With older (PPC?) based Macs, to update the firmware you had to power off the machine, then turn it on by holding the power button until you got an extra beep or sound. This would physically un-write-protect the firmware EPROM so that it could be updated by open firmware.

In their quest to make everything as "user friendly" as possible, they took out this hardware security feature, allowing the update to just happen without any physical action.

Bad Apple, no donut.

Hotels will make you pay just to use an electrical outlet in a meeting room.

They charge for every little tiny thing, simply because business execs will just sign off on all of it and not care about a "paltry" $100 "outlet usage" fee.

Meanwhile, these fees can be big problems for smaller budget conventions, such as fandom cons. The artist alley at half the furry cons I've been to have a policy keeping artists from plugging in their stuff to charge because the con gets dinged hundreds of dollars in penalties by the hotel.

It truly is a non-customer-friendly business if you're not a big company flush with cash.

We have a load control transponder here which allows the power company to temporarily shut off the air conditioner and/or water heater, basically creating a "rolling blackout" of just those devices when demand for power exceeds supply.

The fact that they deploy such devices suggests utilities would be happy to shed some load, especially during the brightest time of day when solar works best and air conditioners are working hardest.

So what's the deal? They want us to use more power after all?

Lead acid batteries last longest when they are fully charged and kept that way, and discharged infrequently. This makes them excellent for use in standby power situations, where they are almost always topped up ready for the power to go out.

Li-Ion batteries last longest when they are actively used. Keeping a Li-Ion battery fully charged all the time is bad for its longevity; the battery structure breaks down faster at a high state of charge. This is why it is recommended to store Li-Ion batteries half-charged in a cold environment, and why cars like the Tesla Model S normally only charge up to 80% unless you require a "full-range charge" for a road trip. Not topping off to 100% extends battery life.

Maybe Facebook intends to keep the batteries at 80%, but it's hard to believe the economics are going to work in their favor.

Not to mention that lead-acid batteries are mostly water and non-combustible sulfuric acid. A Li-Ion battery fire is 50 times nastier than a lead-acid battery fire, and produces a hell of a lot more noxious gases.

The original twin towers DID use robotic window washers. They were built in 1971.

This problem has already been resolved, but they didn't design the new building in a way that robotic window washers could be implemented easily.

Oops.

Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.

Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.

This is why we can't have nice things. :(

...is like using a steam engine to power a car. It's clunky, inefficient, and outmoded.

WHY??????? HTML5 can play audio directly.

Now people will just go out of state to buy Teslas, and thus the tax revenue will go to another state.

This is a case where someone didn't think things through.

I truly don't understand this. When I was a young awkward geek with very specific interests, I would have absolutely LOVED there to be women around with those same interests. Us guys totally loved the few geeky girls that were around and always wished there were more.

Yet today we see guys trying to scare the women away. What the hell changed?

Why the hell did the industry move away from using red LEDs for power indicators?

It really is the best color for that. It's clearly visible, doesn't mess up dark adaptation, and red LEDs are the cheapest.

I suspect they derped the packaging of the release. Its behavior highly suggests missing files or wrong versions.

It's still inexcusable though. Updates should be pushed to a few dozen people inside the company to test the possibility of showstoppers like this one.

>-always try to arrange so you owe a little money come tax time

This this this this this.

You can tweak your allowances with your employer so you always get a small tax bill. No worries about losing your refund money, AND you get the money throughout the year instead of in a lump sum.

Some idiots claim they like receiving that check every year, that it's a nice "bonus", when in actuality it's just you lending Uncle Sam your hard earned money interest free and getting the loan repaid in April. I keep hearing about people with refunds well into the four figures, and want to slap them silly.

I bet the IRS wouldn't give YOU an interest free loan if you stopped withholding... why should you give THEM one?

>technical question like listing all the container classes in STL from the top of my head

Do experienced devs even know this? I've programmed in several languages and I could never give a list of functions on demand. That's what reference material is for.

You honestly dodged a bullet with that one; any company that asks for such a thing has a damaged tech culture.

I can't believe they're still using ATM. I mean, seriously what is this 1996?

The funny thing is I was told all the time growing up that I was "extremely smart" and "gifted", when in reality, I didn't FEEL like I was.

Sure, I could do things with computers that few of the other kids could do, like program and build things. But I don't think I was "smart". I just LIKED doing those things, so I did them all the time, and thus became really good at those things.

Meanwhile, you could ask me to cook a meal at the time and I'd completely fail because I never cooked. I didn't enjoy it, and was thus lousy at it.

I don't think I was unusually "smart" or "gifted". I just got obsessed with computers and technology, so I got good at those things.