I have a Win11 ThinkPad for work, so I get MS ads, Lenovo ads, and 2 or 3 versions each of Teams and Outlook. We use SharePoint, so when I open a file from there via the web interface, I don’t want to deal with that BS for printing. Depending if it’s Word or Excel, the button/link for opening in the desktop app will be located differently (or maybe it’s based on editing permissions), but it never fails to throw a dialog saying it couldn’t open the file in desktop mode and asking if i want to cancel or try again…just before the desktop app opens.

Some of these things don’t happen every day, but they all happen every week, and anyone who doesn’t see a problem with that hasn’t used a half-decent OS (and I’m willing to include early-release Win10 in that group, telemetry and Cortana notwithstanding).

Why on earth would she have any interest in helping the company retain knowledge when the country that company is in has treated her so poorly? Move on and it’s their loss.

“if we bank online, how come we can’t vote?”

There are two competing goals: traceability and anonymity. Banking has strong traceability and no anonymity. Having both is much harder than having one but not the other. Traceability is maintained until you put the ballot in the box, and the security of those boxes are maintained by multiple people. Banks also have traceability, by themselves and you, in part by removing anonymity - you can verify activity in your account. Anonymity is vital to maintain the integrity of the vote - if you can’t prove who you voted for, your vote can’t be easily sold or coerced out of you.

“imagine how many more people would vote if you could just open your phone and do it”

Sure, good point, simplicity would be nice, but part of the process is verifying who is voting and thay they aren’t being coerced. Do you have any proposals for doing that remotely? I can’t think of any.

“why can’t we vote on proposals like we do on Reddit? with their discussions”

We can have discussions about votes like we are, right now. It would be nice if more people did, and more policies could be easily read by laymen so we could do this without intermediaries such as news sites. And how to turn that into direct democracy, where everyone gets a vote, anonymously and verified? See above.

I hope things trend this way in the future, but there are fundamental problems to solve before it can be safely done.

And every time one runs into a wall at fatal speeds, two slower ones appear.

There are 4 main bottlenecks in computers, and they generally take turns being the most relevant. CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. Bus speed can also be a bottleneck, but that is generally factored in and we know how to make faster buses for the most part, using parallelization if nothing else.

Right now, for home computer use, GPU is the biggest factor. Good thing, too, because CPUs are plateauing, and will probably require a fundamental change in architecture or programming techniques to get past it.

Yeah, it’s funny because of how terrible everyone is. I’m laughing because it’s outrageous, not because the characters are going through relatable hijinks.

I wouldn’t say inevitable, but there seems to be a whole aspect of capitalism where doing that which is not done is the norm. So all those baby steps inevitably lead to a degree of rapaciousness that is hard to envision 20 or 40 years ago.

Well, that got a laugh out of me.

“How did we get here from there?” One step at a time.

Not all consequences are immediate.

And have an easily accessed setting to turn it all off if you don’t want it. I’d even be okay with a physical switch. The short answere is, your appliance should do what you and only you want it to do, and you should be able to enforce that.

Or growing eyeballs in your teeth.

…where were your balls when that happened?

And where is the cowlick on there…

Yearning for the mines.

I had someone at work ask me if I was an expert at Excel. I’ve written macros in VBA and made formulas that would have been easier as a macro so I could save them as xlsx instead of xlsm. I said yes, with some hesitation. She asked me if I could help her with a problem and I said sure. The problem was a bunch of hidden cells. At least it wasn’t a bunch of data she’d deleted and wanted me to get back for her.

The amazing part was how hard it was to show the cells in the latest version of Excel.

Can’t read the articles? Can’t even read step 1 on a list!

Lol this is the typical takeaway. A better result would be to not engage in illegal practices and then it doesn’t matter if you put it in writing, but that’s not how you become a billionaire.

Well, I could counter that point, which I already said was valid, but I already gave those points and you completely ignored them. Continue as you are, I’m sure it gives some relief from any feelings of responsibility for your actions and the carbon emitted to allow it.

I used to play on my PC, and have used kb+m and HOTAS. I mostly play on the Steam Deck now, and with a few tweaks have been able to get everything up and running pretty much the way I like. All 3 have pluses and minuses.

HOTAS feels pretty great, especially after you get everything set up just right. I found it clunky for on foot, but that may have been more experience than everything else. It felt good enough that I really considered HOSAS, but that’s another expense I wasn’t willing to invest in. HOSAS flying can be truly amazing.

KB+M is pretty flexible, and the conversion from in ship to on foot is seamless. The biggest downside is remembering the dozens of keys you’ve bound to various functions, and the slight differences between in ship, in SRV, and on foot.

The Steam Deck is a little worse than the other two options, but it’s so convenient. It’s supported in game, so hints show your controller binds, which helps a lot. The default graphics leave text a little fuzzy, but switching the anti-alias from the default fixes this (I can find it later if need be). You will need button combos to do everything you need to, but, hints. Your deck will sound like a jet the whole time (so does my computer). I find the dual 2-axis joysticks a better experience than KB+M for flying, but not quite as good as a 3-axis joystick and throttle. I don’t really use the tactile pads for anything but keyboard entry, which could be smoother. I rarely use the touch screen feature as well.

I’m not sure if Elite has controller support, but I think it does. If you have a controller as capable as the Steam Deck, it’s definitely an option.

If the tariffs get high enough, it will just mean more American oil will be used domestically.