Well, I guess I'm part of the idiocy then, I just bought one. I also owned the original surface book. I'm a greybeard, been doing this since TRS-80. Was linux guy for a long time till OSX was a better linux, then did macs. I only say all this to provide some context, I'm really far from being a ms fanboi.

The Surface Book devices are hands down the best computing devices I've ever owned. Not even close to anything else. And yes, I've owned and still own top-end Macs, top-end System 76 Linux boxes, etc...

Windows 10 is a delight. With WSL enabled, I have everything I want and need immediately available. The precision touchpad on the surface book is the only one I've ever used that's comparable to a mac, and works amazingly well. I set up three or for different desktops and four-finger brush between them, and three finger brush between apps in a desktop. This is better than the OSX experience.

The battery drain issue is overblown imho and experience. I played Divinity 2 dialed all the way up for hours and the battery charged, albeit slowly.

Additionally, even if you're getting a drain, it's not like it's going to ruin your day. We're talking about like 5-10% per hour or something, plugged in. I mean, you can game for a really long time at max-awesome without any problem. And guess what. When you take a break to eat lunch, the laptop will be fully charged again when you're ready.

I had the same concern before I bought it, and then realized that basically this is a non-issue for real, practical purposes. This laptop is lightweight, has amazing engineering and unique features, a detachable tablet, and can play modern games without really working hard.

Hell, I played Divinity 2 on battery *alone* for almost three hours. I've never seen a laptop that can do that. Ever.

Considering that I spend 10-14 hours a day on my laptop, the $3k I paid for this one is well worth it.

I mean, on paper the specs are great, but I've actually done projects with these things and they're seriously junk. They burn out if you look at them wrong. Additionally, they have a 1.8v gpio level, so there's basically zero chance that you can use any other peripheral without level shifting.

I've talked to a lot of other folks about them as well, they have a terrible reputation in the maker community.

And they're expensive.

So yeah, I'm not surprised. I abandoned them after a single project, like most other folks I know.

No, no. You're missing the point. Apple sales and revenues are in decline. They need to innovate, but they don't have Steve.

Conversation goes something like this:

"Crap. We're dying here. We need new ideas!"
"Sorry sir, we don't have any."
"Well, shit."
"Wait, I have an idea - what if we take away all the really useful parts of a laptop..."
"What the fuck? Are you stupid?"
"No, no hear me out. Then, Mac Book Pro 2017 will have a brand new super functional multipurpose button that let's you communicate to a running process that you want to exit out of the current activity... we'll call it, the iEsc - and run marketing ads with beaches... The All New Mac Book 2017 - Escape The Norm"
"I like where you're going with this..."

I may disagree with the whole premise of this. I also don't discount the possibility that I'm easily duped or have poor cognitive abilities and am a sucker.

It's common practice for artists to generate random words in different configurations in order to draw new insights, inspiration and ideas.

Also, just because something is randomly generated, doesn't mean it's not insightful. How it is possible to objectively judge?

FTFA: "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena". Even though I was told that this phrase was nonsense and randomly generated, I decided to think about it a bit to see if there was an insight I can draw.

Here's one:
In our lives, we're constantly flooded with external stimuli. Text messages, advertisements, flashing lights, warnings, political messages, friends in crisis, problems at work, deadlines, all stridently competing for our attention (infinite phenomena). Personality flaws and weaknesses allow some of these to catch us and drive us in unhealthy directions. If we can work to fix our flaws (wholeness) we can have more effective defenses against the infinite flood of events pushing us and driving us to action (buy this, sell that, believe this, become outraged, donate, think this way, etc...). Becoming a healthy, mature, thoughtful person helps reduce or eliminate the effect that these external driving forces have on us (quiets). Ergo, Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.

I don't know. BS? Maybe. Possibly. But also thought provoking. I think I like the random phrases.

Actually, I'm giving MS a heck of a lot of credit these days. It's a different Microsoft from what we here at slashdot are used to.

VS Code is brilliant. MS's actions embracing open source are wonderful. Azure supporting Linux is awesome. Windows 10 is a freaking amazing OS and for the first time in a long time the best consumer OS on the market (though I'm still partial to Linux on servers).

Microsoft has embraced JavaScript and NodeJS, and they are actively pushing the open web and standards. Edge browser has better and more advanced HTML5 support and ES6 support than Chrome!

Microsoft has a lot of history to overcome, but from what I see they are doing the right things and I think we should give credit where it's due and encourage the awesome new direction MS is taking. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm really starting to like MS, or at the very least taking a serious second look and not discarding them out of hand like I would have four or five years ago.

Actually, I'll probably be switching my whole team over to this once they add two things, 1) vim keybindings and 2) support for debugging node clusters

Why? Because it's lightweight, runs everywhere, is open source and works great. It supports node debugging well. It's a heck of a lot better than Webstorm, which we're currently using. Webstorm is nice but so full of feature bloat that all I see all day as I code is the little mac spinning rainbow as java slowly executes.

There are plenty of other editors out there, and other IDE options, but one thing that MS has always done well is focus on developer tools and ease of use. This seems to be the next iteration of that, but aiming for a minimalist approach with filesystem based "projects" and drastically simplified UI that works with most web developer's workflow.

I like it. Once it grows up a bit my whole team will probably switch over, and we're a mac/linux shop primarily.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

                — HL Mencken

I've been encouraged by what I'm seeing in my local Radio Shack. I just dropped a couple hundred bucks in there, bought a Beaglebone Black, some RGB LED strips (with weather proofing), a nice little USB battery/charger that has enough umph to drive the BBB, and some other odds and ends.

Going to run over there today and pick up the "tv be gone" DIY project kit for a buddy of mine for his birthday.

Also lots of Arduino stuff. I also see on their site that they've been making a bit of an effort to have blog posts about controlling some of the stuff they are selling, but it's a far cry from adafruit or the other maker sites.

They still have a long way to go if they want to really compete in that market.

From the *actual* draft:

This document describes two alternative methods for an user-agent to
            automatically discover and for an user to provide consent for a
            Trusted Proxy to be securely involved when he or she is requesting an
            HTTP URI resource over HTTP2 with TLS. The consent is supposed to be
            per network access. The draft also describes the role of the Trusted
            Proxy in helping the user to fetch HTTP URIs resource when the user
            has provided consent to the Trusted Proxy to be involved.

The entire draft is oriented around user consent and transparency to the user... where is the problem here?

The linked article by Lauren Weinstein is very heavy on sarcasm, scorn and flippant one-liners, but pretty light on technical details. From what I can discern, her primary concern is that ISP's will force all of their users to consent to them acting as a trusted proxy or refuse to serve them.

This is pretty far fetched, imho. First of all, the backlash from the average consumer would be staggering. If, every time they go to their bank's web page, they get a scary security notice "do you want to allow an intermediary at "trustedproxy.verizon.com" to see your private data?" they answer, every time, will be "hell no". And if they are then unable to access their bank account because of this... well, that's not going to be a pretty picture for L1 support.

Second, the *last* thing most ISPs want is to have to deal with yet more PCI concerns. If they end up storing your cc number and ssn in a plain-text cache, that introduces all sorts of potential problems for them.

It seems like the primary use case for this technology is in serving media-heavy content that SSL screws up, like streaming video over ssl etc... so, it would allow caching etc for various media streams that really don't need SSL. And the user could make the decision for whether they want to do it or not.

This seems like a pretty smart thing to me, I'm not sure what all the hand-wringing is about. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

A while ago I was also accepted to the glass explorers program. I was pretty excited at the time, and was planning to go ahead and get one. I'll admit to being a bit of a Google fanboy, though recently they've lost some of their shine in my eyes.

At the time, there were a few compelling reasons why I decided to wait, which I summarized here: Why I'll Wait on Glass

One thing to consider, is that along with the $1,500 price tag, unless you live close to one of the fitting centers, you'll also have to book airfare and hotel, which can be as much as the Glass itself, so that really raises the price a lot. At least, this was the case when I was invited to the program, it may have changed.

For those who don't like clicking G+ links, here's my full original post:

Why I'll Wait on Glass

So, I received my invitation to purchase #googleglass and become a #glassexplorers . Google notified me that I had 14 days to make my purchase and schedule a pickup date.

I've put a lot of thought into this, and decided not to move forward with the purchase. I'm outlining my reasons below, and I hope that the amazing folks on the Glass team can take this post with the spirit that it's intended: as constructive, objective feedback from a developer who is a huge Google fan.

When I first heard about Glass, I was gobsmacked. The notion of having a powerful, wearable computing device with an array of sensors, camera and floating UI always available to the user, with speech recognition and integration with wireless services - well frankly, I had trouble containing my excitement.

At the local bar, I waxed on (to annoying lengths, I'm sure) about how this was a revolution in technology. How it would change the world and the way we interact with it.

I shared my excitement with my family, and when I was selected as a #glassexplorers they had to pull me down out of the clouds.

I was busy planning apps that I was going to develop, I had visions of an app where I could say "ok glass, find my car" and a floating 3d compass arrow would appear and guide me.

I had visions of walking into my house and saying "ok, glass turn on the lights, lock the doors, arm security", and seeing an interactive display of all my devices. I would be able to say "ok, glass show front camera" and I would be able to look out of the security camera on my front porch.

I had ideas for interactive augmented reality games, where the user could scan the sky for alien UFO's and see 3d spaceships through the Glass display window.

I eagerly refreshed myself on OpenCV, preparing for all the computer vision awesomeness I would be able to develop (I'd already done some of this work on android tablets, using the native sdk).

With all of these visions in my head, I set out to begin development. Finally the new api was released. I sat down at my main development box, pulling up the docs, expecting to see all of the richness of the Android API plus Glass specific enhancements.

What I got was: Cards. A completely non-interactive API where I had to broker every request through a complex chain of servers where eventually, at some point, some static text or images may or may not popup on the user's screen.

I was actually in disbelief. I was sure I was missing some documentation somewhere. I poured through the docs, trying to understand what I was looking at. I felt that I must be missing something really obvious. From what I could tell, the amazing awesomness that was Glass, was limited by the API to being essentially nothing more than a SMS messaging system, similar to text messages on my cell.

None of my applications were possible. I couldn't talk to the accelerometer or other sensors. All I could do was go through a strange "add my app as a contact" process so that I could post text messages with some limited media to the user's timeline. That's it. Interactivity was limited to glorified hyperlinks that would post a message to Google's servers, then post a message to my servers, where I could eventually reply with a minimalistic message back to the user after who-knows-how-much latency.

Basically, this revolutionary piece of hardware and engineering was being hobbled by an API that was less effective than a twitter feed. It's like having a Lamborghini, but the only way you can drive it is by calling up an operator and saying "Ok, turn left. Where am I? Ok, go straight. Where am I now? Ok, turn right".

I decided to wait a while, certain that the really smart folks at Google were going to announce an additional API, that this was just the early state of things. Soon, there would be a native API that would allow me to do all of the wonderful things I had planned.

So, I've been waiting. Last week I got a message that my Glass was ready for me to pick up. I thought about it, thought about it some more and decided: I'll keep waiting.

That's true, however, there are two really important points here.

1) No one that I know of, no matter how far afield, follows the rules laid down in Leviticus, which was why I was so annoyed with the poster.

2) The fact that old testament rules aren't followed strictly is internally consistent. My understanding is that these old rules were superseded by the teachings of Jesus who was mostly all about not harming others.

Of course, the poster that I originally replied to is either unaware of this, or was specifically misrepresenting these things, which I felt it was necessary to call out.

No, just being revisionist and - once again - misleading.

Your phrasing, use of exclamation points, and flippant "Yup, good book that" were all clear indicators of your tone.

Saying something does not make it so. The OP did not take the position you stated. Your post was clearly intended to be derogatory and sarcastic.

Congratulations, the moderators of slashdot agreed with you. You sunk to the level of hipster group think and won karma points. Well done.

You don't need to justify yourself, you "won". I should have never wasted my time trying to help you improve your critical thinking and writing.

Please ignore my points, and carry on as you were.

No, I disagree. It was clear that the purpose of your comment was to score points by sneering at the Bible. It was clear that the OP's post was a joke, and poking fun at creationists. The OP was taking a sarcastic tone to illustrate some of the poorly reasoned arguments that are made by new-earth creationists.

You post, however was not that. You post cherry picked individual lines from the Bible in order to specifically misrepresent them, take them out of context in a sort of elitist, intellectually superior tone by applying current moral standards to a culture of thousands of years ago. By doing that, you treated an important book with total disregard and disrespect.

That was inappropriate.

You post was inaccurate, misleading and childish. It lowered the quality of the discussion.

Well, it depends on what assumptions you are making about me.

I never said I agreed with the things that I mentioned, or suggested that Leviticus contains a list of rules to live by, or what religion, if any, I ascribe to.

What I disagree with is the casual disrespect and misrepresentation that the OP treated the Bible with.

Regardless of religious preference, such an important historical document should be treated with more respect. Also, regardless of religious preference, it is a fool who goes through life believing that there isn't a great deal of wisdom contained in the Bible. Or the Koran (Quran). Or the Bhagavad Gita. I would defend any of those texts with the same fervor.

I know that it is cool to make fun of religions, especially Christians, here. It's a guaranteed way to score yourself some easy Karma (ironic!). In this case, however, I took exception to the condescending, disrespectful tone and willful ignorance of the poster.

Those points were specifically cherry picked in order to make a distorted point and to trash the Bible: "Yup, good book that"

It was done by applying current moral standards, two thousand years later, to a people, civilization and culture that were *vastly* different.

The poster made no attempt at intellectual honesty, and strictly went for "cool points". This sort of thing lowers the quality of the discussion for everyone. Even if slashdot tends to be something of a hip, liberal echo-chamber - most of us here value reasoned, intelligent debate. The poster didn't do that, so I (quite appropriately) called him out on it.