No matter how much Microsoft tweaks up the X-Box hardware, it is still not a Playstation or Nintendo console. Those have the games people want to play.

At the risk of invoking the Death of the Author trope, I don't agree with him here (and I note that he leaves that open too, by saying he personally doesn't want to and not excluding others from wanting to)..

Markdown is now a way doing shorthand formatted typing, effectively. What it's original purpose was is interesting, but not a limitation ('make', for example, was not made for software development but for compiling books). I'm computer-centric, not mobile-centric. A way of formatting bullets and tables without having to move my hands off the keyboard is great for me.

Be interested to see how it handles the round trip - can I take an existing note and edit it using Markdown for instance. But overall - can't see this as anything but a good thing.

The only people who have this kind of stuff are collectors/nostalgia people. They want things to be accurate - that's why go to that trouble.

For a long time I had a Commodore 64 set up ready to go in my rooms, connected to a 1541 snail drive and a C2N cassette. I had a Mac/SE 30 an d a Mac Plus. I had an Atari ST. I enjoyed them all, and I can absolutely appreciate wanting this kind of thing.

For myself I've moved on (played the C64 version of Portal? That was developed on hardware I donated) from physically collecting, although you could argue I've merely transferred the habit to synthesizers instead. But I absolutely recognise and understand the enjoyment people get from this, and it's nice to see this kind of thing being done.

Heard this so, so many times over the last 35 years. 3GL, 4GL, graphical-style (Powerbuilder etc.), object orientiation...so, so many times.

It's a giant string generator, copying from other people's strings. It's a good giant string generator, but that's what it is - another tool in the box. Most of programming is not just the syntax, it's the ideas. "Doing exactly what you want it to do" - hah, most people absolutely cannot specify exactly what they want a thing to do.

Did it start and run more than twice in a row? Well then, it's not an Eleanor clone.

I mean - I was there. People were on dial-up. Fast display of the page was the thing people liked. SEO didn't even really exist as a concept at that point, and the whole PageRank thing was later and quickly dropped. At the time it launched and started getting sway, Google's results were different-but-fine. It progressed quickly to better, but by that point people had mostly moved.

People have forgotten and bought into the legend. Google won because it was a white page with a search box. Alta Vista had gone for the 90s portal fad, and people didn't want that.

Later revisions of Google may or may not have been better, but certainly the "gained sway" bit was because it was faster and not laden with stuff you didn't care about.

Now I lay me in my bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android, aka Douglas Adams,

...and we're on unlocked phones. UK, EU...all of it that I'm aware of. No harm done at all.

OK - so let's assume the lowest participation rate is also the lowest number of physical answers - that's not a given, but taking this assumption would actually show things in the most optimistic light. Under this assumption if 5 is 13%, then ~39 (rounding up) is 100%. That survey then was sent to only 39 people - that's quite a specialised survey.

The method of engaging needs to be questioned as well as the statistical fall in responses, I feel. Also the relevancy of the survey - if I'm not interested in the answer, then even if you've found the perfect way to reach me I'm still not going to respond.

Also - anecdote not data, but I've been working in the UK for 35 years now. Never received any engagement from the ONS other than the standard once every four years census.

It's for Tim Cook to say he had a VR set. Like Apple Intelligence was for Tim Cook to say he had an AI solution.

I like Apple stuff, but honestly it's been a rough few years as a consumer of Apple kit. ARM transition? Superlative. Excellent. Mac Mini rebirth? Couldn't be happier. Anything else? Well....errr....there was USB C on the iPhone which was a good thing. And, and...*

They really, really need a product person back. Trouble is, everything I just said was from the point of using it. It was not from the point of view of an investor, where Tim Cook appears to be superlatively good at logistics and perspective. So it's going to languish until some high profile failures. Unfortunately I don't think that the Vision Pro earned the 'high profile' moniker so they're likely to emerge relatively undamaged.

*Niche use case, but as a Logic Pro user I'm pretty happy. Mac that is. Would actually get an iPad if Logic Pro worked better when sequencing external MIDI gear, had working MIDI learn etc.. It could be an MPC competitor at that point, but it's a bit limited now.

The thing is, it's not quick and cheap anymore. Coal is more expensive than solar now - it would be cheaper for them to spin up solar. And that's exactly what's happening - even though new coal plants are being built, and sadly at the highest rate this year for 10 years, the actual amount of burned coal is predicted to be lower.

Here's a good look at what's happening. More plants are being built, but it's expensive so less coal is being burned. Renewables, mostly solar, are in the ascendant there.

I was listening to a podcast on the impact of cement recently. The majority was about new production methods or grading for cement, but they touched on using more wood as building materials where *some* cement might typically be used instead (they were in no way claiming 1:1 replacement). Must say I find it intriguing - both intuitively obvious but also filled with questions about durability, weatherproofing etc..

Unfortunately the adoption of things like the UK Online Safety laws, while (at least ostensibly) well meant, means returning to the old ways isn't viable. I could no longer host a small forum for instance, as I'd need people's real names and identities for age verification and I'd also need to be actively policing the forum to some sort of legal SLA for taking down content. Having those names also brings in GDPR....naah, I'm out.

Years back I ran a very small web hosting business that existed primarily just to cover its costs so some of us could get reasonably priced web sites. I and a friend administered the email, the web server upgrades, the OS upgrades etc. and everyone else could just publish a web site.

I shut it down decades ago when all this lot started raising its head. There started to be talk of providers being liable for user content, and for log retention, and, and...nope. Done.

Eddie Cue says Safari, Google state Apple's 'devices and platforms' - emphasis mine. The one need not contradict the other. If people are backing Siri/Apple Intelligence with models that search the web, they're likely hitting Google at some point. So what is Google counting as a 'platform' here?