And yet the Bible has numerous stories where it seems people don't have free will, with God either "hardening their hearts" or laying out what they'll do in the near future. It's obvious from the Bible that either God plays an active role in the lives of people, whether they ask for it or not, thus negating their free will, and that there is some level of sight into future actions. All that is without discussing whether God is omniscient.
The Bible is not very clear about what happens with an afterlife. The book of Revelation is where you find the most intimations of divine judgement, but the OT has little to nothing and many Biblical scholars agree that the idea of end leans heavily towards the Jewish idea of a literal heaven on earth for the chosen people and that's all.
I think it's more likely that over the next few years US power fades in the region and Taiwan strikes a bargain with China. The Taiwanese are extremely pragmatic when it comes to these sorts of things, and I somehow doubt they'll enter into a conflict they know they can't win. China is also pragmatic and would be willing to allow Taiwan significant autonomy if they can on paper say they've reunited Taiwan with the motherland.
In my opinion, the most likely scenario is that China will ramp up pressure with "gray zone" actions, (exercises of the coast, election interference, propaganda, cyber attacks, air defense zone and airspace incursions, overflights over straits islands), while at the same time pushing for negotiations for peaceful reunification.
Essentially salami slicing Taiwan sovereignty, in order to undermine their authority and erode their red lines without triggering a conflict, and attempting to demonstrate resistance as futile.
I can't think of a single Linux user I know who doesn't use a multi-monitor setup. I have three monitors on my desktop and it works fine on Cinnamon and Plasma. Maybe the dozen I know are outliers, but I think multi-monitor setups are fairly common.
I've been playing with io_uring for the last month or so, just for fun. I'm working on building an async runtime from scratch on top of it. I've been documenting (think of them more as notes to myself) the process thus far:
I've been learning io_uring for fun and 0 profit by building a web-based game using only the Rust standard library. I create a simple WebSocket server and am now creating async from the ground up. I'm documenting it all: https://github.com/kilroyjones/series_game_from_scratch
It's not harder than any other job, but it's harder than many. Teaching, especially in middle and high school, is not as technically difficult as say many developer roles, but it is far more difficult when it comes to organization, emotional resilience, multitasking, and managing people.
It requires you to not only keep 20+ twelve year olds from devolving into chaos, but to also teach them things many of them could care less about. Then, you need take into account the laws surrounding your choices both in and outside the school and your representation in front of administration and parents. In the age of cell phones any slip up will likely end up being online and possibly in the news.
Imagine, as a developer, if you every possible small mistake you made had the potential to find its way to Twitter or Reddit? What if you had to manage 20 different, but similar projects? You had to time your bathroom breaks because you can't go whenever you want. That your lunches were consumed with professional development sessions, emergency parent meetings, kids that need your help, etc... That every few months you had to meet with every single customer to give them an update and hear back how much your work is amazing or sucks? Oh, and you have to do it over a period of 10 hours sitting in a crappy hard plastic chair.
Put aside the fact that you have little agency to affect any real change, are potentially subject to verbal or even physical abuse you can do nothing about. Then there are the shootings...
Teaching is much harder than most jobs where you can stare at a monitor and post throwaways on Hackernews. Technically harder, no, it's not physics (unless you're teaching physics), but it's still a difficult field.
You must be from the US. If the old rule of Internet chat was that someone would (eventually) draw comparison to Adolf Hitler or German National Socialism period, then the new rule on HN is someone will raise the expectation of gun violence in the US.
Because, very sadly, it is now an epidemic in the US that has no workable solution in sight because of intransigence around a 233 year old constitutional amendment in a context of intense, media-led paranoia (perhaps creating a feedback loop). "Bowling for Columbine" is 22 years old now - I don't think there's been substantial progress any of the root causes Moore called out back then.
There's such a low probability of that happening, even if the US turns their back on Taiwan. It would likely result in Taiwan and Japan, at the least, rapidly building nuclear weapons. Then they'd trade the occasional word and politician would make grand gestures, but continue business as usual.
Given the complex economic ties between them it makes no sense. Not only are they big trading partners, there are large Taiwanese businesses in China (like Foxconn). War would hurt both economies.
Military it would hurt both sides. Taiwan is riddled with fortified gun emplacements, some of which can bombard mainland Chinese cities. Attacking it would be like a cross between Normandy and the Somme.
The only reason is political. But politics often overrides common sense.
Taiwan does not need to start a nuclear program. Taiwan has previously completed everything except final assembly of a nuke, so they have the capability in principle. There are a number of countries that have never built nukes but that are believed to possess all of necessary components to rapidly assemble nukes should they feel it necessary, it is a gray area in nuclear non-proliferation. For international accounting purposes, a disassembled warhead sitting on a shelf somewhere doesn't count as a nuke, they only count systems.
Invasions are unavoidably telegraphed months ahead of time, which is more than enough time to assemble a nuke if you have already have the components.
TW is still thoroughly infiltrated by PRC intelligence, if there's credible hint they're moving from nuclear latency/threshold to actual nuclearization (PRC redline), the relevant facilities would be destroyed - no need for PLA boots on ground or telescoped build up, every inch of TW is within 10 minute strike of mainland based ordnances. TW nuclear turnkey potential isn't as fast as PLA rockets/bunker busters.
Unmentioned aspect of US axing TW nuclear program in late 80s, was CSIST / INER (Taiwan nuclear program) was already monitored by PRC intelligence and post Nixon normalization US intel cooperated with PRC intel to shut the program down. Unwritten between the line is PRC, having closely monitored TW program would have probably nuked TW first if US didn't compel TW to end the program. US Inspection / IAEA went in the dismantle the program, no doubt verified by PRC intelligence, it's unlikely TW can rebuild to nuclear turnkey faster than PRC can mount an invasion. And realistically TW can't fend off a PRC invasion without US involvement, and if US involves to assist TW nuclearizing then TW going to get nuked, and US + PRC will stare down MAD.
I have a feeling that China is very prepared to invade with extreme haste and their intelligence agencies would not let something like this go unnoticed.
The sheer logistics of a large scale mobilization means that its obvious weeks and even months in advance. Moving troops, equipment and ammunition to staging areas etc. Even just preparing transports shows up.
Think back to the weeks before the Ukrainian invasion. It's kinda hard to hide it.
As far as I know, China has not been hiding this preparation. They are actively preparing to invade Taiwan, at least for the sake of appearances so that they can be seen doing so.
With teaching now (even via videos), there's no way to present material for 30 students when they vary widely in background understanding and attention span, so only the high middle gets targeted. This creates a vicious cycle where the spread only gets larger as students age.
If slow kids can be tutored to catch up, they'll be much more motivated as part of the class, instead of the losers. If fast kids are given a taste of how ignorant they remain, they might have more sympathy for others, and might try to help instead of compete.
I would argue there's a very human element to tutoring that AI does not provide.
Having been a tutor and also having been tutored myself, the personal relationship is very important. To know some other human is taking their very human time to help you is a powerful motivating factor that an AI can't simulate. To see another human performing some task that you can't activates some kind of primal desire to emulate them. AI can't simulate that.
The Bible is not very clear about what happens with an afterlife. The book of Revelation is where you find the most intimations of divine judgement, but the OT has little to nothing and many Biblical scholars agree that the idea of end leans heavily towards the Jewish idea of a literal heaven on earth for the chosen people and that's all.