fmajid

35 years in my case, thanks to Jean-Jacques Lévy of INRIA. But Emacs was started by James Gosling, not Stallman.

The word you are looking for is “simony”

There are two reasons why the UK does not have affordable housing:

1) land hoarded by the feudal aristocracy (parasites descended from thugs), who do not pay property taxes because there are effectively none (wouldn't want Chuck von Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg und Gotha to pay taxes, now, would we?). Most people in the UK do not own the land under their lodging due to the feudal practice of leasehold, and have to pay rent on it and are constrained from doing even essential maintenance like fire safety without the permission of the freeholder.

2) NIMBYs, generally older and Tory, who vote to block construction and are pandered to by pretty much every major party

Granted, England has twice the population density of Japan, but Tokyo somehow manages to have affordable housing.

International students subsidize UK ones, and most UK universities would go bust without them. Cutting their numbers means at best making higher education even more expensive for British students, and endangering one of the few sectors where the UK is still world-class.

The UK enjoys the worst of both worlds: the high taxes of Europe combined with the low benefits of the US like no free higher education (Germany provides free university education even for foreigners, for instance).

Ah but the geniuses Trump and Netanyahu assassinated the Iranian leader who had issued a fatwa banning nukes as unislamic so now all bets are off.

The Saudis would then get nukes from Pakistan. The thought of MBS or a Wahhabism fanatic successor getting his hands on nukes is absolutely terrifying, far more than the Iranians or even Kim Jong Un.

Sufficiently long that in the TV Series “The Big Bang Theory”, one subplot involves the characters buying helium from a black market dealer to perform their experiments

More likely Larry finally had to come to terms with the fact his son is a moron, and now a significant portion of his wealth is tied to the Skydance millstone, he wanted to see adult supervision.

It’s called failing upwards and is the primary skill set of many CEOs and executives

They are working on it (CXMT for RAM and YMTC for NAND flash) but not having access to ASML’s EUV lithography equipment hobbles them.

The US government is also trying to kneecap them, threatening Apple with tariffs if they went ahead with YMTC storage, even if only for the Chinese market.

They are thus primarily focusing on the Chinese market, but if they weren’t there, DRAM and flash is a global commodity market and prices would have gone up even more insanely than today.

Not being able to receive phone calls is the single greatest feature of the iPad.

The Google Pixel Tablet can be degoogled with GrapheneOS, but it was discontinued last month. It also does not have cellular connectivity. But it’s an excellent device, and the one I am using as part of my effort to wean myself off dependency on fast-enshittifying Apple.

Nano texture was the entire reason I upgraded to an iPad Pro M4. The camera on the long edge is a major regression as far as I am concerned, however. The only drawback is fingerprints are harder to remove,you really need that special microfiber cloth or one of the cheap Chinese clones.

Praying mantises are far swifter.

The British monarchy has far more powers than is commonly thought, even if they are held in reserve.

And they also get to exempt themselves from laws they don't like, like racial discrimination laws (well into the 1970s, brown and black people were deemed unfit for anything more exalted than cleaning toiletsat Buckingham Palace). Or the Cornish or Lancastrian tenants of the crown who have far fewer protections than any others in the UK.