We will never totally stop using oil of course, but we need to mostly stop burning it for fuel, outside of a limited number of applications. We need to do something about plastic pollution too.

I'd say that will he the harder transition to manage. Electrifying everything isn't too difficult and most of the tech is already mature. Replacing or dealing with plastic pollution seems harder, as will be dealing with increasing costs as fuel oil product consumption is greatly reduced.

That's one of the reasons why so many young people in the West are disillusioned with Western democracy. They want somewhere to live, they can't afford anything. Meanwhile in China the government plans ahead, builds massive new cities, and young people can afford to buy a nice modern apartment or house.

Having visited one such development, it was like walking into one of those show houses. Not an IKEA one either, a high end luxury one. I didn't look too closely to see how much was real solid wood and how much was veneer, but the apartment was spacious and very well furnished and finished. The owner was a logistics office worker and his wife a full time mother.

We really need to figure out how to deliver that with Western style democratic systems, because the old "look how bad life is in the Soviet Union!" isn't going to work this time.

European manufacturers are finally getting their act together on EVs it seems. The Skoda Elroq is probably going to be the best selling EV this year, in the UK.

We need EVs, we need to get off oil. Some pain is inevitable, all we can do is delay it, which makes it worse.

He's upset that he gave up a treasure trove of incredibly valuable data for nothing more than some help raising money and a few contacts.

That data was worth billions and had he realized it back then he'd be part of the billionaire club.

Basically he's upset that he's not going to be the one getting to screw you over using ai and llms.

I'm all for it if it actually happens but I'll believe it when I see it. I think all Microsoft wants to do is stop subsidizing the hardware which would defeat the purpose. At that point I can just buy my own gaming PC.

What makes steam stuff interesting is that they just kind of focus on getting it right with medium level performance and a decent price and I don't think Microsoft can do that so they're probably just going to put out a $1,200 gaming PC. That's assuming they actually pull it off and it doesn't get shot down by other people from company and fighting.

So who knows what's going to happen with AI bullshit devouring everything

Whatever method it is, it will probably defeat the purpose of ending unsigned side loading. Whatever the hoops are, users will be trained to jump through them.

Obtainium is such a useful tool. As well as open source apps, it can update apps that you aren't allowed to install in your region via Google Play. Very handy if you travel a lot, as developers often put regional restrictions on things like transport and loyalty apps.

How can this be? I was told that Mr. Google was evilly rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of take even more control of your phone, cackling away as lightning flashed outside an arched window behind his throne.

He gave up on the much hated Privacy Sandbox too, which was going to send all your data to Google. That said he also decided to keep third party cookies, which kinda sucks.

For embedded, efficiency is important. Plus familiarity, especially with GCC. For ARM stuff they only tend to provide libraries in C too, for 8 bit stuff I usually write my own so I suppose it could be Rust...

Just not really seeing any benefit at the moment.

Apparently I hallucinated it, like ChatGPT.

Maybe now Steam consoles are a thing, more games will explicitly support Steam OS as a first rate experience. The user base is still small, but growing.

For 3 years? I didn't realize that the suits went back that far.

It's kind of amazing how badly Microsoft has been failing for decades.

They were in a pretty strong position with Internet Explorer and MSN as the start page. But IE was crap and didn't get much development. MSN was so bad everyone moved to Yahoo! and then Google. They let their lead slip away, and have been trying to bribe people or trick them into coming back ever since.

No matter what they offer, even with Edge being a half decent browser, they manage to screw it up.

In Ireland they often round prices and don't bother giving you change if it's only a few cents, or even tens of cents on a large purchase. It caught me out the first time.

Apparently the switch to using contactless payments more often has resulted in noticeable losses for shops that were previously keeping the change from your Euro.

The outcome isn't inevitable. If the money is there to support them, to help them make up that lost time, recovery is possible.

COVID broke an already struggling school system.