For now, lab grown meat is super expensive, and I honestly can’t see a way it will ever catch up to faciry farmed animals. Factory farmed animal meat is very close to optimal in terms of cost efficiency.

Yeah, the hope isn’t dead.

Politics is the way we make decisions that affect more than three people.

Anything that affects society is politics. Even choosing to not do something is politics.

“Guys can we please talk about how we better do politics without being political?”

I hope your statement was satire. Otherwise I question your understanding of basic concepts.

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Depends on what exactly you mean.

Star Trek famously took scientific concepts that were in early development at that time and finctionalized them. Some of them then were developed in reality. They didn’t “invent” them, but they did popularize them.

For example, the first early prototype work on touch screen was published in 1965, and Star Trek introduced them in 1966. At that time the concept of touch screens was not widely known in the general public. Touch screens did become a wide-spread product much later.

Research on speech recognition started in 1960, computer-based speech synthesis in 1950 and Chatbots in 1964. Neither of them were any good in 1966 when Star Trek used the concepts to create a “computer” that one can talk to. They neither invented the components of that, nor did they invent the combination of all that. But when they used that in fiction, reality wasn’t nearly ready to actually deliver on these promises.

In general, good science fiction usually uses stuff that is right now in research. Bad science fiction makes shit up.

The last line is the key factor and exactly what’s the issue.

You mean your story of buying an unnamed “Microsoft” headset at least 5 years ago and using it so little that you could still return it? Ok. Yeah. That kind of “user story” is pretty insubstantial.

That is really harsh… Good way to harm one’s own economy unless there are equivalent local products for absolutely everything.

Of course, but the download is still labelled as “driver”, and it’s the only (official) way to get the full functionality of the mouse.

Wrong universe.

VR did not take off, but for wildly different reasons than what you state.

A steam deck or a games console also need expensive special equipment (in form of the console) that has no other use. Still they are thriving.

They also need expensive powerful graphics hardware for good quality. (Also, standalone VR totally exists and is pretty good nowadays, to the point where I don’t see much of a reason to pair my headset to my PC, and I am still rocking a Quest 2. Considering you are quoting “a headset at the Microsoft store”, I venture to guess that you haven’t tried VR in over half a decade.)

You don’t need special equipment if you wear glasses for most headsets, you just wear your glasses inside the VR headset. Source: I have been doing that for years. Glasses compatible VR headsets are a thing and quite common.

VR doesn’t cause migraines, migraines are something different. They mainly cause tension headaches and motion sickness. Headsets with better balance (e.g. ones that move the battery to the back of the head or ones that are lighter) reduce tension headaches a lot, and motion sickness differs between people and with practice.

The wide open space is the only actual problem you identified, but also there, VR also works in sitting or stationary standing positions. Full roomscale VR is only required by rather few VR games or apps.

The real issues are:

• VR doesn’t have advantages for working. Like, none at all. Meta focussed a lot on working in VR, and that just doesn’t work. No advantage means no reason to do it.
• VR works for games, but the inability to develop cross-platform between VR and other platforms means that it’s almost completely restricted to VR-exclusives. There are a few non-VR-exclusives with a VR mode, but they usually don’t actually take advantage of VR, since they have to work on a flat screen too. This means, not a lot of games and the ones that exist are super low budget.
• Local multiplayer is very difficult for VR. If I want to do local multiplayer on a flat screen console or PC, I need another controller and a place for the second person to sit. For VR I need to buy a second console (headset) and need more floor space. VR multiplayer in the same room often leads to people hitting each other, so to play together it’s best to separate between rooms.
• Gaming is often used as a relaxing, chill experience. That doesn’t really work in VR, since VR games require you to move. You usually can’t just chill on the couch while playing VR.
• VR software and UX is still in its infancy. Compare that to flat screen games, which took about 20-30 years to actually become really good in therms of UX and gameplay. VR hasn’t had enough time yet to get there, but it’s also not something that can just be forced with more money.

96%? Uff, that’s harsh. Where do you live?

Yeah, it was a problem from day 1, but they did jack all to fix it.

Probably because changing a system usually doesn’t benefit those who got into power via the old system.

The US system is a hot broken mess. It’s 200 years outdated and nobody dared fixing it.

It’s literally a prototype of a democracy that people started to treat like a religion.

The constitutionally mandated two-party-system is perfect at dividing the nation and makes sure that cross-party coalitions aren’t a thing, thus voiding all need for any cooperation.

Mouse drivers are ridiculous. Over 1 GB for just a freaking mouse driver.

If you want a standard unit of measurement, I trust you can re-read the title and find “9GW” in there. That is a proper standard unit, but to most people a number so mindbogglingly huge makes no sense at all, so they added a comparison to something people are more likely to being able to even roughly conceptualize.

The 9 GW are already there if anyone needs a proper value, but without anything to compare it to, 9GW means nothing to most people. Hence the comparison.

In a proper political system?

• Inform the electorate about shit the government is doing
• Suing the government in front of an unpolitical, independent court, up to an unpolitical, independent supreme court
• Bargaining with the government on regular laws for whenever the government needs a 2/3 majority (e.g. for constitutional amendments, which should be a regular thing, not a once-in-a-lifetime event)
• Running a shadow cabinet where each shadow minister is completely up-to-date to everything that happens so that in case the opposition wins the next election they can hit the ground running

Just to name a few things.

But since the USA doesn’t have unpolitical, independent courts and not even an unpolitical, independent supreme court, and constitutional amendments are exceedingly rare, the opposition is pretty worthless.

Just for reference: If you take out the zero-day fixes (all amendments that were passed within the first year) and the two amendments that cancel each other out (18 and 21), the USA has had 15 constitutional amendments. France had 15 full constitutional rewrites in the same time.

Totally possible. Thequestion is whether it’s worth it. Science fiction is cool because of the fiction, not because of the science.

When it becomes science reality it instantly loses it’s luster. Because science fiction doesn’t tell you about the things that suck about the tech.