Comment Re:8 GB of RAM (Score 2) 10
I'll stick with my laptop from 2019. It shipped with 16GB and I upgraded it to 32GB. In today's prices that's a small house or 100 lbs of ground beef.
Comment Usenet was a nerd echo chamber. (Score 1) 78
p>There used to be this thing called 'Usenet'. It was everything reddit and more!
Nope, definitely not. I remember usenet well and used it often. It was nothing but a nerd echo chamber. It was great for autistic dedication to a specific male-oriented band or discussing Linux and garbage for anything more civilian. Also, the spam was legendary. Reddit's strength is their bot management and diverse network. My hobbies involve non-nerds, like chefs, artisans, artists, mechanics, DIY folks, as well as nerds. If my only interest was programming, sure, usenet is great. If I wanted to do anything involving arts and crafts?...it was desolate.
Comment Free formula and diapers won't make a dent. (Score 1) 128
Subsidize baby formula and diapers. And make onsite daycare services required at larger companies in order to normalize the practice.
Some places do that. It doesn't help. Many countries have tried cash payouts that far exceed the diaper budget. Also, rich people tend to have similar numbers of kids to middle class folks. The main barriers to having more kids is housing and support. Most high paying jobs are in areas with expensive real estate, so having room is a massive issue, but even if we had enough housing, most parents can't fathom having a 3rd kid because having 2 is such a struggle today. You have to do sliding scale daycare and have LOTS of it, which you implied. In my area, most daycares have a 3-6 month waiting period. But daycare only helps the first 2 kids. You have to do more: free pre-K and afterschool programs to replace daycare once your kids get older. Even if you're wealthy enough to have a stay-at-home parent, the burden of the family gets overwhelming and most quit after 3.
Countries with great support networks have managed to raise their birthrate. The only proven way to raise the birthrate is to support the motivated to have 4 or more, including putting as much of the burden on the state to raise the kid, if the family chooses to. It's EXPENSIVE, but so is finding yourself in a nursing home in your twilight years with a massive personnel shortage of people to take care of you....as well as a lack of taxpayers to fund everything you depend on ranging from gov to basic industry.
Comment It's also unusable with 8GB of RAM (Score 2) 10
Reviews of these 8 gigabyte laptops running Windows 11 have them unable to complete basic tasks like web browsing and conference calls.
Unless the ram is upgradable this is going to be a disaster. People just return them because they feel broken. Microsoft is trying to solve the problem but internal culture means they can't. Every division of Microsoft is fighting to be profitable and so they want to gobble up your RAM and use it to serve up advertisements and synergize with other companies for profit. This is why the windows 11 weather app uses 3 GB of RAM.
Unless the ram is upgradable this is going to be a disaster. People just return them because they feel broken. Microsoft is trying to solve the problem but internal culture means they can't. Every division of Microsoft is fighting to be profitable and so they want to gobble up your RAM and use it to serve up advertisements and synergize with other companies for profit. This is why the windows 11 weather app uses 3 GB of RAM.
Comment That's far from enough according to the data (Score 1) 128
That's only 1 variable. It's been tried to disappointing results. You can double everyone's salary and it will barely make a dent. If you've had kids and a working wife, you know how bad it gets. The good jobs? They're in expensive real estate areas....nearly everywhere in the world. So houses are hard to find, daycare is hard to find, and support is terrible once you have a kid.
Once people get a job in the city, they don't want kids. You can't make someone want them. All you can do is make existing parents have more. So you're never going to get every couple to churn out 3 kids, but you can make families of 1 or 2 have 3 or 5. However, support is the main factor. Work is a massive burden and even if your wife isn't working, many kids is a massive burden.
Data has shown that incentives don't make a lick of difference, but support programs have. Sliding scale daycare is 1 great way to get people to have their 1st or 2nd kid. However, if you want anyone to have more than 2, you need support for older children: sliding scale daycare for young ones and free afterschool programs for older kids.
Additionally, you need to alter the culture for parenting flexibility. That's tricky because the gov can only set rules for gov jobs. My job is great about it. I can step out during the morning or afternoon for a school event and make the hours in the evening. Jobs that are rigid and stuck in the past are a huge burden for families. Even if you have a stay-at-home mom, the dad needs the flexibility to be involved with his kids' lives if you want families to go past 2 kids.
More money is not the main problem. It's a huge one, but the bigger issue is lack of resources. Daycares in my area require a 6 month application process. Spots go often. It's harder to get into daycare in some areas than many ivy league universities.
It's not cheap, but sliding scale childcare and LOTS of it, will help the birth rate, help families, and be a MASSIVE stimulus since nearly every dollar is paying for human labor for a segment of unskilled (no formal training) women, most of which are very young or very old. But even the programs for older go out to a diverse pool of individuals and are great investments in future citizens to build skills and a sense of community.
However, many gov have tried throwing money at the problem and hoping for the best. It's easy, but it just doesn't work well. It requires a lot of follow through since the resistance to reproducing is very complex and the causes are many and you can have infinite money. So long as you have a job or other responsibilities, it's a huge load. Reducing the load reduces the friction to the 3rd kid and beyond.
Put simply, you have to make it EASY to have kids. Nothing else really works.
Once people get a job in the city, they don't want kids. You can't make someone want them. All you can do is make existing parents have more. So you're never going to get every couple to churn out 3 kids, but you can make families of 1 or 2 have 3 or 5. However, support is the main factor. Work is a massive burden and even if your wife isn't working, many kids is a massive burden.
Data has shown that incentives don't make a lick of difference, but support programs have. Sliding scale daycare is 1 great way to get people to have their 1st or 2nd kid. However, if you want anyone to have more than 2, you need support for older children: sliding scale daycare for young ones and free afterschool programs for older kids.
Additionally, you need to alter the culture for parenting flexibility. That's tricky because the gov can only set rules for gov jobs. My job is great about it. I can step out during the morning or afternoon for a school event and make the hours in the evening. Jobs that are rigid and stuck in the past are a huge burden for families. Even if you have a stay-at-home mom, the dad needs the flexibility to be involved with his kids' lives if you want families to go past 2 kids.
More money is not the main problem. It's a huge one, but the bigger issue is lack of resources. Daycares in my area require a 6 month application process. Spots go often. It's harder to get into daycare in some areas than many ivy league universities.
It's not cheap, but sliding scale childcare and LOTS of it, will help the birth rate, help families, and be a MASSIVE stimulus since nearly every dollar is paying for human labor for a segment of unskilled (no formal training) women, most of which are very young or very old. But even the programs for older go out to a diverse pool of individuals and are great investments in future citizens to build skills and a sense of community.
However, many gov have tried throwing money at the problem and hoping for the best. It's easy, but it just doesn't work well. It requires a lot of follow through since the resistance to reproducing is very complex and the causes are many and you can have infinite money. So long as you have a job or other responsibilities, it's a huge load. Reducing the load reduces the friction to the 3rd kid and beyond.
Put simply, you have to make it EASY to have kids. Nothing else really works.
Comment Re:"A months-long breach" (Score 1) 60
Don't forget updating all the maps for everything named to "America".
Comment Re:Geometry is dead (Score 1) 49
May I introduce the Apple Mac Studio?
That's a bold strategy Cotton - let's see how it works out... 8^) All joking aside, I have an M4 Mini, and it seriously hauls ass.
Apple Silicon M5 Ultra
M5 Ultra fuses two M5 Max chips into a single SoC — resulting in the most CPU cores of any Mac, the most powerful Apple silicon GPU ever, and our most capable chip for AI. Color-grade uncompressed 8K footage, perform computational fluid dynamics, and run frontier-class models on device — no cloud tokens needed.
Stop it! I'm drooling! Seriously though, I'd love to take a test ride in that. I don't do all that much heavy duty computing these days but it would be fun testing that beast out
Within the 7.7-inch-square enclosure lies a thermal system that allows Mac Studio to fly through intensive tasks at lightning-fast speeds. And even with all that power, it stays remarkably quiet, so you can process batch video renders or coding agent tasks without interrupting your focus."
That made for a flashback. My old G5 Mac - the one In that incredible aircraft aluminum case, sounded like a jet taking off while rendering 3-D animations.
Comment Re:Windows needs XBox (Score 1) 49
No it isn't. It's API stability.
Too bad the operating System at present is not stable.
I know, I am still pissed off that My M4 Mac is better than my Intel Macs in every way. We need to go back to 286's this business of changing things has to stop. 8^/
You figure that inertia is going to hold 50 years from now? Also, there was a reason why my previous place kept a museum of windows and DOS machines. Because despite claims of stability, they aren't all that.
Comment Re:Windows needs XBox (Score 1) 49
Preeeeetty sure corporate lock-in is about ten thousand times more important to them than gamers.
Sounds like the number one now, so it will be number one to infinity and beyond argument.
Yes - for years, Microsoft has done whatever it wants, and even if the customers grumble, they will come back and take it. And for years they have. Will they forever? There is no questioning that W11 has become a very unstable OS. I've been bit several times, my students were bit so many times that they wanted me to teach the class using Linux. A couple migrated their programs to Mac.
So yes, I agree Microsoft wants the user base to continue, and yes, keeping that user base captive is a big priority. However - in nuance, I'm still in agreement with hutkept, as the present Windows situation unfolds, they might want to hold on to everyone they have. Linux and UNIX can do everything Windows can do, just have to write the appropriate software and drivers. The goes for games too.
Linux is catching up in gaming, Apple is mildly interested in gaming, but probably not all that worried.
Maybe they should look at why their gaming division is losing money, and try a different approach?
Comment Re:Windows needs XBox (Score 1) 49
Windows' real only advantage over macOS and Linux is its gaming audience.
That is an interesting take - and I think you are exactly right. Otherwise, most everything else is just inertia, the installed user base argument.
Comment Re:Heh (Score 1) 60
Just be evil . . .
Comment Re:Geometry is dead (Score 1) 49
Yeah, because Apple is famous for their heat management! I once had to develop a Mac printer driver for our product on a Mac that kept overheating and shutting itself off... that was the Mac where everything was built into the monitor, with no fans, 'cause who needs fans, right?
Submission + - Cops Can Bypass iPhoneâ(TM)s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones (404media.co)
alternative_right writes: Apple quietly introduced a new feature in iOS that automatically reboots an iPhone that has not been unlocked for 72 hours. The idea behind this so-called âoeinactivity rebootâ is to revert the phone to a state that makes it harder for police to break into the device, and thus extract sensitive data from it with forensics technology.
The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode, according to the video.
The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode, according to the video.
Submission + - Five physics breakthroughs that should have won a Nobel Prize—but didn't (science.org)
sciencehabit writes: Next week, the Nobel Prizes will raise a handful of scientists to global, if fleeting, fame. Since the Nobels were first presented in 1901, the physics prize has honored advances ranging from the discovery of the electron and the development of quantum mechanics to the detection of gravitational waves and the modeling of climate change. There’s no doubt the prize has identified momentous achievements.
Still, when looking back on the physics awards, it’s clear they have missed some of the most important discoveries in the field. In fact, for various reasons, several foundational concepts in modern physics were never honored with a Nobel. Here is a list of five seminal developments in physics that did not earn a Nobel Prize—at least, not yet—in increasing order of obviousness.
This list of missed Nobels isn’t comprehensive. “You could probably come up with 100 of these,” says Michael Norman, a condensed matter physicist at Argonne National Laboratory. The list also doesn’t address snubs in which the Nobel Committee omitted a key scientist from an award—such as the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which honored Otto Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission, but left out Lise Meitner, who explained how it works.
Making a list of missed Nobel Prizes may be foolhardy, but as Nobel laureate Albert Einstein once wrote: “Everybody has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.”
Still, when looking back on the physics awards, it’s clear they have missed some of the most important discoveries in the field. In fact, for various reasons, several foundational concepts in modern physics were never honored with a Nobel. Here is a list of five seminal developments in physics that did not earn a Nobel Prize—at least, not yet—in increasing order of obviousness.
This list of missed Nobels isn’t comprehensive. “You could probably come up with 100 of these,” says Michael Norman, a condensed matter physicist at Argonne National Laboratory. The list also doesn’t address snubs in which the Nobel Committee omitted a key scientist from an award—such as the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which honored Otto Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission, but left out Lise Meitner, who explained how it works.
Making a list of missed Nobel Prizes may be foolhardy, but as Nobel laureate Albert Einstein once wrote: “Everybody has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.”
Comment Re:It's got to be Trump's fault - somehow... (Score 1) 60
What odds do you give that the reflecting pool will be fixed before he leaves office?
