Samsung still has DEX (Desktiop EXperience) available for its phones. You can either plug it into a computer and use the phone like a program within a computer, or you can connect it to a USBC docking station with HDMI, mouse, and keyboard attached and use the phone in a desktop style.

It works decently well enough. I wouldn't want to use it full time but I've used it occasionally (typically when my home internet is out. My desktop doesn't have a wifi card since I use ethernet, so I can't really pair the phone as a hotspot - I just connect the phone and use DEX).

There is a concept in computing where a certain spec is good NOW, but will not be good in the future. Rather than replace the entire computer many would rather just increase the power of their current one where its lacking.

Also, by preventing outside ram installation, Apple is free to charge whatever premium they want on more RAM. If they're the only way to increase the ram on a machine then if they decide you're going to pay an extra $500 to go from 8gb to 16gb, then you're stuck.

... about the Fyre Festival fraud and failure, (at least) one of them on Netflix. Check it out, absolutely hilarious. LimeWire buying the Fyre brand sounds 110% like something the LimeWire crew came up with while laying stoned in a Whirlpool. I love this. LOL!

Something isn't over just because it has peaked. While I wish there was more, compared to when I was younger there are a lot more shows available.

What I do kinda dislike though is these mini-abbreviated seasons that have been adopted on new shows. I know its due to expense, but 10 episodes feels kinda short for a season when the shows I grew up with would have 20 to 26 episodes per season. And while I can deal with 10 - a lot of shows have been trying to get away with "seasons" of 6 episodes or less. 6 episodes of TV isn't a season - its a long movie chopped into pieces.

What's wrong with "Yeah, there are some kinks that we overlooked. It's because the studio had to get the release out before bladiblah. We're working on a patch that addresses the issue. Anyone who bought the game until yesterday will get skin/pet/neat-fun-little-soapbubblegun as a bonus DLC for the inconvenience."

It costs like nothing to do this and you'll be portrayed the cool gaming company dude.

Borderlands is a beloved franchise, it's not that the fans will get all worked up about this. Why insult your customer base with bullshit for no reason what-so-ever? And claiming they build UE5 or that UE5 is a sub-par engine is just being silly. A move that anyone who knows a bit about gaming will see right through. .... With minimal social skill you could turn a buggy release like this into a PR win with a slice of self-deprecating humor, a little DLC fluff as a token apology and some community chat to calm the waters and grow connection. If I were in his place I'd even ride the wave and call it the special "Buggy as Fuck!" release, "Only for a limited time!". I'm pretty sure that would've gotten the game even extra attention. Especially the Borderlands fanbase is into this kind of humor.

I fundamentally don't get it.

These pretentious douchebags need some basic PR training above anything else.

The school administrators, unlike the people who actually make the schools work, such as it is, tend to be paid pretty well.

I get so tired of hearing the school systems stress technology so much, because they are inevitably 20-30 years behind in their understanding of how to best utilize it, leave alone secure their systems. I always fantasized about teaching a computer class that didn't even touch a keyboard for the first half year...

I recall Windows 3.51 was quite secure for the time. But once they merged the DOS branch of the OS with the NT branch, things got a lot worse for several years.

It's good to hear AWS has never been hacked because just about every other company with data has been. A lot of people rely on AWS, and what you are saying is accurate and if they are running their systems correctly, there can be a reasonable expectation that they will be secure. That's nice to know.

> What I learned is that teachers have literally no time for anything.

The school system in the U.S. is notorious for this. Teachers get so much stuff dumped on them, much of which has little to do with actual teaching. It's a truly thankless job that cannot be fixed by dumping more money into the system. It's fundamentally broken. There are plenty of good teachers, but their effectiveness becomes more and more fettered every year.

Source: father of 4, and husband to a school teacher

In my experience the two worst things to combine are "education system" and "technology".

If the script kiddies are hacking your system, you've got bigger problems.

Is "script kiddies" still a thing?

I'm so old.

Many PFAS/Forever Chemicals have a structure and effect similar to estrogen, which makes men less manly. It also appears that there are environmental effects lowering testosterone, some researchers Link this to PFAS as well. Low sperm count has also been linked to PFAS.

So, yeah, they literally make your more trans. If you're a man that is.

Socialism with American Characteristics

Iowa's rolling farm fields of coffee

They are slowly gaining in Germany too and have been for the last two decades or so, also due to some EU funding while back. Some German towns even exploited this a little by stringing roundabouts together. They make you dizzy driving through them. That aside, roundabouts are a surefire way to slow down traffic to reasonable speeds, remove breaking and waiting at traffic lights and are low-maintenance intersections.

They'd be the default intersection if I were in charge.

Sadly, quite a few of my fellow German citizens whine like crybabies about them and would rather wait at traffic-lights. I don't quite get it, but this is Germany where people are similarly crazy about cars as some are about guns and gun regulations in the US. Go figure.

Narrative podcast is a media format, not an industry. Conflating those two like some silly dimwit is very likely to lose you big amounts of money. QED.

"Serial" was a podcast that helped kicked off the craze. It was new, had the true-crime pull that fascinates women and men alike, produced with a fairly low budget, available for free download asynchronously (unlike radio shows), covered a current controversy (which it helped hype up, partly out of self interest in the attention economy) and had enough cliff-hangers to string people along and have people around the world awaiting the next episode.

There is one "problem" with this sort of format though: It takes time to consume, very much like a streaming series. And there is only so much time that shows like this can eat up. I jumped on the "Serial" bandwagon right after a close friend of mine got all hyped up about it. I listened to a few episodes but quickly noticed the cliff-hanger shtick on keeping people on edge wether the convict was guilty or not. IMHO the trick was somewhat transparent and it became less compelling after I noticed it.

I'm pretty sure the format is still out there and used by podcasts, but it never was an industry, since every regular person with a cheap-ass laptop and a free installation of reaper or ardour has everything they need to get going and producing their own narrative podcast.

Thinking that this is an "industry" in itself was quite silly from the beginning. Sort of like calling "cooking spagetti" an industry.

Indeed, I fully agree. The funny thing is, monthly numbers would help us move away from the distortions of the quarterly cycle. If key data reporting becomes frequent enough, you can't get into a cycle of "do adverse-numbers stuff early in the quarter and then cram positive-numbers stuff into the end of the quarter". You have to - *gasp* - just run your business normally.

Some businesses could still manage to switch to a monthly cycle, but anyone who deals significantly in transoceanic feedstocks/parts/goods shipments won't be able to.