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Comment Re:Many people will stay on console, or give up ga (Score 1) 41

The line has muddied, as consoles went USB and console accessories started being PC compatible.

Once upon a time, you popped a game cartridge into a purpose built specialty thing with bespoke capabilities to do the things the game companies wanted, with proprietary connectors and instant boot up and what you get is what you have.

On the PC side, you futzed with config.sys/autoexec.bat to have just the right memory layout, depending on if you needed the maximum conventional memory, ems or xms, and environment variables to match your dip switches.

Now a game console is an x86 box that takes some time to boot to an OS then you select an app, which probably is a game, and good chance it's developed with a game engine that pretty much equally supports Nintendo, PS4, and Microsoft ecosystem.

The PC side you just plug in, often the exact same accessory, and things automatically go. The UI of Windows can be obnoxious, but this is a prime mindset for Valve to take advantage launching their PC that's 10-foot optimized out of the box.

Nintendo held on to console-ness longer, with their Wii and Wii-U gimmicks, and their switch admittedly isn't an x86 box, but it's basically a gaming tablet, which is the other big thing eating into the casual gamer market.

Comment Re:Cooling? (Score 1) 88

The thing is that while the heat pipes can work in space and may have been used in satellites and then brought to earth, the issue is with the amount of thermal energy and having radiation as the only way to evict heat.

So while the mechanism for heat pipes started in space, the computers are *way* more wattage than the space based applications.

Comment Re:C/C++ code covers more complex legacy code (Score 1) 32

Rust [...] makes it harder for you to work around the compiler when it comes to memory.

... which, to be clear, is a good thing. Working around the compiler is dangerous and a code smell, so it shouldn't be something that is easy to do. It usually indicates that either the compiler's capabilities aren't sufficient to meet your needs (in which case, a better solution would be either a better compiler, or to re-evaluate the wisdom of your approach), or that you are doing something the wrong way and should find a way to do it that works with the compiler, rather than around it, so that you get the benefits of the compiler's co-operation.

Comment Re:not intended to actually work (Score 1) 27

Fair point, I forget how utterly stupid businesses, particularly large businesses can get about boneheaded requirements that they mandate but do not use or do need, but could better solve it in a separate path rather than mandating it on what should be the 'wrong' product category.

Particularly surprising to forget since I'm basically continuously exposed to that in my job, but guess it eventually faded into the background of me not thinking explicitly about it anymore..

Comment Re:Could be a game-changer (Score 1) 27

I certainly would agree with that direction, however this has been an option for an eternity and broadly hasn't moved the needle for Windows market share.

Once upon a time VirtualBox made an effort for this to work as a feature, and eventually dropped it in favor of just using Windows RDP to the same end. Doing it via a browser may be somewhat more convenient, but not fundamentally more accessible than RDP...

After watching a demo, I'd say this is in fact a step back from 'seamless' RDP, since you just get a web page with what looks like full-desktop RDP in it.

Comment Re:Are people this ignorant of basic online securi (Score 1) 79

Fortunately there is an easy fix. Education.

If education was an easy fix, we'd have an educated populace and ClickFix wouldn't be a problem.

The fact is, we live in eternal September. No matter how many people we educate, there's a unending firehose of exploitable n00bs arriving to replace them.

Comment Re:Poor design, not impossible (Score 1) 90

" Pack 9 million people into a "linear" city.."

The Chicago metropolitan area is a linear city of 9 million, more if you include the corridor up to Kenosha and Milwaukee. At its peak the city of Chicago was 3.2 million alone. However, it grew that way in the historic human pattern of part luck, part planning, part ignoring some of the planning, part haphazard human desire/greed/whim.

City regions that are created by force of one will and an ironclad design (Brasilia) seldom work - Canberra is the only one I can think of.

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 1) 95

I come down on the side of Tsiolkovsky: âoeEarth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.â

A baby in a cradle is the wrong analogy -- a better analogy is an internal organ inside a body. Yes, you can (with advanced technology and at great expense) remove the internal organ from the body and keep it alive externally for some time, but it's going to be unpleasant for everyone involved, and sooner or later the disembodied organ will wither and die, unless it is returned to the environment it was specifically evolved to live within.

Comment Re:Dusaster (Score 1) 158

I fully anticipate there will be branding changes, like adding a '+' for rewards and consumers will learn fairly quickly that merchants frequently don't want to deal with the more expensive 'plus' transactions.

Can't blame them, your rewards points/cash back is just being charged to the merchant.

Comment Re:In theory not a bad idea (Score 1) 158

Or you just carry a couple of cards, one with no rewards that people will actually take, and maybe one or two with rewards that some merchants will still take.

The biggest thing to get right is some simple 'branding' so consumers actually know at a glance what cards might work or might not.

It's just bonkers that the credit card companies have basically made the merchants pay for the credit card companies to motivate cardholders to use the cards that merchants don't want them using in the first place. Those 'cash back' and 'rewards' represent some of cost of goods that a consumer can't really get away from without these measures.

Comment Re:That dog won't bring home Huntsman's Rewards (t (Score 4, Insightful) 158

including rewards credit cards, credit cards with no rewards programs, and commercial cards,

It's right there in the summary, that merchant's would start being able to decline the credit cards with 'points' and 'cash back'. I presume this would come with some rebranding to be phased in, like 'Visa+' and 'Visa Business', with a lot of merchants refusing 'Visa+' just like they reject other high-fee cards.

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