A technical note: OpenType Layout does have a way of representing the appropriate _cursor positions_ to use for components of a ligature[1], which is a good proxy for where the individual glyph boundaries are in the trivial case (fi and fl, say) but these tables are not reliably included in all fonts, and they are not actually used by much client software (last I checked they were used by CoreText but not by HarfBuzz or DirectWrite.)
This is definitely true, but there is a useful distinction between the usual evolutionary competition between species in an ecosystem and the very sharp situation of an ecologically novel species being introduced into that ecosystem and out-competing the incumbents, and 'invasive species' is the best term we currently have for this second case.
It is significantly more than that. One major example: quebec has a separate legal system for civil matters, based on french civil law. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_law)
If you're going to post quite sensationalist speculation please at least provide some attempt at a source or rationale. It doesn't really pass the sniff test that any goverment would bother with this banal subterfuge when they are more than capable of putting secret payloads into orbit, and have done so many times[1].
I don't think there's some huge point beyond exploring an interesting question, and raising it in a forum where it's possible some people with more specific domain knowledge might offer some insight.
I remember reading in one of John McPhee's geology books (collected as [1], and one of the best things I've ever read) about a particular way that diamonds can form; it had a name (like a diamond jet or a diamond burst or something) but the basic idea is mesmerizing: super-heated water containing dissolved carbon would find some fissure in the surrounding rock and explosively expand into it, and in the process it would cool rapidly and diamonds would crystallize out of the solution. I'm stuck with the visual of a seam of diamonds popping into existence in an instant, which is not what we normally think of as a geological timescale.
In reality, how many people are regularly using github search without having a github account? Can this change really be expected to bring in a meaningful number of users?
Trying to think this through, my own best guess for what is going on is that there is some amount of traffic coming from bots/scripts and github would like to have all queries associated with an account so that they can block accounts? I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I think it's a reasonable possibility.
I’ve smoked weed before bed most nights for at least a decade, and if I happen to skip a night I… still sleep fine, unless I’ve had no exercise that day.
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/g...