Small businesses disproportionately were affected by the de minimis exemption. It also happened to help Temu et al, but Temu et al weren't really affected by how high it was (which is the usual complaint here. Had it been reduced, local shoe shops (to give one example) would have been impacted but not those ordering USB chargers at slightly lower prices than Amazon sells them.)

Small businesses do, actually, have to sell things that meet US standards. So your claim here is false.

Reform would have been better than abolishing it.

* accepted terminology *sighs* too early in the morning and haven't had coffee today....

Yeah you're right (IIRC the main difference in terms of technology between M vs F was swapping out the highly regarded capacitive system of the latter for a membrane.)

Given the M is still highly regarded either the clickiness of buckling spring is doing overtime on a psychological level, or it's not the membrane and associated (usual) low roll over (technically a membrane keyboard could have great rollover, say if each key had its own line to the chips decoding it rather than using the grid they usually use, but the entire point of using them is that they're cheap and that would add to the costs) that's causing the fewer typos.

Or maybe the buckling spring in the M just strikes the membrane earlier and disconnects faster by some attribute of that mechanism? No idea. Probably a coincidence if true, especially as fast typists almost certainly run into rollover problems because of their own failure to remove fingers from one key before pressing another.

Yes, it's a membrane keyboard, because its primary mechanism of operation is a membrane.

Look, I know you don't like the fact that your cheap-ass Dell keyboard belongs to the same family of keyboards as the ZX81's, but it nonetheless does, which is why Dell and Sinclair chose that technology in the first place. It's cheap. It gets the customer a keyboard for the lowest possible price. With the added rubber dome and keycaps it's acceptable quality for many consumers, especially given most people can't type very fast and many don't play games.

I had already pointed you at a (well sourced and constantly peer reviewed) article that explained that key cap on rubber dome and scissor keys are types of membrane keyboard before you wrote this reply. I'm sorry you disagree with the industry terminology but it's nonetheless the industry terminology. That's why Wikipedia used it. Simply shoving a rubber dome mat over the top of a membrane and putting plastic keycaps on it doesn't change the fact the underlying technology is membrane which is why everyone, yourself excepted, refers to these keyboards as membrane keyboards.

Here's some more examples of people using the term and it being abundantly clear that this is the excepted terminology:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lenovo.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fg...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.corsair.com%2Fus%2Fen%2F...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.keychron.com%2Fblogs...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kensington.com%2Fnew...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamesradar.com%2Fmec...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fbuild...

These are literally the first few links I got Googling "membrane vs mechanical" minus some duplicates, Quora links, videos, etc, but crucially none of the links contradicted what I was saying either. Try it for yourself!

The article does nothing of the sort? It has a see-also in the scissor switch section but that's because a lot of modern scissor switch keyboards are frequently (and justifiably IMO) described as chiclet, which you'd see explained if you actually followed the link (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FChiclet_keyboard) and looked under the "Legacy" section.

No, it's "Problem solved". If someone chooses a source other than Google Play then they get what they need. Nobody has to use Google Play. The only reason they do is because for reasons I don't understand everyone in computing has turned into morons who can't fathom anything that isn't a default. But to be very clear here: if you have the mental skills to go to Google Play, search for an app, find it, and click "install", then you're already "not doing the default" and are perfectly capable yourself of either installing an APK from the web or installing a third party app store.

I'm tired of Slashdotters, of all people, defending mediocrity. Stop it. By doing so, by refusing to countenance the idea that someone can do something REALLY FUCKING EASY you're basically putting power in Google's hands. You're discouraging third party stores, side loading, and so on.

I'm hoping at some point they'll come up with a keyboard using the classic ~90 key layout (example: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fw...) but oddly they seem to be avoiding that, even producing 10X key Model F despite that IBM never producing a keyboard like that.

(The advantage is you have all the keys - the "extras" the Model M added were always available on the F but were toggled on and off via Num Lk - but the keyboard is shorter and more centered, allowing the mouse to be used more closely.)

This might help you learn some of the jargon involved when describing keyboard technologies: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

But essentially, yes, the keyboard that came with your cheap ass Dell or your overpriced Mac (my God they have horrible keyboards) is, indeed, more related to the keypad on your microwave oven (or your ZX81) than it's related to mechanical keyboard technology - either discrete keyswitches (which is what Torvalds is referring to) or buckling spring keyboards like the IBM Model M.

A typical modern membrane keyboard is a membrane with a rubber dome pad over it and keycaps slotted over the top of that. It's cheap, which is why everyone does it, but it's also horrible. Some laptops use a scissor-switch over membrane set-up, which is similarly hot garbage but at least they don't have any excuse.

Why? Unicomp still makes Model M keyboards, what on Earth makes you think Model M lovers would buy a terminal for a keyboard that can't even be plugged into their PC when they can one new?

The point is that mechanical keyboards work well to reduce typos.

Torvalds is wrong FWIW, it has nothing to do with it click noises. People with Cherry Browns have also noticed fewer typos. And I've had keyboards that try to emulate mechanical keyboards in feel and sound but were membrane underneath but I had just as many typos.

The issue is that membrane keyboards are just not very good. I can't comment on why, I suspect it's because membrane keyboards require you do a full keypress that ensures the key hits the membrane covered circuit board, while mechanical key switches activate well before that, but I honestly don't know, it might be how the keys are wired to the control circuits or something like that. I'd be curious to know from someone who builds the things (lots of people do - well, the keyboards, not the switches.)

A few years ago I ported some legacy device firmware from its ancient Sun-based development environment to gcc (68k cross-compiler) and Linux. Most of the code compiled reasonably as-is. Some of it required a bit of hand-holding, like telling gcc that I really did need to store four characters one at a time rather than a single long when talking to a dual-port RAM interface.

Some of the low-level OS code did in fact require assembly. So be it.

...laura

You're the one that says it can happen. YOU need to answer the GP's questions.

Here's an idea, stop defending the indefensible argument that women and black people should have more hurdles placed in front of them than white males in order to vote. Especially as none of you fascist assholes can come up with a problem photo IDs fix that voter registration doesn't. Nor can you point at any election where significant numbers of votes were fraudulent outside of pre-registration times in New York City and Chicago.

> I'm sorry, asking for an ID to vote is NOT suppression...just common sense.

You keep repeating this nonsense, that doesn't make it any more true.

Requiring a photo ID that conforms to specific requirements that creates hurdles for certain demographics that other demographics do not suffer is suppression. Doing so unnecessarily, which photo ID is (what problem are you trying to solve? And before claiming it, submit proof that there that the problem actually existed in reality - don't claim "iLlEgAl iMmIgRaNts" unless you can show illegal immigrants were actually voting in significant numbers at any time before photo ID was required. Likewise dead people. etc. Voter registration, not photo ID, solved those problems) is clearly INTENTIONAL VOTER SUPPRESSION.

I can vote just by showing the DMV my naturalization certificate. My wife, who was born here, had to present her birth certificate and her marriage license and proof that we actually married. Because her name doesn't match the birth certificate (most married women's names don't!)

And then there's anyone black born in the south before the 1970s when the civil rights acts started to come into play. How easy do you think it is to get a birth certificate when your mother couldn't give birth in a fucking hospital because of segregation and the costs of doing so?

Photo IDs, especially REAL IDs, are voter suppression. The requirement is intended to be, and they do suppress the vote. They create hurdles to vote. They are unnecessary. They are, by definition, suppression.

This is not the first time it's been pointed out to you, which makes me wonder whether you have any shame parroting this lie over and over again.

The de minimis exemption is still gone, so alas this isn't a drop to the levels set by Trump that Biden didn't change. Anyone ordering something that gets shipped directly from China, intentionally or unwittingly, is still going to get slammed with a bill.

The level of partisanship derangement it takes to ridicule criticism of ineffective war-on-drugs bullshit that ultimately harms everyone except the drug dealers is truly astonishing.

Especially when everyone on both sides knows the policy had nothing to do with the war-on-drugs in the first place.

Do you really think illegal drug dealers are going to have problems obtaining fentanyl if foreign supplies are cut off when it's an entirely legal prescription drug made by normal pharmaceutical companies in the US?

Did you think think Pam Bondi was right when she claimed Trump saved 251 million lives the other day by preventing the importation of a few thousand pounds of the drug from... well, she didn't even say it was imported... a tiny fraction of what gets made here?

Amazing you've hung your hat on a fascist regime and you can't even come up with a coherent reason to support his ludicrous policies. Well, we still know why fascists support fascism, it's not exactly a big secret...