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.

I've been looking since March 2024. Having no reasonable options in sight, have reopened https://informationr.us/

In this job search, Linked In and Dice- but MOST of my LinkedIn devolves down into one of the above quickly. The number of scammers on Linked In is truly awesome.

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.

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.

I was actually in college in the 1990s, but yes, a middle schooler today with python on a raspberry pi and a pretty simple GPS module could do this.

I didn't say it wasn't abhorrent or alarming. I'm presenting the scenario that this task of "defend this three dimensional coordinate box" doesn't require AI.

Yes, it did. The beacon signals weren't that good back then, neither were the sensors. I had the same problem in the fake robot battles I was involved in.

The answer turned out to be a solution not from Defense industries, but from Genie Garage Door Openers.

The robot doesn't care. The robot's job isn't foreign policy. The robot's job is "here's a box defined by this coordinate cloud, defend it"

Like I said, I programmed it for a fighting robot back in the 1990s. It ain't that complex, and with today's drone factory ships, the Navy can now output this level of AI in killbots at a rate of 10,000 a day.

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.

Kill decisions are simple in comparison: Stay within your predefined geofence, kill anything that moves that isn't transmitting Friend beacon. We don't need AI for that, I coded a form of it in both Basic and Forth back in the 1990s.

And if they don't, some other startup will.