In theory I think it was more energy efficient, giving them a very slightly longer battery life. Plus there were probably supply chain reasons for it too, such as allowing them to stop making the older chip while continuing to make the Vision Pro.

The Vision Pro has always struck me as a device in search of a purpose. I think Apple was hoping someone else would figure out what it was useful for an then swoop in and Sherlock them, but so far, no one really has.

It is a vast majority. The midterms won't go like people on the left expect. There's one group that's hated more than just about anyone else in polls of Americans: Democrats. They manage to be less popular than Trump and less popular than Republicans.

People may not be terribly happy with Trump and the way things are currently going, but it won't take too much to remind them how much worse things were when Democrats were in control.

Despite his current negative approval rating, Trump manages to be one of the most popular politicians in America right now, even with a net negative approval rating. That mostly because Americans just do not like their current politicians than Trump, but ultimately, there's a reason Trump won in a landslide. Americans may not really like Trump, but they loathe the alternatives.

You missed the #1 gigantic reason that eventually got Microsoft in trouble with antitrust and then they invested in Apple to get out of it. Microsoft made exclusive deals with computer vendors where they could get the OS and later the OS bundled with Word and other products at a huge discount if you didn't sell any competitor's products. I worked for and we sucked at Microsoft's teat. MS is probably half the enemy to consumers Apple is today, but in the 90s, they were the devil. They still have the absolute worst file system. NX isn't horrible, but compared to Linux and Mac offerings, it is a piece of garbage.

I don't hate Microsoft, I think they should win competitively, and in gaming lately, they are losing, from what I've read and seen. When I helped porting some (freeware) games from Windows to Linux and Mac, they were beating the Windows version by 5-6FPS (same as the Linux version). That was DX vs Vulkan. I want to try something with, say, Unreal Engine. This was all custom stuff and maybe we were just better at optimizing.

Won't happen, in fact, Apple was probably given a short timeline to fix it. Why? Because Signal is an approved application for contractors to communicate with government employees, including Secret and Top Secret.calls as long as everyone on the call is approved. I've been on some of these calls. Not that anything that needed to be classifeid was ever discussed.

Yeah, what competitors, lol.

Everyone I know in farming today (and I'm a descendant of farmers) owns John Deere everything. There is no other choice. They pay $200000+ (1 Mil+, I'm giving you low end) for combines because the choice is... that or IH or some other brand that has no presence where they live and zero maintenance or parts. Hey, those farmers sit in the cab and make money doing nothing, my cousin reads books, so it kind of pays for itself - laws require drivers, but everything is automated.

Not to mention that the first thing any gamer does when they get a game is turn all that artistic crap off, both to get a better framerate, but also to make the game easier to see. The fewer "artistic effects" on the screen, the easier it is to see what's happening. The idea that gamers care about "artistic intent" is hilarious if you've ever seen any gamer community.

I miss just blaming Bobby Kotick for this...

Worst. Boss. Ever.

Actually, that's not true, I like blaming Bobby, but the dot com bust was worse (after I worked for and left Activision). I kept my job, but I saw 88% collective layoffs (multiple rounds). We joked the floggings would stop when morale improved. The guy that told me that joke was laid off.

And 10 years later I was laid off... and got a job paying more than twice as much. Wish I'd been laid off sooner, lol. No unions involved.

It is called the Department of War. Hilariously enough the rest of the Fortune article uses the correct name everywhere else, it's only the quoted sentence that misnames it.

Totally. You have 9000 deprecated functions and 1006067 obsolete functions you need to update (that were installed before I got there). These will be removed in the next 3 days. I didn't f***** create the code, I don't have 9 years to update the goddamn code you deprecate or obsolete as abandonware daily, I need like 15 support people to keep up. I hated Node.js when I first tried it (same issues) and it is 1000x worse now.

There's a reason I phrased it "appearance of working" - you're assuming that enough people will be able to tell the difference between "working right" and "not working right." As long as it looks to be working properly for the majority of use cases, that's good enough. For most of these tasks, it isn't a simple binary between "doesn't work" and "does work," there's a whole spectrum.

In fact, I would argue this ultimately makes AI more dangerous, because it does a very good job of appearing to work while failing in ways a human doesn't.

Sure, probably, assuming it fails badly enough, which it might. But you're assuming "short term" won't be years, and that it fails in ways that make it clear profit was lost. It's pretty easy to assume that if a computer made a mistake, a human would have as well, especially if you're the one who put the computer in charge.

But that's the thing: AI doesn't have to work particularly well to displace hundreds of thousands of white collar jobs. It just has to create the appearance of working, while being cheaper.

It's already there in places where, even at minimum wage, it wouldn't be cost-effective to have a person perform the task, but an AI can do it cheaply enough. Even if it doesn't do it particularly well. That it can do it at all is enough.

Jobs are going to be given to AI, even if the AI does a worse job of it, simply because it's cheaper. The assumption will be that AIs will only ever get cheaper and more productive. The same assumption isn't being made of humans.

I tease people about being anti-nuclear when coal and natural gas pump more radiation into the air than nuclear ever did, even from accidents. I still use natural gas for cooking, and I can't go outside without breathing coal pollution (the nearest power plant is coal). Sometimes I even use a coal grill.

It's not in the Slashdot blurb because it's not in the Ars Technica blurb. The only reason we know it's Benj Edwards is due to his posts on social media. So I disagree: it shouldn't be in the Slashdot blurb, because it hasn't been verified by, ironically enough, real journalists. Once it's on the record, then Slashdot can post that information, but right now, it hasn't been reported by any official source.

Discord won't be. Some random vendor they use will be.

They're outsourcing the verification process to third party vendors. In fact, they already do:

That happened with a vendor they contracted customer support to. Discord is happy to point out that none of their systems were compromised. (This is, sadly, very common: a lot of companies "don't store personal data" but instead contract with third parties to do it for them. And, you should also note, no one seems to know who this "third party vendor" is. Likely a small company that can safely shield their clients from legal liability and fold and reincorporate as a "new company" as needed.)

As these third party vendors specialize in "age verification service" via storing face scans and IDs, you can be sure that they're already a huge target for nation-state attackers. But Discord can truthfully claim that their systems were never breached. Just the third party vendors that they chose and that they'll require you to use if you want to access everything Discord offers.

My take is that Apple is finally admitting that Siri is useless as a voice UI and that they're going to let you use other voice UIs.

Of course, you're still right, because Apple's implementation won't let you replace Siri, but instead require you to launch the specific app that provides the alternative voice control. But it may be worth it to get a voice UI that is functional rather than Siri.