I have to imagine competing with a de-Googled Chrome is also a concern. I wouldn’t think this apples to the majority of users, but a lot of people currently using Firefox today are only doing so because of a dislike of Google (and Microsoft), who might be willing to go back to a responsibly managed/truly FOSS Chrome.

I think your example wins, OP, but I will say for anyone who works in an office environment: Microsoft Office (or Libre alternatives for my FOSS friends which don’t have logins to begin with but whatever).

Imagine if you had to log in every time you opened up a document, and you get automatically logged out after 10 minutes of inactivity and lose any unsaved progress.

Global productivity would grind to a halt. (That, or people finally switch to LibreOffice or similar, but corpos will still reliably do whatever decision seems dumbest).

Likely not, it seems wasteful if the product is otherwise good in all other important regards. I’d just cover up the LED with tape or paint.

Boston City Hall is truly a legendarily gaudy building.

There’s always hope. The feeling you are experiencing is what the people who are causing all of that want you to feel.

Now if everything seems bleak and hopeless all the time, that’s also a strong indicator of depression, and may also be worth talking to a professional about. Or if not a professional, at least people in your life whose perspectives matter more than random internet strangers like me.

I’m apparently in the “Pal” region and it’s not a word I use often to refer to people, nor have I heard it used often by others either.

We use “Dude” pretty often, but looking at the map you’d think this is a dude desert.

Humans (and most other animals) see better side-to-side than up-down. Your eyes are spaced horizontally, giving us a wider horizontal field of vision. People generally prefer putting things side-to-side in work environments, maybe also reflecting how much easier it is to move and work within a horizontal plane than a vertical one. So the upper threshold for monitor width would be longer than the upper threshold for monitor height.

That being said, I know reading is best done in narrower columns, to reduce the amount of left-right movement your eyes need to do which can cause you to lose your place when skimming lines. Three columns of text on a 16:9 monitor is way more readable than one column of text that spans the entire monitor.

And then why do we make an exception for phones which are predominantly used in portrait mode? I guess maybe just for easier 1-handed use? Maybe also to give us more peripheral vision of potential hazards and other things happening in the background when using them, since they’re mobile devices.

Ending it as quickly and painlessly as possible then, I guess. I stick by the opinion that a life without agency and with no means to obtain it isn’t really living at all.

It sounds like you have no agency either way, then, which still sounds like a bad deal to me. I’d rather die at 40 living a life of my choosing than live to 400 with essentially no free will.

I’m not sure I understand the question. If the premise is that you become physically incapable of doing any action that introduces greater risk than some alternative, which isn’t even a guarantee of “immortality” as described, then it’s basically a life not lived at all. The safest option would always be to go nowhere, do nothing, speak to no one.

Imagine living life as if everything was covered in California Prop 65 labels saying “This action can expose you to risks which are known to future you to cause premature demise or other bodily harm.” It sounds awful, I’d never take that bet.

I mean, all of the “especially” bits are still significant, and affect the general understanding of the term.

Ocarina of Time. Randomizer.

You wouldn’t see any billionaires.

Can we keep this specific to Rampart?

In one sense, as a key component of the UK, they already had that chance somewhere between the years of 1600-ish to 1945-ish.

I would like to hope no one nation is the future. Replacing one global hegemony with another is not my idea of progress.

Star Trek says that we shouldn’t expect World War 3 until 2026, so we’ve got 1 more year to live to the fullest before then.

0, and happy to keep it that way.

They’re aristocatic.

Star Trek: The Next Generation season 5 episode 18 “Cause and Effect”