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Comment Re:Latinx (Score 2) 83

I understand why people reject "Latino" for being inherently male but Latinx is just a bad alternative. There's another alternative which is both (1) widely used both inside and outside the community for decades and (2) not gendered. "Latin". As in, "Guatemala is part of Latin America". Or "Latin American literature". You already understand it and there's no weird linguistic bullshit to deal with.

Comment Doors were solved by '92 (Score 1) 88

IIRC, Wolfenstein 3D did this by having the doors go behind the wall (now, you couldn't close the doors). I also can't recall a single person complaining about this who wished the doors functioned in a more realistic way while they battled mecha-Hitler. They're still used in this way in the competitive FPS Valorant for example. Doors are a solved problem and every game that has deviated from this very simple formula I have found the door behavior annoying.
You want a hard problem? 3D Ladders. I haven't climbed a ladder in the past year IRL so you could simply not have them, which is what the vast majority of games choose to do (2D ladders are fine -- Donkey Kong is a great game).

Comment Re:I remember it like it was yesterday (Score 1) 41

I'm just sad to see the River Oaks shut down this past year. So many great off-the-radar films -- I saw Tommy Wisseau do a Q&A after "The Room". Richard Linklater (director, Houstonian) wants to try to do something to keep it a movie theater -- so many of that eras movie theaters got turned into other things (such as the Trader Joe's on Shepherd).
I don't think there is any place to even see such films any more. The other theater I would go to was the other Landmark (now closed -- thanks Joel Osteen!) and the Angelika/Sundance which has morphed into a boring AMC.

Comment Re:Truly (Score 1) 134

Why not join the west and actually regulate employers, offer employees legal protections, and build an agency to advocate for employees like a normal modern nation.

Doing so would require an organization of workers fighting for a fairer share of revenue, building on their success in key industries, and finally force legislation making those changes normative across all industries -- just as happened in other western industrialized countries. You could call it a "Rebel Alliance" or something if you're a southern Star Wars fan or something.

Comment Re:Fox News Lies Shock (Score 2) 504

Let's be honest here. If Trump had shut down everything in December and only 4 Americans died, the news stories would be about how Trump killed the economy over a hoax scare because of his unchecked authoritarian impulses.

So you're saying the most important factor is about how POTUS is treated by the media, not how many Americans die of a global pandemic? In the long run, we'll see how our country does relative to others and decide the merits of his actions or inactions. Right now, the US is #1 in COVID19 cases and failing to adequately contain them relative to the rest of the world.
And if you want to compare this to Obama -- go ahead. An Ebola outbreak that reached American shores. And SARS. At least I didn't have to stay at home for 2 months because Obama didn't think it was a big deal and could stand to have cable news attack him for alarmism.
Priorities.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 168

Microsoft has steadily been losing marketshare in every market for a long time. Zune, Internet Explorer and Windows Phone are just a few of the corpses in their graveyard. Meanwhile, they've been losing market share even in the desktop area slowly but surely for over a decade going from over 95% of the market to 77% of the market today while macOS usage has quadrupled from ~4% to ~18%.

Anyone seeing Windows dominance as both "inevitable" or "how it's always going to be" in 2020 are likely the same people proudly using Internet Explorer in 2010. They were wrong then, are wrong now. I would expect Windows usage to continue its historic decline.

Comment Swedish companies have figured this out (Score 1) 101

Ikea has managed to stay dominant and relevant in online market by offering low prices for decent goods whose price point is achieved through mass production. Wanting to be able to see a product in person and in context is *still* a valuable resource. Pier 1 -- with a large brick and mortar presence -- could have gone down this route by producing specialty goods at low prices with high volumes. Another Swedish retailer, H&M, is also following this model -- you probably want to try on the clothing you'll buy and that will *always* be an advantage a brick and mortar store has.

Comment Mod parent up (Score 1) 77

Yes you do. When you only have two systems, you know that one's right and one's wrong, but no idea which one is which. In a system with 3 computers, a simple voting protocol (the two systems that agree are right) is absolutely critical to safety. And if you're going to Mars, it's even harder as cosmic rays can cause memory to change.

Comment Re: Of World Importance: We need a universal OS. (Score 1) 147

No, governments should NOT get together. Do you really want a backdoor-ed OS with weak encryption for civilians? Or how about patch management performed by the NSA?

The NSA has been working on Linux for 20 years. There's another project called BSD -- UC Berkeley is run by the gov't of California -- whose TCP/IP code is even used in Windows. As long as software engineering groups are transparent to everyone, it doesn't matter who's running the show -- that's the entire point of Free Software.

Comment Re:Securing one's nation is ethical. (Score 1) 107

Ethics!=Morality.
If your nation is the DPRK, helping the Kim family is ethical. If your ruler is Pol Pot, then helping him maintain dominance during the bloody Khmer Rouge was ethical. Were you an Iraqi during Saddam Hussein's regime, crushing rebellions using chemical weapons would also be ethical -- you're merely supporting the security of your country.
Your reasoning is ethical and yet amoral.

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