I actually started drinking Diet Coke years ago because of the aspartame. I had one too many cans of Coca-Cola that just tasted awful (this was in the Coke Classic era after the New Coke fiasco), and found that the aspartame in Diet Coke not only tasted better, but consistently better.

I think one of the reasons that regular Coca-Cola tasted bad may have been because I don't care much for drinking them really cold, and the HFCS was probably tasting bad when it wasn't chilled. Aspartame has its own problems (it's not shelf stable at neutral pH, but perfect at soda-water acidity), and to me it has a bitter "before-taste" (in contrast to saccharine's bitter after-taste) giving it a bite that I actually sort of like.

And I really do not like saccharine. I'm old enough to remember Diet Pepsi from the '80s. It was absolutely awful. And really, all this got started when cyclamates got a bad reputation. It's actually still banned in the US, due to a lack of motivation to remove the ban.

I knew some wise-ass Windows 8 metrosexual type would say that. Hint: I'm not running that new of a version of Windows. Also, the game that is the reason I have Windows installed wouldn't respect the DPI setting anyhow.

Death was current? So they've finally developed the electrocution-over-internet protocol that everyone has been waiting for? This should be a success just from the people having to deal with Comcast customer support!

And I'm sure there were multiple dot-com start-up name generators around 2000 or so. But they all probably died due to running out of seed money. (ba-dum-pissh!)

1) Collect extensive intelligence from phone calls and internet activity of all Americans
2) Don't tell other agencies about it
3) ???
4) PROFIT!

But I might aluminum a car.

No, it means I have a lawn. Can you see it? Good. Now get off of it.

But aren't PC sales on the decline these days? About the only thing driving PC sales these days (aside from simple replacement of broken computers) is when Microsoft end-of-lifes a version of Windows. And that may have been mostly because the computers that ran W2K and XP could be so low spec. Microsoft may have to force the end of legacy BIOS booting for this to happen in significant numbers.

Ditto for 24/96 and 24/192 audio. Too bad that Neil Young doesn't understand the concept that the purpose of higher resolution sources is to reduce artefacts during editing/mixing, and thinks that we need to carry around lossless high-resolution audio on dedicated player hardware.

I have a 1080p 37" TV set in the living room hooked up to a PC, six feet from the couch. I had to set Windows to 720p just so I could read the icon name text.

I came to say roughly the same thing. 4K resolution is absolutely overkill for video. Sitting six feet away from a 37" 1080p TV set to 720p in Windows (otherwise I can't even read the small text), I can watch a 480p video without feeling like I'm losing anything. I still don't have Blu-Ray, aside from a BD reader drive that a friend gave me because he wasn't using it. I put it on an Ubuntu box and have not even been able yet to play that Talledega Nights movie that was one of the earliest releases (I got it real cheap at a thrift store, it's my only BD disc at all).

Aluminum Cans The guy actually opens some vintage pull-tab cans... for SCIENCE!

The Hackaday article that video was linked from

Or they could, you know, consider an account that has at least one retail code registered to have spent at least $5? I doubt there are many Steam-based games that you can buy at retail for under $5, unless it's some kind of super clearance sale item.

The point is to restrict accounts that have with no purchase activity at all, because apparently it's easy (and free) to create a bunch of them with an automated script. You can't (or shouldn't be able to) generate retail codes with a script, so you can't use a script to create a large number of accounts with registration codes. The important difference is an account created with no effort vs one created with the effort to register games worth at least $5.

http://hackaday.com/2015/04/17...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...