The more likely alternative is that Harry Potter is hugely popular and referenced so many times in so many places that whatever training they did ended up weighting it more heavily. Possibly also people mimicked the author's style and linguistic patterns so much that it is easy to reproduce.

Although I personally liked Sandman Slim, given the subject matter of that book, it didn't have anywhere near the widespread cultural impact.

My grandma's cousin lived in Eureka California near the coast in a nice open plan ranch house. Air conditioning was handled by a couple of oscillating fans and windows that opened. Heat was supplied by two extra incandescent lamps she'd leave on at night, and a Franklin stove for the one month out of the year it gets down into the 50s.

An amazingly efficient system for her. It wouldn't quite cut it where we live, when it's well below freezing for a third of the year with almost no sun, then into the 90s and 100s for two months of the year with high humidity.

My son's coach has the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and uses them to take pictures during competitions. He says, though it's the only reason he bought them, it keeps his hands free to use his walkie talkies to talk to the other coaches and refs, check his clipboard, and do hand signals. He keeps them in a mode that records everything, so when something cool happens, he says "Save that picture" and the last few seconds are stored away. He got some amazing pictures that would have been missed if he had to pull a camera up or his phone out.

It's a niche use case, but it works remarkably well.

Why is the price a headline? The first video conferencing systems in the 1990s cost upwards of $80,000 in 90's money, which didn't include the requisite leased line.

A company finds that the product they are developing does not meet their quality requirements and does not launch it. I don't see why an apology is necessary. Nobody is paying for Siri AI stuff.

What they should be apologizing for, and fixing, is why Siri doesn't work as well as it did two iOS revisions ago. I mainly use it to control music playback while driving, and it has problems finding podcasts, bands, albums, songs - just about everything. It all worked perfectly a year ago.

You cannot die, McLeod. Accept it.

Also Sean Connery.

Although outsourcing is definitely a thing, a lot of companies are just not hiring, even at the expense of shipping new products. Do not discount enshittification and stagnation. Why build a new thing, when you can put lipstick on the old thing.

It doesn't matter how many more solar panels you have when they are covered in snow.

And we have the steam deck, which does this thing already without inviting MS into the home.

Only if you do zero commenting or documentation. I'd estimate 30% of my typing is code, the rest is documentation, comments, updating tickets, etc...

I learned to touch type in a writing and composition class in high school where we had to write something every day. Not anything major, but a story or report or poem. About halfway through the year I was touch typing.

It's an unofficial list of rumored announcements. You're reading a bit much into this.

transition.
everyone and I do mean everyone will lose their job.
how does fearless leader feel about consumers and cake

That's what I assumed as well. Buy Now Pay Later loans like this have a long history of being predatory. So I took a look at what it would cost to accept Klarna (as an example) as a merchant. The reality is that they have transaction fees that are very similar to credit cards. In other words, these companies do not need to rely on missed payments to make a profit.

These companies are apparently setting themselves up to replace traditional credit card payment systems, which suits me right down to the ground.

The difference is that it is much easier to get a Klarna account, and it isn't (yet) as widely available.

I felt the same way at first. Traditional BNPL schemes were very predatory. However, Klarna (and others) appear to be playing approximately the same game as the traditional credit card processors. They charge transaction fees that are roughly the same as credit card processors, and like credit cards their customers don't pay extra if they pay their bill on time. Klarna, in particular actually appears to give customers interest free time.

The difference, for consumers, is primarily that a Klarna account is much easier to get, and it isn't universally accepted. From a merchant perspective, depending on your payment provider, you might already be able to accept Klarna, and it appears that it mostly works like a credit card. It's even possible that charge backs are less of an issue, although it does appear that transaction fees are not given back in the case of a refund.

Personally, I am all for competition when it comes to payment networks. Visa and Mastercard are both devils. More competition for them is good for all of us.