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Comment No they literally could not be (Score 0) 13

Intel's "Form" that made them famous was having superior process technology and parlaying that into superior performance.

Intel no longer has superior process technology. They have roughly equivalent tech, except that their yields are trash. Or, they use someone else's process technology, in which case it's still not superior.

Intel's Next-Generation Panther Lake Laptop Chips Literally Could Not Be A Return To Form doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the headline you used here, but it wouldn't have been ignorant fuckery.

Comment Re:Great single-point-of-failure (Score 1) 208

That is your opinion, which is not the same as it being factual

If you're not familiar with Microsoft's many absolutely unacceptable security failures, then you have nothing of value to add to this conversation, and there's no purpose in engaging with you further.

Comment Re:Such beauty (Score 2) 60

There's no doubt that AI is developing into a useful tool -- for people who understand its limitations and how long it is going to take to work the bugs out. But people have a long track record of getting burned by not understanding the gap between promise and delivery and, in retrospect, missing the point.

I think we should take a lesson from the history of the dot com boom and following bust. A lot of people got burned by their foolish enthusiasm, but in the end the promise was delivered, and then some. People just got the timescale for delivering profits wrong, and in any case their plans for getting there were remarkably unimaginative, e.g., take a bricks and mortar business like pet supplies and do exactly that on the Internet. They by in large completely missed all the *new* ways of making money ubiquitous global network access created.

I think in the case of AI, everybody knows a crash is coming. In fact they're planning on it. Nobody expects there to be hundreds or even dozens of major competitors in twenty years. They expect there to be one winner, an Amazon-level giant, with maybe a handful of also-rans subsisting off the big winner's scraps; tolerated because they at least in theory provide a legal shield to anti-trust actions.

And in this winner-take-all scenario, they're hoping to be Jeff Bezos -- only far, far more so. Bezos owns about 40% of online retail transactions. If AI delivers on its commercial promise, being the Jeff Bezos of *that* will be like owning 40% of the labor market. Assuming, as seems likely, that the winning enterprise is largely unencumbered by regulation and anti-trust restrictions, the person behind it will become the richest, and therefore the most powerful person in history. That's what these tech bros are playing for -- the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Comment Re:Great single-point-of-failure (Score 1) 208

So how is that any different from iOS, or Android, or OSX?

Once again, since it didn't seem to sink in for you the many other times it's been said in this discussion and this thread, Microsoft has demonstrated again and again that they are incompetent when it comes to security at every level.

Comment Re:software abandonment (Score 0) 62

I don't think a real or faux Pi is a good idea any more unless the size is important. You can buy a minipc for competitive prices now, and get a nice working complete system which doesn't require weird software. If you don't need any graphics performance to speak of then a N150 is pretty beefy for 10W, and plausibly under $200. I chose to have just a little graphics performance and went with a Zen3 MiniPC with 15W TDP, a bit over $300 with 32GB and 1TB. It overclocks and the graphics get kind of OK for 1080p, but it's not worth it given the fan noise. I've also seen some pretty cheap "NAS" minipcs (they just have drive bays and SATA ports, most of these only have M.2 and if you want SATA you need to convert and come up with an enclosure.)

I got what I got because of the low power consumption, the whole thing maxes at only 30W.. and also because my desktop is the same architecture, which is convenient.

Comment Re:wait... (Score 1) 208

So like... literally on boot when Windows Security starts? Or actually during setup when disk encryption is turned on and the setup gives you the option to backup your recovery key?

Are you somehow not aware that Windows 11 is perfectly happy to allow you to turn any or all of its security features on post-installation? If you can get the system installed without any of those things, you can turn any or all of them on piecemeal (aside from dependencies) after the fact. You can even start with fdisk partitioning and no TPM in the system, and wind up all of the security stuff turned on without reinstalling Windows. I've done all of this in a virtual machine, but you can also put a TPM on some motherboards, so you can do all of these things with a real machine as well.

the common person these days expects online accounts, cloud integration, etc.

Microsoft is not forcing accounts on people for their good. Making it a prominent default is very reasonable. Making it this difficult to go around is unacceptable. But then, I haven't accepted Windows on the metal (except for some veritable antiques I've got here... single-and dual core Atoms) in years, and these days I don't even allow it to access the internet except via filtering proxy. Windows cannot be trusted. No corporation should be trusted, but Microsoft more than most.

Comment Re:Great single-point-of-failure (Score 1) 208

Nobody thinks that, but your argument is self-defeating because you explained yourself that it takes a user doing something to compromise that machine. But Microsoft is holding the keys to every connected Windows user's computer at a very deep level, and they have shown repeatedly that they are bad at security on every level.

Microsoft has failed at security in every way possible, and usually on multiple occasions, and that's just what we know about. Mistaking them for being sufficiently competent to hold this level of responsibility over the world's computing resources is bafflingly bananas.

Comment Re:UK, your issue isn't "climate change" (Score 1) 52

But you are leaving out the difference in fertility. The fertility rate of the UK, which as you noted is a population dominated by native britons who trace their ancestry on the island back a millennium or more, is 1.4 live births per woman. The replacement rate is 2.1. In a hundred years the UK will have a smaller population than Haiti.

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