Compatibility is unlikely to be very different. The key is immutability (easy to update, hard to brick your system) and some baked in nice to haves for gaming like some specific drivers/patches and controller support out of the box.

Cheaper than Spotify for the number of users it gives you (at least where I live) and the app itself has functioned significantly better than Spotify’s has in my experience so far while not depriving me of any of the artists and albums I listen to regularly. Early on in its life it was big time selling snake oil, but at this point it’s just a solid alternative to Spotify and YouTube music which have both, frankly, gotten “too big to fail” and have begun enshittification because of it. Man we need more competition…

Just tracking trended data in general would be sufficient to defeat a LARGE number of common cheats. One of the very few use cases “AI” might actually work for in a positive way. But that puts the burden on the developers and server hosters, and it’s much easier to just burden the players directly instead.

To be more clear I was more focused on the not wanting a car that needs software updates part of the argument, less so the means of delivery. Obviously, having an always on connection absolutely sucks and I’d personally be super down with just pushing an update via a USB drive or whatever like you can a BIOS update. But a lot of manufacturers have it set up so that you have to either pay a dealership to plug in the USB for some arbitrary reason, or demand the always on connection to do it. In a utopia of software development where there are no critical bugs, we would all prefer a car that doesn’t need updates. I didn’t mean to imply that I was arguing in favor of remote connection by manufacturers, and it’s absolutely my bad in not wording it properly.

On the flip side: if a car stereo has a known firmware issue causing problems with say Bluetooth connection, I DO want the manufacturer to actually provide an easy means of fixing/updating the borked software. Better that the system was properly tested and feature complete to begin with- but I’m not delusional enough to believe we can truly have nice things.

Alright, where’s my replacement once my current Fitbit dies? What company makes a watch that tracks steps, heart rate, sleep, spO2, notifications, is generally water resistant (light swimming) and has a battery that lasts ~5+ days? Bonus points for open firmware/hardware that doesn’t require me to design my own apps/systems for each of those items. I don’t even use most of what my Versa 3 can do, but I know it won’t last forever and I’d at least like an idea of where to go if/when it breaks down.

On windows the article mentioned being a microcode patch via Windows update. Linux would be similar- but via a kernel update most likely. I’d assume that a general BIOS update would also do the trick, but then you’re relying on motherboard vendors and it’s unlikely many would provide such an update to older hardware, even if it’s still widely used.

Difficult to exploit, already in the process of being patched. Truly, the most breaking of news.

I think they meant it as “once infected may be impossible to disinfect.” But it sure doesn’t read that way at first glance.

Here’s my vote for Bazzite. If your use case is simple computing and games? I don’t know if you can do much better.

Anyone who ritualistically buys Dell. I believe Intel is on the record as having called Dell “the best friend money can buy.”