A couple of weeks ago, several Microsoft Logos and icons changed, for example, the blue envelope shown while Outlook365 is starting. No purpose to it, not better or worse, just somewhat different. Why?

So Firefox us going to do the same thing? Again, why? There is zero need for this, and certainly arguments against it.

UIs and Logos need to be stable, preferably over decades. We need a lot fewer designers.

Which was better for the consumer? Netflix, back when they were *the* streaming platform? Or the situation today, where streaming is balkanized?

What's good for the big game studios is different from what's good for gamers. As long as Steam remains consumer-friendly, they can (and will) keep their monopoly.

Everyone who really saw a benefit to an EV has bought one. Those are people who have an easy solution for charging, plus climate fanatics who want an EV for political reasons.

The rest of the population will buy an EV when they cost less than the alternative. Also, charging has to be easy: either charge in the employer's parking lot (at reasonable costs), or landlords install charging stations where renters can use them overnight. That's a big ask.

Meanwhile, it's just as well that EV sales are slowing down, because the general net infrastructure is not up to charging millions of vehicles. I'm not just speaking of the US here - I'm in Europe, and that's generally true here as well.

Hubris. With our capabilities within our universe, we cannot fully describe our reality. However - if our universe is a simulation - we have no idea of the capabilities of the universe in which that simulation runs, no idea of its physical laws and reality.

Consider: if we create a simulation, even one that allows computation: can that simulation potentially explain itself? It really depends on the capabilities we build into it.

The fact that they know this proves what we already knew: chats are saved and mined for information. Probably even temporary chats, whatever they say.

Of course, there are a lot of people out there who are disturbed or lonely. ChatGPT&Co make for someone to talk to - and someone is better than no one. That said, I hope that a serious discussion of suicide leads immediately to a suggestion to call a help-line.

Meanwhile, the kids just screwing around can be told to fob off - only the AIs are way to sycophantic to actually do that.

basic flaws like buffer overflows, command injections, and SQL injections

I teach students how to avoid these kinds of flaws in my basic programming courses. Most students don't understand the importance, or don't care, or are actually incapable of avoiding these issues in their programs.

It's yet another aspect of a well-known issue: We have a massive demand for software, but very few programmers are actually competent. I've taught in high-quality degree programs: maybe 10% of the students are really good, and another 30%-40% could contribute competently - as long as they are supervised by someone good. Those are self-selected students in high-quality degree programs.

In less technical degree programs, where I also teach some programming courses, I feel fortunate to have 1 or 2 students who have any real potential. The other learn to copy-and-paste (or, now, use AI), without any real understanding of what they are doing. These make up the vast majority of programmers out there, and they are the reason why injection attacks are still a thing.

FWIW: This is especially true in Asian software sweat-shops: rooms full of people pasting in code with no clue what they are doing, while their boss walks around looking over their shoulders, telling each person what their next task is. Push out code, fast and cheap, that's all that matters.

First, if you're in the office, the boss can see you. Assuming, of course, that the boss is in the office.

second, who spends all their time in Teams? No work gets done there - if I'm not actively using it, it is closed.

Jaguar had three hits:

1. They had an absolutely idiotic ad campaign featuring weird people in colored clothing prancing around. Had nothing to do with cars, and alienated their core audience.
2. They completely stopped producing cars during the transition to EVs. That transition did not go smoothly, so they had literally nothing to sell for months.
3. They outsourced their IT security to an Indian company, apparently chosen because it belongs to the same Indian holding company as Jaguar. Surprise: they got hacked.

Was the third point really what hurt them? Or is it just an excuse, because the first two were the real causes?

Seriously, if you want to push forward on a research topic, you don't want a team of thousands. A team of 600 is already far too big. If they had 600 extra people, well, that's a research team that is going nowhere...

A core group of 10-15 researchers and engineers. Maybe a few such groups, to chase different ideas. Supporting staff, maybe an equal number. If they had 100 really good people, that would be the max. Add to that the staff required to keep their public offerings up and running - how many is that, maybe another 100?

Yeah, if they can drop 600, their unit is still bloated.

Disagree. You aren't loaning money to yourself. If we use your analogy, it's like a father borrowing money in the names of all his kids. Sure, maybe he spent some of it on their food and upkeep, but they are the ones who will ultimately be responsible for the borrowing.

It's a continual struggle everywhere. Here, in Switzerland, the population recently voted to reject a number of extensions to the highway system, preferring to invest more in our excellent public transport system. The job of the politicians in parliament is to implement the referendum the public has voted on.

So what do the politicians do? They commission a study that examines the best places to invest transport money - funny, how it proposes extending the highway system at the expense of public transport. I'm sure none of them are the recipients of any lobbying efforts. /s

We already have a problem: What do you do with people on the left side of the bell curve? You only need so many agricultural harvesters, and even that is increasingly automated.

Factories everywhere are increasingly automated - this is a trend that has been going on for decades. Eliminate factory jobs, and you only need so many baristas and Amazon delivery drivers. So what do you do with people in the middle of the bell curve?

That's a lot of infrastructure to maintain. Semi-permanent costs. Why, exactly, would they want to commit to something like that?

Last In heard, we had passed 3 of 4?

Should we reduce our impact on the planet? Obviously.

However, this oanic-filled clickbait is counterproductive to that goal. Fewer and fewer people take these stupid pronouncements seriously, which leads them to the other extreme of not caring at all.

You have two paddles, one to increase and one to decrease. What it means is this: When you remove your foot from the accelerator, what should the car do? Simply coast freely? Lightly brake? Brake more strongly? Brake really strongly?

When I first moved to an EV, I thought: let's make it behave like the manual gas-powered car I'm used to. I often pushed in the clutch and just let the car coast, so I set the EV to coast. But experimenting, it turns out that light braking is (for me) by far the most pleasing option. Most of the time, when you remove your foot from the accelerator, it's because you are coming up on an intersection, or traffic, or whatever - and you do want to slow down.