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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.

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.

I’ve seen worse. A group at the university was using the IBM mainframe for basically everything from their terminals. To reduce load on the mainframe, the university spent a load of money to buy a cluster of workstations with crazy specs and software, each one more expensive than a big new car back then.

I visited them shortly after they got those killer machines. For comparison: in our university department, we had green serial terminals connected to an old VAX 11/780. They had those shiny new workstations with GUI on high-resolution (for that time) color monitors. My friend there logged in - and his autostart just opened two terminal sessions on the IBM mainframe, where he did all his work just like before. He was happy that he had the terminals in a windowed environment, though, so he could easily open and handle several sessions on the machine at the same time.

I think it will not take long until there is a cell phone/PC hybrid: you plug your cell phone into a base and can use it with a normal desktop interface on a screen with mouse and keyboard. A bit like the Nintendo switch.

This is a sign of ARM approaching the “enough” level. I remember the times when it was actually important to buy the latest PC at least every other year to have enough power to run a basic office suite or similar programs with acceptable speed.

Nowadays, you can staff offices with about any PC off the shelf - it is powerful and big enough to fulfill the needs of the majority of users. Of course there are servers, there are power users, engineers running simulations, and of course gamers who need more power, and who still fuel the cutting edge of PC building. But the masses don’t need to be cutting edge anymore. A rather basic machine is enough.

Here comes the ARM: For many years, ARM-based chips were used as SOCs, running anything from washing machines to mobile phones. But they have grown bigger and faster, and I can see them approaching the point that they can cover the basic needs of the average office and home user - which would be a damn big chunk of the market. It would be enough for those needs, but it would be cheaper and in many aspects less troublesome than Intel and AMD. Take for example power consumption in relation to computational power, where ARM is way better than the old and crusty x86 architecture. And less power leads to less cooling requirements, making the machines smaller, more energy efficient, and less noisy.

I can see ARM-based systems approaching this enough level, and I can see that Intel and ARM are deadly afraid of that scenario.

Short: Yes, of course. Long: Well, this is really a long answer, depending on your needs…

Nothing that cannot be fixed by a Linux install.

Just generally break people’s systems, add spyware, lie to users, treat them like shit.

Too many people bought that shit. Their own fault for getting ripped another one.