Case in point? From what I've read he's reserved, keeps a very low profile, and is dedicated to his work. We know next to nothing about his personal life.
While I have many grievances with Windows 11, I am particularly upset about the taskbar. Back in Windows 10, I used a double-height taskbar positioned at the bottom of the screen. I forget the name of the specific setting, but all windows would appear as their own item, and, the taskbar would ensure that all items retained the same width.
The taskbar in Windows 11 is a downgrade in every conceivable way. I can look past having the icons be centered and grouped by default, as that is an option that can be configured. I can't get past not being able to at least make a double height taskbar. But the biggest frustration is that Windows 11 refuses to make ungrouped items have a static width. Moreover, the width of a taskbar item will depend on the title of the window. So when I have a browser open with multiple windows the taskbar will animate the taskbar item expanding or contracting based on the title of the page I am looking at. I, personally, find this incredibly distracting, especially considering how often one visits a different page or tab while browsing. While Windows 10 also changed the size of taskbar items, it only did that when opening a new window and the taskbar was full. Even so, it would resize all existing items to the same dimension.
This became nigh intolerable for me, but thankfully, I was given permission to install a third-party taskbar and start menu replacement called Start11. I would say it gives me about 95% of the functionality I wanted back. At home, I'm still running Windows 10.
>"It reminds me of the web before Apple-style minimalism took over."
The loss of color and texture is my biggest gripe. So many webpages and user interfaces abandoned the idea of distinguishing components using different colors and just went with making the page as close to bleach white as possible. I suppose an upside of this is that it made dark-mode easier to adopt. That being said, good dark mode support seems relatively recent.
Liquid Glass looks pretty from a distance, but my biggest gripe with the design language is just how difficult so many things become to read or interact with. Given that the whole raison d'être of liquid glass is transparent effects, the options to limit that or otherwise increase contrast simply do not go far enough. I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.
My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.
I'm told that was the reason, which is a shame because I would continue to buy the "mini" version if they kept making them. Sadly the only dimension Apple seems interested in reducing is the thickness.
Over the long run, more volume would provide more work for the FAA and its employees. For now, though, loosening the rules in hopes of getting more launches would serve to reduce work for the agency and diminish it's purpose. I could see a business making the short term tradeoff in the name of long term gains but not a government bureaucracy. Does that make where I am coming from a little more understandable?
And they aren't sending passengers on these autonomous test flights. Nor are they risking multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded payloads. It makes total sense to me to allow SpaceX a faster launch cadence for their prototypes.
To be clear, I'm not saying regulatory agencies are bad. What I am saying, though, is that these agencies don't have an incentive to trim down red-tape in the interest of efficiency. On one level, it would be bad for their employees and budget. On another level, something might slip through the cracks so it makes sense for a safety agency to be far more risk averse than what it watches.
To be honest, I can't tell you what kind of future innovation is going to result from cheaper spaceflight. But there is serious scientific and engineering potential to be unlocked. What SpaceX is doing seems environmentally unfriendly, and I know no-one wants to hear "but xyz is worse". But we really do need to keep such things in mind, because SpaceX's footprint here is completely dwarfed by domestic carbon creation. The Apollo Project lead to all sorts of spinoff technologies that we use today. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect some of the future technological advancements to reduce pollution or carbon emissions.
It should be remembered that the unspoken rule of any agency or institution is to justify its own continued existence. For be bureaucracy that is the FAA, all the onerous requirements they place on spaceflight is a feature, not a bug.
I feel like YouTube's goal is to always get you to watch something else. Scroll down in search results? See unrelated videos. As soon as the video starts? See a 'Recommended' badge. Pause the video? See an overlay with other videos. Leave the video running? Autoplay fixates on something else.
I literally couldn't agree more. I can't stand how bad searching has become.
While we're at it, you know what else I really hate? How google switches the order of the buttons for Images, News, Shopping, Video, etc. on EACH QUERY. Who in the world ever thought this was a good idea?
I don't know which is more ridiculous, the fact that reality works like this, or, that a species of apes was able to figure this out.