I don't think that's it. Gaming PC's generally cost more than a console, and the "general purpose PC that can also dabble in some gaming" is becoming less common. It seems that people are buying less PC's but those who are still buying them are often buying them for a purpose.

I think it's that "gaming" (and by that I need AAA high dollar value gaming as opposed to casual cell phone/mobile device gaming) is becoming a little more niche of a hobby. Niche hobbies often have high costs associated with them because the small group of people who are willing to participate are willing to unload large sums of money into it.

PC gaming has always been where the best performance and visuals have been available - and it could just be that the remaining customer base are the ones who want that whilst more casual people are fine using their mobile devices for playing a different type of game.

I will say personally I've always bought consoles strictly for exclusives, while always also maintaining a gaming PC as well. As exclusives become less of a thing and everything seems to be available on PC anyways, I have little incentive to actually buy a console anymore.

General purpose PC's are becoming more rare, but it seems like gaming PC's are starting to account for a larger chunk of the PC population. In general it seems like people who just want to do mundane tasks are largely moving away from full PC to tablets and smartphones, but people who actually want to game are still very much getting PC's to do it on.

I'm an old fart who still games, but every one of my 3 teenage nieces have asked me to build them a gaming PC because it's a "cool kid" thing to have one.

I'm not sure DRM is hugely necessary. So many games do online play now that just getting a pirated copy of something generally isn't as functional. And honestly the LAST thing I'd do in modern times is run executable code from some random torrent site. Media files for audio and/or video sure, but anything executable is a no-go for me.

I don't know - maybe its because I'm not the broke teenager I once was, but I haven't pirated a game in probably 20 years. If you wait most of them will be $5 or less eventually on steam anyways.

I don't mean "modern print" as opposed to "old print" - I mean print with modern writing instruments as opposed to the instruments of the time when cursive was invented. They didn't exactly have ball point pens back in the days of yore.

Cursive is not generally less movement in the 2d plane of the paper - it is just less movement up and down in the 3d space so that you are removing the pen from the paper less. The thing is, we can move in 2 directions at once. The tip of a pen can come off the paper as its moving to the next location with very little impact in overall speed.

The goal of cursive is to keep the tip on the page more which worked better for quills as coming off the page and back onto it would often cause an ink blot and could break the tip of a quill. Those issues are gone with ink pens. Plus have you ever looked at cursive from when they really focused on it? Like census reports from the 1800's? A lot of that stuff is basically illegible. Even the archives that have translated it will just have ????? in some spots because no one could make out what was written. While print isn't immune to

Trust me - I know how to write it. I'm old. I was forced to learn it in elementary school and had to do all assignments in cursive up through high school. Its still a dumb idea.

Hand-writing is fine. Cursive itself is pointless. Print is just as fast in modern times and is FAR more legible.

If you look at cursive writing from like an 1800's census or something, half of it is virtually impossible to read. Cursive was invented for use with QUILLS. Even if you're writing by hand now you're using a pencil or an ink pen, not a quill.

On the other hand, if your card got refused at that grocery line - would you go back? Likely not.

I doubt many such businesses would risk the customer ire by refusing some cards.

What I DO forsee as happening is some businesses that aren't time sensitive but routinely deal in high $$$ transactions not accepting some such cards. IE, (ironically) - airlines. If you're buying several thousand dollars worth of airline tickets the rewards (and in turn, the merchant fees) can add up quite a bit.

Maybe they're in another country? Here in the US a guy selling tomatoes beside the road is likely to whip out a Square reader attached to a phone and take credit cards.

I live in a small town and I can't think of a single business that DOESN'T accept cards. The last holdout (an old diner thats been there for decades) gave in about 7 or 8 years ago and got a reader.

As a direct result, no, but as a net result, yes, they will. Large companies like Walmart have razor thin profit margins. They just make insane profits because of the volume of product that they move. Those margins will always be just a small amount above whatever their net costs require, and credit card fees are part of those net costs.

You might not like them as companies, but there's a reason why Wal-mart and Amazon are almost always the cheapest place to buy something.

Most airlines aren't even setup to make a profit from ticket sales anymore. They at best break even there, and then make their profit off of agreements with credit card companies for CC miles/points.

Its a very weird system that we've gotten ourselves into.

That skill proved useful in his later career.

My local ISP switching to CG NAT was the last straw that made me actually switch to Comcast/Xfinity. Not only do you have all the aforementioned issues, you also can't connect back to your computer from the outside even by using Dynamic DNS services. I don't run websites or anything from my home network, but I do like to be able to get back in via SSH and retrieve files and such from my devices at home.

With Xfinity at least I'm back to having my own IP (and honestly the connection is more stable and faster).

If they ever switch I'm going to have to break down and just buy business internet. Hopefully though we just eventually make it to IPV6.

If Linux can achieve sufficient critical mass to get native ports, I'll start gaming on it (I already use it for day to day usage). Even if a game works on Wine though, I don't want to have that nagging question in the back of my mind that if there's a glitch or a crash, is it truly a bug in the game, or is it a Wine incompatibility issue?

We MUST be able to inspect and age verify every AI slop porn image to protect the fictional children!

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Yep. "Do your own research" is the favorite slogan - which has come to mean "Form your opinion first, then make sure you can find another person on the internet that agrees with you. Once you find them your opinion is validated.".

People discussing things isn't the problem. The problem is that people don't understand the concept of professional consensus. This would still be a problem if you limited it to degree holders.

I guarantee you can still find someone with an applicable degree to agree with you. The problem isn't the credentials, its that if 97 out of 100 credentialed people DISAGREE with your opinion, the 3 that do agree are irrelevant and don't validate your opinions.

That's my opinion too.

Unfortunately, after a certain amount of actual progress we are now regressing again.