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Comment PC-first games from smaller studios (Score 1) 35

Until they see a trailer for a game that looks interesting, click through to learn more about the game, and find that it's available for (say) Linux, Windows, and NES. A lot of games from smaller studios get released on PC first, or PC plus an unlicensed release on a long-obsolete console, while the studio awaits approval to obtain a devkit for the major modern consoles.

Comment Re:Many people would never want a PC (Score 1) 35

Now if you read any review for any of the PC gaming handhelds you will unanimously see people saying Windows is the problem here. It's the barrier.

Unless they start selling pre built PCs

Does this include things like Steam Deck?

on a best buy shelf

If you refer solely to physical distribution through big-box electronics store chains in the United States, what's so special about that sales channel?

Comment Obsolete game consoles (Score 1) 35

Likewise, a lot of people use obsolete Mac computers, and a lot of people (including myself) use obsolete Nintendo Entertainment System consoles.

As I understand it, the "obsolete" label applies to a video game console once its manufacturer is no longer certifying new games for it. For example, Shakedown: Hawaii is the last Wii disc game in Europe, the last Wii U disc game in North America, and the last PlayStation 3 game. See list of last licensed games by console.

Comment Let's try Irish disability law (Score 2) 111

You are technically correct that the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 does not apply because Ryanair operates in Europe, not the United States. However, the United States is by far not the only country with a disability discrimination law. Ryanair is headquartered in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, a European Union member state that has its own disability accommodation law framework. So let me address the spirit of coats's question:

Say someone can't use a smartphone without setting it to use large print. If Ryanair requires its customers to use an application that is incompatible with large print setting, what recourse does the customer have under Irish law?

Comment Online safety acts (Score 1) 111

I would think you're exaggerating about the Google stuff, but this past week they decided I wasn't an adult and "need" me to upload my state issued picture ID (Driver's License) and my credit card information to "verify" my adult status just so I can continue to upload my shitty but fun songs on Youtube.

What country? I seem to remember some countries have instituted policies that require "social" web applications to thoroughly verify the age of all users. Australia, for example, passed such a law that takes effect next month.

One alternative to YouTube is uploading your "shitty but fun songs" on your own website.

Comment I thought that was what TLS was for (Score 1) 111

And using the wifi of an airport in a foreign country would also be definitely a bad idea, security wise.

How so, now that almost all web and native applications use TLS to communicate with the server? An attacker running a packet sniffer on a TLS session can see the connection's IP address, the server's hostname, the size of communication, and nothing else. This would amount to "A user connected to Ryanair and received a data volume typical of a checkin."

Comment Progressive web applications (Score 3, Interesting) 111

Following that logic, your phone is a browser and the apps are bookmarks with special permissions.

This is the case for many applications. Both major smartphone operating systems' included web browsers support progressive web applications (PWA). These use a service worker, a script cached on the device that acts as a proxy to cache a particular site's pages, scripts, and data and present them to the user even while the device is offline. They grant additional permissions to bookmarks on the device's home screen. For example, Safari for iOS allows a website added to the home screen to use the Push API to receive notifications through its service worker.

However, a lot of service providers maintain a native application for iOS and a native application for Android instead of relying on a PWA. Based on my recent conversation with UnknowingFool, this includes at least Grab, Doordash, Uber Eats, Instacart, Favor, Grubhub, and Postmates, and these providers are thought to have (unstated) good reasons for doing so.

Comment x32 flopped (Score 2) 28

The larger address space can be useful in some applications

Such as high-resolution image editing and high-definition video editing. Compared to a web browser, these aren't quite as amenable to splitting an application into numerous "content processes," each with their own separate 2 GB RAM.

but most applications are already bloated and having bigger pointers hasn't improved matters for this bloat problem.

For a while, Linux supported an x86-64 ABI called "x32" that limits each process's address space to 2 GB so that more pointers will fit in the processor's data cache. It didn't become popular, in part because of a need to load three versions of the system libraries: 32-bit i686, x86-64, and "x32". In addition, porting x86-64 applications to use less pointer-heavy containers gave most of the cache advantage that "x32" would have provided. This includes switching from linked lists to gap buffers (or other dynamic arrays), from B-trees to T-trees, or from pointers to indices in a pool. Rust in particular has encouraged use of appropriately sized indices as a workaround for the borrow checker.

For systems that want to access more than 2GB-4GB of physical RAM, there has long been PAE/PSE-36 that permit mapping 64GB physical address space to a 32-bit virtual space.

There's a widespread misconception that a 32-bit operating system is limited to 3 GB of physical RAM. I think this comes from Microsoft's practice of requiring drivers for 32-bit Windows Server to support PAE as a condition for certification, but not drivers for 32-bit Windows desktop. I seem to remember 32-bit desktop Linux being more PAE-friendly. PAE and content processes are how Firefox for 32-bit Linux managed to hang on this long.

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