As I post further down, you can just wear +1D reading glasses.

I started noticing this when I was revising for A-Levels. (17-18)

My distance vision would start to fuzz after hours on the books, and be restored by a long walk.

It's pretty much done the same thing ever since.

One thing I do is make sure to focus on distant objects while looking out of the window a few times an hour.

The other thing that helps is wearing +1D reading glasses (just cheap ones from the supermarket). These are designed for oldies who can't focus on close objects anymore - so they move the focal point of close up material much further away. A foot or two away, my monitor is basicaly at infinity, which stops/reverses the atrophy of my distance vision.

Focussing is mediate by muscles! Like any others, use them, or lose them.

They should only accept orders as signed emails from a public key you provide on first registration.

For a 2 word .com domain name that had been previously unregistered for 30 years? And was registered for the first time shortly after I fed it into a whois query box on their site?

No. There's no coincidence there.

... is the name of a domain name I searched for on their site to see if they'd bite.

A few years ago I thought I'd buy a domain for myself. Went and searched for it on their site. NEVER DO THIS.

It wasn't taken.

I ummed and aahed and slept on it.

I came back. It was taken. By Domains By Proxy LLC. Who are owned by GoDaddy.

It seems to have been sold on to another speculator, unless Afternic are them too. (I just checked. Afternic were bought out by GoDaddy in 2013).

I own the .co.uk variant of it now. I used GANDI, who by all accounts, are not wankers.

So, if you want a domain, be prepared to buy it on the spot if it's available. And use a registrar who aren't arseholes.

SecureBoot is a reasonable thing. It's when it's under the control of Microsoft, rather than the owner of the hardware, that it becomes a problem.

Make sure the OS is composed of files that are cryptographically signed and entirely legit? Fine.

Define "legit" as being "only those things signed with Microsoft keys"? Not so fine.

The current solution of a Linux bootloader signed by Microsoft is a stupid, half-baked compromise. I wouldn't have settled for it - nothing less than the ability to load my own signing keys into the BIOS being mandatory for all SecureBoot installations. And of course, disabling it.

True - the problem is not the security, the problem is who it's working for.

If this comes to pass, you'll have to beg Microsoft's permission to run any software at all on hardware locked down like this.

First, you had to switch off SecureBoot. This probably discouraged a bunch of users who may have tried Linux out. Who wants to turn off a feature that sounds all... secure.

Now, you'll have to obtain and install special signed binaries. That will be a stumbling block for a few more.

Then eventually, they'll stop signing binaries, and the only operating system that will be bootable will be Windows.

And finally, they'll change the OS not to load anything that isn't signed with an MS key. Only MS approved and certified developers (with valid Visual Studio Cloud accounts!) will be able to produce software for Windows, and sell it through the Windows App Store only.

Quite. This was forseen. This is just another whack of the mallet driving the thin end of the wedge a bit deeper.

First you had to turn off a feature that said "Secure Boot". How many standard users are going to turn that off?

Now there will probably be "considerations" for those who make their hardware less easy to boot Linux on.

"Oh, yes, fewer config options make things more reliable - less to misconfigure, less to go wrong - we prefer that kind of device, gives Windows a good name by being more reliable..."

I always thought Star Trek's objection to this was a bit hokey - the episode where Geordi points out that the technology to save a colony of carefully genetically managed humans wouldn't have existed without his VISOR having been invented.

His VISOR was no doubt based on a huge number of components that were individually created for other purposes.

What's more of a surprise is how few enhanced humans there are around in Star Trek. The tricorder seems a clumsy and stunted way to extend the human sensorium.

.. .and incidentally, many of his predictions are already true - Amazon and other players already have warehouses where the humans are mere robot arms serving a computer. The only thing really lacking for his Manna 2.0 version is the federated web API for employment contracts, which can't be far off.

I periodically link Marshall Brain's "Manna" into these discussions ; his novel basically describes what you just said, only the rich guys "won" by ushering all the "useless poor" into government subsistence camps policed by robots.

His proposed robo-utopia is probably going to rub most libertarians up the wrong way, seeing as it includes panopticon surveillance and implants that can deprive you of your liberty (in exchange for a life of self-determinism and luxury that would otherwise give most of them a wet dream...).

The print time, and certainly the queue time for the printer head, for many things probably exceeds the delivery time.

New install of Windows? Not suspicious at all - it's a new computer, or it got "corrupted by a virus", and you had your helpful nephew reinstall it for you.

Universal Basic Income, funded by the recognisation that if the only things in the loop are energy and material resources that are rightfully property of everyone on planet earth, and robots manufacturered from said resources, then everyone should get a share.

By all means, have bonuses for those who like to innovate, but Luxury Automated Communism!

That would be one seriously impressive Kickstarter....

"For the first step, we will breach the barrier into the next world..."