The victim self-driving shuttle bus didn't try to back away from being run over. According to reports, it couldn't for unspecified reasons. (I speculate that the autonomous logic or arrangement of sensors didn't adequately cover "going into reverse.")

Someone up-topic asked about sounding a horn. I haven't heard any press reporting that the autonomous vehicle tried.

Either case (if true) represent a difference between how the self-driving logic reacted and how a human driver would probably have. This tells me unless an autono-car can do everything a human driver can, at least as well as a human driver (admittedly a low bar), it shouldn't be on the streets. There will always be corner conditions; they have to be handled as well by the robot as they would be by a human.

Why can't you ask Logitech for source code for the cloud software?

You certainly could ask. Expect crickets, however.

Why Logitech won't respond to your request is right in TFS:

"The certificate will not be renewed as we are focusing resources on our current app-based remote, the Harmony Hub," Logi_WillWong added, which seems to indicate that the shutting down of the Harmony Link system is a way to get more customers on the newer Harmony Hub system.

Planned enforced obsolescence doesn't work if you don't force it. Allowing people to escape "upgrade or fail" defeats the purpose.

Corporations are not your friend, and you have value to them only as far as the next wodge of money they can get out of you.

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and even harder to modify.

-- A Real Programmer

This is why Perl is hated by "developers". They aren't Real Programmers.

Bowmore is less assertive. You don't feel like you're scraping your tongue off on a creosoted railroad tie, like with Laphroaig.

Not like that's a bad thing, obviously.

If you have ever participated in the 20th or 21st Century banking or credit system, Equifax has given away your personally identifiable information.

I've got your "healthy sales culture" right here. Quantified. Metrics-based. Competitive. The textbook case!

Maybe we can compete to sell the anonymous submitter a fire to die in.

Think about it. They got a big sale, so money in pocket. And now they're relieved of any obligation to support what they sold, so money stays in pocket.

Really, the perfect business model is that buyers give you lots of money for absolutely nothing, and can't effectively demand anything afterwards. "Once you have their money, you never give it back." Plus, the uselessness of the articles you sold this time creates a built-in opportunity for the next sale, since obviously your "customer" has to replace what they bought from you. Oh, sure, you'd think your prior sale would be plenty of incentive for the sucker ^w customer to not do business with you any longer, but customers are stupid and easy to fool, so a good salesmonster can get repeat business even while abusing the gullibility of the buyer over and over.

This is why the standard Google "perpetual beta" joke isn't very damn funny. It's "on paper" officially released. So it's not supposed to be beta-quality.

But the phased rollout of 8.0 means that the "lucky winners" of this bug are the owners of the "Google device" class, like Pixel and Nexus users. The overwhelming majority of near-future Oreo users won't get it until their phone manufacturer and wireless provider have had a chance to hack on it (i.e., add their own bloatware), so maybe they'll have a chance to roll in the patch for this behavior before releasing to manufacturing? <cross fingers>

That question is "Where did the monopolistic swine go after they left Microsoft?" Because, let's face it, Microsoft is a creampuff compared to their good old days. The consent decree certainly seemed to affect their market behavior, and that meant there were a lot of hyper-competitive cheating dirtbags who couldn't work to their full potential at ol' MS.

The question has been answered. "Google hired them."

One more bump in battery power and it won't need a Mr. Fusion or a lightning strike.

You'd not know it was not he decline here in New Orleans. Geez, the other night, driving through City Park about 3:30am on a Friday night, the place was packed with people slowly cruising around in cars with their Pokemon playing on their phones.

That wasn't Pokemon. That was Grindr.

Yeah. It's a damn shame we don't have people who... what's the word?... "edit". Like, an editor.

FWIW, you can be safely assured the stories here on /. are US-centric because it's a US-centric site. Thank you for playing.

As of 2016, how easy is it for someone who's not super technical to buy an Android phone without carrier branding that works well on Verizon or Sprint? Even if hardcore users of Slashdot have a lot of time to learn to do their own research, our non-technical friends and family may not.

As of March 2016, I brought a Nexus 6p to the Verizon company store and told them to transfer my phone number to it. They knew to look up the ESN/IMEI, poke it into a Verizon support website (on their own support tablet) to validate that it's compatible with their network, go get a nano-sim and put it into the phone, and transfer the account and phone number to it. Half an hour, no drama.

I didn't have to know, do, or tell them anything. I am a super technical guy, so I was watching like a hawk, ready to manspain anything they didn't get right, but it wasn't necessary.

It can work, if you get someone competent at the support site. Such a thing isn't guaranteed, but it's not impossible either.

You have to appreciate the thoroughness of the engineering, to incorporate the electronics necessary to simulate the sounds of mechanical failure in a solid-state, no-moving-parts storage system.

The only improvement would be including a pyro squib and a small smoke source for the complete effect.

Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.

And now I have a new signature. Thanks.