Ah, correction fluid. Nice flashback. It also reminded me of an old joke: "Q: How do you know a Swede has been using the computer? A: There's correction fluid on the display."

Actually, the healthcare in most of those countries has far better outcomes than the US. They also spend far less of their GDP doing so.

While I'm pro free market, I see that in this particular case - health care - it doesn't work. It's better to pay 10% of GDP in taxes for better healthcare than 15% of GDP through a mix of taxes (elderly), insurance, and out of pocket for worse outcomes.

Reasons for this might include that the buyers aren't rational (doh), that there are monopolies (patents, location, urgency), and that the costs are such that the large majority of the population needs insurance of some kind. The specifics of the market also means there are a lot of very bad incentives for the insurance companies to use pre-existing conditions or trying to deny coverage after the fact, and very strange and weird price/discount structures.

To be fair, having merit in the US is easy when the best the US can offer - the brightest minds, sharpest intellects, and most honest of people - are Trump, Kennedy,Hegseth, and Greene.

The problem with these old codebases is usually not the language as such, it's the byzantine specs - and usually partial lack thereof. And all the special cases hiding therein. Writing something you don't understand into a different language is a time consuming challenge, and for these systems breaking stuff often has severe consequences.

This is not how OS support in the Mac world works. Every OS is just supported for 3 years - 1 year of full support including feature upgrades and improvements, and 2 years of security updates. However, Mac gets news major OS versions for free - and a system will get these new major releases for 5-6 years, before they get 2 years of security updates on the final one. So a total of 7-8 years of support. They use the same scheme for both MacOS and iOS. Great for phones, not so great for computers. Microsoft is far superior there, and also in backwards compatibility for applications running on that platform.

That's not how OS releases in the Apple world work. You get a new major OS release for free every year for 5-6 years, and then the final one gets security updates for two more years. Thus, the hardware is supported by Apple for 6-8 years. Which is great for a phone, and a bit behind Windows for PCs and laptops.

If DOGE was actually doing anything useful rather than dismantling the US, they would have seen "how come the US as a nation spends so much more of our GDP on healthcare, but with so bad results compared to other developed countries?". There seems to be plenty of evidence that public healthcare works better than the US system - and if the total paid via taxes would be much less than the sum insurance + tax of today, that'd be a big win. Real world efficiency.

A well functioning market needs rational and informed consumers - neither of which you will have in healthcare. Also, the old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is much more of an incentive in a public healthcare system.

That's not correct. Apple provides full MacOS updates for 6-7 years - the current release, Sequioa supports a lot of hardware from 2018 and 2019. When they no longer release new OS versions for the hardware, they still supply security updates for a couple of years more. Similar for iOS - it also supports 2018 phones, and if they no longer support that with the next release it'll have security updates until 2027 or so. 9 years is a pretty good lifespan for a phone.

What Apple is pretty bad at is software backwards compatibility - 32 bits software hasn't run for years, leaving a lot of software behind. And when they drop Intel backwards compatibility, it'll be even worse.

Microsoft - evil as they are - are much better on these aspects of computers. Games from the 90s still run - as do my old games on my Xbox.

These cameras all save in open formats like jpeg as well, and you can also get them to save both. RAW files are (at least initially) pretty much sensor dumps - the data isn't lossily compressed or processed (or at least minimially processed). This typically allows you do processing yourself before you "develop" a jpeg - things like tinker with the exposure, noise reduction etc in the image, or parts of it. If you're looking for an open source competitor to Lightroom and Capture One, darktable is more up that alley than Gimp.

Given the current President's economic illiteracy combined with his admiration for dictators and hate of democratic countries, it's not a surprise that they're going to implement Juche in the US.

As for why the US has been losing technical leadership: The populace has gotten stupid - things like antiscience, antivaxxers, and creationism being taught rather than evolution are good indicators of something going wrong. And voting in the most corrupt president in history so he can attack allies and ally himself with dictators, while is he is tearing down the justice system and the separation of powers on which modern democracies as built so he can go after "enemies within" - that's the current climax of the downhill turn. The stupidity covers both those who voted for him and those who thought not voting for Harris was OK because they disagreed with her on something. There was one normal person and one corrupt, ignorant, narcissistic, and vindictive dictator-wannabe on the ballot.

While overspending is common you also have situations where there is less of a choice - medical emergencies (in the US. For the rest of the world, much less of an issue), something critical that breaks etc.

The best thing in a freezing car is a heated steering wheel. Beats even seat warmers. Also, EVs are great as the heating of the car starts immediately - makes cold, icy winters much less of an issue than they used to be.

In Norway, automatic bank payments ("avtalegiro") have limits you have authorized for that specific vendor. They also show up in due payments in your bank account before they happen.

The US ended up with Trump. The majority either voted for him, or didn't that vote. When one of the alternatives was Trump, that counts as being an idiot just as much as those who voted for him.

I've yet to see any "really crazy liberal bunch in the US", while the GOP has certainly turned into a crazy, fascist-adjacent cult where truth doesn't matter and allies should be attacked and dictators like Putin praised. Reagan would turn in his grave if he saw what his party has turned into.