The line has muddied, as consoles went USB and console accessories started being PC compatible.

Once upon a time, you popped a game cartridge into a purpose built specialty thing with bespoke capabilities to do the things the game companies wanted, with proprietary connectors and instant boot up and what you get is what you have.

On the PC side, you futzed with config.sys/autoexec.bat to have just the right memory layout, depending on if you needed the maximum conventional memory, ems or xms, and environment variables to match your dip switches.

Now a game console is an x86 box that takes some time to boot to an OS then you select an app, which probably is a game, and good chance it's developed with a game engine that pretty much equally supports Nintendo, PS4, and Microsoft ecosystem.

The PC side you just plug in, often the exact same accessory, and things automatically go. The UI of Windows can be obnoxious, but this is a prime mindset for Valve to take advantage launching their PC that's 10-foot optimized out of the box.

Nintendo held on to console-ness longer, with their Wii and Wii-U gimmicks, and their switch admittedly isn't an x86 box, but it's basically a gaming tablet, which is the other big thing eating into the casual gamer market.

The thing is that while the heat pipes can work in space and may have been used in satellites and then brought to earth, the issue is with the amount of thermal energy and having radiation as the only way to evict heat.

So while the mechanism for heat pipes started in space, the computers are *way* more wattage than the space based applications.

I wonder how the developers feel about that characterization. Now all performance improvements are subject to being attributed to motivated by AI for marketing points...

Fair point, I forget how utterly stupid businesses, particularly large businesses can get about boneheaded requirements that they mandate but do not use or do need, but could better solve it in a separate path rather than mandating it on what should be the 'wrong' product category.

Particularly surprising to forget since I'm basically continuously exposed to that in my job, but guess it eventually faded into the background of me not thinking explicitly about it anymore..

Problem with that is thinking it's vaguely new... This has been possible pretty much all along. The Cameyo demos I saw seemed underwhelming compared to almost every alternative I've seen...

Except it is a whole desktop, but with ability to request an app to maximize... It's kind of embarassingly bare bones for this level of claiming it makes ChromeOS just do Windows...

I certainly would agree with that direction, however this has been an option for an eternity and broadly hasn't moved the needle for Windows market share.

Once upon a time VirtualBox made an effort for this to work as a feature, and eventually dropped it in favor of just using Windows RDP to the same end. Doing it via a browser may be somewhat more convenient, but not fundamentally more accessible than RDP...

After watching a demo, I'd say this is in fact a step back from 'seamless' RDP, since you just get a web page with what looks like full-desktop RDP in it.

I fully anticipate there will be branding changes, like adding a '+' for rewards and consumers will learn fairly quickly that merchants frequently don't want to deal with the more expensive 'plus' transactions.

Can't blame them, your rewards points/cash back is just being charged to the merchant.

Or you just carry a couple of cards, one with no rewards that people will actually take, and maybe one or two with rewards that some merchants will still take.

The biggest thing to get right is some simple 'branding' so consumers actually know at a glance what cards might work or might not.

It's just bonkers that the credit card companies have basically made the merchants pay for the credit card companies to motivate cardholders to use the cards that merchants don't want them using in the first place. Those 'cash back' and 'rewards' represent some of cost of goods that a consumer can't really get away from without these measures.

It's right there in the summary, that merchant's would start being able to decline the credit cards with 'points' and 'cash back'. I presume this would come with some rebranding to be phased in, like 'Visa+' and 'Visa Business', with a lot of merchants refusing 'Visa+' just like they reject other high-fee cards.

Z-Wave v. Zigbee largely stemmed from some awkward licensing to implement Z-Wave.

I think the thing driving Matter-over-Thread seems to be a desire to have more commonality with IP stacks, notably Apple's Homekit not having the adoption Apple wanted and Apple deciding to maybe go with something that the device manufacturers will go for, but not wanting to have to have a totally different stack for dealing with Zigbee vs. wifi devices.

So here's Matter, based on IP, with endorsement of 'Thread' as one of the transports. Now talking to a Matter device over Wifi is pretty similar to talking to a Matter device over Thread, except Thread is not generally IP routing.

So Thread is an inherent mesh design, unlike Bluetooth or Wifi, and low power. Bluetooth kind of sucks for this application since it's peer to peer. Wifi somewhat better but it means you have to inject access points even if coverage could be had mesh-style, with a light switch serving as a perfectly viable relay while doing it's job otherwise. Also you have an actual shot of running a Thread radio on modest battery much longer than Wifi.

I think the woosh is directed the wrong way, the comment had an example of exactly and obviously useful data, so it has to be sarcastic.

"Matter-over-Thread" is actually a solid strategy compared to most 'cloud connected' wifi smart devices.

This is more akin to Zigbee/Z-Wave. It's a local, non-internet scheme for local communication and control. You can get a totally local air-gapped Matter over Thread setup running without internet. It's if you pick a cloud-connected thread border router when you get in trouble, but you can roll your own, e.g. with Home Assistant platform providing a way forward.

Elon just made a pertinent statement:
https://futurism.com/future-so...

Some possibilities:
-The agent buys the wrong thing and Amazon sees a substantially higher rate of returns or other bad customer feedback
-The agent buys one thing despite Amazon search results trying to push a different option
-Amazon's upsell for "you may also like" is tanked by the agentic purchaasing.