Tell that to the folks on ISS who ride back and forth on Soyuz all the time. A couple of people went up to ISS from Russia just one week ago.

To be fair, at the moment, future ISS launches from Russia won't be possible because of some launch pad damage incurred by a recent launch, but Russia still has the capability of launching crewed rockets into space from other pads. They just can't send any to ISS right now because its orbital inclination is incompatible with the locations of those other pads while staying within the fuel capacity limits of their rockets.

What are you talking about? On average, engines last 150k to 200k miles in the U.S., complete with CAFE standards.

And the main goal of the current CAFE standards was to push hybrids and electric vehicles. Manufacturers rigging the game by trying to make pure ICE cars with ridiculous mileage is an unanticipated negative side effect, mostly because the folks coming up with the rules did not expect automakers to be so stupid that they would do something like that.

For the most part, oil change schedules are set so that car dealers can make money off of mandatory service so that you keep your warranty. In reality, if you periodically change your filter, use a filter with a smaller pore size, and use synthetic oil, there's at least potentially no need to change the oil at all, at least within the typical lifetime of a passenger car.

Semi goes 1 million miles without an oil change.

The problem is not the CAFE standards per se. The problem is that they are trying to meet them by playing tricks instead of with actual design changes. And even though they come with thinner engine oil, 90% of people will put standard oil into the cars at the first change. So they get higher MPG for the first 5,000 miles, and then the same as they did before the CAFE standards.

I suppose that in theory, you could argue that the standards are flawed for not requiring normal oil weights during testing, but that's about it.

The correct way to hit the MPG targets is to use more electric drive trains. If you make your cars hybrids, you can improve the efficiency of the electric drive train and find ways to engineer the vehicles to weigh less by using more modern materials, and you won't have to work too hard to hit the standards.

Better yet, push actual EVs, which typically have an eMPG of 100+. If just one-third of your vehicles get 130 eMPG and the rest get 30 MPG, you're averaging about 53 MPG already.

Because for the past 30 or so years, it has worked very well for MS to keep their main products barely useable, rely on lock-in and chase the next big thing so they can get their dirty hands on it early and lock more people into more products.

That is exactly wrong. Beta versions are there to find bugs. If nobody complained about them, they won't be found. So if you try beta versions, please DO complain about bugs.

I guess "vibe-something" is going to be the anti-word of 2026. People are slowly waking up to what it actually means to let the AI do the work.

I'm not dissing AI, I'm using it extensively myself and there's a few AI whitepapers with my name on them. But like any tool, it can be great when used correctly and ruin your day when not.

That doesn't mean what they do is automatically legal.

I'm pretty sure there's a demand for "murder my husband", or for "can someone please drown my neighbour". And yet it's illegal to offer such services.

Also: Voters. Smokers are still a fairly substantial fraction of the population, enough to swing a vote, especially if, and that appears to be the trend in most western democracies these days, there are two opposing political sides roughly evenly matched.

I mean, does it not strike anyone as a very weird coincidence that we have almost perfect 50/50 splits in so many countries?

No, but they do everything BUT force to make it the most attractive option. Just as one silly example: With wages and prices as they are, having both partners work full-time is basically required unless you're in the top few percent of earners or inherited wealth. So who's going to cook? After a long work day? Convenience food is the obvious choice. You are not being forced, but unless food is a high-priority item in your life, you are very much steered into that direction.

Not with a tattoo gun, but yes, microneedle delivery is a new experimental way to deliver vaccines. It's less like a tattoo gun and more like a nicotine patch or a bandaid, though.

Can you let Tim Cook know that?

I'm an Apple fan, but the money they charge for internal storage is ridiculous, especially given that I can buy an external SSD with 2 TB for like $150 if I shop around a bit.

The cynic in me wants to say that they see "intelligence" and go "great, it has something I don't, let's just 100% trust it".

The social critic in me wants to say that it's due to the gigantic hype about AI and how it'll revolutionize everything, replace everyone and solve all problems.

And the tech/security guy in me wants to say "doh, people do dumb shit. What else is new?"

AI isn't a junior dev. It's an intern. Someone who doesn't much care beyond the current session, and whose skills can surprise you - in both directions, and whose primary focus is that you like him at least in the moment.

And like an intern, if you include the code in anything even close to production without review, it's your fault, not theirs.

My observation is the opposite. In my 20s tattoos were just common enough to be accepted as normal, but the majority of people didn't have them and most people who did had one or two fairly small ones.

Today, it seems everyone and their dog has them.