Lio

If no body cares why do so many manufacturers insist on logging what we watch?

This happens to the point that Vizio is even willing to lie[1] about not doing it.

If it didn't mater you would be able to actually buy products that didn't spy on you or your family.

1. https://www.techdirt.com/2026/11/02/study-claims-vizio-simpl...

Love Neal's work. He's created so many great worlds but I think Snow Crash and Anathem are my favourites.

I have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'll be prepared to give him better directions. :P

Handling touch screens in McDonalds will regularly put you in contact with staphylococcus because of trace faecal matter from unwashed hands. Your immune system isn't really going adapt to that.

> Come on bro.

Yep, you're right, there's probably a bit of that on there too.

Consider that bacteria are not the only things you could pick up. There's plenty of other parasites to choose from.

There is a reason we ask people to wash their hands.

You're immune system is probably not going to improve on exposure to worm eggs or larvae for example.

To take it to an absurd extreme, if you come across an unflushed public toilet you're not going to drink from it with the hope of boosting your immune system... are you?

There's nothing wrong with the phrase "grooming". We groom lots of things including ourselves as in personal grooming.

This whole language purity test, whether from the left or right, is just a load of performative bollocks.

True but you can definitely become less healthy by eating and drinking the wrong things.

Sugar in sodas, burger buns and ketchup for example is linked to type 2 diabetes.

Yeah that's a much better use case. Now you mention it I could see it being useful for soft synths, mixing, arranging, effects, etc.

I don't think I'd every want to "play" on it except as a last resort but it could definitely be handy for other virtual interfaces.

Imagine a knob per function synth or a modular setup being able to go straight the control in question would be useful.

An interesting aside here, there is no one, true style of action for keyboard instruments and no one, true type of feedback.

I have a good 88-note hammer action stage piano. I love it for acoustic pianos and it's OK for electric pianos (Rhodes, Wurlitzer) but it sucks a bit for organ, clavinet and synths.

I've seen people play Hammond really, really well on a weighted keybeds but it's much easier to just plug a second cheap(er) synth action controller in for organ parts.

I've never met anyone that really liked playing a tablet screen though. :P

Now think of all those people ordering on touch screens in MacDonalds and then eating their food with their hands. Yuk! :-&

I actually disable touch screen in bios on my Dell XPS13 because I don't like touching it accidentally but then I'm not the target market for a touchscreen laptop.

I guess for the most part if you like this you'll use it and if you don't you'll just ignore it.

Well the ZX81 was black and white only so that's not too surprising.

One of my friends had a ZX81 when we were kids.

If you went round this house he'd have to start it loading from cassette while you went out to play in the garden.

When you'd had enough pretending to be the A-Team you'd creep back, praying no one sneezed or farted lest the RAM pack wobbled and you have to start over.

I'd claim this was the Gen X equivalent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch but if you told kids t'day they'd nare believe you.

Good times.

I surprised can’t, or rather don’t, make more use of tidal energy.

That and low density storage located at sea with the turbines.

Yeah if you're a share holder you shouldn't be in any doubt that business is probably dead, if not straight away then in the medium term.

Truffle is very good.

Could also use Matz's Spinel Ruby compiler. That's Ruby with static types using RBS but you have to give up some metaprogramming to get it.

I love the idea that we could get ractors written with Spinel and compiled ahead of time. I also love the idea that I can use Ruby for self contained binary tools.

(And for the sake of avoiding confusion, Crystal is also a great project. I'm really pleased to see them continue making progress).

https://github.com/matz/spinel

"Don't. Be evil!" :P

My understanding was that Sinclare got to 48K using 8× 4116 + 8× 4532 chips where the 4532 was basically a 64K-bit 4164 where only half the chip worked.

> One of the future goals is to copy the ROM and RAM and switch it out of the address space.

Like the BBC Micro Sideways RAM system? Nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideways_address_space

Interesting spec. Why go for 48K of RAM and not at least 64K (the full address space without paging)?

Back in the day 48K got used as a way of binning in the ZX Spectrum (Z80 based) to make use of cheap "bad" memory. Surely RAM prices aren't that crazy now? :P

As long as you can disconnect it from the network then it's more private than something running on a cloud server.

Top Trumps is a popular card game for kids here.

As a kid that’s a hilarious name because “trump” is also a euphemism for fart. To this day, fart is the first thing I think of when I hear the word trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Trumps

Again, as repeated elsewhere in the thread, Musk requested that Starshield be slowed.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...

> and the decision reportedly came from the White House.

That looks like outdated information. The request to slow Starshield came directly from Musk.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-appro...

I have no interest in Siri or always-on AI assistants. I turn as much of that off as I can.

I do have an interest in local, private inference though and I am willing to pay for that.

Apple segmenting the market is actually a good strategy. Horses for courses, as they say.

The CIA already had the SA-C46[1] for that “unexplained death” scenario. I believe ot was developed “but not used”… ;) ;)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAC-46_(handgun)

Yes that makes senses. It's a hedge.

Meta's past behaviour has been to ignore illegality in business, with the hope that they can either win in court or stave off legal action altogether.

That's how they acted with the books they pirated to train models and when they targeted children with gambling products to increase revenue.

They love a legal grey area. It's not what's moral it's what you can get away with.

Yep I find the Elizabeth Line in London has this effect too.

I find it a bit freaky to be honest but you do get used to it.

It’s an interesting question. I would also guess that this kind of behaviour would be illegal for private companies in many countries even if you don’t do it domestically.