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Comment Re:This is not surprising (Score 1) 122

Useless is the word. You can see the difference in approach from Apple vs Meta in their product announcements. Apple: spent 45min on the hardware and 10min showing things which are better done on a screen, and 5minutes showing new and novel ideas (albeit with a lack of content). Meta: spent 5 minutes on the hardware and 55minutes on a gaming showcase.

Content matters. No one puts on a VR headset because they want to feel the warmth of a screen close to their eyes.

That's because almost nobody has released games for this thing yet. I mean, apart from subscription-only Apple Arcade games, I really didn't find very many out there that are worth playing.

Comment Re:More like Newton (Score 1) 122

(The "extra screen while on the move" is very limited in practice due to resolution limitation of VR).

Not to mention that screens tend not to move with you on the Vision Pro, and neither do physical keyboards and trackpads. Their text input story, other than with a keyboard (where you might as well use a real computer) is basically nonexistent, and a "spatial computer" that can only be used for media consumption device and gaming doesn't make much sense (because you might as well buy a Quest for a fraction of the price).

Comment Re:Another one down (Score 1) 122

I bought a Quest 2 a few years ago, because I'm interested in the technology. It actually has a lot of cool tech packed in a small package. But it's been collecting dust for a while now. I haven't used it in almost a year... the last time I pulled it out was when I got Covid and was self isolating. It's surprisingly comfortable to watch Netflix on a virtual big screen while laying in bed, but you really have to struggle with the software to get it to let you. It really doesn't like it when you're lying down.

Other than that, there's a real paucity of content, and the games on there are unequivocally novelty toys. There are lots of ways it can improve... Better resolution, refresh rate, more lightweight... but I don't think any of those would really get me to buy another one. It's clear the product hasn't found its legs. VR remains a solution in search of a problem.

What does your litany of problems with the Quest 2 have to do with the AVP? For example, the AVP works fine for laying in bed and watching movies; in fact, Tim Cook said that's one of his favorite ways to use it.

AVP has serious problems when lying down, though. Yes, if you can get a virtual screen positioned correctly before you lie down, it works, but try repositioning it while lying flat, and it jumps in random directions and is completely as unusable as the Quest 2.

AVP also lacks any obvious way for the user to mark a screen as "floating". One way I'd like to use it is as a media consumption device while out for a walk. Have a picture-in-picture with the screen floating in front of me. But I haven't been able to figure out a good way to do that. I'm pretty sure the Quest actually does have a way to do that, at least in some apps, though I don't remember how off the top of my head. So for at least one consumption mode, Apple's offering is actually inferior in some ways (though I'll grant you that its image quality is much better).

Comment Re:Particality (Score 1) 122

(No controllable way to "project black", meaning you need some blocking/filtering;

Passive LEDs have blocked light for decades. That's solvable. So in theory, if you combined a projection-style setup like Google Glass used with a 1-bit LCD panel, you might be able to do a passable job. But I've obviously never tried it, so I could be wrong.

Comment Re:Another one down (Score 1) 122

The idea of using it as a mobile workstation with a MacBook was nerfed by Apple. You can only mirror your MacBook screen, not use the AVP as a second screen. It's larger, but also you need to have a heavy and hot brick strapped to your face to use it.

It doesn't mirror the MacBook screen. It blacks it out and replaces it entirely, making it the ultimate privacy screen.

But you have to either use the computer's keyboard/trackpad or an external Bluetooth keyboard and mouse/trackpad/trackball, so you can't usefully use it as the only display unless you're sitting right at the computer, so it is basically useless unless you are working on an airplane, on a bus, in a coffee shop, or in an open office and you don't want other people seeing what you're doing.

Comment Re: It's called work (Score 1) 223

And the Jewish settlers are consistently and constantly reasonable are they? Was turning Gaza in to a giant open air prison and destroying any hope for its population reasonable? Israel's killing of tens of thousands of women and children and driving over two million people to the point of starvation as well as destroying half their buildings is not reasonable and is disproportionate. You're clearly biased.

Both sides have done and continue to do bad things.

Comment Re:No killer app, indeed (Score 2) 122

And it's not a very well done thing, mostly due to the not so stellar resolution even in the middle of the field of view. Works for workload where one doesn't need super fine resolution (e.g.: video editing), but forget about using this with walls of tiny next (not usable for coding, for example).

Actually, I find it to work pretty well for that — better than a laptop screen, anyway.

What doesn't work well are:

  • Low rate of iOS app compatibility — most iOS apps don't run on it, despite it theoretically being able to run them, because most developers don't check the checkbox
  • No Mac app compatibility
  • Zero keyboard or mouse control when controlling your Mac (i.e. you're still 100% tethered to the Mac when using it as a display)
  • Almost zero games that are not part of Apple Arcade (subscription-only)
  • Frequent inability to connect to nearby computers, and no way to figure out what's wrong, with the only reliable fix being a complete reboot of the Vision Pro

Basically, you can't do anything with it except in a few limited situations, and when you can, it's still a pain in the a**. It can give you a private screen for working in a cube farm or on an airplane, and that's about it. Mind you, its Wi-Fi support is miles ahead of what you can do with non-Apple hardware, which at least makes those things practical, but it is nowhere near good enough yet, IMO.

At some point, when the apps are there, this could be pretty cool, but right now, it really just isn't there.

Comment Re: It's called work (Score 2) 223

The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen.

I'm fairly sure that on both sides, there are plenty of people who just want to live there in peace. Whether their next door neighbor is a Jew, Muslim or a polka dotted alien, they couldn't care less.

They just want to do what almost all people (outside those with small dicks and power fantasies) want: Watching their kids grow up in peace and a chance for increased prosperity.

Yeah, I'm overstating things a bit. I'm sure there are a certain percentage of people who aren't in power who want peace. But the problem is that the people with power mostly don't seem to want peace if it comes with any strings attached, and most of the people voting for them are too blinded by the rhetoric from their leaders to realize that both sides are the problem, not just one.

Until the overwhelming majority of people are willing to do what is needed to actually bring about peace — specifically, throwing out the people in power, running for office against them, amplifying the voices of the sane and reasonable, and speaking out constantly against abuse, oppression, prejudice, and violence, without regard to who is being abused or oppressed or being prejudiced against or committing the violence — I don't expect anything to change.

People have to not just want peace, but want peace badly enough to choose moderate leaders, knowing full well that their long-time enemies could easily take advantage of reduced militarism to do them harm. And that's hard. I get it. That's really, really hard. The tendency to "other" people who are not like us is so ingrained in human nature that even when we're taught not to do it, most people still seem to go out of their way to find different ways to do it. And that's doubly true when your actual life could be on the line.

But that's what it takes to have a lasting peace. That's the only way. One side has to take the first step by standing down, and given the lopsided power dynamic, nothing the Palestinians do will change anything, because all it takes is one bad seed deciding not to do so and killing some Israeli settler while shouting some anti-Israel chant, and Israel will send in missiles again. Israel, being the side with all the power, is the only side that is truly in the position to end this long-term, by actively choosing not to use their enormous military might against the Palestinians on an ongoing basis — actively choosing not to overreact — actively choosing not to punish all Palestinians for what are presumably the actions of a few — and instead using diplomatic means to coerce the Palestinian government into bringing the responsible parties to justice.

But that also depends on there actually being a functioning Palestinian government that isn't a branch of an extremist group. And that's not going to happen unless a whole lot of things change, and that change will take decades, and it only takes a single aggressive response by Israel to set such changes back by decades overnight, losing any goodwill that might have been built up prior to that point.

At this point, I don't see an obvious way out that doesn't involve massive third-party intervention. The Israeli and Palestinian governments have simply both done too many bad things over too many decades, creating an environment of distrust that won't be easily fixed. IMO, the threat of international action against both sides would go a long way towards pressuring both sides to come to the table in earnest and to stick to their promises for once.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in the near future, Israel will stop this latest wave of attacks and will begin working to help the Palestinians rebuild (without putting Israeli settlers and businesses in the newly built houses and buildings). That would at least help repair trust a bit. The longer this goes on, however, the less likely a positive outcome seems.

Comment Re: It's called work (Score 2) 223

The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.

So rather than them hating each other, they'll be united in their hatred for the UN.

Not if they're allowed civil autonomy. I'm not suggesting a plan where they would be *governed* by someone else, just one in which those governments don't have an active military or police force, relying instead on a neutral third party for all security for an extended period of time. And yeah, they might eventually grow to resent the rest of the world subjecting them to that, particularly if policing isn't even-handed. But them not being happy about it isn't in and of itself a good reason not to do so.

The reality is that the elites of both sides want to fight . . . but realistically Israel is the side that will come out on top militarily, so the Palestinian leaders have to be willing to come to the table and negotiate. They're not getting one state, and they're not getting any historic territory back - not without land swaps anyways.

Realistically, neither side will trust the other side's negotiation to be in good faith, because both sides ignore any agreements whenever it suits them. Nothing short of a neutral third party tying their hands militarily can realistically fix this unless both sides *want* to change.

Submission + - Telegram a 'huge' problem for Ukraine; intel chief (thepressunited.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Telegram poses a “huge problem” for Ukraine and must be legally forced to do away with anonymous channels, Kiev’s top spy Kirill Budanov said in an interview with the BBC published on Monday.

Comment Re: It's called work (Score 0, Troll) 223

Just so I know who to side with here, what marginalized group are we talking about? The Palestinians who get mowed down by the Israel army or the Jews that get blown to pieces by Hamas?

Both. They're both victims of the governments of those two nations/regions. Hamas's barbarism is entirely inexcusable, but at the same time, the leaders of Israel (and Netanyahu specifically) turned their country hard to the right in a manner that pretty much gave rise to Hamas's power. Foreign governments have also added fuel to the fire, which doesn't help.

The tragedy in this whole farce is that the ones that could make peace don't want it and the ones that would want peace can't make it.

The tragedy is that nobody actually wants peace enough to make it happen. All it would take is the U.N. declaring all of Israel to be a demilitarized zone, ordering the Israeli government and Hamas to both disarm, shooting anyone who refuses to comply, and then keeping those million or so troops in that region to help rebuild, slowly drawing down the number of troops over... say 200 years, so that by the time they are gone, no one alive still remembers the horrors of this day.

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