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Comment Re:Modern VR hardware is really disappointing (Score 1) 40

Untethered means battery-powered wifi gaming.

Immediately, not interested.

I can play my Vive Pro as long as I like (e.g. at a party we can all have a go for hours), it's reliant on the power of the machine connected to it, not the device itself, and it provides tech specs far in advance of the wireless junk.

Comment Re:Modern VR hardware is really disappointing (Score 2) 40

I solved that problem with a hook in the ceiliing and one of those springy-cord things (like people used to have on their keys) so that you can move in literally any direction and it doesn't matter at all as the cable will follow you, and then spring back to the hook when you step back again.

Literally a $10 solution, never had an issue after that.

Comment Re:Modern VR hardware is really disappointing (Score 2) 40

Yeah, you remember when all the game-streaming services failed because they just couldn't actually overcome the latency issues?

And you know that in VR, latency is the thing that makes you feel travel sick and/or have an awful experience? (Good VR sets have such low latency that it's incredible, and this is basically a non-issue, but even a poorly-programmed game can introduce enough latency to have this effect even with perfect hardware).

And that wireless tech - regardless of its implementation - is subject to local radio noise and will "hang up" if there's interference?

Streaming shite to VR is a TERRIBLE idea. That's why they often need proprietary cables to do it, as per the OP.

Comment Re:Rationality versus rationalism (Score 1) 75

That smells a LOT like BS. I'm just going to eat all this food in your pantry to make sure you don't get food poisoning, and such.

Compare, instead of the nobleman charging rent, the herdsmen do get together and own the commons in common, working out a fair deal between them for sustainability.

As for the NYC situation, if there's a glut, why don't prices fall? Where are the buildings for sale cheap to someone who wants to do a residential conversion?

Comment AI (Score 1) 69

"When we go down, we want to take down every market with us because we're a bottomless-money-pit and are chasing a dream that we can't achieve with all the world's computing resources, the training data of the entire Internet from billions of people, and excruciatingly overburdening several utilities to try to find something that we think will just magically happen if we keep throwing stuff at it. And we've used up every available money source but are still hundreds of billions in the red without any sign of profit, so we just need to tank everyone so that we can succeed"

Comment Re:ffmpeg (Score 1) 111

All that would happen is that the companies would take the last version, continue using that in privately-patched versions that they never distribute (they don't need to, they only need to provide source if they're providing binaries and YouTube et al don't give you their binaries), and wait for someone else to start up a fork.

Additionally, they can't. If they change the licence, they can't build on what's already there as its GPL. It's literally in the design of the licence that they deliberately chose. You'd have to get the sign-off of thousands of previous contributors (some dead) or rebuild all the pieces of the software that they touched without any reference to their original code. It's not going to ever happen, same as the same argument for Linux etc. that people keep thinking they're being clever when they push it, not realising that it's designed deliberately so that it's forever open-source.

Sorry, but the only reasonable solution is to block their ability to submit a bug unless it comes from a human maintainer at Google, with a full patch and no AI slop inside it. And if they work around that ban them again. And if they work around that, stop accepting bug reports / patches as here.

Comment Re:Sigh. (Score 1) 62

I studied AI 25 years ago, thanks.

The consumer-grade technology being available clearly came about in the last 5 years.

Additionally, it's a technology which is going to - inevitably - significantly increases its costs. Being given away as a loss-leader against hundreds of billions of dollars or generation costs is going to come back to bite once you're reliant on it and have abandoned other things.

P.S. abandoning 60 years of traditional computer science for 5 years of ONLY MODERN AI (unless you're intending to teach kids about neural networks, etc.) is a dumb thing for an educational framework to do.

P.P.S. I work in schools. I work in IT.

P.P.P.S. We don't teach kids any real computer science at this age, what this is use COMPUTING - i.e. using a computer. Same difference as between literature and literacy, or maths and numeracy. Teaching AI as a base core subject intending to replace higher-level CS is... dumb.

Comment Re:Rejecting my card... (Score 1) 158

On the other hand, if your card got refused at that grocery line - would you go back? Likely not.

I doubt many such businesses would risk the customer ire by refusing some cards.

What I DO forsee as happening is some businesses that aren't time sensitive but routinely deal in high $$$ transactions not accepting some such cards. IE, (ironically) - airlines. If you're buying several thousand dollars worth of airline tickets the rewards (and in turn, the merchant fees) can add up quite a bit.

Comment Re:That dog won't bring home Huntsman's Rewards (t (Score 1) 158

Maybe they're in another country? Here in the US a guy selling tomatoes beside the road is likely to whip out a Square reader attached to a phone and take credit cards.

I live in a small town and I can't think of a single business that DOESN'T accept cards. The last holdout (an old diner thats been there for decades) gave in about 7 or 8 years ago and got a reader.

Comment Re:That dog won't bring home Huntsman's Rewards (t (Score 0) 158

As a direct result, no, but as a net result, yes, they will. Large companies like Walmart have razor thin profit margins. They just make insane profits because of the volume of product that they move. Those margins will always be just a small amount above whatever their net costs require, and credit card fees are part of those net costs.

You might not like them as companies, but there's a reason why Wal-mart and Amazon are almost always the cheapest place to buy something.

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