Unless you really need to optimise for land use. An arbitrarily large solar array in space could transmit to a fairly small collector in the surface.

As for losing power to atmospheric attenuation, high frequency microwaves will pass right through most everything that would scatter visible light. Clouds, dust, etc wouldn’t really impede it.

I won’t say it’s not a silly idea, because it is. It’s fun to think about though.

For reasons similar to why plain bread doesn’t show up in sandwich recommendations.

I offer that it’s actually worse, since it requires acting on it and knowing it’s wrong.

Old hardware is certainly possible. I salvaged it from my parents who were going to throw it out. It’s got an A10-8700P and is limping along with a single 4GB DIMM. The thing doesn’t even have a second memory slot.

I do like the dedication to Mint! To be honest it’s generally my default pick if I need to slap Linux onto something. I actually tried putting it on the gaming table machine but for reasons I didn’t feel like digging into it just did not cooperate, and Debian did.

CachyOS on the luggable gaming machine is mostly just because I hadn’t used it before and wanted to give it a spin. So far so good.

As for the Windows machine, it’s a gaming rig and at the time it was built, pre-steam deck, Linux wasn’t quite yet in as good a position for that as it is now. I just can’t be bothered to switch it mid-stream as it were. It’s almost certainly going to be the last Windows machine I ever own though.

• Luggable gaming rig: CachyOS
• Surface Go 2: Mint
• Old laptop strapped to the underside of the gaming table: Debian
• NUC home server: Ubuntu Server
• Steam Deck: SteamOS

Non-linux:

• Gaming tower: Windows
• Previous gaming tower repurposed as NAS: TrueNAS

This is such a bizarre lawsuit. I had to pull up the actual filing to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

Specifically, the PCR contends that Valve has abused its dominant position by:

(a) imposing Platform Parity Obligations (“PPOs”) that prohibit publishers, which market PC Games, from selling Products through other distribution channels on better terms than the same Products are available on Steam

This is only true if you’re selling Steam product keys, which I feel just makes good sense. You’re still selling something that’s on Valve’s platform, so you need to adhere to Valve’s rules. You can offer a non-steam copy under any terms you like.

(b) restricting the ability of users to purchase Add-on Content for games purchased on Steam through other distribution channels (a ‘tying’ or ‘anti-steering’ infringement)

…is there any platform where this is not the case for paid content? I guess for anything that has additional content available on GoG this is technically true by virtue of it lacking DRM, but where else would you even buy it in that case? Is there some other DRM-free platform from which I can buy Blood and Wine and drop it into my GoG version of Witcher III?

(c) charging publishers unfair and excessive commission rates for distributing the Products (collectively the “Infringing Conduct”).

The question of whether Valve’s 30% is “fair” or not has been beaten to death already but it is funny to me how it was basically the industry standard right up until people started gunning for bigger pieces of the PC gaming pie and started undercutting Valve.

True size is possible just fine on a 2D surface. For both too large and too small to be even possible there must exist some transitional point where the size is correct.

You cannot have both the size and shape correct at the same time. Having the correct size means distorting the shape, and vise versa. One or the other can be correct, but never both.

I don’t really disagree, at least in principle. You’re absolutely correct that workflows should be clear and developers often do not make good UI/UX. You just didn’t really qualify your original statement with any of that and made it an absolute, but you’ve clarified now and I’m pretty sure we agree.

a UI should offer everything a user can do in a given moment, readily available, nothing hidden behind more than a single menu.

That would be a nightmare for any sufficiently complex software. Can you imagine how dense the UI would need to be for something like Blender or even Excel if literally every possible option of “things available to do right now” had to be at most two clicks away?

People can be busy or tired or anything else. You aren’t owed 100% engagement all of the time, even from your friends.

They are in general purpose PCs though. Intel has them taking up die space in a bunch of their recent core ultra processors.

Reads an article about people falling for the doorman fallacy, immediately falls for the doorman fallacy.

There’s another alternative, which is manually adding libraries to your project yourself instead of doing it all automatically through a package manager.

Yes, it’s less convenient to download and import a package manually, especially if you need to do the same with a litany of dependencies, but I don’t feel like that’s a bad thing. Raising the barrier of entry for arbitrarily adding thousands of lines of other people’s code to your project would force people to think about how much of that they actually need.

I am so incredibly glad that I find the “yes man” attitude of most LLMs to be extremely off-putting and actively discourages me from using them

No? I very much don’t believe it is.

Sure, that’s not a problem. Calling a legitimate sensitivity an “allergy” for the sake of expediency isn’t a problem. It’s still a legitimate dietary concern that needs similar handling.

I guess I’m more averse to lying then this supposed “average person” then.

I’m okay with that.

I literally said that I do get it corrected unless doing so is a huge inconvenience for me.

I don’t lie about why I need special treatment.

I have preferences for things I don’t like on my food and ask for removals or substitutions regularly. Sometimes those requests are forgotten or ignored and I will get it remade, or maybe I just suck it up and deal with it if it’s takeout and I’m a half hour from where I got the food. Not once in my entire life have I considered telling people I have an allergy.

So yes, I have thought about why a person might feel like they have to lie about severity, and my conclusion is “that person is a self-centered asshole.”