If it was limited to "an old Android phone" that would be one thing, but they're doing this to any Android interaction regardless of how new it is.

And that's why it's stupid. They are relying on their own proprietary protocols and then denigrating anyone that isn't using their proprietary protocols.

Spirit Areosystems is one of Airbus' subcontractors too. So of course the problems within the Boeing supply-chain could affect the Airbus supply-chain.

As was commonly the case during the DOS/Windows and MacOS era, many applications will only come to the Apple platform after the DOS or Windows platform proves successful. It didn't matter how slick or easy the Apple product was, the risks were higher and in that era of small teams or individual software developers it didn't make sense to pursue the higher-risk platform before the lower-risk one.

Frankly I'm surprised with these walled-garden models that this hasn't happened even sooner.

Being Classified is an actual... classification.

Being proprietary has no actual classification, and could refer to any of a number of classifications.

No we don't. "Late-stage" implies that we're approaching a limit for the insanity that businesses will come up with. I am under no such illusions that they can't continue to screw around in new and revolutionary ways for as long as capitalism exists.

Mmhmm.

Gas stations publish their prices on a huge sign at the street so when the customer pulls in, it's a known quantity. A decade or so ago most gas stations made the swap to LED signs that could be updated very easily, so if gas prices fluctuated during the day itself the store clerks could change them to reflect the new prices easily, or it could even be automated without requiring the clerk to do anything at all.

If a fast food restaurant doesn't publish its prices where potential customers can see them without having to wait in line first (think the drivethrough) then they're simply going to enrage their customers and drive them away. I have my choices of places to eat, and to be honest, fast food is already at risk of pricing itself out of being worthwhile for someone who has time for a sit-down lunch. Only the 'value' items are really cheaper these days. Wendy's might be conveniently located to where I work and usually provides my meal quicker than sitting down for service from a more traditional restaurant, but they're already borderline for value. If they do this then I'm simply going to budget the time to eat at other restaurants or will go to other fast-food chains that aren't unknown quantities.

The problem with the consumer-writable media was the use of organics in the substrate, organics which made the media cheap to manufacture but not enduring for the long term.

Inorganic media were developed, particularly for DVD and BD, and tended to be sold under monikers like archive quality . They also cost more and required writing devices capable of using them.

I had started getting into this as a way of archiving that which I've saved locally in case media servers died, but in the end it required a lot of my time.

Like the GP post I'm a skeptic, but that doesn't mean I can't be convinced. Unfortunately in order to convince me the technology will need to mature and be in service for long enough to confirm that it's truly a viable, durable solution, and typically by the time that happens we're moving on to whatever the next new hot thing is regardless of how good it is.

The cost to orbit has come down dramatically in the last decade. My expectation is that setting up the automated production process is harder than the launch, but if the product can be made much more efficiently in microgravity than on the surface, and if the machinery needed to perform the production can be standardized and used to just send-up, produce, and return, then it might not be as bad as it initially sounds.

Consider too, if they can integrate this into satellites that already are expected to have short service-lives, where it can piggyback up, do its thing, and then deorbit when the life of satellite is ended, that might further help.

It's nice to want things.

No, we spent 4% of GDP getting to the moon in the 1960s, if my math is correct, in 1969 alone that was around $40,000,000,000.

Inflation has been roughly a full order of magnitude since then. Are you prepared to spend $400,000,000,000 to send a half-dozen people to the moon?

To my view the burden for what constitutes a successful accusation of cheating is pretty high. Normally I'm accustomed to the act of cheating being something done during a game/match/competition, not something done prior to it, unless it's literally either 1) equipment related, or 2) involves someone in the opponent's camp feeding one information, or feeding bad information to the opponent.

The only way I see to tamper with equipment in chess is to do something that causes discomfort to the opposing player, such as messing with the lighting, furniture, or climate controls. Otherwise it really would involve some kind of subterfuge with the opposing player' entourage, either getting information from them, or supplying some kind of information to them that convinces the opposing player to change strategy in a way that can be predicted. But even for the latter, is that actually cheating? If somehow I communicate to the opponent's friend(s) that I've studied all of his opening moves and thus he chooses an alternate opening move altogether, is that actually cheating?

If they didn't catch him somehow taking instructions from someone in the audience then I guess I just don't see how he's cheating without some kind of clear description of the mechanism by which he's cheating.

They're probably looking at the situation through the car's cameras and are making decisions that get passed to the car to perform, not directly activating the steering and accelerator themselves.

I expect that it's more like driving the Mars Rover than like driving Spy Hunter or Carmageddon.

The thing about their business that bothered me was how they were trying to just be an equipment provider and an app. They were using an app for both rentals and for gig-economy maintenance of their scooters.

Gig economy is for suckers. You make almost nothing. You're earning the kind of money that you earned as a kid mowing lawns in the neighborhood. If the business is dependent on this BS non-category category of employment then it's no surprise that it fails.

McDonalds owns the restaurant itself. The franchisee is a tenant.

And then due to your contract for the franchise, McDonalds lawyers would show up the next day with a court order taking over all of your stores, seizing bank accounts of the franchise, and changing the locks, to then go through and audit everything, probably firing any staff that you had more than a professional relationship with (ie friends, family) and then finally going through the motions to permanently sever you from the business before finding someone else to sell it to.