Companies want unbounded exponential profits. Now guess where those profits are coming from.

It should be noted that a lot of companies audit security software like this and attest that the implementation is secure and safe to use.

I'm curious if Microsoft did the same for their encryption scheme and if so, who they hired. Because anyone who did attest to the security of this component is likely compromised as well.

I'm asking out of genuine ignorance here, but... don't you have to distribute it?

A lot of people have asked in the past, why can't we just cover the Sahara Desert in solar panels, and my understanding is that it's because you can't get all of that power where it needs to go. So the installments have to be distributed geographically, not all in one place, no?

4 commits

Hypocrite.

Yeah, this should definitely not be allowed. Google should not be allowed to dictate which operating systems people are allowed to use. And no doubt that this is harmful to many European companies and prevents competition in the space of mobile operating systems.

That said, it remains to be seen if anything will get done about it.

Agreed, they probably are cheap garbage (I myself don't know, I haven't driven cars regularly in a while), but two things:

1. Manufacturing volume is really important in making cars. You need know-how, you need experts and ways to make things better and deliver incremental improvements, and that becomes a lot easier when you have higher volumes.

2. People don't have lots of cash to burn these days - quality is easy to sacrifice when you don't have the cash to pay up.

Ease of adoption, if I'm not mistaken (so I was told 20-ish years ago when I started learning C++). Think back to the early/mid '90s - there was a lot of existing C code out there back then, people really didn't want to throw it away but had few options if they wanted to use something else. C compatibility offered a way for large companies to incrementally adopt C++. All you had to do was change your compiler and your existing C code would compile, and you could write new stuff in C++. In the mean time, other languages could only leverage that existing code by using message passing or FFI-like frameworks. For example, you would have to use JNI if you were writing Java I think - maybe there were other options, but it was a big pain to deal with at the time, especially since tooling was probably not as polished back then.

Maybe it's not as much of an issue today, but they have to maintain compatibility with earlier versions, so while it helped adoption a lot, it also is a big challenge for the language and its ability to move forward.

Well it's about time we fix that, isn't it?

This is true, but the risks of the oil economy have been known for a very long time. Everybody knows that the oil/auto fuel supply chain is in areas with fragile geopolitical relations and it's not like this hasn't happened before.

What we should be doing is channeling our frustration toward transitioning from ICE automobiles to EVs[1], but look at how slowly European carmakers are adapting. The rate of change in Germany has been embarrassingly slow and China is galaxies ahead of anyone else. We need to invest and compete, rather than throwing up our hands and blaming others for fucking up things we shouldn't be depending on anymore.

[1]: and improving public transit too of course

I managed to beat 4BC and decided I wasn't having fun anymore. Once you get to 4BC or 5BC, it feels more like taking a driving test or a calculus exam, and I'd rather play a game that's a little more forgiving of making mistakes because I like to try silly new things.

Fortunately, custom mode is available, so I would play on 5BC with refillable health potions and enemy damage turned down to the lowest amount possible, and I found it a lot more fun.

And side note: all games need a custom mode like Dead Cells has, it's impossible to tune a game to a single difficulty that's fun for everybody!

Dota 2 is the most I have logged at around 3000 hours, but I don't have any friends to play with and don't want to deal with randoms, so almost all of it is against bots. Even though the bots are garbage, there's still so many creative, silly ways to play that game and ridiculous builds that are fun to try and see if they work.

Super Smash Brothers (64 and melee) is probably the most of all time though. Any time I pick up a new 2D game, I find myself comparing it to SSB in terms of mechanics. The way you control your characters in that series is the most innovative and compelling concept I have ever seen in a game. If I ever have the time to make a game myself, I would probably heavily model it based on that control scheme.

I also have to give a shoutout to Streets of Rogue, which is a fairly obscure rogue-like that deserves a lot more attention IMO. Another very replayable game with many fascinating play styles and ways to complete missions. It's on Steam and it's fantastic, I would highly recommend it.

Enter the Gungeon is another game I have high playtime on. It took about 40 hours before it started becoming fun, but man, it's awesome once you finally figure out how to properly dodge enemies and make the most of your weapons and items.

If you go back a few decades, you would see how companies would produce technological innovations with the mindset of, "If we design the best, most useful device possible, customers will come to us and buy our product".

Today, that has flipped into a mindset of, "We will create this technology, force users into adoption, and exploit them as hard as possible once we have them under our control."

The technology has become a means to control users, not to enable them.

At least it's good to see that people are catching on though.