That... actually all sounds pretty good to me. I think myself & some friends would consider it at such a price point. Someone with gobs of money should pay someone like you to advise them when they build it.

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I believe you're thinking of Williams Syndrome:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

"Among the hallmark traits of people with Williams syndrome is an apparent lack of social inhibition. Dykens and Rosner (1999) found that 100% of those with Williams syndrome were kind-spirited, 90% sought the company of others, 87% empathize with others' pain, 84% are caring, 83% are unselfish/forgiving, 75% never go unnoticed in a group, and 75% are happy when others do well.[39] Infants with Williams syndrome make normal and frequent eye contact, and young children with Williams will often approach and hug strangers. People affected by Williams syndrome typically have high empathy, showing relative strength in reading people's eyes to gauge intentions, emotions, and mental states.[40] The level of friendliness observed in people with Williams is often inappropriate for the social setting, however, and teens and adults with Williams syndrome often experience social isolation, frustration, and loneliness despite their clear desire to connect to other people.[37]"

It's a little more involved than just 3 genes, though, and there are multiple drawbacks (more than just what was mentioned in the quote above).

I've long thought that if sentience as we know it is to survive in our tiny corner of the galaxy, we will have to either become a different species or be replaced by one. However, the idea that we could/should do this intentionally will very quickly come up hard against the strong resistance to anything with the slightest whiff of eugenics. I'm not sure there is a good answer to that, honestly. The whole thing seems like somewhat of a catch-22 to me.

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We have had a mid-level gaming PC hooked up to our living room TV for a really long time, since before smart TVs or things like the Chromecast existed. We have used the Chromecast and a smart TV somewhat, but the full PC experience is just so much snappier in responsiveness - and gives you so many more options for what you can do - that it's going to remain our preferred choice for the foreseeable future.

For couch multiplayer, a few years ago we just started hooking game controllers up to it. It's maybe a tiny bit more hassle than a console, but it's way less sluggish when navigating menus and using other apps.

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> couch multiplayer which seems to have fallen out of favor except for Nintendo

I've been playing couch co-op with my partner exclusively on PC for at least 6 years, probably longer. There has been an explosion of titles available in this space recently, particularly on Steam.

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It *has* been the other way around in the past. More recently, Google increasingly appears to be floundering at several levels in multiple areas. Users are getting tired of the declining quality in Search, creators & businesses aren't as happy with ads, and developers don't like how they kill projects, constantly mess with APIs & other interfaces or how their cloud infrastructure is run.

Speaking of developers (developers, developers!), Microsoft has in recent years garnered large amounts of goodwill with the quality & accessibility of their Visual Studio IDE, their recognition of the value of Github, their continual investments in the gaming & education ecosystems and their work in code completion tools which are actually sometimes useful.

Google is on the back foot and has been for a while, and they kinda deserve it. I don't care what happens to any big corporation, but it would be nice to see this resulting in them finally tightening up some of their longstanding poor management practices and making a comeback. If not... I will indeed be glad to keep passing the popcorn.

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I am typing this on an ASUS laptop I've used for hours a day for roughly 8 years, and it's taken a few hard physical knocks during a couple dozen trips over that time.

The only modification I did was swapping the spinning rust platter for a SSD. Well, that and I remove the battery when I'm not mobile. The only reason I'm looking at EOL for the damn thing is Windows. I'm considering just disabling networking on it under Windows and setting up a second partition (or drive) with a Linux install once I can decide on a distro.

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I've been pretty happy with ASUS overall-- they made my favorite gaming laptop, in addition to the most recent commodity one I bought for work.

I haven't explored Linux compatibility in detail on these machines yet, but the hardware has been solid. I will probably be looking at Linux again soon, however, considering how Windows continues to increasingly piss me off. If all goes well there I would be happy to make an ASUS my last machine.

On the subject of Windows, I'm just so tired of basic functionality - including keyboard shortcuts I've used for decades - suddenly being yanked out from under me for no damn good reason. To say nothing of the tabloid news, built in spyware, more & more locked down choices and a total lack of quality support. M$ may have gotten their act together better with regard to developer tools, but their consumer/business products (don't even get me started on Office 365 and SuckPoint) can die in a fire.

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The world needs more non-repeating animations. They're so much better for our brains.

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Only nine? That's nothing. I think a count of all the other animal carcasses would be much more impressive.

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* "someone" should be "something" ... this is what happens when I rush proofreading to catch a call

The other thing about the blurb is that he's obviously citing over-the-top conspiracy theory level stuff-- it's mocking people who think like that. Oh yeah, and he's a bot. What a stupid non-controversy.

I don't really see the problem here, and I've actually dated a trans person. The very text of the 'joke' itself indicates that he's saying someone no one in the room wants to hear. Also, this is probably one of the funnier bits I've seen come out of this project-- most of it is lame as hell. My two cents.

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> kidnappers, data ransomers, drug dealers and money launderers

I'm pretty sure they all stopped using bitcoin years ago. Too easily traceable. From what I understand it's mostly Monero or lesser-known stuff now. Bitcoin crashing might still have some effect, but I don't think it would significantly hamper their activities at this point.

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Except that, unlike any of the other launchers (AFAIK), people actually *like* using Steam. [Yes, I know this wasn't initially the case.] It streamlines the entire process of game ownership, while also providing a useful forum for everything from reviews to technical support to help when you get stuck.

Every other launcher I've seen - which is at least four of them - add pointless friction more than they help. Epic has probably gotten the closest to actually competing with Steam with their recent massive investments in the effort, but they're still a long way behind.

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When I was younger, I didn't even hardly notice laugh tracks. They were so normalized & ubiquitous, they flew under the radar.

I finally arrived late to the anti-laugh-track party when I tried to watch the new Night Court. There was so much audience laughter at stuff that wasn't funny at all, it was starkly glaring. At first I thought maybe they were making some kind of meta joke about the history of sitcoms, but nope, they're just trying to do things the old fashioned way. For me at least, that approach has become unwatchable now.

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Yes, that was here on slashdot like two days ago:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstor...

No idea which is the better route to go here, probably good to be exploring multiple options.

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