What ads? (User without premium, but proper browser and adblocker)

Absolutely my creed. In my industrial niche, touch screen never took hold - when your action is actually (or at least perceived) important, nobody wants to rely on touch screens.

First I thought “WTF is period data a thing that should concern the government”, but then I noticed we are talking about the future Handmaids Tale country here.

They probably kill off any agency who would protect your consumer rights, anyway. And redefine “broadband” as “you’ve got modem access, so stop whining”. And let the companies keep the subsidies they got for making the former broadband definition happen.

Could be. Key fobs use button cells.

Normal AA or AAA battery, or a CR<something> button? If it is a button cell, try wiping it with alcohol before you insert it. Many modern button cells have a coating that tastes horrible to prevent people (children) from taking them into the mouth. I’ve noticed that on some brands, this coating measurably increases the resistance of the cell, not only reducing the the power it can deliver, but als making it appear “emptier” than they are ofor the measuring circuits. Wiping off the coating with alcohol (90% isopropanol) expanded the cells’ life (in a kitchen scale to boot!) significantly.

Don’t worry, the money is not gone. It is just with someone else, probably one of the billionaires.

Sue them for voter intimidation.

We only had one group visiting on Halloween. But that’s due to a decline of Halloween in general in this area - the fad is over. Here it basically started when our kids were young, and there were maybe five to ten groups coming through. But after a few years, it simply declined.

I still buy some sweets - I don’t want to disappoint kids - but whatever is left goes into the sweets bowl at work.

That is the maximum annual pay for a 0-60 h/week job.

Yes, there are differences in certain x86 command sets. But they actually have a market. RISC-V is just a niche, and splintering in a small niche is making the support situation worse.

And it does not concern you that this RVA profile is version 23? Which means there are a number of CPUs based on lower versions, too, as they don’t just update on a whim? And they are incompatible, with version 23 because they lack instructions?

So a compiler would have to support at least a certain number of those profiles (usually, parts in the embedded world are supported for 10+ years!), and be capable of supporting the one or other non-RVA extension, too, to satisfy customer needs.

That is exactly what I meant with “too many standards”.

Several differing extensions of the RISC-V core machine instructions, for example. A pain in the rear for any compiler builder.

I’ll wait and see. RISC-V is a nice idea, but there are way too many different “standards” to make it a viable ecosystem.

I’m not really into the stock market, but I would not buy Boeing at the moment.

There is always the issue of “x applies” and “x is enforcable”. Think of Signal or Telegram here.

The moved their jurisdiction to the Netherlands? In the EU? Wow. Now the GDPR can be used to really kick their butts.

While it is not shape-shifting, I’ve experienced a touch screen where you actually could “feel bumps”. Depending on your fingers position, it vibrates in a way that makes you “feel” a bump or ridge. It was amazing.

Like entering a PIN: You close your eyes and put a finger on the screen. The code centers a numeric keyboard at this position so you are on the “5”. You can move your fingers up, and you can feel a “ridge” when moving to the “2” field. You move left and feel a ridge when moving to the “1” field. If you move back to the “5”, you can feel the “bump”, and it differs from the feel of the “ridge”. Once you are on the right field, you lift your finger and bring it down again to select this number. If you leave it off a bit longer, it just re-centers the keypad to the “5” position.

Of course this only works with one finger, but it is absolutely amazing how convincing this is, especially if you close your eyes.

Good. I happen to know companies that will have to kick out some rather nice machines that happen to be just under spec for Win11. Those machines are still top for running Linux.

That is a long shot at best. Games are hungry for power and resources, and adding an emulation layer, even a transpilation system between x86 code and ARM processor will not actually improve the situation.