Toronto's transit system (www.ttc.ca) has allowed children twelve years and younger ride for free for a couple of years now. What this does is encourage families with children to take public transit rather than drive.There are already a number of good reasons for families traveling with children to prefer cars to public transit (e.g. no need to wait for vehicle arrival, easy transportation of items, etc.). Free child fares at least remove "cost savings" from being one of those reasons.
I'm not sure if you're a troll and are trying to evoke annoyance, or if you suffer from severe reading comprehension difficulties and are trying to evoke pity. In me, you evoke both.
This response is confused on so many levels. First, Chris doesn't "know about memory" (particularly flash memory and corresponding control systems that are built into modern ssd's) in the same way and to the same degree as he knows about disks, that's the point. Secondly, he isn't refusing to apply his knowledge, he's using all the knowledge he has, which is less than what he has for disks. Thirdly, he isn't being paranoid -- paranoia requires high and ongoing anxiety about extremely unlikely things (i.e delusional): Chris' anxiety here is neither high nor ongoing, nor is what he is anxious about (SSD failure) an extremely unlikely (delusional) thing. Fourth, there's no evidence in his posting that Chris believes any sort of conspiracy is going on here.
Disclaimer: I've known Chris since we were CS undergraduates together in the 1980s, and we currently work together in the CS Department in Toronto. It may seem a bit odd to some that a hard disk failure isn't unnerving but an SSD failure is. That's because one of a good sysadmin's skills is properly focused anxiety, used to motivate a mental model of how things can fail, and what to do about it. Data storage is a key part of this mental model, since data access loss, or even worse, data loss, is a major risk. That's why it's helpful to know how disks work, how they behave when they fail, and how likely it is for such things to happen. Chris has a few decades of experience in dealing with disks. SSDs take the place of disks, and they store stuff just like disks do, but they work differently, and they behave very differently when they fail. In particular, SSDs often don't seem to give any indication that things may be wrong: one moment all is well, the next moment, all is dead. So instincts honed over a few decades of experience with hard drives don't apply. Of course Chris (and we all) will develop new instincts as we get more experience with SSDs. But in the meanwhile, it's indeed unnerving. And no, this isn't some sort of profound insight. It's merely an observation. Many experienced sysadmins, I think, will "get" this. People newer to the field might not. That's OK.
A laptop with a detachable keyboard (e.g. Microsoft Surface Book) or one that flips under (e.g.Thinkpad yoga) is functionally equivalent to a large tablet, and a large (6+in) smartphone (which are increasingly popular) is functionally equivalent to a small one. Even a Nintendo switch is a tablet too, but it gets counted as a game console (for good reason of course). Much of the use of those devices is tablet use, but it doesn't get counted in the tablet category. So what is being measured here is not purchases for the purposes of having a tablet to use, but purchases of devices that are called tablets, which is a different thing.
This is interesting. Essentially, Google and Facebook monetize user data obtained via surveillance of their platform to make money. Apple and Microsoft sells hardware and software to make money. Increasingly, Microsoft is also monetizing user data obtained via surveillance, while Apple isn't. Probably this is because Apple is doing very well at making money in the way it traditionally does. This is less so for Microsoft. Hence the difference: Apple is criticizing Google and Facebook, while Microsoft is joining them. Apple sees greater upside from positioning itself as a platform that is at least nominally opposed to surveillance, than becoming such a platform itself. Hence it can point out the truth here, where its competitors would rather not.
Let's put this in perspective. The problem here is not Google. Google doesn't want to censor its search engine, but it has to, in order to operate in China. It's all well and good for Google to decide not to operate in China, but it's fine also for them to come up with a censored (i.e. partial) search engine that can legally operate in China, as did Microsoft. Previously they chose to do the former. As a form of protest or boycott, it had little effect on China: it just pushed Chinese internet users to other search engines. Now Google is choosing to do the latter. It may be a better strategy: it at least gives Google an opportunity to provide (partial) search to Chinese internet users.
There are two things going on here. One is the growth of mobile vs. desktop for web use. Firefox has never had any substantial market share of mobile, and as mobile becomes an increasing percentage of web browsing, Firefox' overall market share declines. The other is the decline of Firefox on the desktop. Firefox is at about 12% in the desktop market now, which, while higher than any desktop browser other than Chrome, is a lot lower than a decade ago when it was at 30% or so.
As for whether Firefox lost market share due to it killing off its extensions, it was pretty steady at about 14% of the desktop market before those extensions were killed off; since then it's declined to about 12% so it may have had an effect, but not so major as you imply.
The summary is a bit misleading, which is probably why there's so much confusion on this thread. No, support for hyperthreading is not being removed. Rather, an option is being added to OpenBSD to disable hyperthreading. That option will be set to disabled by default on Intel CPUs. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
HT can't be disabled in all BIOSes apparently. OpenBSD isn't dropping HT support, it's merely turning it off by default on Intel CPUs. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
OpenBSD is adding a control to turn off hyper-threading (because some BIOSes these days don't have such a control), and is turning it off by default on Intel CPUs. But it can be turned on again. So OpenBSD is providing control, not taking it away. Read for yourself. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
The 200MB Maxtors were rock-solid. The Quantums, on the other hand, had a sticktion problem. As for the Suns themselves, the ones built into CRTs (SLC and ELC) would bake themselves to death, but the other shoeboxes and pizzaboxes were quite reliable. Previous pre-pizzabox Suns were maybe a little less so.
Presumably, by "lots of people who can't afford to pay", Mark means people who can't afford Apple's products. These aren't necessarily people without any money at all, more likely they're people with less money than the typical apple consumer, who typically earns higher income than average.
Most cars today are essentially single-user: "one person - one car". Add single-user self-driving cars to the mix and you will often get "no person - one car", such as when the car is circling the block while the user is on an errand, or when the car is going to pick up the user. This, left unchecked, will make traffic worse than it is now, by adding more vehicles to traffic
without serving more people.
If one limits the number of self-driving cars allowed in high-traffic areas (for example, by permitting only self-driving cars
that serve multiple people per day), this problem can be constrained somewhat.
As the author of one of those add-ons (httplogout), I couldn't "redevelop" my add-on for Quantum because the XUL functionality that my add-on relied upon simply didn't exist in WebExtensions (the only add-ons API that Quantum supports). I told Mozilla about the problem in September 2017, and that's where things stand at the moment. Until Mozilla adds the necessary functionality to WebExtensions, my add-on can't be ported to Quantum.
While miners quite reasonably prefer not to buy headless cards because they're harder to resell, if the headless cards are a lot easier to buy in quantity than normal cards, it may help.
Mine too. But no RAM pack, I lived with the 1k. I was dirt poor at the time.
I blew the Sinclair logic unit attaching a mechanical keyboard; the membrane keyboard was driving me nuts. So I bought a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a replacement (a US version of the ZX81 with 2k RAM), and blew the SLU on that too, doing the same thing. So I abandoned Sinclair, got a better part-time job, and bought a used Atari 800XL from a friend. It was a much more useful computer.
I don't believe that Apple would have easily allowed Flash on iOS if it had performed well. Flash on iOS would have provided a simple path for people to write applications for iOS without paying the 30% apple tax.
The problem with the idea that these five are "here to stay" is that it takes intelligent effort, a lot of intelligent effort, to stay on top. All of these companies are putting in the effort now, but if their effort flags, or they end up doing something stupid, others (perhaps the other four, perhaps someone new) will eat their lunch. Yes, size makes a difference, and can make it easier in many ways for a big tech company to stay on top, but size alone won't do it: if one of these companies decides to relax and sit on its laurels, it will lose its top spot.
Most of the comments about whether or not a curved glass phone is better misses the point. Samsung competes with other phone vendors through hardware differentiation, and it works. Samsung is very good at producing innovative hardware, and that's why they're the biggest darn smartphone vendor out there. Curved glass? Samsung can do it, nobody else does (yet): more hardware differentiation. Will the phone sell like hotcakes? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter: by releasing it first, Samsung has again buttressed its reputation as a hardware differentiator.
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Toronto's transit system (www.ttc.ca) has allowed children twelve years and younger ride for free for a couple of years now. What this does is encourage families with children to take public transit rather than drive.There are already a number of good reasons for families traveling with children to prefer cars to public transit (e.g. no need to wait for vehicle arrival, easy transportation of items, etc.). Free child fares at least remove "cost savings" from being one of those reasons.
Lake Ontario isn't so shallow (avg 280ft, down to over 800ft) and rarely freezes. It has a real moderating effect on Toronto's climate.
I'm not sure if you're a troll and are trying to evoke annoyance, or if you suffer from severe reading comprehension difficulties and are trying to evoke pity. In me, you evoke both.
This response is confused on so many levels. First, Chris doesn't "know about memory" (particularly flash memory and corresponding control systems that are built into modern ssd's) in the same way and to the same degree as he knows about disks, that's the point. Secondly, he isn't refusing to apply his knowledge, he's using all the knowledge he has, which is less than what he has for disks. Thirdly, he isn't being paranoid -- paranoia requires high and ongoing anxiety about extremely unlikely things (i.e delusional): Chris' anxiety here is neither high nor ongoing, nor is what he is anxious about (SSD failure) an extremely unlikely (delusional) thing. Fourth, there's no evidence in his posting that Chris believes any sort of conspiracy is going on here.
Disclaimer: I've known Chris since we were CS undergraduates together in the 1980s, and we currently work together in the CS Department in Toronto. It may seem a bit odd to some that a hard disk failure isn't unnerving but an SSD failure is. That's because one of a good sysadmin's skills is properly focused anxiety, used to motivate a mental model of how things can fail, and what to do about it. Data storage is a key part of this mental model, since data access loss, or even worse, data loss, is a major risk. That's why it's helpful to know how disks work, how they behave when they fail, and how likely it is for such things to happen. Chris has a few decades of experience in dealing with disks. SSDs take the place of disks, and they store stuff just like disks do, but they work differently, and they behave very differently when they fail. In particular, SSDs often don't seem to give any indication that things may be wrong: one moment all is well, the next moment, all is dead. So instincts honed over a few decades of experience with hard drives don't apply. Of course Chris (and we all) will develop new instincts as we get more experience with SSDs. But in the meanwhile, it's indeed unnerving. And no, this isn't some sort of profound insight. It's merely an observation. Many experienced sysadmins, I think, will "get" this. People newer to the field might not. That's OK.
A laptop with a detachable keyboard (e.g. Microsoft Surface Book) or one that flips under (e.g.Thinkpad yoga) is functionally equivalent to a large tablet, and a large (6+in) smartphone (which are increasingly popular) is functionally equivalent to a small one. Even a Nintendo switch is a tablet too, but it gets counted as a game console (for good reason of course). Much of the use of those devices is tablet use, but it doesn't get counted in the tablet category. So what is being measured here is not purchases for the purposes of having a tablet to use, but purchases of devices that are called tablets, which is a different thing.
This is interesting. Essentially, Google and Facebook monetize user data obtained via surveillance of their platform to make money. Apple and Microsoft sells hardware and software to make money. Increasingly, Microsoft is also monetizing user data obtained via surveillance, while Apple isn't. Probably this is because Apple is doing very well at making money in the way it traditionally does. This is less so for Microsoft. Hence the difference: Apple is criticizing Google and Facebook, while Microsoft is joining them. Apple sees greater upside from positioning itself as a platform that is at least nominally opposed to surveillance, than becoming such a platform itself. Hence it can point out the truth here, where its competitors would rather not.
"AI" right now is a trendy buzzword, like "cloud". But the truth is that modern machine learning is very useful and is showing up in many new places.
Let's put this in perspective. The problem here is not Google. Google doesn't want to censor its search engine, but it has to, in order to operate in China. It's all well and good for Google to decide not to operate in China, but it's fine also for them to come up with a censored (i.e. partial) search engine that can legally operate in China, as did Microsoft. Previously they chose to do the former. As a form of protest or boycott, it had little effect on China: it just pushed Chinese internet users to other search engines. Now Google is choosing to do the latter. It may be a better strategy: it at least gives Google an opportunity to provide (partial) search to Chinese internet users.
There are two things going on here. One is the growth of mobile vs. desktop for web use. Firefox has never had any substantial market share of mobile, and as mobile becomes an increasing percentage of web browsing, Firefox' overall market share declines. The other is the decline of Firefox on the desktop. Firefox is at about 12% in the desktop market now, which, while higher than any desktop browser other than Chrome, is a lot lower than a decade ago when it was at 30% or so. As for whether Firefox lost market share due to it killing off its extensions, it was pretty steady at about 14% of the desktop market before those extensions were killed off; since then it's declined to about 12% so it may have had an effect, but not so major as you imply.
The summary is a bit misleading, which is probably why there's so much confusion on this thread. No, support for hyperthreading is not being removed. Rather, an option is being added to OpenBSD to disable hyperthreading. That option will be set to disabled by default on Intel CPUs. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
HT can't be disabled in all BIOSes apparently. OpenBSD isn't dropping HT support, it's merely turning it off by default on Intel CPUs. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
It's an option disabled by default that can be enabled if you want it to be enabled. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
OpenBSD is adding a control to turn off hyper-threading (because some BIOSes these days don't have such a control), and is turning it off by default on Intel CPUs. But it can be turned on again. So OpenBSD is providing control, not taking it away. Read for yourself. https://undeadly.org/cgi?actio...
The 200MB Maxtors were rock-solid. The Quantums, on the other hand, had a sticktion problem. As for the Suns themselves, the ones built into CRTs (SLC and ELC) would bake themselves to death, but the other shoeboxes and pizzaboxes were quite reliable. Previous pre-pizzabox Suns were maybe a little less so.
There's no ECC on i7.
Presumably, by "lots of people who can't afford to pay", Mark means people who can't afford Apple's products. These aren't necessarily people without any money at all, more likely they're people with less money than the typical apple consumer, who typically earns higher income than average.
Most cars today are essentially single-user: "one person - one car". Add single-user self-driving cars to the mix and you will often get "no person - one car", such as when the car is circling the block while the user is on an errand, or when the car is going to pick up the user. This, left unchecked, will make traffic worse than it is now, by adding more vehicles to traffic without serving more people. If one limits the number of self-driving cars allowed in high-traffic areas (for example, by permitting only self-driving cars that serve multiple people per day), this problem can be constrained somewhat.
As the author of one of those add-ons (httplogout), I couldn't "redevelop" my add-on for Quantum because the XUL functionality that my add-on relied upon simply didn't exist in WebExtensions (the only add-ons API that Quantum supports). I told Mozilla about the problem in September 2017, and that's where things stand at the moment. Until Mozilla adds the necessary functionality to WebExtensions, my add-on can't be ported to Quantum.
While miners quite reasonably prefer not to buy headless cards because they're harder to resell, if the headless cards are a lot easier to buy in quantity than normal cards, it may help.
Mine too. But no RAM pack, I lived with the 1k. I was dirt poor at the time. I blew the Sinclair logic unit attaching a mechanical keyboard; the membrane keyboard was driving me nuts. So I bought a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a replacement (a US version of the ZX81 with 2k RAM), and blew the SLU on that too, doing the same thing. So I abandoned Sinclair, got a better part-time job, and bought a used Atari 800XL from a friend. It was a much more useful computer.
Sell it. If there are no buyers, rent it out. If there are no renters, and occasional use doesn't warrant the ongoing cost, retire it "skylab" style.
I don't believe that Apple would have easily allowed Flash on iOS if it had performed well. Flash on iOS would have provided a simple path for people to write applications for iOS without paying the 30% apple tax.
The problem with the idea that these five are "here to stay" is that it takes intelligent effort, a lot of intelligent effort, to stay on top. All of these companies are putting in the effort now, but if their effort flags, or they end up doing something stupid, others (perhaps the other four, perhaps someone new) will eat their lunch. Yes, size makes a difference, and can make it easier in many ways for a big tech company to stay on top, but size alone won't do it: if one of these companies decides to relax and sit on its laurels, it will lose its top spot.
Most of the comments about whether or not a curved glass phone is better misses the point. Samsung competes with other phone vendors through hardware differentiation, and it works. Samsung is very good at producing innovative hardware, and that's why they're the biggest darn smartphone vendor out there. Curved glass? Samsung can do it, nobody else does (yet): more hardware differentiation. Will the phone sell like hotcakes? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter: by releasing it first, Samsung has again buttressed its reputation as a hardware differentiator.