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Submission + - Is Windows 7 about to overtake Windows 10? (gbnews.com)

alternative_right writes: According to StatCounter, Windows 7 has been rapidly gaining market share in recent weeks — a full five years after support for the desktop operating system was officially terminated. At the latest count, Windows 7 is now used by some 22.65% of all Windows PCs worldwide. That's an increase from the 18.97% just a little over a month ago.

As of last month, users were already switching to Windows 7 in record numbers, but that number had only totalled to 9.6% worldwide.

Comment Re:Interesting Idea (Score 1) 62

I suspect phone manufacturers will attempt to find ways to block installing it on their devices

I suspect they'll just ignore it because no one will want to actually use it.

The problem with these ideology-based projects is that they have no mass appeal. No one out there in userland gives a flying fuck about free software. They want the latest apps. They want a seamless experience. Especially Gen Z who were raised on mobile devices. Tell them that they should give up iPhones and Android phones because "Free as in Freedom is the right way", and they're going to look at you like you're a tentacled thing from Mars. There simply aren't enough nerds on the fringe to make a "free" phone system work.

Comment Re:If you thought SEO/affiliate marketing spam is (Score 1) 18

As if that's different from any other "Sponsored Item" search results?

I really look forward to more widespread adoption of AI search in listings. I hate spending hours having to manually dig through listings to see if the product listed *actually* meets my needs or building up spreadsheets to compare feature sets. This should be automatable. We have the tech to do so now.

Comment Re:PDF is an awfully shit format. (Score 1) 141

Yes, it absolutely is a shit format, but for distributing documents it's a widely deployed lowest common denominator that works for everyone. Unless you're suggesting we go back to fixed width text files (or you can figure out how to get the entire world to immediately start using LaTex) it's probably the best distribution format you're going to see without falling into the xkcd 927 trap.

Comment Re: I'm rooting for it!! (Score 4, Insightful) 164

To get an SLS-equivalent payload to the lunar surface, it will take 8-16 Starship launches

You're extremely confused. SLS cannot land on the moon in the way that the (lunar variant) Starship can. It can only launch Orion to the moon. Orion is 8 meters tall and 5 meters in diameter. Starship is 52 meters tall and 9 meters in diameter. These are not the same thing.

SLS/Orion missions are expected to cost approximately $4,2B each. If you fully disposed of every Starship, the cost for 8-16 launches would be $720M-$1,44B. But of course the entire point is to not dispose of them; the goal is to get it down to where, like airplanes, most of the cost is propellant. The propellant for a single launch is $900k. Even if they don't get anywhere near propellant costs, you're still looking at orders of magnitude cheaper than a single SLS/Orion mission.

Comment Re: I'm rooting for it!! (Score 4, Informative) 164

By far, most of SpaceX's launches are for Starlink, which is self-funded.
Nextmost is commercial launches. SpaceX does the lion's share of global commercial launches.
Government launches are a tiny piece of the pie. They don't "subsidize" anything, they're just yet another minor revenue stream.

The best you can say is that they charge more for government launches, but everyone charges more for government launches than commercial launches. You can argue over whether that's justified or not (launch providers have to do a lot of extra work for government launches - the DoD usually has a lot of special requirements, NASA usually demands extra safety precautions, government launches in general are more likely to want special trajectories, fully expended boosters, etc), but overall, the government is a bit player in terms of launch purchases.

Comment Re:How are they updating the bricked models? (Score 1) 85

Ford Mobile Service isn't just for a King Ranch, it applies to anything--it doesn't even have to be a Ford vehicle. They also do concierge pickup/drop off service--when I need an oil change, I just call the dealership, they schedule a pickup, come get the truck out of the parking lot while I'm at work, and bring it back. I typically don't even talk to the the driver, it's full no contact.

They do not charge for this service, and the drivers don't even ask for/expect tips.

Comment Re:Car manufacturers are correct (Score 1) 105

The problem is, those rules only applied to "cars". Almost all US car manufacturers have stopped making cars, and the ones they are building are largely big muscle cars, and not fuel efficient ones. Instead, they are building SUVs that aren't "cars" but are classed as "trucks" and exempt

The 1990s called, they want their talking point back. CAFE applies to light trucks (up to 8500lbs GVWR) and was expanded under both the Dubya and Obama administrations, and light trucks are included in the fleetwide averages.

Comment Re:Modern Climate Denial (Score 4, Informative) 150

Do coral reefs really matter though? Sure, it's a milestone, but not an existential one.

Yes, they absolutely do matter, and yes it is potentially an existential one. Coral reefs are the most biodiverse part of the seas and are the source of many of the ocean nutrients that get carried around the globe on currents like the AMOC, so they play an essential part in the overall ocean food chain that many people rely on to survive. Removing the coral reefs from those people's food chains would be akin to the impact of removing Alfalfa from the US food chain that ultimately leads to all that beef and dairy produce.

Also, if their primary food source is unable to support them, they're not likely to stay put and starve for the greater good, are they? Where do you think they are going to start marching towards?

Comment Re:Incorrect (Score 3, Insightful) 150

The AMOC relies on a cycling of warmer water in the tropics and cooler water in the Arctic Circle to generate the circulatory current. The warm water flows north, cools and sinks below the thermocline, then flows back to the tropics. It is not a loop on the surface like tidal flows, but rather a loop in an elongated cross sectional view that stretches right around the Indian and Southern Oceans as well as the Atlantic and is, in effect, a gigantic natural heat pump moving energy from the tropics to the North Atlantic ocean. The basic idea behind the potential shutdown of the flow is that as the temperature differential declines, so does the energy in the system, resulting a slowdown of the current and, ultimately (if taken to a logical conclusion), it stopping altogether - just as a heat pump would once the temperatures on either side have the pump have equalised.

In terms of impact, there's a bit more to it than that to do with variations in salinity between different parts of the ocean, which in turn being compounded with the inflow of fresh water from the melting Arctic ice cap and (mostly) Greenland's glaciers, that it also bring nutrients essential for the supporting the marine life in the Atlantic, plays a key part in sequestering the vast amounts of CO2 the ocean captures into the deep ocean (which is a whole other feedback loop). Even if it doesn't stop altogether, but only slows significantly, the impact on the entire biosphere, and especially around the North Atlantic, is going to be profound.

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