For mobile - For desktop computers, below 10% even. Given that only 73% of world population is estimated to have internet access in total, that makes it just a small fraction of world population overall

As a portion of Internet users who regularly pay for and depend on hosted services, I bet that percentage is much, much higher.

Did any of these VS Code forks yet fix their issues from official marketplace access leading to extensions being severely outdated and ripe with security issues?

Don't want to discuss your statement about "bankrolling" here, I'm not into the topic enough.

However, since this post is about US GDP I'm now curious, what do you think where this money is going and contributing to GDP?

I'm jojoing on this for at least 15 years at this point. I really appreciate the physical experience of real books, the smell, the weight, just as you describe it. At the same time I really despise the storage space they take up, collecting dust, never to be touched again. So I go full digital for a while and read books on my Scribe. I get decision paralysis really quickly because of all the content available at a finger press, but the note taking and accessibility of it all are really nice. But after a while I grow tired of this and buy some hardcover books again and really enjoy that.

This cycle has been repeating for me for a long time, I wonder if I'll find a good balance eventually. My current approach is to try and read more technical stuff digital while keeping novels, the humanities, history as paperback, we'll see.

In your quote he says there's less concern about bias, not that there is less bias. That's an important distinction imho

Less concern from whom?

The people who will soon be waving big, scary, regulatory sticks in his direction, presumably.

Well but maybe Chad in Nebraska would appreciate buying a Halloween decoration for $0.50 on wish!?!

We should maybe just reconsider in general what kind of thing is economically viable

He and his family certainly would if all they can afford to make it a special weekend is plastic crap from the dollar shop.

The real concern isn't that consumerism is threaten, as you seem to indicate that could be a good thing in fact.

I consider the U.S slowly becoming 19th century China.

I would like to remain positive but it might even be worse.

Globalisation, the U.S economy has been relying on developing countries to provide raw and finished produce. Not only de-industrialized, the population suffers from some superiority complex that makes it even hard to accept it may have to learn how to work and make stuff. Betting on AI to solve the universe, a migration to Mars.

Orders of magnitude more potent Pharmaceuticals. fantanyl is a hundred times more potent than Opium, a hundred times cheaper, and far easier to smuggle and conceal.

The U.S got to wake up, not just reconsider its consumerism culture.

There's maintenance management fees to be earned!

I don't know about how this stuff works, but as a matter of fact there's management bonuses for new development for DB execs, whereas nothing is gained from plain bleak maintenance. So guess why many major train stations in Germany have been undergoing major, multi-billion relocations and redesigns (often with worse throughput metrics).

Complaining about train noise is a national hobby, so the legal rules for noise protection have been significantly tightened up in the last decades and now multi-metre high noise barriers (up to four, five or even six metres) are a legal requirement. The end result being that people still complain about fear of more noise when infrastructure upgrades are proposed, but new they complain about visual blight, too. Even where local property owners would be okay with somewhat more elevated noise levels (or having sound-insulating windows installed) in return for lower noise barriers, the infrastructure operator is legally required to build the full-height wall even against the wishes of the adjacent property owners/local municipalities.

In the absence of national sensibilities on noise returning to e.g. Swiss levels (where AFAIK balancing noise protection vs. its visual impacts actually is an official planning goal), less ugly noise protection barriers are a worthwhile development. (They've also managed to make freight train noticeably quieter by requiring composite-materials brake shoes, which don't roughen up the wheel treads so much, but beyond that there aren't many more easy gains in noise reduction to be had…)

I agree with you, but I would like to point out that airplanes without power should glide, i.e. see gimli glider. I do wonder though if anyone has tried with recent Boeing models.

They do glide, in fact airliners have a glide ratio rivaling gliders, and substantially exceeds general aviation airplanes.

I knew most planes have quite reasonable glide distances and I knew that large commercial airliners were no exception. But from a relative standpoint (GA vs CA) this seemed suspect at first. Intuitively to me the enormous mass differences would make up for the wing surface area differences and the advantage would be to much smaller / lighter planes. On further reflection makes a lot of sense. Fuel is one of the highest costs of commercial airlines. Of course they are going to be hyper-optimizing for this where they can. A 747 being fuel efficient is far more important to bottom lines than a tiny Cessna being fuel efficient and with the relative costs of these aircraft, Boeing can invest far more in research to reduce drag and optimize lift. Aircraft glide ratios certainly seem to confirm this.

Airliner glide ratios fall between 15 and 20, which is comparable with cheapest immediately post-war training gliders for category B, aka the gliders you put a student pilot to learn how to make turns before the advent of two-seater trainer gliders.

And that 15 to 20 glide ratio is for best possible condition.