Asbestos is dangerous to your lungs because the individual fibers are long and sharp and stabby and your mucus lining cannot clear them. These are little metallic beads; I expect your lungs would clear them just like any other similar sized particle of dust or plastic.

But you go live in your protective bubble so you're safe from them. I don't mind.

Ah.. now it makes sense.

Announcing my newest spray-on robotic window cleaner, Robo-Dex; now with nano-robotic ethanol droplets that react to sunlight and microfiber towels for a streak-free shine.

When the technology we used was sold to MicroFocus, the joke was that they are the group that buys mature technology stacks simply to bleed the last bit of revenue out of them before they're completely worthless.

Broadcom has recently started showing the same traits, jacking up the costs of their recently purchased virtualization platform while they can before the product becomes a true commodity that cannot generate revenue.

Now it sounds like Oracle is following the same playbook. Oracle's Java platform has been commoditized. So has the RDMS. Most businesses are discovering they just don't need to pay the high costs Oracle charges.. so they're jacking up the costs for those that have not yet discovered that or are locked in for other reasons.. and doing it quickly before that changes.

What we're witnessing is the death knell of another formerly innovative company that got mired in bureaucracy and complacence. Farewell, Oracle; your time has come.

I just flew Basic Economy on United earlier this week. I could not check in online without entering my CC just in case I brought more than my personal item. Gave the gate agent an earful until he used his badge to verify my personal item's dimensions and proceed with the check-in.

Yeah, complain about the budget airlines while you follow their lead. Pound sand, Kirby.

I see. Avoiding a pass of writing zeros to a structure before writing the values you actually want there is not an efficient pattern, it just makes something crap. Got it; thank you.

They realized their mistake and corrected it. Now, they're not telling people about the forced 15-minute wait, they're just quietly implementing it.

Yet another reason for games to NOT require a network login while launching...

Case in point; right now, Facebook is labeling any posts about Linux as a cybersecurity threat according to DistroWatch. Sure, we can trust the large companies to "do the right thing..." I mean, there's precedent.

Thank you, AI. Let's see how long this new "truth" hangs around.

Best I can figure, "2.4, 5, and 6GHz" somehow got translated to "2, 4, 5, and 6GHz." Please correct me if 4GHz is a band used internationally that I'm not familiar with, but everything I'm seeing says there are only three bands, the lowest of is known as 2.4GHz, not 2GHz, and there is no 4GHz spectrum allocated for WiFi.

The 4-band models out there generally have two 5GHz radios, one of which is dedicated to the backhaul/mesh network.

As much as is possible, before I buy a piece of consumer network gear, I first determine if I can install OpenWRT on it. Doing so means I may forego the latest tech, but it means the service life is much more likely to extend beyond the OEM's support cycle.

My Nighthawk X4S R7800 (AC2600) was released in 2016 and is running OpenWRT 23.5. It is plenty fast enough for now, and even has a SATA port so could be a light-duty NAS when connected to a suitable external enclosure.

Having worked at a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, specifically on the CALEA subsystem testing team, let me say that I'm just shocked that a system designed for lawful intercept would ever be used for nefarious purposes. Shocked, I tell you. Nobody could ever anticipate something like this happening.

(for the emo-divergent, I should point out that the above statement is positively dripping with sarcasm.)

Assuming the NSA is going to share their fiber? I doubt it.

But it's a nice day and I'm traveling at 65mph with the top down in my convertible. You want me to pull over just so I can tell the car to adjust the passenger side mirror?

Agreed. Buttons and knobs are to voice controls as CLI is to GUI. When you use it (or drive in it) every day, the CLI is faster.

And why should their jobs be protected if a robot can do it? I mean, sewing machines are part and parcel of today's standard of living. Imagine a world where the seamstress union was able to successfully ban them and shirts cost 4 times what they do now because everything had to be hand sewn.

Automation is always viewed as an evil by the class of workers it's replacing, but it is inevitably a net positive for the world as a whole, as the price of goods drop and production increases. The class of workers that become redundant experience some pain, of course, but all that excess labor eventually finds its way to other fields to contribute in other ways.