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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
Well, the planet would be better off without Chinese middle class and elite flying around and buying stuff. Countries that are full of poor "uneducated farmers" tend to have much lower carbon footprint than richer ones, even with the higher birth rates. Despite its admirable investments in reneweable tech, China still keeps building new coal plants as well.
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.