Other than that new versions of mainstream operating systems and web browsers make it harder for the owner of a device to trust the root certificate of a particular private CA. I seem to remember, for example, that iOS and Android put a scary warning on the lock screen if one or more user-trusted root certificates is installed, and Android application developers have to opt into user-trusted root certificates through a "Network Security Config".

Different machines can respond to the same IP address as seen from the Internet vs. from a coffee shop's guest WLAN. Let's Encrypt sees only the former when evaluating an http-01 challenge. If you associate to a guest WLAN and connect to https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2F42.42.42.42%2F and it offers a certificate issued by Let's Encrypt, that means you're seeing the same server that Let's Encrypt saw through the Internet, not a server on the guest WLAN that's intercepting your connection.

Unless the studio wants a tax break and the series gets Willow'd.

Microsoft tried to do something like that before with the Windows Experience Index in WinSAT. It didn't last long: the GUI was displayed only from Windows Vista through the first release of Windows 8.

If next to nobody signs up for Microsoft's curated store, this curation will be ineffective. The only thing that encouraged third-party developers to publish through Microsoft's store is that Xbox consoles are cryptographically locked down not to run games from anywhere else.

Plus the cost of buying the rest of the computer around it. This can prove more expensive if you want a case that looks more attractive in the living room than a big noisy tower.

I'm curious why it took over 14 years after Red Dead Redemption was released for Xbox 360 for it to get a PC port. Rare Replay and several other respected Xbox One games still haven't been ported.

In 2012, the consensus was that most users were unwilling to either build a second PC, cart a gaming PC back and forth between the living room and the computer desk, or run cables through the walls, to use Big Picture mode in Steam. (Source: adolf's comment) When did this change?

The incentives to collecting are 1. ability to watch if you rely on wireless Internet (satellite or cellular) with a harsh monthly data cap, 2. ability to watch a particular movie or TV episode again after you have switched to a different streaming service for the month, and 3. ability to watch a particular work again even after its publisher has destroyed it for an "impairment" tax deduction or the service it's on has ended (particularly for game consoles).

I've read that dropping X11 in favor of Wayland goes beyond GNOME and reaches all of GTK. This means developers of other GTK-based desktop environments (particularly Xfce) and users of distributions built around those environments (I have Xubuntu and Debian Xfce in mind) will have to make hard decisions.

I think what happened with FOSTA is that some of the more conservative states or the federal government redefined "sex trafficking" to include not only sexually-oriented human trafficking but also all other sexually-oriented commerce.

True, higher-priced prepaid mobile phone plans have unlimited text. Lower-priced plans do not. SMS-based 2-factor authentication is not cost effective for a subscriber making do with a lower-priced plan.

Then you must not have followed FOSTA, a 2018 US law weakened the protections of Telecommunications Act section 230 with respect to sexually explicit material. This made it easier for acquiring banks to get away with debanking sellers of erotica.

How do minors (children and teens not yet old enough for a bank account in their own name) pay for things in Sweden?

When did these advantages of "a locked down hardware BOM" go away?

- Easier for the audience to compare a game's system requirements to a particular device model
- Console maker's imprimatur makes it easier to sort through Theodore Sturgeon's 90 percent crap that fills more open online app stores
- Restriction against software modding reduces likelihood of cheating in online ranked play against strangers
- Restriction against software from unidentified publishers eliminates need for intrusive real-time anti-malware
- Console game discs and cartridges can be resold and used even if you are stuck on slow satellite or cellular Internet with its low monthly cap
- A GPU for a desktop PC costs as much as a console, and then you still need to buy all the other parts of the PC if you want to be able to use the console for something else while someone else in the household is using a PC for gaming
- Consoles have historically had more couch multiplayer games than PC

As for tablets and phones, how many people carry a Bluetooth controller with them? A virtual gamepad on a flat sheet of glass offers no tactile feedback as to where the player's thumbs are. Not all games adapt well to that.

GTK began as the GIMP toolkit (hence the name). What's the Qt based replacement for GIMP, including editing pixel art in indexed mode? Last I checked, Krita didn't support indexed mode, instead expecting all images to be in RGBA.

Or unless they live in a country where carriers charge their prepaid customers for incoming text messages (such as Slashdot's home country) and they're out of texts for the month.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.yahoo.com%2Fai%2Farti...
""Gross oversimplification, but like older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. Maybe people in their 20s and 30s use it as like a life advisor, and then, like people in college use it as an operating system," Altman said at Sequoia Capital's AI Ascent event earlier this month."

Not a surprise then that a lot of Slashdotters (who tend to be on the older side) emphasize search engine use.

Insightful video on other options for using AI:
"Most of Us Are Using AI Backwards -- Here's Why"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...
"Takeaways
  1. Compression Trap: We default to using AI to shrink information--summaries, bullet points, stakeholder briefs--missing opportunities for deeper insight.
  2. Optimize Brain Time: The real question isn't "How fast can I read?" but "When should I slow down and let ideas ferment?" AI can be tuned to extend, not shorten, our cognitive dwell-time on critical topics.
  3. Conversational Partnership: Advanced voice mode's give-and-take cadence keeps ideas flowing, acting like a patient therapist and sharp colleague rolled into one.
  4. Multi-Model Workflow: I pair models deliberately--4o voice for live riffing, O3 for distilling a thesis, Opus 4 for conceptual sculpting--to match each cognitive phase.
  5. Naming the Work: Speaking thoughts aloud while an AI listens helps "name" the terrain of a project, turning vague hunches into navigable coordinates.
  6. AI as Expander: Used thoughtfully, AI doesn't replace brainpower; it amplifies it, transforming routine tooling into a force-multiplier for deep thinking."

Other interesting AI Videos:

"Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We've Already Lost Control! Geoffrey Hinton"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

"Is AI Apocalypse Inevitable? - Tristan Harris"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

See also an essay by Maggie Appleton: "The Dark Forest and Generative AI: Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaggieappleton.com%2Fai-...

Talk & video version: "The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI: An exploration of the problems and possible futures of flooding the web with generative AI content"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaggieappleton.com%2Ffor...

On what Star Trek in the 1960s had to say about AI and becoming "Captain Dunsel" and also the risk of AI reflecting its obsessive & flawed creators,:
"The Ultimate Computer // Star Trek: The Original Series Reaction // Season 2"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

An insightful Substack post (which I replied to) on that theme of flawed creators making a flawed creation, mentioning the story of the Krell from Forbidden Planet:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2F%40bernsh%2Fn...
"In Forbidden Planet the Krell built a machine of unimaginable power, designed to materialize thought itself -- but were ultimately destroyed because it also materialized their unconscious, primitive, destructive impulses, which they themselves did not fully understand or control. ..."

They also mention other stories there (perhaps generated from an LLM), including The Garden of Eden, Pandoraâ(TM)s Box, The Tower of Babel, The Icarus Myth, and Prometheus. I my response I mentioned some other sci-fi stories that touch on related themes for that and my sig on the irony of tools of abundance misused by scarcity-minded people.

Inspired by that first video on using AI to help refine ideas, a few days ago I used llama3.1 to discuss an essay I wrote related to my sig ( "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism" https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Frecogni... ). The most surprisingly useful part was when I asked the LLM to list authors who had written related things (most of whom I knew of), and then, as a follow-up, what those authors might have thought about the essay I wrote. The LLM included for each author what parts of the essay they would have praised and also what was missing from the essay from that author's perspective.