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Console games - just launched prices have risen from around 40bucks to 70 in less than a decade.

Console game prices (major studio releases, not indie titles) have been in the $50-$70 range for decades.

AAA console games like Street Fighter II and Final Fantasy III had release prices of $70, and that was 25 years ago.

Adjusting for inflation, console games have never been cheaper.

Democrats are the media / communication company whores, not the republicans.

Or, you know, it's both. In this particular case you have a Democratic AG in a state with a majority Republican stage government (including governor) for legislation that hurts the public but helps communication companies. Cloris Leachman in Beerfest might as well have been speaking for both parties when she said "We are all whores".

I get what people mean when they suggest to use a "real camera" instead of a smartphone (hobby photographer here), but current smartphone cameras do a fine job for most day-to-day situations. Nothing keeps you from breaking out your DSLR or other camera for "that special shot", but you won't be lugging one around all day, and it won't be in your pant pocket when you need it, especially when out of the house.

Actually, there have been tests over the years, and the current crop of cameras in phones do a pretty good job. Yes, the DSLR runs circles around the phone, but if all you had was the phone, except in a few specialized situations (very low light where you need long exposures, for example) it does such a decent job it can be hard to tell the difference.

Yes, the best camera is the one you have on you. But even today's smartphones do a pretty bang-up job taking excellent quality photos. It's why the point and shoot camera has pretty much died - phones do such a nice job those cameras couldn't do much better.

Carmack admitted to copying thousands of e-mails to a personal hard drive on his last day working for ZeniMax

oops

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

What are they going to get done in five days?

Depends on how accurate you want it to be. If it's very close to accurate, it'll take several more generations.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

The WiiU is actually an exception here, as it was sold at a loss for a good while: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

The idea being presented by elrous0 is that this somehow means it's an equivalent loss and invalidates Nintendo's profitable console sales outside this exception. I built into my original point that it was only "most" of their console sales were at a profit, because these and certain temporary sales have been exceptions to that. His packaging of his point is false, though, and his point doesn't really invalidate or even deal with mine.

This isn't twitter, we can speak to nuance here, and he's choosing not to for argument's sake.

Check this piece on ars technica:

http://arstechnica.com/securit...

Most available satellite-based Internet remains almost as limited now as when it was introduced two decades ago. It's slow and provides users only with a unidirectional download link. But there's something about the connections that made them highly attractive to Turla members: most satellite links are unencrypted and can be intercepted by anyone within a radius of more than 600 miles. That means a connection between someone located in, say, a remote location in Africa and a satellite-based ISP can be monitored or even hijacked by an attacker.

Obama replied: "I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point."

This is an outright lie. Not surprising, given the number of lies this administration has made, after promising the most transparent government in history. The Office is doing their best to back this position with word games, rather than clearly (do I dare use the word "transparently") state that a pardon is possible without any trial whatsoever?

Obama is a failure as a president. Under him, the US went from the #1 world power to #3, despite still having the world's largest military. Russia is now firmly #1, because they have shown they can repeatedly ignore the rest of the world, including the US and the UN. China is #2, because they could launch a military blockade of Taiwan tomorrow and what's the US going to do - stop buying Chinese goods? The stock market would crash overnight. Heck, all China has to do to tank the US stock market for the next 4 years is halt all shipments of iPhones. Apple is in decline anyway - nice way to crash the tech bubble in 24 hours. Or they could just put a big fat $1000 per phone export tax on them. Even if they only sold 5% as many, they would make more profit off them.

Even Netanyahu made it clear how little power Obama has, pissing on his administration before congress and the world. Under Obama, the Palestine-Israeli two-state solution has now been buried. Never going to happen. So much for Obama's peace prize.

Between Bush2 and Obama, the US will almost definitely never recover. But that's okay - we have 6 billion surplus people on the planet - a few nuclear wars will solve that. And as a species, we really don't fit in here, do we?

... (or won't) after all he hasn't been to a trial yet, just accused. That might be true or not, but he already spoke about it on November. He wont pardon him.

"“I just think government needs to be very cautious about investing taxpayer dollars in these networks that they not only have to be able to manage, but they also have to maintain them,” Byron told The Roanoke Times. "Maintaining this type of stuff is much better done by private business.”" http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Really cock sucking whore. Do you have proof to support this assertion that does not come with wheel barrels full of cash....

Chrome does that now, but Google could make Chrome behave differently and not ask, simply accept the new plugin (with its spying turned on by default) without prompting the user.

Ultimately this allegation of "smarts" is not under the user's control, it's unsafe and a minor stroke of luck that things happened to work out the way they did for now. It doesn't strike me as smart to dismiss this as a settled matter, just as it was not smart for Microsoft Windows 10 users to believe that the OS privacy settings were being obeyed when they weren't.

Better story here: http://arstechnica.com/informa...

The screenshot was a future possible local settings panel, the "web-based privacy dashboard" is here https://account.microsoft.com/...

Probably the same AC, but here's a better story: http://arstechnica.com/informa...

This is what their web-based privacy dashboard looks like https://account.microsoft.com/...

Ars has a better story that makes it clear there are two parts, the dashboard above, and OS level system controls that disable certain types of data being sent in the first place:

http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Just because an article "clearly states" something doesn't make it gospel, unless you're watching Fox, then obviously I defer to your religious preferences.

a 20 mile tether doesn't sound practical

It's not just impractical; it's downright dangerous, even with much shorter lengths. If tether breaks at the ground end, interesting things can happen.

You're right in that the headline text is filled with lies (typical of the corporate tech press and their corporate repeater friends like /.) and things like this should all be opt-in by default. But without software freedom, even those changes would be necessary but insufficient to ensure user's privacy because there's no way to check to make sure the software actually behaves in accordance with the settings.

Microsoft's record shows this to be the case. The GNU Project's surveillance section of the Microsoft malware page does a good job of collecting stories about how this has already failed Windows users who thought they had tweaked the settings in just the right way to get Windows 10 to not "phone home" or report details of what happened outside the machine. These settings failed to do that job because the software was designed to fail in this way.

Much to the apparent chagrin of moderators in the recent Microsoft thread about letting Windows 10 users opt-out of automatic updates who marked down posts about software freedom, the real answer remains the same here—no software freedom means no real control over one's computer and that includes no privacy for the user. Network dumps reveal some of what the software does but not all; it's very easy for programmers to encrypt data they want to send somewhere and/or delay sending data in an attempt to not show up when the system's network output is being watched.

Microsoft's promises (which boil down to "Trust us this time! Really!") must be interpreted in the context of taking the word of a liar whose secret software should now be trusted. That makes no sense to do, and the same logic applies to all non-free/user-subjugating software. No matter how much technical skill you have you have to assume proprietary software is doing what you don't want it to do because you don't have the permission to check out what it's actually doing, change it to make it obey you, or help your community by sharing copies of improved software.

New York Times, late as usual, reporting on October's news: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... NYT should leave tech reporting to tech sites. Remember what happened to WP when it reported on hacking?

http://arstechnica.com/securit...

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.c...

Originally, I believe the idea of Wikileaks was to have a place for people to safely and anonymously without fear of retaliation, leak information people in power didn't want publicized.

Now in the last day, Wikileaks has come out against government leaks, and anonymity, and in support of retaliation against people (eg: Doxing). In our own little real-life version of Animal Farm, it looks like we're now near the end of the story.

Or like @ElliotHiggins said on Twitter:

Feels like WikiLeaks stared into the abyss, then fell into it, befriended the monsters, and is now looking upwards with them.

As the CEO of T-Mobile Germany stated, the "uncarrier" model that T-Mobile USA has been selling for the last couple years is unsustainable. To be fair, they were selling service so low it really was cheaper than it should have been. It was only a matter of time before a rate hike of some sort would happen. They are trying really really hard to spin the rate hike with marketing to make it sounds like a bigger deal than before with the whole "unlimited" wording, but truth is its no different than their previous plans, except for the extra cost. Don't let them convince you that the rate hike would not have happened had they been allowed to merge with Sprint by the way. I'm just glad I got in while they were still selling the ridiculously low price plans.

Sure as long as you only played their one bland boring dx12 game, ashes of the singularity. Anything else and dual r480's still usually get smoked by a standard 1080, let alone whatever the ti version might be. Hell they just about match a 1070

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

This! As somewhat of an audio engineer I know various speaker drivers very well, and laptop speakers essentially never have advertised frequency responses above 20KHz. And you're right, realistically, it's more like 18Khz with a steep drop off after 16KHz. Many people can hear 20KHz -- I've done tone tests and found I can hear up to 22KHz. So what speakers is this person using and what manner of computer has this kind of built in tweeters?

You guys realize this is not some theoretical flight of fancy, right? It's being used today for ad tracking: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/

Apps using SilverPush

Does historic data getting colder in newer datasets count or is your mind already made up?

Historic data is not "getting colder". Don't believe everything you read in the Breitbart comments section.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Scien...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

You need to read both:

-Accusations that climate science is money-driven reveal ignorance of how science is done
-No climate conspiracy: NOAA temperature adjustments bring data closer to pristine

Intel tried to do that a few years ago through the OEM channel when they were pushing aggressively in to the tablet market. Being able to run Windows and Android is a natural advantage for x86. Both Google AND Microsoft killed it by refusal to certify the resulting device. Even if Microsoft is cool with it now it is highly unlikely Google's stance has changed.

Just a wild guess: they're still using an O(2^n) algorithm for applying updates.

The Federal Communications Commission has reached a preliminary conclusion that AT&T is violating net neutrality rules by using data cap exemptions to favor DirecTV video on its mobile network.

- http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Can you please explain how "No charges for access" is different from this?

http://arstechnica.com/securit...

http://www.robertmlee.org/crit...

Try reading actual sources about things.

Moore's law has been decelerating for a long time but is far from dead. What's really surprising is how far visible light lithography has been pushed, when everybody thought EUV would be needed long ago. Now, feature size is _way_ less than the wavelength, nice trick that. Even less than EUV wavelength. Probably, EUV will be used for 5nm nodes. Nanoimprint might take over when EUV reaches its limits. This is while staying with silicon. A 1 nm transistor (gate size) has already been demonstrated, and it won't stop there.

Buying a "connection [that] is this side of Y2K" may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some places. (Source 1 | Source 2)

Buying a "connection [that] is this side of Y2K" may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some places. (Source 1 | Source 2)

Anyone who wants to recommend either GPG or PGP should have read and should give a good answer to both of the following articles.

why Johnny can't encrypt

why I'm giving up on PGP

And you should include hello to avoid the issues mentioned if you are making a recommendation.

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it.

So? They wrecked the centrifuges didn't they? Mission accomplished and who gives a rats ass about collateral damage.

An anomaly to be sure. What percentage of Android phones in use do you think the OnePlus makes up? 0.1%? It also carried all the horrendous security flaws of Android over the last couple of years and runs CyanogenMod which is now essentially defunct. Oh and ridiculous invite system and long delays. And let's not forget that the iPhone 6 camera was light years ahead of the OnePlus One and it's a 5.5" phone -- thats bordering on phablet, coming in at 20% heavier than the iPhone 6 (it's competition at the time). That's not even mentioning things like TouchID. I haven't typed in a passcode since the iPhone 5 and I'll never go back.

The new versions of the OnePlus (3) shipped with bugs and a significantly increased cost ($399). The reviews also panned it's poor display and absurd "20 app limit".. The 3T I believe solved some of the display issues, but wasn't exactly critically received.

So even if the OnePlus One was probably the best Android phone ever made, it still had serious issues, and isn't a good alternative today.

It's why I use a literary keyboard layout with dead-keys (Windows)
I haven't really explored it too fully, but the characters I enjoy most often are:
alt-gr, minus: hyphen
alt-gr, minus, m : m dash
alt-gr, minus, n : n dash
alt-gr, dbl-quote, 6 : low curly double quote
alt-gr, dbl-quote, 9 : high curly (9) double quote
alt-gr, dbl-quote, comma : low curly (9) double quote
alt-gr, dbl-quote, open bracket : left double guillement ...
and I tend to use combinig unicode, rather than pre-composed now:
alt-gr, dbl-quote, dbl-quote: combining double acute accent
alt-gr, single-quote, single quote: combining acute accent
alt-gr, single-quote, pipe : combining vertical line above

Windows supporting full unicode characters, and multiple chaining dead-key combinations in a simple keyboard map has really made international typing on one keyboard layout _really easy_.

Bias: I type and edit a lot in multiple european languages, and being able to type every character in all european latin-based languages in one layout is heaven. Particularly, all the oddities as well (sharp s, section symbol, pilcrow, etc)

Fun causing rendering issues on non Windows machines (and some windows software not using Uniscribe). Seeing as I have combining characters fully available, adding them to non-expected characters (cyrilling, arabic, hindi, etc) can cause many strange rendeing issues (or causing people phones to crash, OSX to crash) when using non-expected parings: see : http://arstechnica.com/apple/2... for a description of one particular Apple font implementaiton fail.

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it.

Prison without trials:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Indefinite solitary confinement:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/res...

Spying on all citizens:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Current government supports executions of whistleblowers:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Executing citizens without a trial:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Just to name a few.

Bubububu... they told me that permissive licenses are the only way we can have real freedom!

Meanwhile, consumers everywhere are still feeling the painful loss of freedom after Linksys/Cisco was forced to release their modifications to GPLed source code 14 years ago.

You would be arrested and thrown in jail for endangering the livelihood of some mega corp.

Correct, this could never happen in the US. Definitely, never in a million years.

Or, you could JFDI.

Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them. The end-user has the option to take physical delivery of the DVD, have VidAngel store it forever, or sell it back as a 'used' copy for slightly cheaper.

Not according to this. Granted, it's just a year-old article on a tech site, but according to them, the DMCA forbids consumers from decrypting discs to format shift. Stupid? I think so, but unless the courts change their mind, VidAngel is headed for a world of hurt.

As much as I hate it, ripping for personal use is illegal under the DMCA (anti-circumvention). Ripping for the content editing I think is explicitly separately allowed, but I'm not sure if that's what makes it legal for them. They may be playing the physical disc with an EDL - I don't actually know.

As much as I hate to say it, you are correct (at least as of October of 2015). The legal wrangling came to the conclusion that because CDs were never encrypted, consumers can format-shift. But DVDs and Bly rays? Not so much. However, it seems to me that given the vast number of people that do this "under the radar" it can't be long before an "exemption" is granted to bring this in line with Fair Use.

A few of the many, many articles:

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft's Software is Malware. Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user.

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying"

A few of the many, many articles:

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft's Software is Malware. Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user.

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying"

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Highlights:
- Indicates it's a 5-year contract
- Requires access rights to Microsoft's proprietary (closed-source) code
- Direct support from Microsoft's internal employees—not from outsourced contractors

what happens if they push out a bad update and everybody's machine is out of action for a week?

You mean like last week?
I was scratching my head for an hour trying to figure out why my wife's laptop showed it connected to the AP but not the internet. I felt really dumb once I figured it out. Then I read this story and got really mad. All the while happily connected to Steam playing games on my Win 7 desktop running Waterfox (64 bit FF fork). And of course since it took out DHCP there's no way for the average person to connect to get the patch!

I suspect Microsoft would have been delighted - just as Sun was

Sun may have put on a brave face, but they weren't particularly happy about losing control of "mobile Java" to Google. They tried working out a licensing deal early on and failed, and knew they were going to lose a lot of licensing money to Android.

As for Microsoft, we'll never know. But we do knew Microsoft has a cutthroat culture and are a bunch of corporate assholes. They can be trusted just as much as Oracle.

Stating a fact is not a strawman argument. Trump did petition to have a sea wall installed and in his petition it is specifically stated it is because of the possibility of rising sea levels due to climate change. The exact words:

"If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland."

Further, he sent out flyers to the local populace in regards to this proposal in which it states:

"Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century."

So Trump being Trump, he says one thing but does another. Like his golf course in Connecticut which he has repeatedly bragged is worth $50 million but wanted to claim on his taxes was only worth $1.5 million.

Then again, the con artist has done the same thing around the country with his golf courses, bragging about being worth X millions but claiming for tax purposes significantly lower values.