This is relevant, I promise. Just today, I received a Shelly H&T (humidity & temperature). They have s cloud service and spot, but explicitly explain that you can set it up purely locally. I did, and attached it to my OpenHAB installation.

Every IoT device should offer this option.

It seems like there are two unrelated problems here. First, TFA implies that this is affecting existing games. That is truly a licensing issue, and I suppose a Japanese legal expert would need to chime in: Can a font developer change the licensing conditions for an existing product? It seems to me that this should not be possible.

The second issue is really more of a non-issue. If a studio cannot find an "affordable commercial font", then they should just use a free font. Designers obsess way too much over which font to use, but honestly: most people don't care. According to ChatGPT, there are at least four free fonts to choose from: Noto Sans JP, Source Han Sans Japanese, M PLUS 1p, and ZEN Maru Gothic.

Top management breathing down your neck. Yeah, that'll help.

This is just not true. It shows that you are not familiar with other voting systems. Currently, people in the US almost have to choose D or R, because they know that no other party has a chance. Consider a simple example of another system: Let's say that a state has 10 seats in the House of Representatives. Votes are cast for several different parties. Party 1 gets 30% of the votes - they get 3 seats. Party 2 and party 3 each get 20% of the votes - they each get 2 seats. Parties 4, 5 and 6 each get 10% of the votes - they each get 1 seat.

If people knew that smaller parties could actually win, and participate in the political process? I guarantee you that people would vote for parties other than D and R.

There will always be cheap, crappy games. AI will help make more shovelware. Who cares?

For serious game developers, AI will be a huge productivity boost, and it will make the quality of the games better. Imagine, when talking to an NPC, that you don't always get the same dialog. Instead, a small, built-in AI ad libs the dialog within given parameters. Generating and placing the plethora of minor characters, mundane objects and such - instead of pure tedium for the development team, hand it over to an AI. There are so many ways that game development can become faster and produce better results.

I do disagree. I just installed Xubuntu for my 70yo non-technical BIL. A couple of apps had to be replaced, so I showed him the differences. Otherwise, no problems.

Will the personnel be outsourced to India, Pakistan, et al?

This. Energy *is* civilization, meaning more about ndant and *cheaper* energy advances our standard of living. I have nothing against renewables (we have solar on the roof), but: misguided emphasis on renewables has made energy a lot more expensive. That is the opposite of progress.

How many non-technical users upgrade their PC? I expect very, very few...

Having lived with both systems, the US approach is just weird. You buy $10 of stuff, and the cashier demands...$10.70? Huh?

Of course, I do see the problem: different states, counties and towns in pose different tax rates. In countries with VAT this is not the case: VAT is determined at the state or national level.

The VCs want out - many have already gotten out through equity offerings. The equity markets are now tapped out, because these companies are so far from profitability. So now they are tapping the debt markets.

The thing is: there is money to be made here. The current crop of AIs are truly revolutionary, and will only get better. But...profitability is not yet there, and likely won't be for some time. People are still betting that they can pick the winner. There are going to be a lot of tears.

A couple of weeks ago, several Microsoft Logos and icons changed, for example, the blue envelope shown while Outlook365 is starting. No purpose to it, not better or worse, just somewhat different. Why?

So Firefox us going to do the same thing? Again, why? There is zero need for this, and certainly arguments against it.

UIs and Logos need to be stable, preferably over decades. We need a lot fewer designers.

Which was better for the consumer? Netflix, back when they were *the* streaming platform? Or the situation today, where streaming is balkanized?

What's good for the big game studios is different from what's good for gamers. As long as Steam remains consumer-friendly, they can (and will) keep their monopoly.

Everyone who really saw a benefit to an EV has bought one. Those are people who have an easy solution for charging, plus climate fanatics who want an EV for political reasons.

The rest of the population will buy an EV when they cost less than the alternative. Also, charging has to be easy: either charge in the employer's parking lot (at reasonable costs), or landlords install charging stations where renters can use them overnight. That's a big ask.

Meanwhile, it's just as well that EV sales are slowing down, because the general net infrastructure is not up to charging millions of vehicles. I'm not just speaking of the US here - I'm in Europe, and that's generally true here as well.

Hubris. With our capabilities within our universe, we cannot fully describe our reality. However - if our universe is a simulation - we have no idea of the capabilities of the universe in which that simulation runs, no idea of its physical laws and reality.

Consider: if we create a simulation, even one that allows computation: can that simulation potentially explain itself? It really depends on the capabilities we build into it.