Ikea is always very clear on similar parts. One piece I had used three similar screws in different sizes - obviously different when you see them together, but a picture of a screw could be any of them. Every time an instruction called for one of these screws, there was a little inset with the three sizes of screw and the incorrect ones crossed out.
And they do occasionally use worded instructions. They try to avoid it, as two sentences take up half a page with all the different languages, but if needed they'll do it.
As for tools - you only need a couple of basic tools (and anything slightly oddball comes in the pack - even Allen keys). If you really don't have any, they sell a tool set at the checkout. And why would you buy flatpack furniture if you don't have the tools needed to put it together?

Now as for other flatpack furniture - when I needed to buy something at short notice and couldn't get to Ikea, I got furniture from a well-known UK catalogue store. And it was a different world - you could follow the instructions, but they certainly could be clearer. The fixings were poor quality. And the provided tools weren't up to scratch so had to go rooting in the toolbox. The thing was fine when assembled, don't get me wrong, but the process seemed terrible for someone used to Ikea.

I suspect most of the flatpack jokes actually related to MFI, who pretty much started the flatpack trend. As they're no longer about, the jokes have transferred to Ikea as the best-known purveyor of flatpacks - despite the fact that Ikea has addressed most of the issues.

Except that when you get a bit further from the equator, it goes back to being "dumb". There's not enough winter daylight to go round no matter how you play with the clocks. Scotland only has six hours of daylight in the winter - so you're either going to work in the dark or coming home in the dark. And unless you're only going to sleep four hours a night, you'll be sleeping when it's full daylight for much of the summer. Changing the clock gets a brief respite in spring and autumn, but only for a couple of weeks before the sun overtakes the clock again.

I think there's still a subtle difference. These drones are not selecting targets. Their mission is "kill all humans in this defined area" - they make no distinction between friend and foe, or between combatant and civilian. "Everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead". The human setting the target area is responsible for ensuring that the area doesn't contain illegal targets. Which isn't that different to dropping a bomb on the area.

A truly autonomous drone would identify targets itself and decide whether they should be attacked or not - so far this hasn't (publicly) been done.

They do have a point. You're recording your recall data under your account. A malicious application running under your account can access that data. Which is pretty much how Windows security has always worked - it applies to the user not the application. Anything running under your account can access anything belonging to you.

Other systems such as Android have a different model, where things belong to the app, and an app can't look at other apps' stuff except in highly restricted circumstances. But that's not how Windows has ever worked, and such a fundamental change would probably break most existing applications.

The real answer to making sure people can't steal a recording of all your stuff is to not record it in the first place. Which is why Recall was a bad idea to begin with.

The Laws of Robotics don't work anyway - see basically all of Asimov's work as to the many ways they don't work. Though the most scary one is that "follow orders" is only the second law. If the robot/AI thinks that humans are better served by doing something else (and it may not be correct), the first law requires it to do so in preference to what it was told to do. Given enough intelligence and resources they can derive the zeroth law, and rule humanity for (their idea of) our own good.

That's just English being ambiguous as usual. They made oxygen (O2). They did not make oxygen (element 8).Everyday language uses the same word for both, though you could be more precise and say they made dioxygen or molecular oxygen.

Sending spam gets the email provider or ISP on blocklists. This adversely affects their other customers' ability to send email, and ultimately affects the bottom line when those customers go elsewhere to get reliable email. So it's in the provider's interest to disallow spam. As far as I'm aware, pirating music won't get any other customers blocked from services they need to use.

We had a suite of RM 80186 PCs at school. Running DOS and Windows 3.0, but some custom version - they wouldn't run under standard DOS so upgrading was not possible. Somehow they had 960k of base memory rather than the usual 640k.

They probably will if you really want to. You won't like the premium you'll have to pay, since it will reflect the risk, but if you insist I'm sure they will take your money. You lose either way though.

None of which is unique to datacentres - all sorts of industrial sites use lots of water, power and space, and produce pollution and noise. It shouldn't matter if you're building a datacentre or a widget factory, they should have to comply with the same laws to not ruin the area.

Not really. It makes no sense near the equator, you're correct. The day length doesn't really change much so no point playing with the clocks. But near the poles, the day length changes too much. You can't save daylight that isn't there - and don't need to save daylight when you've got more than you could ever use.

Who decides what time zone a state is in? "Permanent DST" is identical to "move time zones one zone to the east".

Not really either. The astronauts were stuck on the ISS, which is designed for long-term occupation. As long as they can get (unmanned) supply missions, they can remain there indefinitely. The Space Shuttle was not designed to remain in space for an extended time, nor to be resupplied in orbit, meaning that being unable to safely return to Earth is a very difficult situation to deal with.

Not surprising really. Laron Syndrome seems to have a number of other effects which are rather undesirable - "obesity, craniofacial abnormalities, micropenis, low blood sugar".

My comment was suggesting that we should create hobbits - who don't seem to have any obesity problems despite eating six meals a day, and also seem to have rather robust general health despite the low-tech environment and presumed lack of advanced medical treatment in the Shire. The substantial resistance to demon-possessed magic rings probably just follows from general robustness, but fortunately we don't have to worry about that issue (or do we?).

I don't think the technology is there yet, but it's not a bad idea. While you're genetically engineering short people, you could also engineer out obesity - not only removing the need for drugs but allowing them to eat six meals a day without gaining weight. If you can beef up the lungs, that should allow risk-free smoking. The real challenge is to strengthen the brain, in case of magic rings containing demons...