Dell went private in 2013.

You should not be abusive to anything, regardless of if it is capable of experiencing that abuse in the same way we can. Because it's not good for YOU. As the old saying goes, "...it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

They tried to build one and it caught fire IIRC.

But also the tariffs. Don't lift them though, that way there is more cheap CXMT DRAM for Europe. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Consumer computers might go away if we are not careful. It will all be cloud based because that is more profitable. Everything on subscription. Your computer is the minimum viable terminal for those services.

The firmware probably isn't designed to be secure, they likely instead have a box that does all the comms with the fridges, and connects to their VPN for remote control. The box only ever talks to the VPN so the only bit that needs securing is their corporate network.

That is how most of these devices work, such as connected cars. VPN to a fixed server, with a certificate to validate that it's the real one, and don't talk to anything else.

Because it saves them vastly more money than this hack has cost them.

They could use a one-way link for simple monitoring, but by having a two way link they can adjust the set point temperature based on real-time electricity prices. Unlike residential customers, large businesses usually pay a variable rate based on 15 minute demand pricing. The pricing is announced 24 hours in advance based on predictions for demand. They drop the set temperature a degree or two when it is cheap, and raise it a degree or two when it is expensive.

Fukushima was an inconvenience? Half a trillion Euros to clean up, and rising, and at least 200 billion Euros of consequential economic damage. Multiple full meltdowns, at least 51 deaths, and 164,000 residence displaced.

Modern reactors absolutely can melt down. I don't know where you got that idea from. The new SMR designs can too.

To be fair Google has supported Fitbit products for a long time and has been steadily upgrading Google Health. It does seem that they are in it for the long haul, although some people aren't happy with the new app and prefer the old Google Fit one.

I've had a Versa 4 for a few years and it's good. Battery life is decent, it seems accurate and proper scientific tests confirm that it is. The sleep tracking is the best you can get without spending at least 4x as much, and is accurate enough to be useful.

The latest Pixel Watch is screwed together, not glued. I imagine this Fitbit will be the same. As long as you properly replace the rubber seals (don't re-use them) it should be fine.

"XL" isn't a good name for it really.

JPEG-XL offers numerous improvements over JPEG, including the ability to do a lossless transcoding of a JPEG file for a ~20% space saving. That alone is very valuable for the web where there is a vast amount of JPEG data that can be reduced now.

It also has proper HDR support, although it remains to be see how well that will work in practice. The issue is going to be the conversion for SDR screens. Also browsers need to be careful with HDR images, or retina burning trolling is going to become a think.

For general use it offers smaller file sizes and better image quality than JPEG. It usually equals or beats most other lossy formats, but not always. It also offers true lossless, and visually lossless modes. The former is competitive with PNG.

The main downside is that performance is much, much worse than JPEG. For decoding, what matters to 99.9% of people, it is both slower and uses more energy (i.e. battery run-time) than JPEG. It may be a net benefit due to smaller downloads, but I'm not convinced.

The other issue is that the reference decoder is written in Rust, so if you want to use it you need to integrate that into your app. There is a C implementation but it's old and seemingly abandoned.

People who are just making little apps and scripts to improve productivity could benefit from AI. I've used it to do a few little PowerShell and Python scripts. I'm not very familiar with either language and don't have time to learn, so some little automation scripts that I otherwise wouldn't have had the inclination to make myself are valuable time savers.

For example I have a PowerShell script that takes unstapled magazines that have been scanned in a sheet feed scanner and splits them into correctly numbered individual pages. It has massively sped up the process of preserving old magazines. Gemini took a few attempts to get it right, but it got there eventually. I'd have probably ended up wasting a fair bit more time writing a little C# app if AI couldn't do it for me.

On the other hand, I'd never let it write embedded code for work. If I can't write it myself, I can't debug it either.

Also it less liability to merely cover them. Flock cannot claim that their tech was "damaged" during the removal by the college if they were not removed.

Similar thing in Japan. The food isn't expensive either.