One thing to keep mind is that while the percentage share of renewables is growing, in absolute terms electricity production from coal and gas still increased. Looking at this data, which I assume to be the base of this article.

HDR vs no HDR makes a big difference in colours to me. And if you compare compressed low Bitrate footage vs higher Bitrate there will often be artifacts or color banding, particularly in darker scenes or wherever you have gradients.

It ofc also depends on what device you are watching it on. But I would say that yes if you have a movie (made up example) that is compressed to 5gb total size vs 25gb vs 70gb for the uncompressed Blu-ray quality, then the first jump will be a very noticeable difference assuming you have capable hardware. Whereas the second one will be much much less noticeable and also come with other drawbacks that need to weighted off, e.g. storage requirements.

Is that actually the case? I was under the impression that at least under US teenagers the iPhone usage was insanely high. And those are far from cheap, so at least there parents seem fine in spending big.

Also the cited article mentions $250 for the se watch vs $200 for the Samsung (although I guess that one might have bigger discounts). $50 difference doesn’t seem large for the “Apple tax”.

To me the plastic part would just seem like a risky gamble. Apple has the premium image and it might cheapen it. Especially on a device that is constantly visible, has skin contact and isn’t used with any case.

The question is if they actually need more land or just more resources. I imagine they already get the latter for dirt cheap, so why bother actually invading.

Doesn’t look great:

• No progress with health features, which seem like the most exciting evolution.

• Who truly needs the larger screen and faster chip. Especially the former will presumably reduce battery life, something that very much matters with watches.

The company is also working on a new version of its lower-cost Apple Watch SE model, which it last updated in 2022. One idea the company has tested is swapping the aluminium shell for rigid plastic. It’s likely to lower the cost to something that could better rival Samsung’s cheapest watch, the $199 Galaxy Watch FE. The SE currently starts at $249.

That really doesn’t sound like Apple.

But are those notifications and pop ups directly saying something like “from now on we will start to train ai on your information”?

Or is is one of the hundredth change of terms and conditions that people usually just skip, which mentions the major change in some fine print. Or a pop up designed with dark patterns to influence people into just accepting without actual informed consent?

Is that the one they recently moved from Moscow to Crimera? First article I found on the topic

If so that didn’t take long and is pretty embarrassing.

Fallout probably got a boost from the new series, that was quite well received.

I wonder if this method doesn’t overproportionally eliminates valuable workers, who can easily switch companies.

You are right, Apple also has some legit professional staff. And if the person using it gets paid a lot, then a one time hardware purchase becomes negligible.

Accurate fine motor control and even basic stuff like typing does seem not quite fleshed out, so that is indeed an issue. But I don’t think it’s a deal breaker that you can’t do long shifts with it, since you’d probably only use it for certain tasks.

Even more of a niche, but I could see it for something like architects. Both for work and to maybe even present to clients.

Performance and bettery is good, but they’re barely better than what Intel and AMD offer.

And both AMD and Intel have pretty exciting new architectures coming soon with zen5 and lunar lake.

Meanwhile, on Vive, you could stand up, walk around, and manipulate the world with two tracked remotes.

Issue is that if I remember correctly the vive was an outside-in concept that required base stations to be setup. So you lose the cable, but are still bound by location. And importantly also needs a pc aswell. So still far away from standalone.

I think the core issue is that every piece of new technology so far has helped us get lazier. People used to walk around an office, then they sat at a computer, now they carry their computer with them and do things from the couch.

Nobody wants to get up to do things if they can avoid it, and that’s the only real benefit VR/AR provides

But I think VR/AR could make us lazier:

For VR the promise is immersion. You get to experience a concert, sport event, unique experience or exotic place from your own living room. And for many of that it is just fine to sit on a couch and still have a benefit from the technology.

For AR i think it’s a bit more productivity focused. For example less need to train personel, if you can project every instruction into their field of view.

Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren’t many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.

Yeah normally Apple is maybe the only company that has the scale and control over their ecosystem to force rapid adoption. But this was clearly not a consumer product aimed at capturing the masses, but more or less a dev kit sold to anyone willing to shell out the price.

The PS VR2 sounds nice, but feels like it is only aimed at the gaming market and even there sony only captures a fraction.

The Quest as a standalone device imo really would have the best shot at mass market adoption, but Facebook rightfully has an image problem. And despite spending so much on development doesn’t seem to create any content or incentivize others to do so.

Edit: actually kind of forgot “bigscreenVR”. I am somewhat surprised that the default is to cram all hardware into the headset making it much bulkier instead of a seperate piece on a belt, back, or maybe strap on your upper arm.

but it’s utterly useless.

That imo has been the issue with VR/AR for a while now. The Hardware as you said is pretty good by now and looking at something like the quest even afforable. What’s lacking is content and use cases.

Smartphones had an easier time being adopted, since it was just moving from a larger to a smaller screen. But VR/AR actually needs a new type of content to make use of it’s capabilities. And there you run into a chicken/egg problem, where no one is putting in the effort (and vr content is harder to produce) without a large user base.

Just games and some office stuff (that you can do just as well on a regular pc) aren’t cutting it. You’d need stuff like every major sport event being broadcast with unique content, e.g. formula one with the ability to put yourself into the driver seat of any car.

Or “Citadel” for that matter, which apparently cost $300m

Same. The thing lacking is user base and content. Also a backlog of older content as knowledge source, but that would come overtime with through the former.

As far as usability goes Iemmy is just as good as reddit was for me. My instance (lemme.ee) is stable and the app experience (currently “connect”) is just as smooth as it was for reddit (where I used “relay”).

I sadly have to admit that I don’t contribute enough in terms of creating and posting threads.

Also I don’t think we’ve really run out of suitable space to install new panels. If that ever happens it might be worthwhile to replace them, but as you said we can otherwise just run them alongside new installations until they break or maintenance costs surpass their profits

signatories of the Budapest memorandum are keeping their word to defend Ukraine’s sovereign

Is that actually something they promised in the Budapest memorandum?

My knowledge on the topic is very limited, but based on Wikipedia i was under the impression that signatories essentially only promised to not attack themself (which Russia clearly violated) and offer assistance only in the limited case where nuclear weapons are used (which isn’t the case). Also “assistance” can mean defense, but doesn’t necessarily, making it quite vague and the point about consultations when questions arise makes it even less binding.

Smartest thing they could do now is shut down their remaining software development. Ship the TVs with vanilla Google OS

I think there’s a difference between smartwatches and TVs in terms of being able to monetize the operating system. On the tiny screen of a watch you can’t really put any advertisement (at least not without destroying the usability completely) and most of the things you can analyse are happening on the smartphone.

A TV on the other hand gives you a huge surface in the living room of a families home and if you have control of the OS there are plenty of ways to monetize it (and companies willing to pay for it). You can preinstall certain streaming apps (and get payed for it), promote newly released movies and give links to rent them (either your own shop or again for commission), you can collect userdata and sell that to other companies, and much more.

I mean i agree that more should be done and faster, but on the topic of prisoner conscription, i think this makes it harder for the west to act. Since there isn’t an obligation like Nato, which someone already mentioned, any aid has to gather popular support. And i can imagine how the downside mentioned above could negatively affect that.