Itanium never really took off and why Intel kept pushing it despite the XEON architecture just never made sense.

I'm disappointed that Geroge's body of work hasn't been fed into an LLM model and AI used to generate his image, generating some interesting material. This is a comedian using AI to simulate his voice only.

Even with consumer usury rates at all-time highs, it's amazing that Citi isn't showing more income. Sad for the folks getting laid off but the CEO has to get her bonus by driving up the stock price however she thinks she can do it.

Thinking that a student will take care of laptops worth hundreds of dollars is equivalent to thinking that kids won't write in textbooks either. Some of it is upbringing and some of it is just bad behavior.

I travel frequently for business and I rent in destinations that don't have good Taxi, Uber, or Lyft services.

When I rent a car, I rent from Avis or Hertz, lately mostly from Avis. Why? Hertz isn't the same as it was 10 years ago and went through bankruptcy during the pandemic. EVs introduce new challenges to the rental market, especially with having a vehicle ready to rent. It's not simply ensuring it's fueled, cleaned, and serviced. It can be days or weeks sometimes for a rental car actually to be rented. Even then an EV that was at 100% can lose charge and now you have to have the car attendants go and charge it up again. You don't have that issue with ICE-powered vehicles. They can sit for days or weeks and Hertz hasn't solved that issue.
Next is the typical wear and tear that affects all fleets, meaning accidents, and even if you can find a shop with technicians certified to do the work, it can take months to get them fixed and back into service. Replacement parts availability is also a problem because Tesla doesn't build spare parts ahead of time, so that's a component in repair delay too.

Rental car companies have been having a difficult time finding new cars to put into their fleets since the pandemic just like everybody else. They were part of the reason we saw clean, low-mile used-car prices hiked up to insane numbers. I guess somebody at Hertz said "hey, we can get Teslas" without thinking it through from their business model's perspective. I think EVs can be a choice for rental drivers but there's a lot of logistics that will need to be involved just beyond buying them. I don't think Hertz thought it through.

Killing entire channels of delivery isn't how you sell a product, especially abruptly. Many customers depend on small to medium providers that can react quickly to their needs. I don't see Broadcom moving quickly on anything in terms of client responsiveness and they've made a strategic error in cutting these channels off.

Yes, and Santa Claus is real too kiddies. Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.

The idiots in DC just keep showing themselves to be more stupid in all of this. Next up: The US bans China from having diesel engines.

I've come to find that audiophiles get really attached to formats. It's like guys from the 60s and 70s with their Ampex tape decks arguing about audio quality vs. LP albums. Vorbis and Ogg are still supported, well as of about 4 years ago they were.

When you say Format, you're talking about Vorbis. Ogg is the container mechanism, i.e., like Matroska, AVI, or MP4...

Vorbis I'd say from a lossy codec is somewhat obsolete. The cool kids really use AAC mainly for streaming and the widest device support. If you want lossless, go FLAC especially for the best quality and for things like audio libraries.

Will this be young greaser-haired Elvis or the Fat, Cheesburger White Sequined Sunglass-wearing version?

Lovell flew the most and was the most experienced regarding flight hours and total missions. Neil was more than a test pilot, he was considered one the best in the Astronaut core. Why? He had innate survival instincts and kept cool under extreme pressure.

First, there was the Gemini 8 docking disaster where he showed cool nerve and skill in saving both himself and his colleague David Scott

Second, Surviving a nearly disastrous system failure flying the landing simulator.

Third, He was a civilian. He had resigned his commission in 1960 and was selected in 1965 for Gemini and Apollo.

Buzz was the first astronaut to be a DSc and was considered the best pure navigator in NASA. He also helped to crack the rendevous problem.

Sure, Buzz had issues after Apollo but he was a pure professional when he was part of the program.

We'd put 10s of thousands of accountants, auditors, and IRS agents out of business if we fixed this thing called a tax code. Instead of
We try to find some technical solution to the issue that becomes another set of logic driven by rules sometimes in conflict.

Wasn't Intuit sued for deceptive practices over their "free filing"?
Yet here we are wanting to give them more taxpayer funds?

Shame on us for voting for these idiots.

A country with human and industrial resources like India could manage several dams and reservoirs to deal with some but not all fluctuations in rainfall. 80% of their rainfall comes during monsoon season as well.

I don't think you can blame "Climate Change" but the increasing population in India.

Average Monsoonal Rainfall and percentage of deviation from "normal"

Year rainfall(mm) Pct Diff From Normal
2015 764 -13.0
2016 989 12.5
2017 960 9.1
2018 919 4.5
2019 870 -1.1
2020 881 0.1
2021 993 12.9
2022 886 0.7
2023 876 -0.5

Population (according to the World Bank) has gone from 1.299B to 1.43B over those same years.

People have characteristics that eventually can lead them to obsession or compulsive behaviors; call it what it is then an addiction. I've seen people obsess over social media and invest hours a day in unproductive endeavors wasted on social media. Christ! read a book, volunteer for something but get off the fucking cell phone! Honestly, the problem is the cell phone or specifically the smartphone. With so many apps looking for your attention, time or resources start with downgrading that instead of something simpler. If it doesn't exist anymore is no reason not to push manufacturers with our dollars to simpler solutions that don't put an addictive system in your face.