Check out the Four Horsemen series by Chris Kennedy (and friends).

https://chriskennedypublishing.com/the-four-horsemen/

Dump a bunch of Asimov, Star Wars, Gundam, Heinlein, and a dose of Bladerunner, add a cup of political theory, put in a bowl and stir...

It's the only scifi universe I've read from in years.

I'm personal friends with a number of authors who publish books in one of several subgenres. Mostly, they rely on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited: some of them are prolific enough that their book sales account for most of their income, simply based on peoples' reading of their works.

Mostly, unless people want a piece of history or something they can reference, folks seem to hate having clutter. Fiction that sells isn't usually, primarily sold as a hardcopy book anymore, I don't believe - short of the kinds of books that end up at the end of the grocery store isle or in an airport novelty store.

Regarding the OP topic, a lot of the published hardcopy books of the types mentioned are published for the explicit purpose of a PR or political campaign. Stuff like the Obama or Hillary Clinton books which are pushed massively and funded by third parties - the fact that they're books and people (supposedly) buy them is secondary, they're being paid for by other interests. They're basically a long form version of those "get published in our magazine about who's who/the top 50 in the x industry, for a low, low price of...." magazines you'll sometimes see, still.

Incorrect. It's been shown that Meta is extremely partisan, and anyone who's even moderate can plainly see it. They openly banned hundreds of satire and news sites during the last election, largely under the banner of "fake news and disinfo". Was it? Sure, much if not most of it was. Some of it wasn't, though - and it isn't their job to do that. What it was, was a highly partisan purge.

Stick around the West long enough and you'll have a chance to be convicted while present for political crimes, too. It's already happening throughout Europe and the UK for years.

You've got to be fairly significantly partisan to think any of what you just said. It really doesn't reflect well.

If Trump was a fascist dictator, he was the absolute worst fascist dictator - or dictator of any kind - ever.

Correct on all of that.

Nevermind that leather is biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and a low carbon option vs a petroleum derivative.

They were just catering to their ecoterrorist customers who lampooned them for killing animals to make a profit/product.

I wouldn't be surprised if they try to go back to leather. It's a natural choice - literally.

It not only puts the cart before the horse, but gw efforts are rife with corruption and a lack of accountability. They're basically government slush funds for corruption and spending malfeasance. If you're looking for cost effective energy, pre-subsidized cost of "green" technology power (batteries, wind, and solar) isn't it.

And yet, some still install to "c:\PROGRA~1" or whatever, because Microsoft, in their opposite of wisdom, didn't design things for the future.

Sounds like a retcon'd attribution, to me.

Are you aware that the xbox is an appliance, like a dvd player? My original NES also "still works fine". No, it hasn't been updated at all.

Xbox 360 hasn't been updated since 2019. I'd hardly consider that supported, and you're using vastly different qualities and quantities for matter of comparison.

Apple seems to do pretty well for feature and security updates, so I'm not sure what you're talking about as a gripe. In contrast to the ~4-8 years Apple supports their devices, Microsoft only supports the major releases of their OS for a very brief period of time (usually about 2 years). It's uncommon for a laptop to be able to be easily upgraded between minor MS releases without breaking things irreparably on x86 (you'll be lucky to get driver support), and major releases are much shorter.

MS has done quite well with the Surface devices and keeping them supported, but it's by far the exception for them and they have a long history of -not- doing the right thing.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/with-macos-sonoma-intel-macs-are-still-getting-fewer-updates-than-they-used-to/

Valid points, thanks.

Yeah, an integrated system is vastly different.

I doubt we'll see a full return to the 'good old days' of open hardware. Even 'open' platforms tend to be pretty locked down and proprietary, now - there's no standard for ARM "BIOS", for instance (though we are getting closer and closer, with the work of the Libre Computer folks).

Yes, well aware of that.

They're also markedly easier to exploit on x86 in most cases.

I actually use the battery in my laptop as a work clock, now. I very rarely work tethered anymore. If my battery is dead or dying on a fresh charge at the beginning of the day, that means I need to get up and get out of the office to do something else. Diminished returns.

Eh. I'll be one of the first to be critical of Microsoft (because fuck'em, that's why), but their historic platform support really doesn't factor in here. It's a different scenario in 2024 than when Itanium and MIPS architectures were around and relevant: they were niche.

We're in a world where x86-64 is quickly sunsetting in relevance, and the CPU core race is effectively over. Intel is consistently on the losing side for TDP and overall performance against AMD, and it doesn't much matter at this point because CPUs don't drive anything other than which platform they're running and the system bus performance: they're still important, but there are better options on the horizon with different and superior computing capabilities: ARM and RISC-V.

We're at a point where integrators and cloud providers don't want to deal with x86-64 anymore due to the significant weight of legacy they bring us, illustrated largely by the ubiquitous and devastating nature of many of the CPU exploits over the past decade. Then add power consumption and architectural design limitations that aren't able to scale, and the writing is on the wall...

its nice to see Microsoft enter the game

No, it's actually not. Microsoft-controlled hardware is a fantastic way to end up with a pile of EOL'd devices which have otherwise decent hardware after only a couple months.

Knowing Microsoft, there will likely be call-home functionality in the hardware itself, and booting anything other than approved, licensed OSes will be impossible. That's not good for anyone except Microsoft, particularly when you consider how good Microsoft is at security (they aren't) and the massive attack surface that'll allow. Get ready for your firmware to be botnet'd irreparably - because there won't be a way for a user to run anything on it.

It'd have been much better for them to have partnered with and provided funding with an organization like the Raspberry Pi Foundation to help create a platform that would be useful and inexpensive, while also remaining - at least somewhat - open.

If this is supposedly for the purposes of safety, as they state, then why would it make any sense to exempt "nonprofit" or government agencies? It's an operational cost, for the purposes of safety. FIN.

Don't be duplicitous.