I agree with you, prices will still be market driven. However I was replying to a comment about a hypothetical scenario, which I think is useful to explore however unlikely it might be.

Thinking of the hypothetical scenario where in a short timeframe energy would become near unlimited and almost free:

On the positive side: with no energy limitations, Direct Air Capture technology could be scaled massively. That’s one really promising technology that can take carbon off the air and use it for other things (like sustainable air fuels) or removing it altogether.

Also this would accelerate the transition to electric cars and well, electric everything: why pay for fuel for your car, your stove or boiler, when they can be almost free? That has a potential for good effects on the environment too.

On the negative side: this opens the door for more, cheap transport. If people don’t have to pay for fuel, they’d be more willing to take the car everywhere. This would mean more roads, more infrastructure, more destruction of ecosystems, less space for pedestrians… A trend that is already too difficult to reverse in a world of expensive fuels.

In terms of economics, I could see this accelerating the gap between countries. Those who could benefit from semi-free energy first would have an immense competitive advantage and also lower their manufacturing costs, leaving worse-off countries in a position where they can’t compete because of technology nor because of cheap labour.

Oh no, stop the presses! They missed a C! ⚠️ Their whole argument is invalid!

Unfortunately in the 2020s you don’t even own the games you have the physical media for.

Edit: as a more serious answer, Linux might be a better bet than Windows for playing windows games (ironically), either through Proton or Wine.

Yeah is this linked with dall-e?

I absolutely didn’t say you’re an idiot.

However, I do find it mildly annoying when people copypaste ChatGPT/LLM comments with no context or introduction, as if they had written that themselves. I don’t necessarily fancy spending my time arguing with a chatbot.

Did you ask ChatGPT to explain how a ship stays afloat?

That’s almost 22 billion more profit than Twitter.

I’m trying to defend here a product I don’t really believe in, so bear with me.

The portal lets you play PS5 games, in PS5-ish quality (-ish because it’s obviously not the same as a 4k TV). The best the switch can do is 7-year-old No Man’s Sky, with no multiplayer. Recent Pokémon and Zelda (first party Nintendo games) can’t even reach a constant 30 FPS in the whole of the game.

I don’t think graphics are THAT important, but I know there are people who think that. And in that case, the PS5+Portal is going to beat a standalone steam deck or a switch. If you have a beefy PC maybe a steam deck can stream in better quality, but if you’re in the PS5 ecosystem it’s the best quality handheld gaming you can achieve.

Would I buy it? Absolutely not. 80% of the fun with my steam deck is taking it places. The airport, the plane, a hotel on a business trip, my partner’s place, the dentist waiting room, the bus/train… All that’s missing with the Portal, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see a (niche) market for it.

I firmly believe the solution is autonomous shuttles, not cars. Imagine having bus routes that can dynamically change and adapt to demand. Say we replace every bus with 2 smaller shuttles: during normal service the route could have the same capacity, but if there is an extraordinary event (sports event for example) you could divert them from the low-demand areas to the extraordinary-demand zone.

During lower demand times, you can also have more routes at no extra cost. If you’re clever and make an app to call the shuttle (think Uber but through pre-established routes) the demand can be determined in real time to ensure you don’t have empty shuttles.

And because they’re bigger than passenger cars you’re still increasing the ratio of passengers per vehicle, unlike robotaxis which merely replace private cars, with mostly 1- or 2-passenger trips.

Yet they keep posting more and more profits. Subscriber count has only increased despite the content being lower quality and prices being higher. The fact that we don’t like them increasing the prices doesn’t mean it isn’t working for them.

I’m not arguing it will work forever, but for now, it’s been a viable strategy.

Yeah no way that anyone who is actually center would be happy with transphobe ads. That’s only the techno-right Elon Musk praisers that believe that because they accept technology, they’re not far right even if they are unaccepting of large swathes of society. Center implies accepting points of view in both sides, which is not compatible with intolerant stances.

I agree, but they’d get a large number of users to subscribe.

And then maybe they wouldn’t complain when they raised the price to $3. And a few months later maybe $3.50. Then $5.

A few years ago, people wouldn’t have paid over $15 for a standard Netflix tier without 4K. But the way to boil a frog is to make them nice and comfy in lukewarm water, then keep increasing the temperature slowly… So even if they lose money, maybe a low price for the ad-free YouTube could make sense, from a business perspective.

Genuine question: and are these slated to have full-fledged Linux compatibility? Because I’ve had to give up on Windows on Arm because of silliness like Google refusing to make Google Drive, or apps like Affinity/Blender/Fusion360 not having hardware acceleration thanks to Qualcomm’s subpar drivers.

Absolutely not. Fast yes, but so is the Saleen F-150 and it is not a sports car either by any stretch of imagination. Or an Audi Q7 V12 TDI, or even a Civic Type R.

A sports car has different qualities than being fast, namely feeling fast. That’s how the MX-5 has always managed to be called a sports car despite not being a fast car really.

No, I agree with his point. Features do take space. Maybe we can make space for a headphone jack (🙄), but consumers demand more cameras, with a larger sensor, faster and more power hungry processors, bigger batteries. With any space limitation (even the Pro Max comes with a space limitation because it can’t become an iPad…) there are feature tradeoffs, and obviously a smaller phone will fit fewer cameras, less cooling, a smaller battery, etc.

7" plus an inch of bezels on each side. A Nexus 7 was nearly 10 inches.

God, the small phone crowd are so exhausting. The iPhone Mini. We get it, some people do like tiny phones, but as an example, for iPhone buyers that seems to be <3% of buyers. There is simply not a large enough market for them.

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopular-march-quarter/

It’s not the same phone, because it has USB-C. I wouldn’t have paid 600€ for an iPhone 14, but this one looks somewhat compelling to me.

These assholes used to spy on people - their app used to keep users’ microphones open, so that together with location, they could detect whether bars were airing football matches, and try to find unlicenced ones.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/732157537/spains-soccer-league-fined-for-using-app-to-spy-on-fans-in-fight-to-curb-piracy

I really hope they don’t get away with deleting apps from people’s phones.