Intel as a company isn’t going anywhere any time soon; they’re just too big, with too many resources, not to do at least OK.

They have serious challenges in their approach and performance to engineering, but short of merging with someone else they’ll find their niche. For as long as x86-derived architectures remain current (i.e. if AMD is still chugging along with them) they’ll continue to put out their own chips, and occasionally they’ll manage to get an edge.

The real question would be what happens if x86 finally ceases to be viable. In theory there’s nothing stopping Intel (or AMD) pivoting to ARM or RISC-V (or fucking POWER for that matter) if that’s where the market goes. Losing the patent/licensing edge would sting, though.

261,471 are classed as “long-term empty,” meaning no-one has lived there for six months or more.

If all empty homes were brought back into use, the housing crisis would be solved at a stroke and, arguably, the government would not have to build 1.5m new homes.

I know number literacy is not journalism’s strong point, but surely even the author can grasp the basics of “which number is bigger”.

Bringing 0.25 million houses into occupancy does not “arguably” negate the need to build 1.5 million houses. At best it reduces the required new builds to 1.25 million.

The larger figure (700k) is a meaningless figure for this discussion, because short term vacant homes are by definition not a problem that needs to be solved. Most of them will be homes which are vacant “between occupants”, e.g. ones where the tenant has moved out and a new one hasn’t moved in yet, or the homes of the recently deceased whose estate is still in the process of winding up.

Heck, even a proportion of the 250k “long term” ones won’t be actual problem vacancies; some of those will just be ones like those of the recently deceased for whom the process takes longer than 6 months. A relative of mine recently died, and it took maybe 4-5 months to sort out probate, another couple of months on the market before an offer was accepted, and as far as I know now (about 6 months on again) the new owner is still in the process of renovating it prior to moving in. That’s “long term vacant” in those stats, but it’s not a problem that needs anyone to solve it- it’s just that sometimes things take time.

Dealing with genuine long term vacancies is legitimately a worthy pursuit in these times of housing crisis, but pretending that it’s literally the solution to the problem (and not, you know, building stuff) is a cheap dream.

Ha, my thoughts exactly. I’ve dipped out of Lemmy for a few weeks, just dipped back in today. “I wonder if it’s still wall to wall Musk?” I thought, logging in; and this was the first post I see.

There’s nothing truly like a Framework, because they’re a whole unique category of one. But if you just want something that is user serviceable there are other options.

I’m a big fan of my Star Labs laptop. It came with complete disassembly and reassembly instructions, and pretty much every part is available to buy individually as a replacement. It’s not magically “plug and go” like a Framework, but if you’re comfortable with a screwdriver you should have no trouble.

They’re a Linux specialist small independent producer, too. And being based in the UK, imports to Switzerland should be more straightforward than imports from the States.

The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

Also, it’d be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?

What with Trump recently declaring (in his usual completely coherent and not at all deranged manner) that Google Are Bad, the Supreme Court might not necessarily be feeling so keen to help out on this one.

The UK isn’t quite that far, but it’s absolutely the dominant text messaging and calling app in the UK. Nobody uses the built in Android or Apple tools anymore, and I’m as likely to receive a WhatsApp voice call as an actual phone call these days.

I have Signal on my phone, but I’ve literally never had a cause to use it; I’ve simply got no contacts on there.

See, now I’m fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.

That’s a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they’ve shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.

They said wrong answers only, wtf.

When ordering meat or fish; you should be aware that, while much effort has been taken to remove any bone, meat and fish products are nonetheless served alive. You will need to slaughter them yourself. They have been pasteurised at birth, so cooking them first is not recommended, but advised.

This is high art. Kudos on all the talent.

It always seemed weird to me that most companies just discontinued their traditional sugary variety and went diet only, instead of having a diet version and the sugary version just at a higher price.

The death of original Irn Bru is a bit of a tragedy, and I’m not even sure what the point of low sugar Lucozade is supposed to be.

This feels like something you should go tell Google about rather than the rest of us. They’re the ones who have embedded LLM-generated answers to random search queries.

Realistically, they could just move their servers abroad to a country with less problematic copyright rules and wind up their US operations. It would make no difference to the end user, unless ISPs are also ordered to block access. And even then it’d only be a VPN away.

The risk of total data loss is not zero, but it’s also not the likely outcome.

Oh yeah, I’ll just tell my wife that we’re never having sex again because we’ve now got enough kids. I’m sure this will be a healthy and emotionally viable way of strengthening our relationship over the next 30 years or so until the menopause.

A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.

If they’re doing it the same as unpaid postage, paying them is still optional as a recipient. They’ll just only give you the item of post if you pay what’s owed.

To send things in the post?

It’s a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.

Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It’s a staple of “look at my system” brag posts.

But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don’t know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it’s a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.

The Government has abdicated its duties; for the they who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains themselves and anxiously hopes for just two things: meat and crumpets.

• Juvenal, 100 AD (mostly)

Yes, it’s always going to be unfeasible to cross the Atlantic or Pacific by train.

But the vast, vast majority of air journeys taken every day aren’t trans-oceanic ones. Most journeys are between destinations within the Americas or within Eurasia and Africa. There are an awful lot of journeys by plane that could be moved to trains if the infrastructure was right.