NovaVeles

Something something, bring back Maxwells house! J/k Glad to see Twit rolling along as always

I am starting to think that Alyx is VR high tide point. It was either going to be the thing that makes folks and developers run to VR or just stand out there is a neat proof of concept that gets ignored. Alyx is now 2 years old, there hasnt been a rush towards the space yet...

One step ahead is an innovation. Two steps ahead is a Martyr.

It will make it to Orbit. Despite all of Elons ways, there are good dedicated people working to make it happen. Making it to the Moon, I am doubtful. Making it to Mars... well lets get to he moon first.

360 had a two things going for its image.

#1 was that the previous generation of Xbox was not the biggest seller, this made the 360 look really good by comparison.

#2 having that 1 year head start, combined with the high price of the Ps3 initially gave it a huge lead. Sony did manage to claw back the user share but it took years to do it.

While I don't think this was a huge factor, GC had to problem of being the middle child. Ps2 had all the games, Xbox had the highest tech. Add in DVD play back on those two and Gamecube just felt like it was stuck in the middle not doing anything amazing.

Long term the games had had legs far greater than the vast majority of Ps2 and Xbox games but at the time it didn't look like it.

I'm not trying to undermine but more just act as a reminder to some folk. There is no such thing as "just an engineering problem". These things do not exist in a vacuum. It is a part of the tripod of economics and politics. If any one of these three buckles, the whole thing doesn't happen. Concord was an engineering problem we solved, but the economics and politics around it made it a white elephant. Here's hoping this doesn't happen to this.

Only question I would ask him is what he though of the love letter than is the 2018 game Tetris Effect?

I could not tell you the last time I had Windows in the home. I would guess around 2013. After then I kind of went (almost) 'Full Stallman' - I had been moving that way for a few years already.

The only Microsoft product I have is an old Xbox 360 that was updated once and then left permanently offline.

Side story - I remember in late 2001 when the 1st Xbox was coming out and I was in a retail store. There was couple looking to see what consoles where around and what to choose. The husband saw the Xbox and the Microsoft name on it. "I'm not supporting that thing! They have made my life a living hell, Mark my worlds they will do anything to dominate the market and I do NOT support that!" Seeing how they are trying to still buy their way to success, his words ring true today.

While the Amiga was impressive in the 80's, they failed to continue on that path of technical innovation. The technical lead they provided simply vanished by having everyone else move forwards just a little bit faster than they were. Thus the inevitable erosion of their space. By the mid 90's there was little compelling that gave the Amiga an advantage and thus they had their lunch eaten. I suspect if we were to project the Amiga forward to today it would have actually meant us being in a worse place than we are today.

In the same way if we had of waited for Silicon Graphics to provide desktop 3D graphics, we would have been waiting for a LONG time and at a high price.

> Only decades ago, it seems the user of the device was the master. Now it seems the other way around.

"There are only two possibilities. Either the user controls the computer or the computer controls the user" - Richard Stallman

"Ask HN: What happened to gloves?"

That is a title that would drag me in!

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

This is something I always have to highlight to folks. In Australia, personally speaking, the best veggie burger is call the 'Not burger'. It doesn't taste like Meat, it just tastes good! There is a reason why they haven't changed it in almost 20 years I have known about it.

There is a reasonable argument that with a lot of the newer technology like the internet that while we have made information easier to produce and move about - it is a lot more fragile that it has ever been. Resilience is traded for convenience.

If there is a long term decline of material/energy resources for whatever reason, we will be in a world of pain in terms of information preservation. Will we favor food or archiving? Yes, this is an extreme scenareo but one that is fun to think about.

SSD's, Hard drives, chemical photographs and high acid paper printing will end up being the Achilles heal of this stuff. It still feels like stories and stone tablets are the best we have for real multi generational - multi millennial information storage.

I always found the Android vs Apple thing to be hilarious. You like Apple, cool - go for. I used to use them. Not any more. But that is my choice just as much as yours is.

There are deeper questions of privacy and eco-system lock in on all sides. But to most people is just isn't that big of an issue.

Honestly my big gripe still is - I miss Windows phone!

Back in 1989 - Dow Chemcial made a proposal. Even then, there was too many plastic type to sort out and contamination was a major issue. They had a realistic but somewhat defeatist solution. Just burn it all. Use it for heat and power, treat plastic as an intermediate step of oil and nothing more. Then figure out emissions capture technology so that it can be stored somehow.

I don't agree with it entirely but I did like that it was an realistic approach to a complex problem.

I am not sure why that is the case. I used to have one that was a cheap small converter cartridge. To explore how it worked, I was amazed to see that there where no chips on the board but merely contacts and traces.

I am completely with this angle as well. In a way I was saying 'Ignorance is bliss but the consequences are dyer'.

The fluid dynamics thing is a good example. Another one is the Demoscene. I knowing how it is done, or the limitations they are working with - that is where the magic comes from.

I didn't mean it 'too' literally, but that is indeed a neat fact.

I think I have heard Ram Dass say that a few times before. ;)

Official language recognition generally lags the real world by a significant amount. A word can be in use for many years before it even gets a consideration into a dictionary. Dictionary's reflect the world, not dictate it.

Alternatively - "The nicest thing about anything is not knowing what it is." - George Carlin.

Not knowing how a cloud works is magical for instance. But taking this line of thinking too far can be disastrous. There is a happy middle ground.

John Michael Greer summarized it wonderfully in the book 'Dark Age America'. Don't confuse technical capabilities with economic realities. Argued that Boeing never getting the SST off the ground was probably one of the better disasters to befall them.

Vaclav Smil was right in pointing out that passenger jets have gotten much more fuel efficient since 1967 but they travel no faster. The fuel savings were passed onto passengers and that made flight more appealing. Economics ultimately rule over what lasts long term.

Super sonic flight is a marvel of engineering but an economic nightmare. It is this lens by which a lot of technologies should be judged long term.

Similar thinking to "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." - Marcus Aurelius

For anyone that has beaten addiction, it is this kind of thinking one eventually takes on. For all the help that you can make to make the leap easier - eventually you have to take that mental leap for change. At no point is it easy, especially with chemical addiction, but it is the step than needs to happen.

I usually check the front page, find 2-5 things I like and then move on for the day. Far different to all the others.

> “It’s not physics, it’s engineering,”

When it comes to fusion I am always in too minds about statements like this.

On one hand, yeah, it is something that we may be able to wrangle into something useful.

On the other, fusion can be seen as a perpetual motion machine that doesn't defy the laws of physics. It can kind of inhabit that same mind space.

For example the origin of the 2002 SARS out break was only established in 2017/2018 - so 16 years after the fact.

Yeah, that would do it. :D My work PC is currently using 8.4GB with outlook, Excel and note pad open!

That may be the case but the question is, what big change to the end user could they pitch to justify such a leap in the requirements?

This is where it becomes apparent that the way I use my machine is very different to some folks on here.

It is a Lenovo T400 with 4GB of RAM. In order to maximise the life span of the SSD, I knocked out the swap sector. So that is 4GB, no option to move beyond that.

That said in daily use, I have never seen my usage go anywhere near 3GB but I suspect that is just because I am very frugal with my browsing and keep cleaning up unused tabs.