Warm and clear by every indication, possibly for another day or so. It was certainly nice yesterday.
Ran my errands, drove all over town. Hit the Post Office and UPS both.
Wife took the kids for their wuflu test. Both negative for wuflu, eldest positive for influenza A. So they are still out of school but entirely ordinary reasons. Kinda neat that they can do all the tests with one swab of the nasal cavity.
I’m not feeling so hot myself. I’m home with the kids today, and I don’t know how much I’ll be doing besides taking it easy, and maybe sleeping.
I don’t have much to say today, so I’ll leave you to talk amongst yourselves…..
n
(keep stacking)
60F at 615am, and I’ve very tired. Had phone ring and wake me about 4 times after going to bed late.
Grrrr.
n
“A F250 “Tremor” with the 7.3L V8 wouldn’t be interesting enough?”
What’s the out the door hit to the wallet for a truck like that?
Mid 50s MSRP to start, but if it is new and rare, the dealers will want a premium, especially since that engine probably isn’t long for this CAFE environment.
Ford won’t make a GM like announcement about going EV only because that would the destroy the resale of their gasoline-powered trucks at a time when the F150 is getting heat from Toyota and what’s left of RAM, but the writing is on the wall.
I’ve always wondered how the pluggable hybrids handle old gas. Do they run the engine periodically just to move fluids around and make sure it is lubricated? Make sure the engine and oil get up to temp to boil off the water and acids in the oil? Have a fuel drain so when the gas is a year old, you can dispose of it? How and where?
So many questions.
Re: The F-117’s being brought out of retirement.
I read somewhere they were being used to test various sensors for performance against 1st generation stealth. Like the Russian SU-57 and the Chinese J-20.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/02/frys-electronics-is-no-more-and-all-30-stores-will-soon-close/
Fry’s is closing as was predicted here many moons ago. I was not surprised. I get a daily email with the specials for the day. That email did not arrive this morning. So the closure is confirmed based on my small sampling.
The management blames COVID. I blame management as the problems started long before COVID. Wish I lived close to a store as I might be able to grab some bargains. Or not.
https://www.frys.com/
Well, I’m actually feeling a bit sad at that news. Three stores in the Houston area, and I was a regular at two of them and an occasional customer at the NASA store. Of course it’s been years, literally, since I did much more than walk thru.
I posted here about my last visit to the NASA store and how empty it was.
I don’t think there will be many bargains. They didn’t own the merch, for the most part, inventory levels were low anyway, and most of the stuff left was way out of date or “As Seen On TV” crap.
There might be some test equipment or radios, but that stuff got mighty thin on the ground over the years.
I did get their email flyer and always scanned it. They fact that they were offering SOFTWARE for sale, and download, should tell you a lot.
n
added- I expect to see the stuff in bankruptcy and reseller auctions in 6 months or so.
The government really needs to decide which message it’s trying to send. They’re working both ends of it right now. “Go get the vaccine! Everyone needs to get the vaccine!” “If you got the vaccine you can probably still spread the virus, it may not work on variants, and we’re going to be wearing masks until at least 2022.” So, why exactly should anyone under 65 bother getting the vaccine? What’s exactly is the f’ing point? So, I get the vaccine but I still have to wear a mask, social distance, and deal with lockdowns. Well, by all means, let me rush right down and get injected. The government is a horrible salesman.
The management blames COVID. I blame management as the problems started long before COVID. Wish I lived close to a store as I might be able to grab some bargains. Or not.
Fry’s has been in trouble for a long time. Retail Archeology on YouTube has good coverage of the situation. My personal experience with the Wilsonville (Portland) and Austin stores made me wonder why they didn’t go under five years ago.
For most of the last year, whatever merchandise available in Fry’s stores was limited to stock from vendors who would work on the company’s terms and risk not getting paid, similar to Borders. Real bargains will be rare … unless you are a fan of “tribute” (whatever they call the kn0ckoffs) scents.
I’ve always wondered how the pluggable hybrids handle old gas. Do they run the engine periodically just to move fluids around and make sure it is lubricated? Make sure the engine and oil get up to temp to boil off the water and acids in the oil? Have a fuel drain so when the gas is a year old, you can dispose of it? How and where?
A GM plugin hybrid like the Volt? Nothing. Its GM.
Plugin hybrids aren’t intended for six months use without running the engine.
Toyota may do something with the RAV4 plugin hybrid, but a lot of their recent standard cars have known bad fuel pumps — the problem is still unresolved — so I wouldn’t have a lot of faith that they solved the problem either. The jury is still out on their fix for DI carbon fouling.
My neighbor’s new plug in Hyundai hybrid is back as of early this morning … and not idle under a tarp in front of my house like most of last week.
Microcenter has been the new Fry’s for some years now.
n
Microcenter has been the new Fry’s for some years now.
Nothing can truly be Fry’s pre-Incredible Unverse buyout, circa 1996, but the Brown Truck Mall and Food Court ate their business model like everyone else.
Fry’s was a one stop shop. Parts. Tools. Snacks. Drinks. Porn.
In Sunnyvale, anything not in the old Fry’s was either across Arques at Weird Stuff or just down Lawrence Expressway in the strip mall with Computer Literacy.
Barnes & Noble put CL out of business after buying them out following Jobs booting the store location at Apple HQ. Google bought Weird Stuff’s last location and evicted them.
There was a technical book store in Hollywood that was really good. you could spend some good time browsing in there.
San Diego Technical Books was also good, and here in Houston there was a decent tech book store, but the last time I drove by it was gone.
n
Just got my second Moderna jab. If I don’t turn green or go blind in 15 minutes they’ll let me go.
San Diego Technical Books was also good, and here in Houston there was a decent tech book store, but the last time I drove by it was gone.
Barnes & Noble and Borders put most of the big independent tech book stores out of business 20 years ago catering to the Hot Skillz crowd. “Teach Yourself Java in 10 Days”.
At least the Hot Skillz crowd would try. These days, any developer under ~ 40-45 will consider it a microaggression if you tell them to read a book on a topic when they ask for “help” with something technical.
Another lesson from my firing — some of our group at the last job asked for “brown bags” on Bash (Korn) shell scripting pre-Covid, and my response, suggesting going through the OReilly book cover-to-cover as I did 25 years ago, apparently generated some bitterness/resentment which carried over into HR’s fishing expedition “investigation”.
Maybe I am too old for this.
@Harold
Good luck and do report. I get my second Moderna on Friday.
Last time I went to Frys Burbank about 3 years ago I thought it gone then. Much reduced and mostly ‘shove it out the door old crap’.
yep, they exceeded the natural lifespan of a business.
The sad part is that their online presence was very early. you could buy and pickup at the store. and their search worked well. I think that a large number of people just stopped buying the sort of thing they were selling.
n
Brown Book Shop. Now all online.
yep, they exceeded the natural lifespan of a business.
The sad part is that their online presence was very early. you could buy and pickup at the store. and their search worked well. I think that a large number of people just stopped buying the sort of thing they were selling.
Buying the Incredible Universe stores seemed to be the key mistake. Fry’s never did anything meaningful with the real estate, and the stores were a *lot* more fun under Tandy’s ownership.
Supposedly, even for some of the variants, the vaccine can, if you do get infected, reduce the severity of the disease and potentially keep you out of the hospital.
Also, becoming a Covid ‘long hauler’ is something else to avoid, so the vaccine still in many cases prevent you from getting infected. Approximately 30% of those that get infected wind up as long haulers, even those that only had a mild case of Covid.
There have been enough people vaccinated so far without any mass reports of arms falling off or skin turning green to convince me to get jabbed as soon as I’m eligible.
–added link
https://www.10tv.com/article/news/nation-world/nih-long-haul-coronavirus-symptoms/507-4ee8e43b-93d0-47fb-89c0-1ebb940ac5fd
Frys; back when I lived in Sacramento, CA, the local Fry’s in Roseville had a “trains” theme, and for 15 years or so, I’d be in there every couple of weeks. But Amazon changed that; Amazon was generally cheaper, and 2 days was generally “soon enough”. But the last three times I went there, they didn’t have what I was looking for, and eventually I stopped bothering.
“Another Black white supremacist in New York”
https://gunfreezone.net/another-black-white-supremacist-in-new-york/
“In New York City, a Filipino man, Noel Quintana, was slashed in the face with a box cutter on the subway because the NYC subway system has really turned into a dystopian hell-tube under de Blasio.”
You know, a .38 special would have solved that problem.
And stay out of the inner cities !
here in Houston there was a decent tech book store, but the last time I drove by it was gone.
Brown Book Shop. Now all online.
I used to go in there just for the smell. And they carried all of the Chemical Engineering resource books that the students at UofH and Rice had bogarted from the campus libraries. I learned the hard way to make sure that the pages I was looking for were actually in the book before heading to the zerox machine though. Brown Book Store just did not carry the engineering magazines that we needed though.
“here in Houston there was a decent tech book store, but the last time I drove by it was gone.”
Brown Book Shop. Now all online.
Amazon isn’t easy to browse.
Another problem is that the latest Hot Skillz are so fluid or briefly lived that decent books never get written. No equivalent exists for Rust or Node.js like “The Camel Book”, “Ousterhout” or “Stroustrup”.
San Diego Technical Books was also good, and here in Houston there was a decent tech book store, but the last time I drove by it was gone.
Barnes & Noble and Borders put most of the big independent tech book stores out of business 20 years ago catering to the Hot Skillz crowd. “Teach Yourself Java in 10 Days”.
At least the Hot Skillz crowd would try. These days, any developer under ~ 40-45 will consider it a microaggression if you tell them to read a book on a topic when they ask for “help” with something technical.
Another lesson from my firing — some of our group at the last job asked for “brown bags” on Bash (Korn) shell scripting pre-Covid, and my response, suggesting going through the OReilly book cover-to-cover as I did 25 years ago, apparently generated some bitterness/resentment which carried over into HR’s fishing expedition “investigation”.
Maybe I am too old for this.
I don’t read technical books cover to cover anymore. I just look up what I need and stick it in my shelves now. I think that Yahoo, Altavista, and the Googles ruined us with quick lookups.
The problem with a quick online lookup is it lacks context. You don’t know what part of the book it would have been in, you don’t see the lessons and examples around it to see if there is better, or a special case…
And the skim and spin gets the problem solved, but doesn’t lock anything into your brain the way having a structure to hang it on does.
n
That’s true, Nick, but when you’re under the gun to get something diagnosed, fixed, and put back into production as fast as possible, anything beyond the immediate often takes second place. In programming positions in the typical corporate workplace, there’s always more on a programmer’s plate than he can possibly do and there’s usually a lot of pressure to crunch through the list as fast as possible because more is always coming.
(Never mind that a high fraction of the work gets thrown away because a project is cancelled or because the requirements changed massively.)
Is this Fry’s related to the Fry’s grocery chain?
I don’t read technical books cover to cover anymore. I just look up what I need and stick it in my shelves now. I think that Yahoo, Altavista, and the Googles ruined us with quick lookups.
Unix shell scripting is really hard to learn with quick lookups. A lot of newbies never get past understanding the quoting rules on the command line. Shell definitely isn’t something you can learn at 3AM from Google when everything is in crisis.
I’m not a big fan of shell scripts, but the shell is always available even on minimal Unix systems. We did quite a bit of shell at various places I’ve worked that were not Windows-specific shops.
The last job loosened hiring standards to recruit one C#/Windows guy from NI with the boss claiming he could ‘train Unix’. I think the truth is that they both geeked out on cosplay during the phone screen, the recruited employee being a part of the permanent cast out at Sherwood Forest every Spring.
Once the standards were loosened for that guy, the door was open until the company started running out of money last year. We ended up with about a quarter of the group for Unix development not really being able to cope with Unix at the command line. And they wonder how the company lost $100 Million so far in the fiscal year that ends in March.
Is this Fry’s related to the Fry’s grocery chain?
The same family, yes. The father founded Fry’s Supermarkets in CA, expanded to Phoenix, and sold out to a bigger chain in the early 70s. The sons then built Fry’s Electronics with money the father gave each of them from the sale of the supermarket chain.
“API: January US oil demand within 1.2% of year-ago level”
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/economics-markets/article/14198186/api-january-us-oil-demand-within-12-of-yearago-level
“US petroleum demand was 19.7 million b/d in January 2021, according to the latest monthly statistical report by API, a 5.6% increase from December and a decrease of 1.2% compared with January 2020.”
Well, the economy is recovering despite the new jerk in the White House. I wonder what he will do next to muck things up ?
“Pressure Grows For Meaningful US Emission Cuts”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/23/pressure-grows-for-meaningful-us-emission-cuts/
“Thirty days after Joe Biden entered the White House, the US is officially back in the Paris Agreement.”
“Now the US is back in the Paris Agreement, it is expected to set a 2030 emissions target, with campaigners calling for at least 50% cuts”
” https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/pledges-and-targets/ ”
“Currently the US has only managed a cut of 10% from 2005 levels.”
Oh yeah, that will be good for the economy.
You know, if we XXXXXX every other person in the USA …
Agree. We had hundreds of multi-thousand-line shell scripts, many jobs ago. It’s very portable, and only some very old and strange Unix variants break the standard.
NI? Northern Ireland? It wasn’t me.
“The Best Dying Earth Books” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-dying-earth-books/
I have read “The Forge of God” and “Tales of the Dying Earth” out of the 16 books.
I would like to add “The Forever Hero” to the list.
https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Hero-Distant-Warrior-Twilight/dp/0312868383/
I am currently reading “Orders of Battle (Frontlines)” by Marko Kloos. He posits that the population of Earth will be 100 billion in 2120. Most of the population eats flavored soy and lives in huge PRCs (public residential complexes).
https://www.amazon.com/Orders-Battle-Frontlines-Marko-Kloos/dp/1542019583/?tag=ttgnet-20
Am I the only person who finds this implausible ?
Does that 30% taking into account that the CDC is reporting that only about 1 in 4.2 symptomatic cases of COVID-19 are reported. So, that 30% “long COVID-19” may be more like ~7%.
I’m not scared of the vaccine. If someone knocked on my front door and legit offered me a vaccine on the spot I’d be like, “Sure, why not? Shoot me up!” Then, roll up my sleeve. However, there are a lot of people anti-vaccine anyway and some that weren’t previously anti-vaccine but are now because of this one being rushed to market. So, how are you going to convince those people to get vaccinated when there’s little perceived benefit to it? Like I previously stated, even after their second shot they’re supposed to stay masked, maintain social distance, avoid crowds and gathering, sterilize everything… why should they bother? They’re telling people to protect themselves and others with a vaccine and then proceeding to describe how having a vaccine doesn’t necessarily protect themselves or others. They’re trying to vaccinate the country and they’re beginning to succeed in doing so, but they need to maintain the virus fear to maintain their control over people and budgets and the two conflict with each other.
I finished OoB. And, yeah, China will be the first (already has) PRCs with delicious soy rations.
“delicious soy rations. ”
–have you looked at how much soy is already in cheap food? QuikE mart burritos are mostly soy, for example. Lots of TVP in cheap prepared food.
n
No…just no. Same for gas station sushi.
In the 50s, it was yeast tanks (see Asimov and others). Now it is soy.
NONE of the others in the Paris accords have cut ANY from their 2005 levels much less our AMAZING 10%. Our cuts are due to burning clean natural gas from fracking. But we must stop that NOW !! demands Biden/Harris in order to cut CO2 … WTF ?? It’s all a power/money grab for their friends and families. The Paris BS won’t do anything for the CO2 levels even the experts admit.
So eventually (maybe?) we can return to some semblance of “normalcy”?
To get there requires a level of ‘herd immunity’ to control the spread of this virus.
I’m the first to admit that there’s plenty that the experts (whichever ones you favor) don’t know about they don’t know. Things like how long does this vaccination last? Will we all need a yearly booster? I imagine all the research that’s going on will continue for some time to come.
From what I’ve read this isn’t just the common cold or the seasonal flu. So if I have to wear a mask in public for the next ten years but I can see my grandkids again then I can deal with the mask.
— added
What “control over people” are they maintaining?
Ain’t fiction fun? But it’s still fiction. In the real world some countries have already reached their peak populations or will in a decade. The iron law of demographics shows us that Japan will loose about half it’s native born population in 100 years. Other countries like Germany and Russia aren’t far behind. Even countries like China will see a large drop. Sorry to disabuse people but we won’t live in a Soylent Green Future.
What is clear, I even noticed it back in 1970, is that the more westernized / civilized a country the lower the birth rate untill it falls below replacement levels.
Well…if you believe the global warming people, in 100 years the species Homo Spaiens will have extincted themselves by then.
https://phys.org/news/2010-06-humans-extinct-years-eminent-scientist.html
When your stuff is in
the “cloud”other people’s computers, you may lose access to it…–people were relying on the manf.’s DDNS to access their cams remotely… fortunately the firmware for the cams supported other DDNS services.
—they want to move everyone to MS onedrive.
n
For those of you eager to apply fixes there should now be available an Optional update for the latest Windows releases:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-releases-windows-10-build-19042844-with-tons-of-fixes/
Come on, man. I shouldn’t have to explain that. 🙂 Everything you’re told you can’t do or that you have to do is control. Face mask mandates are control. Limiting capacity in restaurants is control. Telling people that can’t leave their homes except to do x, y, or z is control. Some control we accept as a trade off for this or that (they tell me how fast I can drive and in return maybe I can step onto a residential street without looking and actually survive being hit by a car). They can exert that control with little pushback because of the fear they instill about the pandemic. They manipulate the fear by deciding which pandemic facts they share and which they do not. What’s worse, is the more they exercise that control the more they normalize it and the less likely people are to raise an alarm at governmental control in general. Though, it’s becoming apparent that most Americans seem to WANT a nanny state, FFS.
Though, it’s becoming apparent that most Americans seem to WANT a nanny state
Half, just half. And it is the half that live in the cities.
The most rapidly growing half. 50% today is soon going to be 55% then 60%…
got the gennies put away (not drained or winterized but put under cover.)
cleaned up a path to the back yard for the tree guy on Friday.
dug out some more auction stuff.
did a small amount of cleanup (blew out the house with the leaf blower), did a lot of leaf blowing in the driveway and on the patio.
LOOKS like I got a bunch of stuff done anyway.
n
One of the few things pundit ex-Judge Andrew Napolitano said (paraphrasing): Every law, EO, etc is a little bit of your freedom taken away.
NI? Northern Ireland? It wasn’t me.
National Instruments. Until a few years ago, the company had a “no layoffs” policy so the company accumulated a lot of marginal performers in Austin like telecom did 20 years ago.
I finished OoB. And, yeah, China will be the first (already has) PRCs with delicious soy rations.
Take a close look at the new drab concrete apartments along the Interstate the next time you drive 35 through Austin. They had exploding plumbing problems in those places long before last week.
Lots of soy in the “fusion” restaurants down there. Franklin’s bucks the trend, but it is blessed — Obama ate there.
Boy, you must be rigorous as to keeping everything nailed down!
Though I used to use the leaf blower to clean the inside of the car, now they have high-pressure air nozzles at the free vacuum stations at the new car wash I’ve been going to.
Variable speed trigger control! Blow the dust off but leave the knicknacks alone.
3 long haired females remain, even if the dog moved on…
The hairballs are epic.
I used to vacuum the whole house but I like the leaf blower better, and it’s faster.
https://www.dewalt.com/products/outdoor/blowers/20v-max-compact-jobsite-blower-kit/dce100m1
It’s way more fun than the vac….
n
For those of you eager to apply fixes there should now be available an Optional update for the latest Windows releases:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-releases-windows-10-build-19042844-with-tons-of-fixes/
I am trying to push version 16.08 of our software out the door. It is not going well, today was a failure. Maybe Thursday.
This business is getting harder and harder. That has nothing to do with me getting older.
Variable speed trigger control! Blow the dust off but leave the knicknacks alone.
3 long haired females remain, even if the dog moved on…
The hairballs are epic.
I used to vacuum the whole house but I like the leaf blower better, and it’s faster.
https://www.dewalt.com/products/outdoor/blowers/20v-max-compact-jobsite-blower-kit/dce100m1
It’s way more fun than the vac….
n
One assumes that you do this when the long haired females are somewhere else so that long hair does not tangle up.
They don’t like the noise….
n
@Greg
“Maybe I am too old for this.”
First, I have been remiss in never expressing my thanks for sharing your employment trials and tribulations. Thank you.
Second, naw, you ain’t too old. You may recall Dr. Pournelle’s stories about being “liberal” as a young man wrt to race relations and other social issues. Then at some point we passed what he and many of us consider a reasonable center. Getting a bit left of that, we got The Egregious Frum and his pals. Now we are far beyond that, and sometime in the future–if we still exist as an independent USA despite the best efforts of the Biden Crime Family–the proverbial pendulum is going to swing back with a vengeance. It will not be pretty. I predict that 50 years from now there will be 20 years of Disney movies that have simply been erased as dangerous and hazardous waste. Hard to tell about other effects, but unfortunately along the way we will lose at least half of two and perhaps three generations. Just too bad they didn’t learn real survival skills.
He posits that the population of Earth will be 100 billion in 2120
Ain’t fiction fun? But it’s still fiction. In the real world some countries have already reached their peak populations or will in a decade. The iron law of demographics shows us that Japan will loose about half it’s native born population in 100 years. Other countries like Germany and Russia aren’t far behind. Even countries like China will see a large drop. Sorry to disabuse people but we won’t live in a Soylent Green Future.
What is clear, I even noticed it back in 1970, is that the more westernized / civilized a country the lower the birth rate untill it falls below replacement levels.
The current planetary growth rate is 0.5%. If one increases that growth rate to 2.6% then the population of Earth in 2120 will be:
So the current population of Earth is 7.8 billion. Using planetary growth factor of 1.026 is (1.026)^100 * 7.8e9 = 101,585,256,208 people.
Wow. That is a lot of people. And a lot of flavored soy.
@Lynn
“I used to go in there just for the smell. And they carried all of the Chemical Engineering resource books that the students at UofH and Rice had bogarted from the campus libraries. ”
About twenty years ago I was perusing the math books at a used bookstore when I thought I had hit the jackpot. A couple dozen very esoteric math books that I was going to add to my library, until I realized they were all from a midwestern university’s library and lacked the proper withdrawal stamp. I made a list and looked them up online. Most were listed as missing. I sent the list in an email to the library director, and they were able to make a phone call and retrieve nearly $4000 in “missing” property.
I still wonder if someone on the library staff ever called the math department to see if they had any recent grads in a certain city.
@Lynn
John Brunner’s “Stand on Zanzibar” 1968
Dystopian New Wave.
Neat title. I couldn’t read more than 50 pages.
John Christopher’s “No Blade of Grass” 1956
was enough, thankyouverymuch.
Film was 1970. Never tempted me.
@Lynn
Too bad McConnell and the rest of the brain trust prevented any real discussion of Trump submitting it to the Senate. Now someone with “standing” and big bucks backing will have to litigate.
@Lynn
“Thirty days after Joe Biden entered the White House, the US is officially back in the Paris Agreement.”
Too bad McConnell and the rest of the brain trust prevented any real discussion of Trump submitting it to the Senate. Now someone with “standing” and big bucks backing will have to litigate.
I figure that we will have a carbon tax shortly. Biden’s advisors are presumably telling him that the Clean Air Act has a fine provision and that he can enact that fine via an executive order.
Barring war or a real pandemic, population growth will top out at 11 billion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
I watched a video from CNBC on YouTube on this subject recently. Basically, the US is already below replacement level. You need to average 2.1 births per couple to maintain population (2 people replaced with 2 people plus 0.1 to account for child mortality). The US is at 1.7. One guy goes on to discuss the old doomsday predictions of the population in a 100 years then adds that as countries develop their birthrate drops and the world population 100 years from now may actually be very close to what it is today. Interesting stuff. I’ll let my great grandchildren worry about it (assuming my progeny make it through that 1.7 number). 🙂
Of course, the government needs the population to grow as population growth fuels consumerism which, in turn, fuels the economy.
And why you import hordes of outsiders.
but when the outsiders don’t spend locally, but instead send remittances home, and spend as little as possible, your strategy fails.
n
I just don’t see the point of plug-in hybrids. Even hybrids are a bit weird.
I mean, one of the big advantages of an EV is that you get rid of the internal combustion engine and all the complexities that go with it. With a hybrid, you have both engine and electric motors. The only advantage is that you are using the engine as efficiently as possible.
A plug-in hybrid? Now you have IC engine, electric motors *and* heavy batteries. How does this make sense?
It’s different, now, with everything online. There is good material, but the problem is finding the good stuff amidst the masses of junk.
Then, for technical stuff, things go out-of-date. Yet, there’s no practical way to say “show me only current stuff”. Mind, the older stuff needs to stay around – if you are solving a problem with older hardware or software, it can be invaluable. But someone looking to learn? They should be able to search for “current” videos, tutorials, whatever.
So, the treaty has been ratified by the Senate? No?
Very implausible. Yes, Africa is exploding, but the rest of the world has pretty much stabilized. Anyway, 100 billion? I don’t think that would be even remotely supportable.
While it won’t happen in our lifetimes, I think overpopulation will ultimately be solved. It may be solved naturally, if living standards everywhere eventually reach a Western level. Or it may be solved in a less nice way: forced sterilization, ethnic cleansing, etc..