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Comment Re:no shit? (Score 1) 72

I suspect that they feel at least incrementally less burned in this case; since, while it wasn't obviously a good idea for a product, it at least goes somewhere: if you can make a phone functional and adequately rigid at that size; it's quite possible that there's a more sensible device size that you can still apply the miniaturized motherboard and whatever mechanical engineering you did for rigidity to; and just fill the rest of the case with battery; and there may be some other cases where the ability to get an entire SoC and supporting components into a particularly tiny area or make a thin component of a larger system quite rigid is handy.

Still doesn't really explain flaying a normal phone until it barely has a normal day's use with a totally fresh battery when you are still going to glue an entire baby spy satellite to one end of it; but some of the actual engineering is probably reusable.
The 'butterfly' keyboards, or the under-mouse charging port, by contrast, went nowhere. They tried and failed at a few iterations of keyboards that committed expensive suicide if you looked at them wrong; then just went back to allocating the extra mm or whatever once Jony was safely out of the picture; and it's not as though putting the port on the bottom rather than the front of the mouse involved any interesting capability development.

Whatever product manager thought that the 'air' would be a big seller deserves to feel bad; but the actual engineering team can probably feel OK about the odds that a future phone will look somewhat air-like if you were to remove the normally shaped case and larger battery.

Comment Re: Curious catch 22 (Score 1) 235

China's population decline, as standards of living increase, will largely take care of the problem. China, like every nation that is now on the other side of the economic growth-population growth curve, will have to figure out how to deal with the next half century. But nothing is going to make factories less automated, and between population decline and foreign tariffs, they are only going to push automation further to fill the gap.

Comment Re:Curious catch 22 (Score 1) 235

Which will not prevent automation. Look at the history of technological advancement, from the Paleolithic to today. Each major innovation has disrupted labor in some form or another, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, in a proximal sense, but in the long run societies adapt. You cannot block innovation, and if you do, you simply surrender the field to the nation that is willing to throw out the status quo.

Comment Re:Ford CEO has been driving chinese EV for months (Score 4, Insightful) 235

All North America can think about is building more pipelines. The oil obsession, in the face of climate change and economics, means we're just going to fall further and further behind. Sure, for a while tariffs will serve to keep EVs and economy cars out, but not even the United States can defy gravity forever, and when it all comes crashing back to Earth, North American automanufacturers, the heart of North America's industrial capacity, will be shattered.

Or the automakers could just ignore the dictates of the White House. But at this point, we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons, with strong encouragement from political leaders in the US and Canada, who lack either the wit or the courage to make the final break.

Comment Re:Dude earns his mansions (Score 2) 27

Xi is a lot of things, but a tinpot dictator he isn't. I despise everything the regime running China stands for, but if we're going to look at the PRC's ability to maintain itself and even expand itself economically and scientifically. Xi may die tomorrow, but the PRC isn't going anywhere. If progress is measured in research, have you paid attention to how much basic research is coming out of China these days, as compared to the West, which seems bound and determined to decimate academic capacity, or hand it over to a bunch monomaniac billionaires.

Comment Re: The base model costs $1,599 (Score 1) 75

You made an unfair comparison and then declared victory. I mean sure, if I plug my MacBook into a $20000 battery backup UPS I can probably get a few weeks out of the fucking thing, but that's not really any kind of rational comparison at all. Out of the box, MacBooks having some of the best battery performance of any laptop. You're comparison was the equivalent of "Oh sure, your Mustang can go 200mph, but if I take my Honda Accord and weld a rocket engine to the back, I can beat the sound barrier!

Comment Re: Almost like (Score 1) 105

I think actually charging him and putting him in prison would have been better. But the Biden administration, and Garland in particular, were cowards and were afraid of creating a civil war. While Trump behind bars may have been able to win an election, and his imprisonment may have caused some sort of general MAGA uprising, the US Government has literally crushed and burned to the ground entire states that were in rebellion, so this all comes down to Biden, Garland and the DOJ being cowards, and not meaningfully taken Trump to task, and leave it to states to try to pick up the slack while they dithered.

Comment Re:Seems like a black and white issue (Score 1, Troll) 105

I'm so very confused. I thought NPR was the fakest of fake news, a left wing Pravda outfit deliberately spreading misinformation to hurt Donald Trump... and thus America.

It's almost as if MAGA is comprised of morons and liars, who literally said anything to get Trump back into office, and deflect from his, and their, lies.

Comment Re:This is correct. Migrate applications first (Score 1) 34

In the MS case; it wouldn't be too surprising if that order is also the one that urgency dictates. Neither is totally unavailable on-prem only; or entirely without more-chatty-than-one-would-like behavior; but if your concern is about your dependence and Redmond's potential direct control their groupware stuff is moving faster than their OSes(at least if you have enterprise licenses and someone to handle keeping them quiet) in the direction of pure SaaS.

You'll get some nagging about how Azure Arc is definitely the cool kid's future of glorious hybrid manageability; but your ability to run Windows as though it were 15 years ago is definitely greater than your ability to run Office that way.

I suspect that this won't be the last case we see; as MS has shown comparatively little interest in backing down on the future being azure SaaS, and there's no real equivalent to some steep but temporary discounts for dealing with people who have fundamental privacy and operational control issues; while it's not terribly challenging to find a special discount that makes sticking with the status quo look cheaper than trying to do a migration.

Comment Re:Guy wants to be President so bad... (Score 1) 45

Not anything. I'm sure when Federal troops take over the State Capitol and Newsom is put in prison for unspecified but certainly horrible crimes, the military governor that takes his place will make sure none of this kind anti-corporate nonsense continues.

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