I’ve used Linux on my private laptop for the past few years, never had any major issues. Work desktop is running Ubuntu, no major problems except for the odd bit of poorly maintained software (niche science things, so that’s not really a Linux issue). Laptop breaks, I get a Windows 11 laptop from work…and I’ve had so many problems. Updates keep breaking everything, and I’ve had to do a factory reset more than once since the recovery after those updates also always failed. Wish I had my good old Linux laptop back :(

Surely that depends on where in Asia you’re looking at as well? On average, the number of languages people speak is quite different between, say, India and Japan. Or Switzerland vs Romania in Europe.

Not sure if this counts since most of them have recently closed down, but for a while there was a large number of American candy stores popping up all over town. Many cash only, same products and same branding across many different stores. Hardly anyone was ever shopping there, and yet they could somehow always afford to pay rent for prime locations. Eventually, several journalists picked up on the topic and found evidence many of them were fronts for money laundering and were tied to organised crime. Not sure if it was directly connected to that increased awareness, but shortly after more of these articles were published, most of the local stores closed.

It does, but it’s important to note that the theoretical basis for much of the rapid progress we’re seeing now (e.g. machine learning) has actually existed for quite a long time. Training very large models wasn’t feasible at the time they were theorised, but the basis for them did exist.

When it comes to brains, we don’t even have a good understanding of how multisensory integration works yet, let alone how we could, even in theory, implant multisensory impressions like ads. It’s much easier with things like movement disorders or paralysis because our understanding of those phenomena is much more advanced. Plus - we’re only really dealing with one modality there - movement.

Deep brain stimulation for psychiatric conditions does exist, but it’s poorly understood, to the point where there isn’t even really a consensus on where you should place the stimulating electrodes for the best effects. At least that’s what a colleague who worked on DBS described a while ago, and I doubt it would’ve changed dramatically in a year.

We definitely share basic values including political views, but there’s also many things where our opinions differ. For example, we both strongly believe in supporting human rights for everyone, but we have different views on local planning reforms or diets. Some hobbies but not all hobbies and interests are shared, we listen to different music, etc. Overall, I really like it this way - we’re different enough so I can always learn something new from her, but not so different we’d have arguments about basic values.

See username :) So much variety even though it’s all the same tea plant

Brain-computer/machine interfaces are really interesting when treating conditions like paralysis or Parkinson’s disease, and to a certain extent severe psychiatric conditions if you count deep brain stimulation for e.g. severe OCD. I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near sending detailed multisensory content like ads into people’s brains for a long time though. That’s so far outside the scope of what brain stimulation can do right now, it’s really just scifi.