The study said that they're better: 19% better. That's not nothing! It's just not the 75% better that lab testing showed.

The link you provided is the experience of one driver, one who is conscientious and focused on minimizing fuel consumption (within reason; hypermilers would do better). The study looked at the real-world results across 800,000 drivers, most of whom apparently didn't take so much care to minimize fuel usage.

Also, it's not true in general that "hybrids use generators rather than ICE". That's true of PHEVs that are strictly serial hybrids, but most are series-parallel or "power split" hybrids, meaning they can drive the wheels with the electric motor, or the combustion engine, or both. Often both the electric motor and the ICE are too small to provide the target maximum performance so must be used in parallel when you step hard on the accelerator.

One fascinating strategy for power splitting is "through the road", which has no mechanical connection at all between the ICE and the traction motor, and uses the wheel-driven traction motor as the generator. The way it works is the ICE drives one axle and the traction motor drives the other. Battery charging is done "through the road", using the road itself to transmit power from the ICE-driven axle to the electrically-driven axle. The ICE spins one pair of wheels, driving the vehicle forward, which forces the other pair of wheels to spin which turns the electric motor which charges the battery. This only makes sense in AWD drive cars but it's peak design elegance.

"repairable"? Its a system on a chip. For the most part ... either it works or it doesn't. There's not much to repair. That said.. yeah, I've got an intellivision flashback that died pretty quickly - so i guess its a valid concern.

I'm disappointed in the game selection on the Spirit. It doesn't have the Dungeons and Dragons games (which also go by minotaur and crown of kings to avoid licensing the DnD name).

It does say it sports a usb port for "game expansion" - so maybe there's a way in there. (official or otherwise).

HDMI and wireless are nice though. I really can't be bothered to hook the original one up with its its whole ancient antenna hookup system. The flashback was nice while it lasted because it was at least RCA. I use jzintv now on a PC.

I currently have usb adapters for both the original system controllers and the littler ones that came with the intellivision flashback a few years ago - works very well.

But wireless would be nice, so I might still buy it for the controllers if someone figures out how to get them working with a PC.

If 100% of jobs meet some standard, we'll pick a higher standard. For example, consider the standard that employees not be chained to their benches, fed nothing but moldy bread and be brutally whipped if the overseer feels like it. 100% of legitimate jobs in the US exceed that standard. OSHA exists to ensure that jobs meet minimum workplace safety standards and minimum wage laws ensure that jobs pay at least a certain amount, so we don't discuss whether jobs meet those standards, we take them as a given and set the quality bar higher.

If a study finds that 40% of jobs meet some standard, it means that the researchers did a reasonably good job of writing a description of the median job, then tweaked it upward just a bit. It's not like there is some universal, eternal standard for what constitutes a "quality job". It would be interesting to take the current standard and apply to historical working conditions, 50, 100, 200, 500 years ago. I'll bet the 1975 percentage would be half of the 2026 percentage and the older percentages would quickly tail off to ~0.

Of course if you get rid of capitalism then you get a different systemic problem, massive shortfalls in production, making everyone worse off. Much like democracy, capitalism is the worst system except for all of the others.

Cute, even with the unironic discussion of irony self-contradiction.

That's what they've done. Or rather they've bought the politicians who create the regulatory frameworks. But if people woke up and realized they've been frog-boiled into giving away their privacy, then that would be prohibitively expensive.

Were I that slack I'd have been fired from every job I ever held.

To what single-digit IQ audience is that not instantly obvious so why is it defiling Slashdot?

I'd gleefully volunteer because that would at least make my dying experience useful to others if not myself. I consider that no different than donating my organs and other leftovers to whoever can use them. If we can donate a corpse we can consent to donating ourselves during the normally protracted, miserable decline we call old age and should have the option while we're still compos mentis.

For me an ideal departure path would be a clinical trial followed by body donation to science. Volunteering is an honorable exercise of agency useful to humanity.

I've cared for a demented, bedridden, crippled family member whose mistery I was forbidden to end. My father (WWII combat infantry vet who'd seen plenty of death at Aachen etc) was on board with me assisting his departure but others were too weak to get out of the way so he suffered a couple extra years for nothing. Of course I'd volunteer so others might one day be spared.

Humans treat each other with less respect than they give a beloved hunting dog. Many hunters, farmers and other good stewards understand merciful death is a kindness while clinging to a helpessly suffering animal out of emotional weakness is self-centered sadism.

We're all fucking doomed to feed the worms. Get over it and do something useful or at least don't be a human obstacle to others peaceful departure. Testing therapies on the damned won't make them more damned and if it helps they'll be pleased.

"Waiting" rather than running more than one OS just postpones the learning curve. Absent unusual constraints you don't need a "next machine" to run Linux which there are many convenient ways to do without disturbing your Windows host. The "I will switch when things get a little bit worse" meme is self-defeating vs exploring Linux (or any OS) in any of many very convenient, educational ways while sacrificing nothing.

Rather than following the "switching" meme I simply add any OS I fancy using the most convenient method.
The idea of "switching" intimidates many prospective users who'd benefit from choice. Use is not contribution, only money and code, so what an individual uses is of nil outside consequence. It's not raging against anyone's machine though that might be one motivator for the Terry Davis crowd.

Your current PC runs 11 so should be quite capable of running a Linux virtual machine you can learn from without disrupting your workflow.

If storage is an issue drive space is cheap and Linux boot drives are normally near effortless to swap between PCs. More RAM is always good so I max out all my PCs old or new that they may serve me better for longer. If money is tight used RAM from reputable Ebay sellers has never failed me (I run memtest after install to be sure). If your drive is soldered in place you can offload storage to external drives (NTFS can be accessed by Linux) with both OS on your boot drive as host or guest.

VMs are a convenient way to sample any or many distros without installing to bare metal. You can download free prebuilts from osboxes and other helpful sites or roll your own (recommended for install training). After running Linux in VMs you can replace your Windows host with Linux. You can make a VM of your current Windows install so you lose nothing and have a readily bootable Windows install to use. You can copy VM as very convenient backups or to run on other computers. If a Windows update breaks something you can revert to a clean snapshot.

I'm a basic VM user still on VirtualBox which is simple and works well for my use but defer to VM aficionados re: the latest optimal choices.

You could run Daz Studio in a light Windows VM with few other programs and if you don't need to connect that VM to the internet you can skip Windows updates to save space. Save work to a shared folder and should anything hose your Windows install reboot into the snapshot you took of whatever Windows state you preferred to save. No need for activation unless the minor inconveniences trigger you, but I've used offline activators since the XP days with clean .iso images. If not sure how that works best the My Digital Life forums are highly educational.

VM aren't just for professionals and in general are a drastic improvement over dual booting and shared boot records. I did that twice in back in 1999ish and found separate hard drives in cheap swap rack trays were the path of least hassle as VM were not an option.

I use Linux because Windows irks me and I greatly prefer my many, many more software options but OS are merely tools so I don't see reason to limit my toolkit. Software doesn't cost a dime unless you feel like paying for it.

You can so I did load Windows To Go drives using leftover small SSD, cheap USB adapters and 3D printed cases. I can boot W10 anywhere or W11 if I cared to use for chores needing bare metal installs like reflashing GM LS V8 firmware. I can swap cheap USB hard drive adapters to use any connector I need. I do similarly with Linux drives which are far more "portable" than Windows. Any sufficiently spacious drive can hold any host and VM and if loaded with Ventoy can boot multiple OS including a wide variety of live .iso images and VM.

Iff you're unhappy with MSFT their OS are easily contained offline on Linux hosts which let you use your most performant hardware rather than older gear (on which Linux typically runs well, especially on Thinkpads). Installing FOSS firmware like Libreboot on older Thinkpads for secure comms use is an established hobby with strong community support. If you don't feel like flashing it yourself (though the more you do the more capable you become) some Thinkpad enthusiasts will sell you a flashed Thinkpad or flash one you send them. I suggest learning to do that for yourself lest an adversary intercept and backdoor the firmware. You can also boot live security-focused distros like TAILS and remaster their images as desired. Linux offers so many free tools it's hard to beat. https://libreboot.org/

If you prefer control to helplessness why not jump in and enjoy some free (or nearly so) mind-expanding fun?

When seeking tech info I suggest NOT vomiting your emotions all over the internet because:

Nobody else cares. Paranoia is a delusion of personal importance and agency. Everyone sane who reads such
things doesn't pity you, they sneer as you would at your left-wing mirror images.

Cultivating emotional fragility is self-sabotage thus degenerate.

Emotional vomit is a distracting barrier to efficient communication. It's noise, not signal
no matter how much the vomiter fantasizes otherwise. It has the opposite effect of advocacy.

Emotional vomit convinces no one and makes vomiters instant laughingstocks and ridicule targets.
It's the equivalent of the woke airheads you despise puking their lives onto social media
and impresses no one. Nothing you could ever do, be or say can change that.

Go do fun stuff instead. For the rest, I suggest 4chan where /pol/ will suit you just fine.

I essentially made the argument that if we want capitalism to work the way we were taught in civics class it is supposed to, companies must be forced by regulation not to undermine the basic assumptions that lead to efficient operation of the free market.

I am neither here nor there on a basic income. I think it depends on circumstances, which of course are changing as more and more labor -- including routine mental labor -- is being automated. We are eventually headed to a world of unprecedented productive capacity and yet very little need for labor, but we aren't there yet.

Anybody who is pushing AI services, particularly *free* AI services, is hoping to mine your data, use it to target you for marketing, and use the service to steer you towards opaque business relationships they will profit from and you will find it complicated and inconvenient to extricate yourself from.

Yes, that is true, but the grandparent perhaps was referring to the fact that the user interface on phones is excruciatingly bad for anything other than entertainment and communication. Sure, you might be able to use it in a pinch to do actual work, but for general-purpose productivity, a modern phone would be left in the dust compared even to a laptop from 25 years ago. CPU and memory in a device are not the only factors for productivity. In fact, I'd argue for general use (e.g., writing, spreadsheets, light computations), screen size and keyboard will be the primary factors driving productivity. For anything specialized (e.g., photo / video editing, data analysis, visualization, CAD, etc.), there's no question that the screen size of phones is crippling.

The question is -- ideas that are bad for *who*? This may be a very bad idea for you and me, but it is a very good idea for Microsoft, especially as, like their online services, they will make money off of us and it will be very inconvenient for us to opt out.

In civics-lesson style capitalism, which I'm all in favor of, companies compete to provide things for us that we want and we, armed with information about their products, services and prices, either choose to give them our business or to give our business to a competitor.

Not to say that stuff doesn't *ever* happen, but it's really hard to make a buck as a business that way. So what sufficiently large or well-placed businesses do is earn money *other* ways, by entangling consumers in business relationships that are opaque and which they don't have control over, may not even be fully aware they're signing on to, and which are complicated and awkward to extricate themselves from. In other words a well placed company, like Microsoft or Google or Facebook, will constantly be looking at ways to make money outside the rigorous demands of free market economics.

I believe you have that backwards. UBI is exactly about creating dependence; that's why the B stands for "basic", and not S for "standard". UBI is about creating a new version of welfare, larger and more extensive, that will keep even more of society placated in servitude.