BAAHHAHAAHHAAHAAAAAA
*gasp*
BAAHHAHAAHHAAHAAAAAA
BAAHHAHAAHHAAHAAAAAA
BAAHHAHAAHHAAHAAAAAA
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1) Either really will stoop to that level of dishonesty or you have no idea what Google RCS was all about. E2EE was a defining feature of Google RCS that distinguished it from Universal profile. To call it a "hobby horse" says you either know nothing about this topic or you are willing to lie about the importance of it.

2) Do you understand what OTHER FEATURES means? E2EE was one of many features in Google RCS that is not defined in Universal Profile nor did the specification spell many ways to handle any of the extensions Google added. Except the one method used by device that used incompatible RCS versions: Fallback to MMS.

3) You still haven't addressed the basic question of Apple was supposed to decrypt Google's implementation of the Signal protocol that no one else used.

Even today, not all Android phones use Google RCS especially those that use GrapheneOS or LineageOS. Did you know that?

And what would that accomplish again? When all these Android devices had incompatible versions of RCS, did they default to Universal Profile 1.0 when messaging each other? No. They all defaulted to MMS. So Apple would implement another incompatible version that no one used that did not have many features . . . Or Apple could default to MMS like everyone else.

You are asking Apple to support people who are not their customers. Why again? Do you ask Toyota why they don't use the same tires on the Camry that Honda uses for the Accord? That's how stupid your request is. I do not know how to say in any other way so you can understand: THE FALLBACK FOR MESSAGING IS MMS. For decades.

Apple has made Universal Profile 2.4 happen. Full Google RCS compatibility has not happened yet. The GSMA announced in March 2026 the release of RCS 4.0 specification which addresses rich text and videos enhancements. They have not solve the problem of E2EE compatibility. Did you know that either?

Nope. Go look up the actual data, don't just go on vibes.

Yes, in 1980 the median house was $65k and it's $430k today... but the median hourly wage in 1980 was $7 and it's $30 today (which, BTW, represents a ~10% inflation-adjusted wage increase -- wages haven't just "kept pace", they've increased). So a 1980 house cost 9,300 hours, and a 2026 house costs 14,300 hours, that's an 53% increase, but when you look at the way everything else has gotten cheaper -- food, clothing, entertainment, etc., it's really not that bad. Go do some research on what percentage of household income went to food and clothing in 1980 vs today. And the median new house size in 1980 was about 1600 square feet and lacked a lot of amenities like attached garages and central air, while the median new house today is 2100 square feet -- 30% larger! -- and that's actually down a little from a few years ago. So compared to 1980 you get 30% more house, and a nicer, better-equipped house, for 50% more money.

As for your claim that dual-income families were rare in 1980, according to the BLS, 51.8% of American households in 1980 had two incomes, and 49.6% do today. If we restrict the analysis to prime working-age families, the numbers look different (47% in 1980 and 66% today), but it was hardly "rare" in 1980 and it's far from universal today.

If they use a 6-core GPU six months from now with no changes to the Neo, what do you think the general public will do? Class action lawsuits will be filed by people who got 5 core GPUs claiming it was "unfair". And those are the people with the wherewithal to sue. Even though Apple made no promises that the Neo would only have 5 cores, my view of human nature is many people will be pissed they got a "lesser" chip. And here's the other problem: Apple will still have 5 core GPU A18 Pros. Will it be completely random as to who gets what? Apple could sell a Neo Plus with 6 cores for slightly more but would you complain that Apple is being greedy? They can't win either way, can they?

They do have a use. It is called the iPhone 16. Did you forget about that? Also could launch other products that use the A18 Pro like new iPads. The real limitation is the TSMC contract. Once TSMC has fulfilled their order, there maybe no more A18 Pro chips whether they have 5 or 6 cores.

I don't think that would make much difference.

At least in the US, young people are wealthier than they ever have been. Housing prices are relatively higher, but not that much, not if you buy the size of house that people bought 50 years ago. If you also reduce eating out and other expenses to the levels that were normal a couple of generations ago, make kids share rooms like they did then, etc., it's perfectly feasibly to have a family on a typical income -- depending on where you live, even a single income.

What's changed isn't the economics, it's people's willingness to make the compromises needed. But the compromises are not just economic; they aren't even primarily economic. Raising children is a lot of work, takes a lot of time, and a lot of patience, and limits your freedom. I think many people today are unwilling to make those compromises, too.

I can't comment on your masculinity. I don't know you. But it seems like you're wounded, so let's cauterize it.

In a very strange sense, it is true that males are disposable, but this fact is built into sexual reproduction by evolution itself. In virtually all species, if one parent is responsible for carrying offspring and the other isn't, then by definition the former parent is anchored longer in the reproductive act, and is thus in need of protection during that period.

Mammals in particular have an "experimental male, stable female" genetic strategy where more pronounced variation in traits (height, academic performance, et cetera) is presented in males. With each generation these traits then get folded back into the matrilineal trunk, which is less affected by them. This specifically happens with traits on the X chromosome via Barr body inactivation.

So there's one answer that you can settle on, if you want to feel really shitty. You are disposable. Society isn't responsible for this, though. The game was rigged tens of millions of years ago when some fucking fish somewhere evolved live birth. Unless you're a salmon, you've drawn the short straw.

But there are a couple of other angles worth considering.

First of all—who is doing the disposal of all these men? Women aren't the ones declaring wars, or cheaping out on safety equipment, or blocking legislation that reduces gun violence. We didn't invent conscription and we didn't bomb the World Trade Center. I mean, fuck, Pete Hegseth is systematically firing female generals and wants to stop women from volunteering to serve in the military, even if they meet all the physical requirements for service. These bloodthirsty assholes are the ones actually killing you, and they should be your #1 enemy. All of these problems are reduced by a factor of ten just by moving to Canada, where the reproductive laws are basically the same as any blue state.

Now, as for reproductive politics... I used to be a fairly left-libertarian person on this issue and felt that the real problem was that people are immature assholes to each other. It seemed to me that custody and child disputes only happen at all because the people involved had shitty parents, and that the only solution was to get rid of societal expectations; live and let live, make it easier for single moms to get good jobs so they don't need alimony in the first place. (Another "-mony" word, but this time from -monia, "condition," + alo, "nourishment.") But these days it's pretty damn clear to just about everyone that the last thing civilization needs is yet more isolation and atomisation.

I think the actual solution is to turn parenting into a social obligation. It's a little different from how things are now, but I think the benefits would be worth it.

Consider the consequences of what would happen if made the following into a moral principle: your parents' generation raised you, so you have a duty to raise the next generation. In this system, every adult is expected to have and raise 2 kids, or contribute the equivalent amount of work to paideia by helping to raise the kids of strangers, teaching, tutoring, babysitting, et cetera. This would have the additional benefits of making childcare cheaper, reducing the work parents actually have to do alone, and reducing the power and scope of serial child abusers (can't hurt a lot of kids if positions of power over them aren't a viable career.) Experts would still exist for key jobs like high school teachers.

Parents still get to choose who they hire to help raise their kids, so you don't have to worry about some weirdo brainwashing them. Since virtually every adult is going through the labor pool, there's a ton of choice. Both parents and helpers would be anonymized during this selection process to reduce biases around gender, appearance, etc.

The enforcement is as follows: anyone refusing to do this work would be slapped with heavy taxes and might even have trouble getting good jobs later on in life, the same way having no high school diploma, or bad credit, or a criminal record can haunt you currently. (There would be waivers and exemptions, deferrals if you can show you're making progress, etc.)

For parents going through divorce proceedings, most of the gendered BS goes away. In situations of joint custody, there's less concern about which parent gets priority because it isn't just 2 people raising the kids. If a parent doesn't want custody during a divorce at all, then they're basically downgrading to the "default" option of paying their debt to society, and there's no real shame in it. The one who gets full custody won't have as much of a burden than a single parent would today because the broader safety net of socially subsidized childcare exists.

The proximate reason is that there are no editors on Slashdot.

The broader reason is that the fortunes of tech companies are often caught up in financial headlines, so publications that cover economics are invariably syndicated here. The intended audience of these publications—the capitalist class—is deeply anxious about any changes in their host organism that may result in the contraction of their debt-based casino, so they eat up stories with pearl-clutching themes. Naturally, slave shortages are a major concern.

Patrimony is a word already. It refers to a son inheriting possessions from his father. The -monium suffix is productive in Latin and means "obligation:" testimony is the obligation to testify; patrimony is the obligation to act as a father; matrimony is the obligation to act as a mother, i.e., fulfil "womanly duties."

Whoever sold you this bullshit was lying to you, and not even doing a particularly good job.

You are being scammed.

Ads: The homescreen has a couple of small store links at the bottom that are relatively unobtrusive. There are no recommendations forced on you unless you go to the store. There is a store button at the bottom of the homescreen, which I imagine is pretty handy if you actually want to get your eBooks from them.

Organization: You have to set up book categories after putting files on the device (like how the Kindle 3 was back in the day) but there are no forced labels or anything. There are at least 2 homebrew launchers that replace the homescreen, one of which lets you use a directory structure for files.

There is no screensaver advertising at all, unlike the Kindle—you can set it to display the cover of the last book you read, a generic "sleeping" message, or upload your own pictures for random display. I was really surprised by this; it's like they asked Kindle modders what they wanted and just made it the default.

There is a trick for skipping user registration during the onboarding experience by plugging the device into a PC and editing a YAML file, allowing you to use the device without giving them any info at all—unthinkable on Kindle!

Rakuten is a small Canadian company, so their niche is being less shitty than Amazon. If they ever stopped doing that they wouldn't have any customers.

I don't give a shit about movement to the right or left, not right now. I just want basic competence and support for the rule of law, because those are the things we've totally lost under the current GOP. A bit of compassion would be good, too. What I wouldn't give to have Dubya back.

That was actually my thought. It wasn't until I got to the mention of Twitter than I figured out they didn't mean X11.

I did think switching from X11 to Wayland was a funny thing to post publicly about. And a funny thing for /. to pick up.

Well considering he predicted that Apple would make touchscreen MacBooks by 2025 and that has not happened yet, this might be another miss.

One of the main problems that foldables have right now is their screen aspect ratio is square whereas a lot of content is either tall (YouTube shorts, TikTok shorts) or wide (movies, YouTube). Having more screen means little if most of it is used for black pixels.

You like Google use the term "RCS" to mean Universal Profile AND Google RCS to mean the same thing. That is the lie you are spreading. They are not the same thing.

What is the "rant"? I posted "features like encryption". I suppose in your world that is a rant. The fact of the matter is Universal Profile does not support encryption and other features that iMessage and Google RCS have. You seem not to understand the word "features" or "other".

The default base protocol for that is called MMS. Please look it up. The problem with RCS is that since every carrier and device used their own version of RCS in the beginning, why should Apple implement dozens of incompatible versions of RCS again? Again MMS is the default fallback.

And Apple has never whined that Google didn't follow iMessage. Like you are whining now.

Please describe how Apple is supposed to decrypt Google RCS encrypted message then without adopting it? Google RCS uses the Signal Protocol however their implementation is incompatible with the Signal app. You don't know? What a shocker.

What are you talking about? Apple did not support RCS for years because every device used a different version. Your argument is Apple should have publicly announced the reason when it was apparent to anyone in the industry? Again, you did no research did you?

And herein are the lies. 1) Google's calls their protocol "RCS" which they used interchangeably with GSMA RCS (Universal Profile) in all their arguments. 2) While Apple did not adopt Universal Profile, which other carriers and devices supported standard Universal Profile? None of them. They implemented their own incompatible versions of Universal Profile. Why? Because Universal Profile did not have features of iMessage. It was not until Google developed Google RCS that had features like encryption that carriers and devices used a common protocol. Unfortunately Google RCS is still proprietary and controlled only by Google. The default fallback for messaging over cellular radio is MMS.

The facts like always do not support your arguments. I could assume you do no research as this seems to be a habit. Or you simply do not care that you post misrepresentations.

Then what is your definition of "artificial"? Bear in mind the entire article is one person's speculation on what Apple might do. The limitation right now is Apple's contract with TSMC is to make a certain amount of A18 Pros. TSMC has allocated those lines to other customers after they finish with Apple's order. I would guess if Neo demand were high enough, Apple would take 6 GPU core A18 Pro chips and disable one of the GPU cores to keep selling Neos. Implementing a new production line or designing a 5 GPU core A18 Pro would be costly.