The thing that amazes me most about that computer is how often it rebooted during the descent. The time required to cycle it could be measured in milliseconds.

Imagine what would happen today if a modern jet was on its final approach to the runway and someone tried to reboot the computer that runs the cockpit. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if after a miniute or so the screen showed an "Installing updates - 1 of 33" message

Not strictly true - it's still in a proving phase, so not being used in anger by anything

It's amazing how often something else can get mistaken for that wake-up phrase. I have my Android phone hooked up to the car for listening to podcasts. I was surprised at how often the audio mutes and Android Auto goes into listening mode because someone on a podcast has said something which it has mistaken for "hey Google"

I bought the camera module and wrote a little webcam application for community weather-watching.

Maybe just paint a hole on the ground for the missle to disappear into

I assume that the targeted person is Wyle E Coyote?

OS does make some of its data available for free, but the really good stuff like MasterMap remains a pay-for (although some institutions like government departments and education can licence it a more attractive rates)

A napkin with a crude diagram, annotated with the text 18"

Seems to be standard practice nowadays - solve a problem that nobody has, and make a product worse.

Plenty of applications which get bundled with Android could claim millions of installs. That doesn't mean they actually get used though, so really stretches the meaning of the word "popular"

Except stupidity - there's a limitless supply of that

I think it often comes down to shareholder pressure. If your primary view of a business its the bottom line, then the people using the limited free product are just freeloaders....drive them out, remove the overhead of subsidising them, boost bottom line value.

WTF DO YOU NEED AI FOR THIS?!

You don't...and I'm willing to bet that the only use of AI here is use of those letters in attention-grabbing headlines.

Seems like nowadays anyone who writes an algorithm in code classifies themselves as "doing AI"

I was at a classic car show a few weeks ago, and saw an old MG that had been converted in a similar way. The company who did it said that the conversion actually improved the car's handling - as well as being in the boot (trunk for USA-ians) batteries were also distributed along the car's floor, which lowered the centre of gravity compared to the regular car

We're getting to the point where cameras are to phones what cupholders are to cars - unless there are more than you can physically use, the manufacturer considers it to be under-specced