These dimwits can't even correct Samsung's misleading-or-fraudulent use of the word "satellite" when they mean "balloon", much less fact-check that amateur high-altitude balloons have been taking so-called "selfies" for decades?

I'm not surprised, sadly.

Wow, Tay was only 2016? Seems like it was a lot longer ago than that...

Nor pocket-sized mobile phones. I had several generations of phones that ran on Ni-MH batteries, all of which fit comfortably in a pocket.

And all of which got longer standby time than my current slab of lithium.

For folks without a fast internet connection, it would be cool if it started downloading scenery the moment you file your flight plan. I'd be happy to throw a few TB of local storage at the thing...

...regardless of how many they actually ship. I preordered one back in 2017 and I'm anxious to get my hands on it!

So, anyone remember the Openmoko? It was an open-source Linux smartphone before anyone heard of Android. Then Android came along and ate its lunch, but the concept had already been proven.

I hope Purism makes an awesome product, but for everyone's sake, I hope some huge player sees this as a bellwether and starts taking privacy more seriously in their own offerings.

Wifi was in a ton of laptops before Centrino, and I was never clear on what intel was trying to accomplish with their centrino branding. You didn't need it to have wifi, so it was meaningless as far as I could tell. Thin and light had been done before too, why do we need intel to "lead" things that've already happened? That's not what that means...

As PR fluff pieces go, this one's particularly bad. "We're doing more of the same! It's all innovative and new!"

Seriously?

Do you browse websites? Then you don't control the software running on your machine. It's a problem for everyone except scientific clusters, basically.

And more importantly, why isn't there a checkbox to turn that function off? And why isn't it off by default?

There's absolutely no reason a web page should be able to ask my magnetometer offset. That's not part of turning HTML into pixels.

Is there a list of browsers which do and don't implement this function?

Not much, you?

Yeah, this actually seems like one of the few applications that's really been yearning for an anonymous microtransaction, aka cryptocurrency, solution.

The Althea Wireless Mesh does something similar. If you run an AP or backhaul link that handles a lot of traffic, you get paid in microtransactions by the folks whose traffic you're handling. So you have incentive to make your signal and placement as good as possible.

There will also, presumably, be bad actors who realize they can get more reward if they assail the competition, so we'll have to see how that shakes out.

Prime has become worse than useless, and it's impossible to find what I want in the search anymore. It's dominated by endless clones of the same item with scarcely-distinguishable gibberish all-caps "names" that all white-label the same FBA and import products.

I've taken to shopping at eBay, which oddly enough, seems to have a more reliable experience and better dispute resolution. I've never had eBay threaten me when I open several disputes within a short time span, because they can look at my transaction history.

eBay has their own issues (shopping cart keeps getting slower, and slower, and slower...) but at least the rest of their offering is improving. They actually added a "group similar items" feature to combat the clones that're clogging Amazon.

Thanks for the reminder. I need to cancel Prime.

https://quokkaspace.wordpress....

It's a long read but full of ire at mismanagement and dashed hopes. Here's hoping they turn a corner someday.

Yeah, um. https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/...

All sorts of plants will be royally fucked by that.

I think the whole thing's a hoax, but that's Poe's Law for ya.

...if spinning rust disappears from the market!

Harvest 'em while you can. Get a crate of dead drives from the local recycler, and strip all the magnets. You'll be telling your mystified grandkids about the glory days when incredibly-powerful magnets were just free for the taking, for anyone willing to wield a screwdriver.

About 2 years ago, when I started putting 480GB SSDs in things, I commented that I'm probably never gonna buy another spinning drive in my life. SSDs are at the point where they can meet my entire workstation need, with the large archival backup stuff still satisfied by spinning rust, but I said by the time that array needs replacing, 2TB or 4TB SSDs would probably be affordable.

Here we are 2 years later and I have a 2TB SSD sitting right here, and if this crash happens, I'd have no problem buying a handful more next year, right around the time I fill the array...

It's happening!

Maybe concentrating all the sick people in one place creates a perfect breeding ground for this stuff.

Yes, yes, there are valid economic reasons for maximizing the work output of doctors, who are exceedingly expensive to mint. But at some point, the downfall of our species might just be more costly.