This is actually a thing up here in the Pacific Northwest. I have city-owned power. They did a huge energy conservation program, promoting the transition from old bulbs to newer CFL/LED bulbs, plus replacing CRT TVs with LCD/LED TVs. The result? Power consumption dropped by a large enough margin that the city-owned power company didn't have the budget to continue to operate, so instead they just raised everyone's power bill rates. So after making the city more efficient, our bills remained the same higher price, even though "lower price" was the #1 "incentive" to change out all the equipment.
Pretty much this. I lived in the middle-of-nowhere Montana for about a year. The house had DSL, literally the only service available. The phone line quality on the poles was so ungodly shitty, service would cut out or have massive packet loss in just about any non-perfect weather condition. But, we counted as "having broadband service" despite it working very slowly and unreliably.
But that's okay though, the internet gods forgave me. After moving back to the Seattle area, they blessed me with symmetrical gigabit FttH.
This "motion smoothing" shit is the absolute worst. I would tolerate it at least slightly more if it ACTUALLY worked right. But it doesn't It'll work for 5 seconds, then turn off for 5, then on again for another 5. It creates a very jarring effect on the scenes. The software/hardware/whatever that is used to determine that one frame is related to another, so automatically splice in more frames CONSTANTLY fails.
Though, what I don't get, is that any TV I've seen in the past few years either doesn't have this "feature" enabled, or doesn't have it at all. I just purchased a brand new TV, a late 2018 model, and this feature doesn't exist. Other TVs I was looking at before this purchase didn't have it either. I think the feature died along with the 3D TV era. Which leads me to wonder why, now, of all times this complaint is showing up, since the feature is pretty much already dead?
The absolute #1 reason why I pause a show is because of a phone call or talk to a person in the room with me. The entire point is to take attention away from the TV, AND TO CANCEL ALL AUDIO INTERRUPTIONS. So now they want to take that control away? Meaning now instead of just a "pause", I must now "pause and then mute"? Yeah, it may seem like nitpickiness, but it is enough to deter me from even considering to use their services when there are alternative services that don't have these pitfalls.
Microsoft already announced at a previous conference that they've actively been working on a x86 binary compatibility layer for ARM https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
Marketing, distribution, infrastructure, and all the people required to keep all of that running isn't free. Game developers are more than welcome to self-publish and absorb all of these costs themselves, this isn't like on Android or iOS where things are REQUIRED (mostly) to run through the centralized ecosystem. This is the PC world where we are free to download and install whatever the hell we want. So why WOULD developers even dream of using such services? Exactly as the reasons just mentioned. These services bring very credible and measurable value to developers.
It isn't just Fortnite. This is Epic Games, who creates the Unreal engine, one of the most popular game engines in the entire industry (and thus the engine's market place as well). They also make the Unreal series of games and Gears series of games. They have a long history in the industry, not just Fortnite. I think ~20 year success is enough establishment to take them seriously on what they know and what they do.
Its not so much that Microsoft got stuck on IE6, its more that IE release cycles were tied directly to Windows OS release cycles and Windows Vista took too long.
IE3 - Windows 95 IE4 - Windows 98 IE5 - Windows 2000 IE6 - Windows XP IE7 - Windows Vista IE8 - Windows 7
And it wasn't until after this point that IE decoupled itself from Windows release cycles.
Beyond 4k we've hit the point of diminishing returns. The jump from SD to 720p has several advantages. First, the switch from either composite to component (huge analog quality difference, significantly better color representation), or analog to digital in general (no signal degradation). Next was the jump from interlaced to progressive scan. But the jump from 4k to 8k is only higher pixel density, when we've already got extremely crisp and clear visuals. This jump wont matter anywhere near as much.
The big issue came about in that some domains lapsed, years later someone else registered said domains, put up robots.txt, and as such the entire history from the previous owners were inadvertently deleted.
Some things do indeed need erasing though. I've yet to publish the paper because disclosure was only earlier this month. I found an entire ISP leaking publicly the physical addresses of virtual every single customer on their network (essentially EVERYONE was doxxed at once). This information is mirrored in the Wayback Machine (along with a few other archives). Part of the reason my paper isn't published yet is due to the ISP currently working with these archives to remove the sensitive information the ISP should never have published in the first place.
I love how you compare this to NT4/95, where something as simple as specifying a minor typo in a font name through their GDI API would blue screen the entire OS.
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS. Yeah, you could in theory say the same about email, but think about how complicated it gets to attempt to scan an image, and then get that image into an email attachment? Everyone here on/. probably knows how, but honestly sit down and attempt to write up the steps for someone who isn't a hard-core techie that just needs to get the job done. Too much tech is getting in the way of the actual jobs at hand.
Remember back when companies in the early 2000s would brag that their software was over a million lines of code, as a testament to some sort of level of complexity? Apparently that threshold has been pushed all the way back to only 1000 lines of code. Honestly, I blame all these copy-paste script kiddies who have never actually written code for thinking that a 1000 line program is "complex" or "large" by any stretch of the imagination.
One thing everyone always misses with Microsoft's twice-a-year updates (same frequency as Ubuntu Linux mind you) is that they recompile every single binary in the OS now, rather than just replacing the few that have been touched in each update here n there. What does this mean? There have been new advances in compiler optimizations, plus new advances in memory allocators to help protect against certain types of exploits. There are also the mitigations for things like Specter and Meltdown, which are also baked into the compiler chain. "Features" are not always new toys for people to play with, but also fixes to outstanding issues.
Noted, this is by no means perfect. I'm still pissed the fuck off that Microsoft decided to remove a critical video codec that was used in countless webcams.
But really, what is "software as a service" even mean? It is just another buzz phrase for C-suites, that's it. Again, Windows update schedule mirrors that of Ubuntu and countless other open source distributions. Those F/OSS distros have had their plentiful fair share of fuckups too, but their user base is almost entirely technical users that can work around issues, and is a significantly smaller user base so mass media wont report on it. As someone who services Windows, Debian, and FreeBSD machines, I could rant all day long about amazing new features in each release, side by side with all the amazing new boneheaded fuck ups each has done on those same releases.
There is a bunch of standard library stuff that is statically compiled into every binary, regardless if it is used or not. I've searched around, and have yet to see a way to remove it or minimize it. I've seen posts about recompiling the standard library with better optimizations and less debugging, plus using a compressed binary, but the binary size is still insanely huge for small programs.
I was very excited by this, until I saw the RAM reduction. I guess this particular board is intended for embedded applications more so than the B+ being designed as a tiny desktop? I'm having trouble seeing where this fits in, considering a single USB port, but still full HDMI? Maybe just for a wall display that is wireless networked only? That RAM reduction seriously hinders a lot of graphical applications that would use the HDMI port in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't need to be traditional ugly rectangle solar panels. Take a look at solar roof tiles, some of those designs actually look quite nice.
This is actually a thing up here in the Pacific Northwest. I have city-owned power. They did a huge energy conservation program, promoting the transition from old bulbs to newer CFL/LED bulbs, plus replacing CRT TVs with LCD/LED TVs. The result? Power consumption dropped by a large enough margin that the city-owned power company didn't have the budget to continue to operate, so instead they just raised everyone's power bill rates. So after making the city more efficient, our bills remained the same higher price, even though "lower price" was the #1 "incentive" to change out all the equipment.
Pretty much this. I lived in the middle-of-nowhere Montana for about a year. The house had DSL, literally the only service available. The phone line quality on the poles was so ungodly shitty, service would cut out or have massive packet loss in just about any non-perfect weather condition. But, we counted as "having broadband service" despite it working very slowly and unreliably.
But that's okay though, the internet gods forgave me. After moving back to the Seattle area, they blessed me with symmetrical gigabit FttH.
This "motion smoothing" shit is the absolute worst. I would tolerate it at least slightly more if it ACTUALLY worked right. But it doesn't It'll work for 5 seconds, then turn off for 5, then on again for another 5. It creates a very jarring effect on the scenes. The software/hardware/whatever that is used to determine that one frame is related to another, so automatically splice in more frames CONSTANTLY fails.
Though, what I don't get, is that any TV I've seen in the past few years either doesn't have this "feature" enabled, or doesn't have it at all. I just purchased a brand new TV, a late 2018 model, and this feature doesn't exist. Other TVs I was looking at before this purchase didn't have it either. I think the feature died along with the 3D TV era. Which leads me to wonder why, now, of all times this complaint is showing up, since the feature is pretty much already dead?
Are you speculating whether or not you're vulnerable to speculation attacks..?
The absolute #1 reason why I pause a show is because of a phone call or talk to a person in the room with me. The entire point is to take attention away from the TV, AND TO CANCEL ALL AUDIO INTERRUPTIONS. So now they want to take that control away? Meaning now instead of just a "pause", I must now "pause and then mute"? Yeah, it may seem like nitpickiness, but it is enough to deter me from even considering to use their services when there are alternative services that don't have these pitfalls.
Microsoft already announced at a previous conference that they've actively been working on a x86 binary compatibility layer for ARM https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
I know! I'll write a productivity app to evaluate productivity apps to determine their level of productivity. https://xkcd.com/927/
Marketing, distribution, infrastructure, and all the people required to keep all of that running isn't free. Game developers are more than welcome to self-publish and absorb all of these costs themselves, this isn't like on Android or iOS where things are REQUIRED (mostly) to run through the centralized ecosystem. This is the PC world where we are free to download and install whatever the hell we want. So why WOULD developers even dream of using such services? Exactly as the reasons just mentioned. These services bring very credible and measurable value to developers.
It isn't just Fortnite. This is Epic Games, who creates the Unreal engine, one of the most popular game engines in the entire industry (and thus the engine's market place as well). They also make the Unreal series of games and Gears series of games. They have a long history in the industry, not just Fortnite. I think ~20 year success is enough establishment to take them seriously on what they know and what they do.
Its not so much that Microsoft got stuck on IE6, its more that IE release cycles were tied directly to Windows OS release cycles and Windows Vista took too long.
IE3 - Windows 95
IE4 - Windows 98
IE5 - Windows 2000
IE6 - Windows XP
IE7 - Windows Vista
IE8 - Windows 7
And it wasn't until after this point that IE decoupled itself from Windows release cycles.
Beyond 4k we've hit the point of diminishing returns. The jump from SD to 720p has several advantages. First, the switch from either composite to component (huge analog quality difference, significantly better color representation), or analog to digital in general (no signal degradation). Next was the jump from interlaced to progressive scan. But the jump from 4k to 8k is only higher pixel density, when we've already got extremely crisp and clear visuals. This jump wont matter anywhere near as much.
The big issue came about in that some domains lapsed, years later someone else registered said domains, put up robots.txt, and as such the entire history from the previous owners were inadvertently deleted.
Some things do indeed need erasing though. I've yet to publish the paper because disclosure was only earlier this month. I found an entire ISP leaking publicly the physical addresses of virtual every single customer on their network (essentially EVERYONE was doxxed at once). This information is mirrored in the Wayback Machine (along with a few other archives). Part of the reason my paper isn't published yet is due to the ISP currently working with these archives to remove the sensitive information the ISP should never have published in the first place.
I love how you compare this to NT4/95, where something as simple as specifying a minor typo in a font name through their GDI API would blue screen the entire OS.
FYI: The acquisition is already complete.
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS. Yeah, you could in theory say the same about email, but think about how complicated it gets to attempt to scan an image, and then get that image into an email attachment? Everyone here on /. probably knows how, but honestly sit down and attempt to write up the steps for someone who isn't a hard-core techie that just needs to get the job done. Too much tech is getting in the way of the actual jobs at hand.
Remember back when companies in the early 2000s would brag that their software was over a million lines of code, as a testament to some sort of level of complexity? Apparently that threshold has been pushed all the way back to only 1000 lines of code. Honestly, I blame all these copy-paste script kiddies who have never actually written code for thinking that a 1000 line program is "complex" or "large" by any stretch of the imagination.
When was the last time anyone visiting this web site EVER shopped at a Gap retail store?
The most relevant tweet ever made about AI is still just as relevant today: https://twitter.com/iamdevlope...
BlueTooth, like many wireless controllers already are, and that work on mobile devices today.
One thing everyone always misses with Microsoft's twice-a-year updates (same frequency as Ubuntu Linux mind you) is that they recompile every single binary in the OS now, rather than just replacing the few that have been touched in each update here n there. What does this mean? There have been new advances in compiler optimizations, plus new advances in memory allocators to help protect against certain types of exploits. There are also the mitigations for things like Specter and Meltdown, which are also baked into the compiler chain. "Features" are not always new toys for people to play with, but also fixes to outstanding issues.
Noted, this is by no means perfect. I'm still pissed the fuck off that Microsoft decided to remove a critical video codec that was used in countless webcams.
But really, what is "software as a service" even mean? It is just another buzz phrase for C-suites, that's it. Again, Windows update schedule mirrors that of Ubuntu and countless other open source distributions. Those F/OSS distros have had their plentiful fair share of fuckups too, but their user base is almost entirely technical users that can work around issues, and is a significantly smaller user base so mass media wont report on it. As someone who services Windows, Debian, and FreeBSD machines, I could rant all day long about amazing new features in each release, side by side with all the amazing new boneheaded fuck ups each has done on those same releases.
"This story is for Medium members."
There is a bunch of standard library stuff that is statically compiled into every binary, regardless if it is used or not. I've searched around, and have yet to see a way to remove it or minimize it. I've seen posts about recompiling the standard library with better optimizations and less debugging, plus using a compressed binary, but the binary size is still insanely huge for small programs.
I was very excited by this, until I saw the RAM reduction. I guess this particular board is intended for embedded applications more so than the B+ being designed as a tiny desktop? I'm having trouble seeing where this fits in, considering a single USB port, but still full HDMI? Maybe just for a wall display that is wireless networked only? That RAM reduction seriously hinders a lot of graphical applications that would use the HDMI port in the first place.