I got my first MacBook around 2010 because I was tired of fixing suspend to RAM every few Nvidia driver updates on my ThinkPad. Then I paid for a commercial VM to seamlessly run some Windows software I needed for my freelance work as a translator, removing the need to dual boot two operating systems. Everything just worked, and I could focus on things I wanted to do instead of continuing to tinker with the OS itself. And after years of playing with many different Linux distros, I realised that I did get tired of that. Moreover, a few games that I played, actually had native Mac versions. What's not to like?

These days I do have a Tuxedo laptop for fooling around, and I don't even use laptops on the regular, which is probably why it works well enough. That and integrated Radeon graphics, I'm sure.

Removing all manifest v2 support is also a code change that can be reverted. Of course, the larger the change, the more work it's likely to require to maintain it in the future.

A typical example for English is the adjective order.

Adjective order in English is basically that most essential qualities of the object go closest to the head. There are lists out there that try to break this down into categories of adjective ("opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose"), and to some extent the anglo intuitions on which sorts of properties are more or less essential are not trivial, but it's not as arbitrary as people want to make it out to be.

This. People act like it's a hyper-complicated rule that English speakers magically infer, when in reality, a) other languages do it, and b) it's a much simpler rule (that you've given) which someone overcomplicated.

As a counterexample (in line with your explanation), consider someone snarking on the WallStreetBets forum: "Come on, guys, this is supposed to be Wall Street bets, not Wall Street prudent hedges!" Adjective order changes because the intended significance changes. (Normally it would be "prudent Wall Street hedges".)

Side note: please don't nitpick about whether "Wall Street" is functionally an adjective here. The same thing would happen if the forum had been named "FinancialBets".

People "overcomplicate" the rule because they find counterexamples to the simple rule.

It's a fool's errand because the way human language works is that people happily accept odd exceptions by rote memory. So the rule simply says that there exist these exceptions. Also, there is something called euphony: speakers find utterances questionable if they are not in some canonical form they are used to hearing. For instance "black & white" is preferred over "white & black".

The rules boil down to "what people are used to hearing, regardless of the underlying grammar offering other possibilities".

Isn't this a bad example? There's only one adjective in "prudent hedges." Changing which noun "prudent" acts on isn't a matter of adjective order.

(I suppose Wall Street is a proper adjective, like "New York pizza," but you said no nitpicking)

In compound noun phrases, nouns serve as adjective-like modifiers.

By the way, modifying compounds generally must not be plurals, to the extent that even pluralia tantum words like scissors and pants get forced into a pseudo-singular form in order to serve as modifiers, giving us scissor lift and pant leg, which must not be scissors lift and pants leg.

An example of a noun phrase containing many modifying nouns is something like: law school entrance examination grading procedure workflow.

The order among modifying nouns is semantically critical and different from euphonic adjective order; examples in which modifying nouns are permuted, resulting in strange or nonsensical interpretations, or bad grammar, are not valid for demonstrating constraintsa mong the order of true adjectives which independently apply to their subject.

For instance, red, big house is strange and wants to be big, red house. The house is independently big and red.

This is not related to why entrance examination grading procedure cannot be changed to examination entrance grading procedure. The modifiers do not target the head, but each other. "entrance" applies to "examination", not to "procedure" or "grading".

Did you read the second sentence of that paragraph? The same thing would happen with a legit adjective, like if the forum had been named "FinancialBets": "Guys, this is financial bets, not financial prudent hedges."

I think that's why they explicitly added the story about the color TV being an instant improvement.

FWIW, I've felt over the years that if you have to get used to it, it probably wasn't that good to begin with: so so many things that are totally different I've upgraded to and thought "omg this is amazing! how did I ever live before?" and, if I have to go back, it takes a long time to get used to the bad thing again.

The one example I have off the top of my head: higher resolution monitors. I was totally happy with my lower resolution monitors; but, the second I tried a higher resolution monitor, it ruined me for lower resolution monitors. I can totally get used to it again, but it takes a long time, and I really don't want to; upgrading, though, is instantaneously better.

I think these questions that all of you have brought up here are really interesting and definitely a part of the psychology of perception. Optical corrections, however, are really a different thing though. They have quite a strict demarcation in that they specifically deal with how we perceive the geometry/measurements/space of things.

Google is not the only provider of Chrome extensions (yet?).

> But because it hasn't become cannon in any group or culture, it's a bad idea in that it doesn't produce human flourishing.

I am not convinced that's certain. At best, we can tell that those cultures were outcompeted by others, but the healthy human cells are outcompeted by cancer as well. Additionally, I'd say that throughout most of the human history taking care of the world in the modern sense was not an existential matter because we had much more room for error.

You’re on the right track in seeing it as an evolutionary selection style system, but there’s another easier explanation along those lines as well.

OP is mistaking those values which reproduce themselves well with values which are Good. Upholding tradition is a particularly brutal example; its ethical consequences are entirely variable depending on what traditions are being upheld. The one thing that it does succeed in doing is reproducing the same social structure which, among other things, will raise new people to believe in upholding tradition. Those values which lead to their adoption by new people will stick, and those values which don’t are weeded out of the population. OP sees the mixed bag of values that result from this process and cherishes them as the word of god.

Rampant misinformation certainly makes it harder to figure things out, but I disagree that it somehow removes people's right to vote for what's best for them or making an educated vote. I don't find that kind of rhetoric helpful.

Politics is complicated, and most people are neither interested nor qualified to determine what's "best." Even the experts often do not know or agree on how to "fix" things that are broken, so how should the voters? Most just want to be able to afford the groceries.

For me, the crisp text was the reason retina became a must.

Sure, but a screen, even a touchscreen, is not mutually exclusive with buttons. My Toyota has both, and after setting up the navigation, I can go the whole way and do everything without touching the screen.

It's not separate, but they don't necessarily have to use them like that. They merely can.