We do get smarter over time. It's just that the pockets of us who choose to are so small that the mob overwhelms the trajectory of society.

I will die knowing more about my surroundings than anyone who died before me. For example; I got to see the first image of a black hole.

As for societal issues. I've never understood the problem with governance. In my overly simplistic view Mr. Spock summarized it perfectly "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Problem we face is our governments are run by Ferengi.

When I started at my current MSP back in 09 we were an Apple reseller. In short; their business model is to treat everyone like dirt. We ended up dropping the reseller agreement about 4yrs later due to the insane requirements Apple imposed. Don't even get me started on what it would entailed to become an authorized repair center.

Apple as a whole is antithesis of why I got into the field. In a different reality where OSX had 93% of the market and Windows was 7% it would be bleak world. I'm going to draw a terrible parallel here; Apple is like an authoritarian government; they demand what the customers want no questions asked.

So sure; after close to a decade they've finally come out with a compelling product. I don't have a short memory and one good thing after a decade of pain isn't enough for me to change my tune. And hell I still think M1 is terrible due to the soldered nature of it all. It's just further customer lock in and helping propel the throw away culture to new heights.

Sadly; I will forever never have anything good to say about anything they produce. Partly because of the business practices, another little piece from their disingenuous marketing, and mostly due to having to support the users for a decade.

There's a point where simply having enough money makes money. Even with market dips like in 01 and 08 the average interest rate is ~10%. If you can save 1mil and just hold it in well balanced funds you can live a modest life off the interest alone.

To you're point if someone gifted me 1mil tomorrow I'd invest it in various areas I know shouldn't fail; health care, clean energy, etc and keep living my modest lower middle class life without needing to work another day.

Not having work another day spending the rest of my life thinking and tinkering would be worth more to me than any trinket.

Their spine is about as powerful as powerful as their power; soft.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. As western customers reject corporations bending the knee to China will we see those said corporations just move to China?

At some point China needs to suck it up; I'd rather go back to the stone age than accept their world view. They will never tame us westerners; our history is built on being asshole rebels. Unlike their citizenry that's content to obey their government it's in our blood to question our government.

Yeah, I'm being melodramatic. It's one of those days.

I love how 14yrs ago we were joking about how egregious $5 virtual horse armor was. Now we're pandering to these massive companies and their recurring revenue.

One has to consider if the game industry didn't move to this GaaS model and kept releasing high quality flat price products where you unlock items from playing; instead of needing real money; we wouldn't be in this mess.

The predatory nature of all of these companies leads me to only one conclusion. I hope they all lose somehow.

While picking sides, just look up the reason for next gen games needing to cost $70 now. At least Codemasters stated that being able to hit 120fps is the cause of needing a higher box price. In some regions the currency conversion makes games around $100.

With all that said, this is why I hope Apple loses and we get another game market crash like in the 80s. This is starting to get a bit absurd.

Oh don't worry. Right when we get everything 100% digital with no form of physical remaining, the sun will be nice enough to finally hit us with CME like the 1859 Carrington Event.

I get hate for suggesting we keep some coal plants around, some form of pre 80s way of conducing business,etc in the event our tech fails us. In winter I keep a kerosene heater around. You never know when the power will go out preventing the furnace from firing.

It seems societies function in only absolutes. We must ALL do it this way, damned the common sense! I agree with you privacy too, I personal do not want a digital beacon strapped to me at all times.

While everything slowly inches to cloud only the customer is going to be penalized. What if in 20yrs one of your favorite childhood movie or game is no longer in print and no streaming service is hosting it. Buy a price gouged 2nd hand copy off ebay or just pirate it?

Also, some shows are web only. Say, Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal. I paid Amazon their fee to cover the cost of my viewing but no physical media was produced. So my only option to have a physical copy was well; piracy.

There are some games from the mid 2000s like No one lives forever that are stuck in licensing hell. No one knows who owns the rights anymore. The only way to obtain it presently is piracy.

Not saying these are good reasons; just my reasons.

Make me always question if our ancestors set us up to fail millennia ago. Not enough gain for the winter; time to rob the neighbor! That other king has a nicer castle; time for a siege. Those people have a different god, time for a crusade.

My point being for all of history we've been this way. Just think if the neighbors helped each out with the grain, if the king with the nicer castle offered some labor to make the others nicer, and if at an early age of our species we realized no one was right on the god front.

Our counties have been this way for so long it's second nature. They say at some point there were only about 2000 homo sapiens alive, did they set in motion this animosity for anything not like us or did it start much later after we all had settled.

Why not bring back the old fashioned drive in movie? Set your radio to X frequency and enjoy a flick from the comfort of your car. Bet they're kicking themselves now for tearing all of those old areas up.

Me personally, I'll continue to enjoy entertainment from the comfort of my living room. For those who really have that itch to get out I'd like to think drive in could accommodate.

Sure Epic are. Just go take a peek at their Wikipage. They directly requested Tencents help to get better at GaaS (Games as a service). Anyone building a game as a service is money grubbing asshole.

And then you have kids who are playing for free getting bullied for having the default skins https://www.polygon.com/2019/5...

Only way Epic can redeem themselves in my eyes is to put a flat boxed price on Fortnite and make all skins and cosmetics unlockable via gameplay. Cosmetics, battle passes, lootboxes they're all a sign of greed; some are more egregious than others. Star wars battlefront 2 possibly being the worst case for a AAA game, and then all of the mobile gacha games for the mobile side.

Unless it's a first gen switch with that hardware flaw in the Tegra chip or a PS4 on a low enough firmware; you're right. Otherwise it's an amazing emulation box. (doubt they secured a hackable revision though)

What's boggles my mind is those of us who started using this tech when it was brand new had a better personal edict. Same rules taught to us from the real world as children carried over to cyberspace. Don't talk to strangers, don't share your personal info and such.

What's even funnier is the generation who taught us Gen Xer's these things are now possibly the worst offenders of sharing to much online.

I really don't know why everyone scummed to Facebooks real name policy. I could semi tolerate it's existence until that point. There's a reason why the internet hardly has any info on me; you'd have to guess one of the many silly names I've used like the one here on /. and then somehow figure out which out of 350m people in the US that is.

Unlike you; I do claim moral superiority for not falling into the social media trap. I never miss a good opportunity to criticize others that help line Zucks wallet. Personal thought of mine is the net was better when it small topic specific forums. [H]ardOCP, Anandtech, toms hardware, rage3d, Slashdot and such.

I hope the future will figure out putting all humans in the same kennel will only lead to constant disagreements and frictions.

Apple set very high bars for everything. They run a business model that makes anyone else doing business with them feel like they should be thankful for even having the chance.

MSP I work at used to be a licensed Mac reseller. We are no longer due to them every year stating you need to sell X $$ worth of Mac products or you get you reseller license pulled; every year the number would go up. Think by the time boss called it quits Apple wanted us to push $250k of product a year.

We also had investigated being an official Apple repair shop since the closest Apple store is an hour and half away. Boy do they lay it on thick to be a repair shop, you entry way needs to look a certain way. No opened systems can be allowed to be in view of customer waiting area,etc.

So that was my long way of saying. Epic broke the rules and this is what Apple does. Isn't it Apples prerogative to run their businness the way they want? I don't personally agree with it; but it's their shop, their rules. I don't see people up in arms if a grocery store drop an entire brand from their selves. Why is this any different?

I can stand in front of the white house and yell that the president is a obese cheeto all I want. Dare someone to call Xi Pooh bear, or draw a picture of Puntin as a drag queen and see how it goes. We don't have great data protection here; but also the internet is wide open unlike other firewalled countries.

We also have food security and a reasonable population. If things ever get bad in China 1.4bn mouths to feed might pose to be a problem. Lots of areas we could improve though; less war mongering, better/cheaper/free healthcare and less partisanship in our government to name a few.

I don't think anyone could pay me enough to move to China with their leader worship, social credit and shady business standards.

Plus all the Karens of the world hadn't infected it with their "I want to see the manager" mentality.