Still wondering about those upload speeds, though.

It's kind of a complex question. It depends on where you are and what plan you currently have.

If you're in a mid-split area (where Comcast is using a larger range of frequencies for upload traffic) and had a plan to take advantage of it - which it sounds like you are - then the new plans actually regress on upload speeds. The old ~1Gbps and ~2Gbps plans had 300Mbps nominal uploads (closer to 360Mbps due to overprovisioning), while all other plans were 150Mbps nominal. The new plans drop this down to 100Mbps nominal for everything except the new ~2Gbps plan, which gets 250Mbps nominal.

Unfortunately, you're facing an either/or proposition. Comcast won't remove the data cap for existing plans, you have to transition to a new plan. But if you do that, then you'll get the new, lower upload speeds. With that said, Comcast isn't forcing anyone to upgrade, so current customers can stay on their legacy plans indefinitely.

Did you really think ANY unencrypted cloud service was private? I feel like we've all learned this lesson over & over & over...

A hybrid is the answer for many people. They work well. Electric continues to improve but is still too much of a niche product.

I recently bought a new car. If I could lay my hands on something like a RAV4 Hybrid I'd be all over it. Good luck. I bought a VW Taos instead.

...laura

Apple typically provides mainstream support for a macOS release for a year, and then security patches for the two years following.

For example, macOS 13 (Ventura) was launched in the fall of 2022. It is receiving security patches until (at least) the fall of 2025.

quietly request the READ_GSERVICES permission. This lets them grab your Google Services Framework ID, a persistent device ID that survives app reinstalls and SIM swaps. Translation: perfect for long-term tracking.

Given how critical that permission is, how are they even able to request it quietly? I would think Android would be screaming at the top of its lungs if that permission were requested.

> it's been neither "stable" nor "reliable."

I was going to say the same thing. CenturyLink/Quantum's fiber service has been spotty pretty much since the beginning. Which tracks, since their DSL service wasn't much better.

AT&T may find new and interesting ways to screw things up. But Quantum residential customers have already been getting the short end of the stick for reliability.

A few years ago I ported some legacy device firmware from its ancient Sun-based development environment to gcc (68k cross-compiler) and Linux. Most of the code compiled reasonably as-is. Some of it required a bit of hand-holding, like telling gcc that I really did need to store four characters one at a time rather than a single long when talking to a dual-port RAM interface.

Some of the low-level OS code did in fact require assembly. So be it.

...laura

This whole exchange has me thinking of a filler bit from a DS9 episode.

JACK: The fact is that the universe is going to stop expanding and it is going to collapse in on itself. We've got to do something before it's too late.
PATRICK: How much time do we have left?
JACK: Sixty trillion years, seventy at the most.
JACK: There's too much matter. The universe is too heavy for its own good.
LAUREN: You need to lighten the load.
JACK: Yes, yes, yes, exactly. We have to find some way to decrease the mass.
SARINA: Of the entire universe?
JACK: That's the whole point.

Apparently, we're just going to have to change the cosmological constant...

I accept that no matter what I do at airport security it will be wrong. This is, according to some sources, by design. Keeps the bad guys on their toes. Something like that.

As a Canadian the only biometric ID I have is my passport. Despite the pressure to do so, I do not use it for domestic flights. International flights only. For U.S. domestic flights I use my drivers license. For Canadian domestic flights, my pilots license.

...laura

Have any of these people ever been to England?

...laura

Polygon had seen better days, that's for sure. But in their early days the site was very, very good.

More than anything else, I feel like the site lost its focus somewhere in the last half-decade. The original focus of the site is all in the name: polygons - as in video games. But Vox slowly morphed it into a general pop culture website. These days it's a mix of video games, movies, TV shows, board games, books, etc.

Those are all fine things in and of themselves. But at best they dilute the brand. And at worst they're taking the place of video game content, to the point where if you're after actual gaming news you're going to want to go elsewhere, because Polygon didn't have the editorial bandwidth to cover it.

So it has been a long time coming, in some respects. Unfortunately, the people who really pay the price are the writers, who are now out of a job.

The gym where I work out has Sirius XM as their background music, variously Hits 1 or The Pulse. If you told me it was all pre-recorded loops and/or AI I wouldn't doubt it.

The gym's soundtrack has nevertheless introduced me to some neat new music, duly added to my workout playlist. In that sense it's served its purpose. It's also exposed me to some truly dire excuses for music. People buy this garbage?!

The radio-friendly versions of songs are sometimes inadvertently amusing. "My give a craps are on vacation" "I'm a real tough kid I can hannnndle it"

...laura

Hubble has provided a spectacular return on its investment, both in science results and in PR (i.e. pretty pictures).

Is it worth additional refurbishing? Is it worth bringing back to Earth? Both decisions are way above my paygrade. In many ways JWST is "better", but will it capture the public's imagination the way Hubble did? I doubt it.

...laura

CodeWeavers is one of the few companies that I believe really do intend to keep their word - and have the means to do it.

The company has been shipping CrossOver Mac for almost 20 years now - basically since Macs transitioned from PPC to x86. They've rejiggered their software lineup a couple of times, essentially consolidating a few different products (Games, Office, Standard) into a single SKU, but they've always provided a continuity of features and an upgrade path. Put another way, they've been offering the same continually-updated CrossOver product for over two decades now.

Which, since it's essentially the commercial release of Wine, that makes sense. Their whole business model is constantly developing improvements to Wine, and then bundling that up into a commercial-grade software package that comes with official support. So their business model is stable (so long as Windows remains important), as well as the need to continue updating the software.

Given how intertwined CodeWeavers is with Wine, it would be a disaster if they did renege on lifetime updates for anyone who has paid for them. The corollary to that being that if it were to happen, then something very bad must have already happened to the broader Wine ecosystem, as this is how they primarilly fund the whole project.

Nobody has any issue with legal immigrants. Nobody ever did.

It's the other kind that people have issues with. Not to mention efforts to erase the distinction in the first place.

...laura