Whenever I'm leading a project that does anything to do with human input like names, addresses, written text I have to repeatedly drum into people that internally the code should be UTF-8 and UTC time unless there is an exceptionally good reason not to be. The weird thing is there is usually somebody from India, Iran, China or wherever where I shouldn't have to say this but I usually have to. They're so used to everything being English and assuming everything fits in a byte with unambiguous values it almost escapes them that it isn't true.

As for Slashdot, I haven't seen this site receive a major update for over a decade. The original version used to be a mess of Perl. I imagine these days it's a mess of Perl and some other stuff with some very fragile scripts that can't cope very well or consistently with different character encodings let alone being UTF-8 end to end. Using a subset of HTML as markup probably doesn't help either.

By that token every dogshit subscription service with autorenew enable can use that tagline that people are "saving". After all think of the precious seconds they're saving not requiring people to renew to something they may have forgotten they were subscribed to. And let's save people even more time by not inconveniencing them with an email about a pending renewal.

Can I set up an AI agent to orchestrate a rugpull?

I updated xtelink e-reader (it has an ESP32 in it) through Chrome and I couldn't believe how simple it was. Ordinarily I'd be downloading some dump bin and having to run some mysterious Chinese written flash software to update the device. Yet all I had to do was go to a website, grant a permission and the device got flashed in about a minute.

Not just Arduino but anything that could potentially driven from a web browser - devices for firmware updates, braille readers, point of sale, barcode readers etc.

I receively bought an xtelink 4 e-reader and was able to flash the thing with custom firmware directly from the browser. This safer IMO that launching some random flash software which might decide to anything when it starts.

I could see this also being very useful for people wanting to flash embedded devices from cloud based software. But it could also be used to drive braille readers, point of sale terminals and anything else that works over serial.

... until one of these competitors drops dead, ends up in a coma, or suffers a psychotic break thanks to the garbage these organizers helped put in their bodies. The lawsuits will be spectacular especially if a competitor kills, injures or harms somebody who isn't covered by a waiver.

I'm referring specifically to people who listen to certain artists so relentlessly the platform thinks they're super fans. Just buy the frigging albums. Not only do they support the artists with royalties but they own the content and save themselves renting it.

... maybe they should buy the content instead of renting it from a shitty service like Spotify.

Which might be great for chicken farming - cutting out the whole chicken egg laying stuff for broilers and just having racks of cloned embryos. And doesn't that sound like a far more likely intention of this technology than this moa smokescreen?

If they had an embryo of a threatened species they could transplant it into a sterilized egg of a more common species where it also has a yolk. This announcement just sounds like funding bullshit and if there is any commercial application it would be more likely for factory farming chickens.

Whenever a company dangles the prospect of resurrecting an extinct species the red flag should be raised. It's more likely they're looking for funding and their chances, funding or not, of resurrecting anything are low. But throwing an endangered / extinct species into the press release guarantees press coverage. This isn't the first time Colossal Biosciences has done this. Their schtick boils down to "think of the Moa/Dodo/Direwolf and give us money, and we pinky promise that our research won't actually be used for more banal and sinister commercial bioengineering purposes". Sure thing.

A company will become strapped for cash, or some new CEO will take over, or the company is bought out. And suddenly the thing that was bought and paid for in perpetuity gets gimped, or relabeled "classic" & discontinued, or the company finds some other way to show "gratitude" to the people who kept them afloat by diminishing or cutting off service.

Basically I wouldn't trust any product to be lifetime unless the entirety of the software can be downloaded with its own license key and continues to work regardless of what happens to the company.

These are the Surface Pro models. The downmarket model is the Surface Go. As for the Neo, it's a tight package but there is absolutely nothing special about it's specs which are actually pretty terrible. It's designed as a browsing device - the sort of thing a Chromebook or Surface Go might also be thought of.

The Surface Pro can run Linux but it requires a custom kernel to deal with its multitouch screen, tablet mode, camera & keyboard and is going to be a pain to make function in the way the hardware was designed. Buy something else if running Linux is your intention.