I think MS wants XBox to be android...a diverse platform in which they bear less responsibility for it's fortunes. The ASUS partnerships are a great example and potentially interesting. MS can never please everyone. But partners can inject new life. Why force everyone to your hardware when you can collect rent from Windows or SteamBox devices?

Apple is about a walled garden. It's weird...you can force me to the Apple Way for productivity and I don't mind. I'll use Apple apps and apple hardware because Apple stuff works and if I can swallow the cost, things are fine. They generally work good enough and I don't have to think much. But gaming? fuck you...I want my games...when I want them...how I want them. I guess because gaming is optional. I need a phone, I don't need an XBox. I can get by with tablet games or PC games, etc.

I love my XBox. I probably should have gotten a PS5 but hey, the past is the past. I am actually excited to see XBox as a platform. I am excited to see Valve or ASUS release hardware faster than MS.

I'd love for the next XBox to be an OS I can install on my own hardware and get the same experience. The ROG XBox Ally was exciting...a great idea...SHIT implementation, but that was entirely windows fault. Fix that?...and XBox gets exciting again. Windows becomes a nice OS for gaming instead of something we put up with just because. If Roku can do this, why can't MS?

In fairness, most tech companies are headquartered in blue states. It would be logical for Texas based companies to give more to locals or the party in power. We've discovered, tech companies are sociopaths. They like diversity only because they have a labor shortage and smart people like diversity. So...some token symbolic trans stuff to make urban AI/data scientists happy...they'll take a stand on civil rights, because it benefits their business, but not go further...they're quite opposed to equal pay or union membership or treating employees well. They have no ideals, for better or worse.

Overpriced might be misstating it, given modern prices. I enjoy my XBox a lot more than my PC. It works a lot better with my kids and on a TV than any PC does. Some want to sit at a desk all by themselves and play on a PC. I like playing couch co-op games with my kids. While I am not sure I made the right choice in picking XBox over PS5 5 years ago, it was a LOT cheaper than the gaming PC I bought and it worked a lot better. We tried hooking the gaming PC up to a TV. It was a fucking nightmare with constant bluetooth disconnections...a huge science project.

Windows sucks for anything but computer usage. I found this out the hard way with the XBox ROG Ally....also a science project and constant nightmare. The XBox gives a nice console experience.

PC gaming and console gaming are just 2 different animals....like cats vs dogs. Some people are cat people, some are dog people. Both are nice, but both cater to different crowds. Complaining that you can't install pirated software on an XBox is like complaining your cat doesn't like to go on walks with a leash to the bar with you.

I have Java applications that are 20 years old and I kinda wish they'd die. I still get questions about a simple struts app I wrote in 2003. Last I heard, it's still being run by a small business I worked for over a summer between jobs in a recession. Many libs were compiled in the late 90s and never touched again...because they were simple and complete. Here's the thing about Java vs C....A compiled jar from 1996 RUNS FASTER AND BETTER in 2026. Java keeps getting better due to JVM improvements. I have libs that I used daily today that haven't been recompiled in 15 years.

Also, you're complaining about Linux? I thought that was settled. Linux is the dominant server OS, hands-down, no exceptions.

Those libs from 1996 will outlive you and I, as will Java. It's too important and has too much investment. It's far huger than COBOL and COBOL seems to want to live forever.

Java today?...looks nearly identical to Java from 10 years ago....for better or worse. It's very stable. It works well. My code from today is 95% similar to code from 10 years ago...which sounds bad...until I realize...ORM is largely mastered...REST services are largely mastered. Lambdas are largely mastered (some minor helpers added). Hence, what was best practices 10 years ago still is today. I've done this a long time and 10 years of stability seems wrong...I wonder if I am just out of date, but I look things up and nope...all the new stuff is niche...all the main problems have good solutions that were introduced over 10 years ago and I adopted them eagerly when they came out.

Point by point:

1. Java is, by far, the top language in commercial applications. If money is involved, Java frequently is one of the top choices. It does have viable competitors, but it is the dominant business language, like COBOL used to be. EVERYONE who is anyone uses it: from Google to Facebook (a PHP pioneer) and Twitter (a Ruby pioneer) to every bank and lots of smaller shops. It's a popular choice. It has the best performance of any language with a runtime and it has the largest talent pool. Every major business that starts in a different language eventually invests heavily in Java. It's rarely the SOLE language these days, but is the one relied on for a lot of the heavy lifting.

2. Which Java? EVERY professional knows the answer to this. First of all, x86 vs ARM doesn't matter...that's the original point of Java. IBM Invested in it early on to revive their mainframe sales. LTS? Everyone will support it. Also, in my 25 years of working with Java, I have never heard of anyone needing JVM support. It's very reliable. The frameworks above it? Yeah, that's more common, and all major ones provide paid support. EE? You're about 15-20 years out of date with that one. They lost the rivalry. Spring Boot is the current champion, for better or worse, and they have a cohesive ecosystem and excellent paid support. Regarding Oracle stupidity, everyone uses OpenJDK now. But if you'd prefer to pay for Oracle, they're basically the same for about 99% of the market. Oracle brags about better garbage collection, and that might be true...but most of us just give the JVM enough resources that we don't care. Java isn't as memory efficient as native-code, but it's a lot better than it's business/scripting rivals, like Python, JavaScript, and C#.

If your "techies" cannot answer these, you got duped. Every experienced Java programmer I know can answer them easily.

I want to believe you. It's what I've been told since I'm a small child, but I am not confident it's true. I am confident macro nutrients matter and that calories matter. We can observe what happens if you don't eat enough fiber or eat too much. However, my own doctors tell me they don't know if vitamins work. I still take one....just in case. But no one knows if multivitamins work. Eating 300 calories of salad vs a PBJ...not sure. There's definitely a placebo effect. There's definitely a mindfulness effect.

But...does it work? I even googled cholesterol after reading your comment "how long does it take for cholesterol to improve with diet alone?"...couldn't find official metrics, but found it mixed anecdotally. People went on hardcore diets and didn't see their cholesterol lowered. My doctor had told me the same thing about blood pressure and cholesterol...that the vast majority of it is genetics. Don't bother cutting salt...you need medicine.

I hope you're right. I am just not confident you are. I'd love to be wrong on this. It would give me hope that one can simply eat a certain way and have good health outcomes.

Also, regarding these cases. How much was socioeconomic factored in? Construction workers tend to have higher rates of diseases than school teachers. Salespeople have higher rates than accountants. I see a massive correlation with stress and income. I've seen with my own eyes family members turn their health around by getting a new job. I am sure most have. I have seen people turn things around by going from slob to mindful and losing weight. I've never seen anyone change their health by diet changes without significant weight loss as well.

I can't tell if you're trolling, but software has to be maintained. COBOL is very expensive to maintain and run. You could achieve a massive cost savings if you ported it to Java and hosted it on your internal x86/commodity servers or a cloud. Mainframes are probably the most expensive environments to run. If you're not a fan of Java: rust, C++, even C# would be massively cheaper and perform better.

In the industry, we call this tech debt. It's ongoing cost due to tech that's difficult to maintain. As a result, banks write software in modern languages to call out to their COBOL, so all new code is written in a new app and old stuff is walled off in the legacy call...and we write complex microservices orchestration software to maintain this massive mess....when it can probably be replaced with a handful, if not a single well-written Java WARs.

As further proof, LLMs are full of shit...this has been a problem for like 40 years now. It's a FUCKING GOLD MINE to port legacy banking apps to modern software frameworks. It's been a problem for so long because, as you pointed out, "It works, leave it be." Saving 50% on operating costs isn't worth it if you introduce an outage. It's easier to keep writing IBM massive checks than to risk breaking your legacy app. If LLMs could safely port COBOL to C/Java/C++/C#/rust/etc...people would be making massive fortunes doing so. /. wouldn't be writing about what Sam Altman said, but would be writing about the death of COBOL...and the revolution in software. EVERY bank wants to get off COBOL. The ones that haven't just aren't willing to stomach the risk. Anyone who has a COBOL app has deep pockets and good credit. They can afford to spend money. They can't afford to tolerate risk.

Every time you see some article about something in life making you healthier or sicker, ask the question...is there a stress correlation? It's safe to say every modern non-genetic/mutation ailment can be traced very reliably to stress. In the 90s, they thought drinking wine was good for your health. Doctors told my dad, a non-drinker, to have a half glass every night for heart health...he tried it and felt sicker and gave up...even felt bad he couldn't drink wine to be healthy.

Now we know, wine is bad for you. At best, you don't notice the damage in small doses. It will never make you healthier. I was in college, listening to biochemistry lectures where they studied it...was it the anti-oxidants? Was it reservatrol? No matter how much was given, they couldn't find a dose-dependent response to either. Turns out, it was simply that wine drinkers have less stressful lives, especially in the USA, especially in the 90s. Most were middle class or above. The poor drank hard liquor or beer. People who have time and lack of serious problems in their life to explore wines have time to visit the doctor for routine checkups and get a walk in every night with the dog and go to bed on time, etc.

Then they thought it was tooth decay. So now scientists are studying to see if bacteria in teeth caused heart attacks...were they producing toxins that are poisoning us? Oh, you're on a statin?...be sure to brush your teeth as well!!!...which is nice advice, but not relevant. More obviously, people who go to routine checkups have less stress, have their act together more, people who take care of their teeth typically take care of their bodies and have their shit together.

Same for any other ailment...ultra-processed foods? ...yeah, the MAHA/RFK crowd loves to complain about that, but first of all, the healthiest foods we eat are REALLY FUCKING PROCESSED...like yogurt and whey and olive oil...there's no clear definition. However, take things we know are terrible, like hot dogs. Most health concerns found from hot dogs are from overeating. You overeat salad and you're going to be pretty similarly sick. But hot dogs are like wine. People that have their shit together don't eat 7-11 hot dogs. That's for poor people or people that are too stressed out and busy to get a proper meal. Feed rich and relaxed people the same stuff, only in proper proportions and I'll wager you'll barely see a difference in health outcomes.

Health and diet are the new religion for the secular crowd. We believe that if we can be more pure...cut out the nitrates and red dye 50, we can be more holy. There's just no evidence. I've eaten like shit as a poor college student. I ate healthy once I graduated and could afford fresh fruit and vegetables and to cook real meals....there was no difference. But I've had stressful jobs that made me feel like ABSOLUTE SHIT while eating PERFECTLY and working out daily. I've had jobs I loved where I worked out very inconsistently and ate junk food....felt much better (chubbier, but healthier).

I'm guilty of this too. I want to believe that if I live off lean protein, "good carbs," and a fuckton of fruits and vegetables...I'll be holy too!...I'll be rewarded for my virtuous eating with good health.

During the pandemic I achieved this because I work from home and can afford whatever food I like....didn't make a difference. I take my vitamins like clockwork and workout nightly...even walk the dog to clear the head, like clockwork. Part of me still thinks, with each meal planned, that if I eat a salad, instead of a slice of pizza (same amount of calories of each), I'll be healthier...but I've NEVER seen ANY evidence...on the scale...in the mirror...in my mood...in my energy levels....in my bloodwork. Calories are calories....I eat too much salad, I feel like shit. I eat an appropriate amount of pizza, I feel fine. I still take my vitamins and eat healthy...but I can't prove it works. I am not sure it does.

I wouldn't be surprised if we don't find out that nutrition is really overrated and barely makes a difference. In fact, I have people I am close to who EAT LIKE SHIT...and feel just as good as I do. People my age who make EVERY mistake...smoking, drinking, weed, NO EXERCISE AT ALL, junk food...and they are in their late 40s with no visible health problems.

Baby-steps...while TypeScript has dogshit performance, at least it has compiler support and is easier to maintain than JavaScript or Python. You tell someone who barely learned Python to go write C and they'll not understand memory management and security very well. But hey...who has ever written insecure code in C? As a daily Claude user...it can't reliably write Java, the most popular business open source language, that compiles reliably. I think it compiles about 60, tops 75% now. LLMs cannot be used by people who don't know what they're doing.

....is that people will hopefully use less Python and stop using those bullshit "It makes me more productive excuses."....when they meant to say "I don't know how to use any other language". If you code for fun?...play with whatever toy you like...when you do this professionally, keep scripting languages out of programs that are meant to scale and do real work. A fuckton of Python has to be rewritten every goddamn year. Some student or intern writes a cool app...it gets users and then it has to be rewritten in a grown-up language because it won't perform or scale and it's untyped nature lets all sorts of bugs sneak in.

Hopefully AI will give people who don't know what they're doing, but somehow got hired to write software, more courage to use Rust or Java instead.

Exactly where in the USA do we grow rubber? Complex machinery will always have globally sourced parts. Even the model T required components from other nations. Nothing of any complexity is 100% made in China, either. The plastic pellets were probably sourced from petroleum from the USA, Middle East or Russia. The camera sensors for Chinese phones are frequently sourced from Japan. That's just a modern economy.

You create less jobs by insisting 100% comes from America...because there are things we cannot make (rubber) as well as things that other countries can produce more efficiently...for example, Israel of all places, seems to be a leader in plastic technology. If we're spending twice as much to produce a part in the USA vs Israel, it makes the product a lot less competitive. Would you prefer a US multinational employ 1000 workers with foreign sourced parts?....or 500 with all USA made...and make 1/4 the revenue. Remember, our biggest companies are beholden to global markets, not just our own. Apple sells phones everywhere, not just the USA. Ford sells vehicles worldwide. It's not unreasonable for some of our global customers to want a cut of the action.

Also, your logic about soda is just WRONG. Have you ever worked in manufacturing? Labor is a specific portion of the cost of getting a bottle of coke into your hands. It varies by product. A pizza?...yeah, that's mostly labor. A bottle of soda?...that's mostly automated. Transportation and fuel costs impact the price more than factory wages. And factory workers and truck drivers are paid more than minimum wage.

Your logic also completely fails because inputs cost money. You make 100% of the produce from 100% USA sourced materials...let's take a simple example, like hand tools. Craftsmen hand tools used to be USA-made and their premium lines are still. OK...they only buy US steel...do tariffs increase or decrease their cost?...if you worked in logistics, you'd know companies are competing in a global market. If Foreign steel gets twice as expensive, what happens?...the cost of American steel goes because everyone buying Chinese steel now has to buy from American companies and there's a massive shortage.

Finally, fuck off with the racist stereotypes. If you're going to be offensive, at least get the country right. Talking about Chinese eating dog is like saying Americans are getting fat off all that Poutine they eat.

AI-generated code only sometimes compiles. It rarely works. It also is so slow it barely saves me time for easy tasks I know how to do. Today, I needed sample data for a unit test...PERFECT use case for AI...I prompted it to generate 3 examples of a specified class...it took several minutes in Claude Opus 4.6, so I just canceled it and did it myself. I retried it with another class and it didn't even compile. It is not remotely reliable. If it was, the world would be a different place, as I've ranted many times before at /.. A reliable code generation tool that could build nice software with prompts would set the world afire and these evangelists and puff piece purveyors wouldn't be writing about the glory of AI, but would be making vast fortunes chasing their software dreams.

I'm autistic AF and even I could see they're full of shit. :) If you want to see hot women, go to a strip club or if you're charming and single, tinder. It's just awkward and weird. I don't like getting erections at work and I don't want bimbos interfering with my project. If want my project to succeed so I can get a promotion, not having it derailed and over budget, but hey....at least Becky will take me out to lunch a few extra times and pretend my jokes are funny and stories aren't boring.

It's just fucking sad and pathetic, IMO. If you're important enough to bribe, you can easily get a date or a mistress. You have they money to hire a pro and you probably got to that leadership position by being smart and charming...real women like that.

Don't fuck with with your job and force horrible products on your coworkers. Don't make me use Oracle/SAP garbage so you can feel young again.

Even as autistic as I am, if I wanted to fuck up my marriage, I could get laid...by age-appropriate women. It's not that hard. I can afford tickets to whatever game I liked (if I didn't hate sports). Most of these decision makers are far more attractive, charming, and wealthy than I am....I don't know why they don't do the same.

OK, I can't prove that whoever picked the enterprise software we use was fucking the sales rep, but that would be the most logical explanation. It can't be on the merits of the software...it's GARBAGE, from a top vendor, and just fucking sucks...when you analyze it, you can see it's using 20 year old technology and hasn't kept up with the times. It doesn't need to actually work, just convince the decision maker it did.

I got my career start as a software engineer at consulting company that specialized in SAP deployments. It was well known that the sales were never based on merit, but on bribing and charming the decision makers.

However, consulting company reps look a lot more like pharmaceutical salespeople than software experts. It's not old nerds with industry experience...we hired lots of women under 30 who were communications majors...they had breast implants and mastered the art of wearing business suits that showed them off...not enough to look like porn stars or that you'll notice immediately, but that you'll pick up on the cleavage during a conversation. They were sorority party girls that can pass for smart. The men were the male equivalents...charming bros that take you to the NBA/hockey game. I got to go to a few of those events.

The women mastered the craft of wearing their hair and makeup so that a routine straight guy wouldn't notice they were trying to look hot, but they were...they smiled the right way, they charmed the customer...your stories were always interesting..."oooh, you went golfing where?...that's so amazing!!!...oh, you're thinking about getting a boat?...that sounds like so much fun."

India, as famously corrupt as the country is reputed to be, their outsourcing firms aren't into bribing with sex...at least to my knowledge. The Indian outsourcing companies I've worked with, as much as I despise them, were really trying to compete with their work. The SAP/PeopleSoft consulting firms were more lavish in perks, dinners, hot bimbos, charming bros...trips to your see your local NBA/NHL/MLB/NFL team, etc.

Enterprise software is a depressing dumpster fire of corruption.

I can't wait until Amazon's Agentic Healthcare system tells me it would be more efficient if I delete and recreate myself rather than treat my symptoms of aging or whatever ailment I see it's help on (forced on me by my insurance plan).