You must be joking, right, when you say that Sigourney Weaver was not a good looking female ?

AlphaGo Zero learned Go from the rules only and in 3 days managed to beat AlphaGo Lee, which had beaten the world champion Lee Sedol in 2016. I guess it could do the same in less days against you playing maharaja.

> A primary purpose of a patent is to PREVENT others from using it

No, that's the contrary. The primary purpose of a patent is to make a secret method public so that others can use it. In exchange, the patent holder receives a retribution when others use that method to build a product that they sell. If the goal is to prevent others to use your method, it's often more simple and less costly to keep it as a secret.

> the only real advantage that traditional brick and mortar stores have over online ones is the ability to interact with staff and ensure that you really are getting the right product

Maybe for you. For me, the only advantage of traditional brick and mortar stores is that I can get a product instantly instead of having to wait some days/weeks to get it, or when it's not available online (mostly food). Interaction I get with staff is not the kind I want/need, I have family, friends, parties, Internet, etc. for that. And most of the time staff isn't here to help me but to sell what gives them the best commissions/margins or get rid of their stock. There are a few exceptions, but it's mostly in very specialized stores (sport, art, music, etc.) and they aren't necessarily experts in their fields (and generally much more expensive than online stores). Looking for articles and reviews on different websites is often a lot more helpful.

> Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.

That's simply not true. France has created the RMI more than 30 years ago (1988), which is basically equivalent to an universal income, except it was not only for 2000 people but for anyone aged 25+ (1.3 million people benefited from it in France in 2010). It's been replaced by the RSA in 2009 and is now at 559,74 €, identical to Finland's universal basic income (more if you're in a relationship or you've children). The difference with the RMI is that the RSA now forces people to actively seek work, which has always been the goal in the first place.

CGA also supported 640x200 (128,000 pixels) in two colors, here it's 400x150 (60,000 pixels) in monochrome, less than half what CGA provided 36 years ago.

While UHD TVs have enough resolution (96 pixels/degree) to emulate the ability to resolve what the detail is like letters on a Snellen chart for people with normal or average visual acuity (60-80 pixels/degree), they are not enough for people approaching maximal visual acuity (150 pixels/degree).

And they're very far from supporting Vernier acuity/hyperacuity (450 pixels/degree), which may be argued as giving the ability to resolve what detail is, like for Veronica Seider who could identify people at a 1 mile distance.

Depends on where you live, in France TV is broadcasted at 1080p for all the free 27 channels. Also Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray discs have been available for more than a year already.

HDMI is not only used for TV but also for VR, HDMI 2.0 is not enough to support recent headsets like the Pimax 8K X with a single cable, HDMI 2.1 is required for that.

Giving access to your house doesn't look lire a good idea but having something that replaces (or sits next to) your mailbox and that is secure looks like a good idea to me.

In France there are Amazon Lockers as well and while useful, you don't necessarily live near one and/or want to do the extra distance after work to get your package. Having these lockers next to your home or block would be useful, I would be glad to have one.

> The limit of human vision useful for discriminating useful detail is 10 degrees of arc at a resolution of 60 pixels per degree or 600 x 600 per eye.

The limit of Human vision is way higher than that. 60 pixels per degree is only normal visual acuity (20/20), average visual acuity is 85 pixels per degree and the limit is around 150 pixels per degree (what US fighter pilots have in average). And that's only for the ability to resolve pixels, for lines there is Vernier acuity at 450 pixels per degree.

Also 10 of field of view is quite small, the Human field of view is 210x135 binocular without eye movement.

Oculus Story Studio, not Oculus VR Studio.

1915 actually, with shorts and extracts from the "Jim, the Penman" movie (Edwin S. Porter/William E. Waddell). In 1922 it was the first public demonstration of a full feature movie, "The Power of Love" (Harry K. Fairall/Robert F. Elder). There had already been showing of the 3D version of "L'Arrivée du Train" by the brothers Lumiere in 1903 but it was for only one person at a time, not an audience.

> One person lamented that computer games nowadays are tied to internet DRM like Steam, that some crucial DCC software is available to rent only now (e.g. Photoshop) and that many "basic freedoms" of the old-school computer nerd are increasingly disappearing.

DRM did already exist in the 80s. In the form of cartridges (MSX, C64, Vic-20, Atari 800XL, TI-99/4A), bad sectors and weak bits on floppy disks, non-standard loaders for cassette tapes, dongles on the parallel port for pro software, etc.

> Another said that Windows 10's spyware aspects made him give up on his beloved PC platform and that he will use Linux and Android devices only from now on

What's the problem then, he has a choice. Nobody is forced to use Windows 10. In the 80s you didn't have much choice for the OS, now you can chose between a multitude of OS, often for free.

> A third complained about zero privacy online, internet advertising, viruses, ransomware, hacking, crapware.

Zero privacy is a user choice, you can easily browse anonymously, disable cookies, use ad-blockers and anti-virus and chose to not use social networks that you think invade your privacy. Also computer viruses and hacking already existed in the 80s.

> I lamented that the hardware industry still hasn't given us anything resembling photorealistic realtime 3D graphics

Look at this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

> and that the current VR trend arrived a full decade later than it should have.

Suitable displays didn't exist a decade ago, several HMDs were released at this period like the eMagin Z800 in 2005, Headplay Visor in 2007 and Vuzix VR920 in 2008. But it was nowhere enough in terms of FOV, resolution and latency to succeed, same thing for the Sony HMZ-T1, SMD ST1080 and Vuzix VR1200 headsets released in 2011/2012.

> A point of general agreement was that big tech companies in particular don't treat computer users with enough respect anymore.

They've always been after your money and have always used all the possible legal tactics to get it, that's just the means that have changed since the apparition of Internet. The laws and the people simply need to adapt and do what is necessary to prevent abuses.

Also it depends on how you look at it. If you're a developer/hacker, big companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Facebook, Google, IBM, Epic, Valve, etc. have greatly lowered the access to computing tools and information (free programming languages, game engines, SDKs, IDEs, databases, Web frameworks, forums, documentation, free tutorials, etc.) and have mostly embraced the open source movement.

> What do Slashdotters think? Is computing still as cool and fun as it once was, or has something "become irreversibly lost" as computing evolved into a multi-billion dollar global business?

For me it's as cool and even cooler than in the 80s when I started programming. Today you can experiment with a lot of computing technologies basically for free : AR, VR, 3D, computer vision, game creation, Web programming, 3D printing, drones, Raspberry, Arduino, etc. Information is also much easier to find today thanks to Internet.

But if you're only a end-user who doesn't know anything besides Windows 10 and doesn't want to learn anything else, then yes, I guess I can understand why you would see computing as less cool and fun than in the 80s.

Maybe it's only because old IT workers who are still there are the best and most motivated from their generation, others may have moved to other fields or positions (management for example). This natural selection has not yet operated on the newest generation, I guess in 20 years the same study will give similar results.