They keep wanting to turn the OS into a bunch of non-optional, deeply-integrated, unremoveable, application-layer talkie assistants.

It's been the same for decades - Active Desktop, the little paperclips and wizards, etc. Microsoft Bob infected them and they're still trying to make it happen.

If Windows was an OS, and Copilot was an optional app that you could download for free or buy, and which any similar AI assistant could plug into your OS in the same way (e.g. so you could choose Gemini or ChatGPT to help in your OS instead), and there was an option to just say "No, none of that"... I'd probably stick with Windows.

But my last 10 machine at home is coming to its end, and its replacement is not going to run Windows. Purely because... you forgot where the OS ends, and my data and my applications begin.

I just want the OS. I'm not interested in ANYTHING ELSE that you have to push. I don't have Office. I don't use Teams. I couldn't give a damn about Copilot or AI. I just want something that boots to a desktop and lets me click the icons of programs that *I* have chosen to put on there.

It's simply not possible on Windows. They proved with IE, literally broke the same laws again with Edge, now it's Copilot, etc. No. And now you're not just being a pain in the butt, intercepting my web traffic to pop up ads for your browser ("There's no need to download a different browser..."), but now you're actually reading all my data and taking screenshots of my screen.

I'm done. Make an OS and the rest as applications and not only would it reveal quite how many people WANT Copilot etc. but it would also mean that you wouldn't be literally breaking the anti-monopoly laws like you have for several decades now.

Many, many PC games can be played with a controller connected to the PC's USB port. Support for HID protocol and XInput protocol is widespread.

Gaming exclusively on modern consoles on grounds that games for Linux or Windows are presumed malware means you'll probably get indie games years late or never. This is because it takes time for an indie developer to build enough of a reputation in the industry to become eligible to buy a devkit for a modern console.

Unless by consoles, you mean things like the NES and Genesis, which are still getting brand-new indie games decades after Nintendo and Sega stopped supporting them.

I live in an all-electric house.

I bought heatpumps within the first 2 years of buying it. Heating with resistive electric is expensive and inefficient (technically it's about 100% efficient... which is awful compared to a heatpump which can be MORE efficient... because it uses the tiny amount o of heat already present in the air outside your house, even in sub-zero temperatures).

My electricity bill is one-third of what it was when I moved in, purely because of heatpumps. By comparison, I have also moved all my home IT to half a dozen individual Raspberry Pi's which, collectively, run at about ~100W... less than it costs to run my laptop, let alone a server.

Most people are trying to reduce their base load and reduce their heating costs, not increase them.

Can it put the fecking taskbar icons back where they were? And let me drag it around the screen? And bring back the start menu? And finally move everything into either control panel or Settings (but not both)? And actually let me choose to NOT update if I so wish? And making things an OFF BY DEFAULT OPTION first, and never removing an option, just switching it off for those who don't want it? And letting me theme Office again so I can make it look like Office 2000? And ....

Because I absolutely hate AI with every fibre of my being, but if lets me do those things, I might well consider supporting it.

Say your reactor has a neutron injector on a rotor. The fission fuel has started vibrating, creating a feedback loop that could cause the reaction to become unstable. Running the rotor in reverse would change the pattern of incident neutrons just enough to stop the vibration. And the way you make a rotor go the other way is by reversing the polarity of its drive current.

That's the best that I could ground this technobabble off the top of my head.

They could do it like Sling, which has two basic tiers: Orange and Blue. Blue has the limited basic channels and a bunch of channels from programming providers other than Disney. Orange has limited basic and Disney, fewer channels and fewer simultaneous streams than Blue, with an "Orange & Blue" add-on tier that adds the missing channels from Blue.

Plausible subjects include either "The government's competition regulator" or "A coalition of multichannel video distributors". Which was it?

Disney requires specific channels to be at the basic tier of a multichannel video provider's offering, not a "sports" tier. Last I checked (today), multichannel IPTV provider Sling worked around this by offering two different basic plans: "Orange" with ESPN and other Disney properties and "Blue" with more channels but no Disney. Orange subscribers can add the extra Blue channels on a second "Orange & Blue" tier.

CBN operated from 1977 through 1997, showing ads starting in 1981 and taking the name The Family Channel in 1988. Beginning in 1997, CBN was reduced to a paid programming arrangement to show The 700 Club on what is now Disney's Freeform channel. There are, however, numerous other religious channels under a viewer donation arrangement like what you describe, such as EWTN. And in 2008, CBN started a second channel called CBN News, first online and then with a handful of broadcast affiliates.

Good for you.

Now...

When can we fecking buy it?

If Pictionary doesn't call back to Tim Follin's soundtrack for the 1990 NES game, then it's Pictionary in name only.

Untethered means battery-powered wifi gaming.

Immediately, not interested.

I can play my Vive Pro as long as I like (e.g. at a party we can all have a go for hours), it's reliant on the power of the machine connected to it, not the device itself, and it provides tech specs far in advance of the wireless junk.

I solved that problem with a hook in the ceiliing and one of those springy-cord things (like people used to have on their keys) so that you can move in literally any direction and it doesn't matter at all as the cable will follow you, and then spring back to the hook when you step back again.

Literally a $10 solution, never had an issue after that.

Yeah, you remember when all the game-streaming services failed because they just couldn't actually overcome the latency issues?

And you know that in VR, latency is the thing that makes you feel travel sick and/or have an awful experience? (Good VR sets have such low latency that it's incredible, and this is basically a non-issue, but even a poorly-programmed game can introduce enough latency to have this effect even with perfect hardware).

And that wireless tech - regardless of its implementation - is subject to local radio noise and will "hang up" if there's interference?

Streaming shite to VR is a TERRIBLE idea. That's why they often need proprietary cables to do it, as per the OP.