I think that after every 3rd wave of Missile Command (what a disgustingly irresponsible creation!!), the game should require that the player's parents check to make sure the player isn't getting depressed by the prospect of nuclear war.

And in Asteroids, after any ship destruction due to collision with an asteroid, the game should require parental attestation that the player isn't starting to develop symptoms of petraphobia.

In both cases, if the parents aren't available (e.g. dead because the player is in their 80s) I suppose a Notary Public or a AMA-certified doctor would be a good-enough replacement.

We have learned so much since the early days of computer games, and it's better to be safe than sorry. (But don't fuck with Joust! I want to be able to play without having to call my mom every time the Lava Troll touches my mount's legs inappropriately.)

Yes, even better idea.

Surely two helicopters would be better - they each hold one end of the blade, and they don't need to actually land, just lower the blade to the ground.

I haven't read the text of this Swiss law, but if it's anything like USA's, UK's, or EU's laws, then it regulates "providers" and/or "carriers," not software applications themselves.

If you are sending already-made ciphertext through a regulated service, the service won't be in trouble. But if the service offers to encrypt for you, then they will be in trouble.

It just occurred to me that the now-common conflation between web apps and local apps (to a lot of phone users, these two things look the same) matters.

Maybe ASF just likes whiskey.

White oak has more tyloses and a tighter grain structure than other oak varieties, which cause its barrels to be more waterproof. It chars better. And it generally wins most taste tests. It's just perfect for barrel aging.

Save your red oaks for furniture.

A decline in the rate of increase of people adopting it for the first time. Not quite the same thing.

The number of companies adopting AI for the first time is increasing, but the rate of increase is lower than previously.
It doesn't about the number of companies that are stopping using AI, which is what we need to know in order to determine whether overall usage is up.

UK supermarkets have stopped doing cashback, probably because nobody pays cash any more.
The benefit to them of offering cashback was that it was cheaper than taking the money from the till to the bank. But now they don't have any of that.

In the UK, *every one*, including street traders, accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay. I don't even take cash with me when I leave the house now.

Is Amazon fitting the bill for higher insurance rates?

This question surprised me.

Before we tackle the unlikely possibility that this raises insurance rates, your question makes me realize there's another question you might want to try to answer first:

Who do you think currently pays for the insurance on Amazon's vehicles?

And another: do you think that by Amazon making the choice to deploy an additional piece of driver hardware, the insurance-premium-paying party in the above question, would change?

>>And also about the fact that a shitbox used car that only the poors drive today has stuff in it standard that only came on luxury models back in my childhood. Power windows? Keyless entry? AC and stereo?

This is the result of globalization and concentrated ownership of industry creating economies of scale for mass-produced gadgets. These are meaningless trinkets, not real wealth. In my fathers day a single bread-winner with no education could buy a home and support a family. Now it takes both parents working with college degrees. For the next generation a home and family will be entirely out of reach for anyone not born into wealth. This is not progress, it's regression.

Ha ha! The github page shows it as last committed "48 years ago." Good one, MS.

I carried my Abacus "The Anatomy of the Commodore 64" around all the time, mostly because it had a somewhat-commented disassembly of the C64's ROMs, which included this interpreter. But actual source would be even cooler.

I remember reading through it and suddenly realizing: "oh, that is why IF..GOTO is slightly faster than IF..THEN, because it skips an unnecessary call to CHRGET."

1) The case's lack of merit was not my opinion, it was in the official ruling:

After thousands of hours of testimony (testimony of over 950 witnesses, 87 in court, the remainder by deposition), and the submission of tens of thousands of exhibits, on January 8, 1982 the anti-trust case U.S. v. IBM was withdrawn on the grounds that the case was "without merit."
https://www.historyofinformati...

2) The case wasn't dropped until 1982 by which point any monopoly in mainframes was increasingly meaningless.

3) IBM was a old boys club and the board of directors did not recognize the value of the personal computer market. The team developing the PC likely did but they were not given adequate resources by the board.

4) So you admit they thought the market was not super valuable.

5) It might be one reason but certain not the main one.

I'm not affected

Maybe, maybe not. The announcement says Pixel 6 and up, but my wife's 3a (!) got it a few days ago.