Macbooks have been nice since M1 era, but the Intel Macbooks between years 2013-2020 were hardly robust. My partner's 2014 MBP Retina's screen plastic film started peeling off, which was a known design flaw of those models. Later the ones with butterfly keyboard were notoriously unreliable, with keys getting stuck.
Personally I haven't had much trouble with Linux on modern Thinkpads. Very little to configure manually, as long as you pick the right distro. Even a Dell laptop at work with Linux isn't causing me much OS-related issues, although battery life sucks.
Well, no. The 2015 MBP is a well known workhorse that stretched many people professionally up to the M1. I would absolutely agree that the 2016-2020 Intel MacBooks were rough though.
Every company can have its issues, I think it's more about how many issues there are and what the company did to address it.
My 2013 4GB RAM MacBook Air is still running great, and is used for browsing in my household. Currently writing this on an M1 Air that is phenomenal as well.
I would suggest creating sanctions that hurt those in power, meaning mainly old bearded men who probably don't play Minecraft. Ordinary people have no power to change anything over there, they get shot if they try.
> I would suggest creating sanctions that hurt those in power
People in power remain in power by keeping the population under control. If the population is indifferent to consequences of the power-class' decisions, then everything can keep rolling along as-is. When the population is impacted negatively by the power-class' decisions - then civil unrest happens. With enough of that, the power-class loses power...
This[1] video does a decent job of highlighting the careful balancing act that's required to remain in power... it also highlights the difficulties of changing the status-quo even for a benevolent dictator that desires to remain a dictator - ie. they have to appease all of the powers-that-be under them.
Iran is one of those dictatorships where the majority of the population already dislikes (or plain hates) the government, as we have seen in many demonstrations that have been extinguished through use of extreme violence by the regime.
Making life more difficult for ordinary Iranians isn't going to change anything as long as the army and revolutionary guard stay loyal to the criminals in power.
> Iran is one of those dictatorships where the majority of the population already dislikes (or plain hates) the government...
Right, just like the people of Afghanistan must have hated so much the Taliban, with their cruel and tyrannic grip on power... just waiting for a saviour like the Americans to bring them up to the modern age...
Well, we all know that's a load of bullshit now. The very moment the Americans left, without resistance of any kind, the Taliban is back. This happens again and again, in country after country, but people still seem to forget (or not even be aware of anything happening) and think everyone in the world wants to be like them, and when those in faraway places are not behaving like themselves it must be because they're being forcibly coerced by some maleficent dictator or some other imaginary villain.
Things are not black and white. Sure, some people in Iran would love a more West-friendly regime, but almost certainly, most would be horrified if their government suddenly started implementing laws to guarantee freedom of speech, legalize abort, separate state and religion, allow same-sex marriage and sex change operations, and a whole lot of stuff that's only preached by the West and is not at all accepted as good by most of the other cultures in the world... can't people just accept that not everyone thinks the same or want to be the same as themselves?? That goes against the Western's own modern values of being accepting of differences and not trying to submit other cultures to our own values and believes.
I don't think this is what they were saying. The political and economic state in Iran is about as far from Afghanistan as possible. Iran/Persia has a long history of national identity and has a highly organized society. Afghanistan is a tribal region and still does not have a sense of nation or really a mature sense of political identity. Iran is also a major power player in Asia with a far stronger economy, with a GDP in the top quartile in the world, and with one of the best performing stock exchanges in Asia in the last decade, while Afghanistan has for many years been the poorest country in Asia.
That said, Iran has a political structure that owes little to no obedience to the will of the people, with a non-elected supreme leader and guardian council (half of which are appointed by the supreme leader) who have the final say in all political decisions, so the actions of Iran should not be mistaken as the will of the people, even in the loose sense that representative democracies are.
Very valid points. But how would you be able to tell whether the majority of Iranians aren't happy with their Government with confidence?
I find that difficult to believe because, if that were the case, at some point, specially because of all the reasons you mentioned, the people would just get over it and kick the current Government out of office for good?! It may be bloody, but if the people really want it, it's not unreasonable to assume, IMHO, that the military would be onboard with it?? Once the military is on board, there's nothing the politicians and cleric can do to stop it as in a revolution, the only thing that matters is physical power.
IRI is likely in control of IRGC at this point. They summoned ambassadors the other week with FM completely out of the loop! The revolutionary courts just ignored the supreme court's judgment and sentenced Toomaj Salahi -- a rap artist that expressed the voice of the people in his dissident songs -- to death.
IRI is the acronym for Iran's official name, Islamic Republic of Iran. I'm reading this as Iran is in control of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. What are you referring to exactly in your first sentence?
First of all, the I in IRGC stands for Islamic and not Iran. In fact, neither their logo or any of their patches mentions the word IRAN.
As my beloved homeland is, imo, under effective coercive occupation of Islamist ideologues (there is not a even hint of godliness in that regime) it is preferred that you refer to the regime by its name IRI and not cast calumny on the beauty that is IRAN.
The name of the IRGC was not the part of your original comment that I was questioning, but your use of IRI. Did you mean to say that the IRI is no longer in control of the IRGC?
Many people in Iran hate their government, but they hate America more. At least the Iranian government always pulls out a “Death to America” rally as a distraction whenever it’s ion the rocks popularity wise. Internal protests show some discord, but it isn’t clear if that’s just cities and the government is still popular in more rural areas.
Maybe the population hates the dictatorship in the same way that pretty much every country hates their government.
Does that mean that they would cheer for a western take over of their land and economy?
Human intelligence is definitely multilayered, and different parts of brain are known to be responsible for different types of processing.
Personally I was born with a disability that makes me suck at motor skills, spatial learning and understanding most forms of mathematics, but somehow I'm still decent at programming, and significantly better than average at reading and writing - all of which LLMs can do quite well compared to its mathematics and logic skills.
What about native Germans though? At least here in Finland plenty of natives move away from the capital to smaller bordering towns once they start a family. Advantages are reduced cost of living, and improved safety & schools.
It happens here too, either willingly or not. At some point the city just isn't suitable either because of cost, infrastructure (especially for raising kids) or general unpleasantness.
But for most immigrants it's really hard to feel at home in a small town halfway around the world.
It's not about where people want to live, but where most jobs are. Historically rapid urbanization started with industrialization, which reduced jobs in countryside, and created news mostly in urban areas.
I think it's worth asking why the jobs are in the cities. Given our information economy, why do the jobs need to be in the cities? My theory is that humanity (and subset of it) behave a bit like neural network. Social networks - neural networks. They both process information. And the social network in a city has a better shape. Villages have insular clique-y networks. Sure there are connections outward - but not enough. Ideas cannot spread as quickly. This makes them worse at processing information so they are outcompeted by the cities.
It seems South Koreans in aren't comfortable with having kids in general. It's much better to dedicate your life to making shareholders of Samsung, or some other soulless megacorporation richer. That's how you get one of the world's lowest birth rates.
Middle class 15-20 years ago was able to buy, or even finance building of their own houses. How many poor you know who do that?
Only thing that has really improved is access to cheap Made in China goods, and perhaps plane tickets. But actual necessities like housing are becoming more and more unaffordable.
Personally I haven't had much trouble with Linux on modern Thinkpads. Very little to configure manually, as long as you pick the right distro. Even a Dell laptop at work with Linux isn't causing me much OS-related issues, although battery life sucks.