But Húsavík has a Eurovision museum. So it wins. I'd live there.

Yep. I was there in the standards meeting when the feds turned up and gave a talk about the mandatory LA features we had to add. We all pointed out how this was stupid and would be exploited by everyone and anyone to spy on everyone and anyone including those feds demanding we add LA.

And here we are 20 years later.

Where I grew up in Wales, they were just plain ugly hexagonal poles of concrete with a light on top. No swan neck to be seen.

They were ugly as sin too.

The 8086 was a long time ago used microcode for different reasons. It had a limited transistor budget and microcode was an efficient way to implement lots of instructions. Obviously there were other options, and it wasn't long before transistor budgets increased to allow for microcode-less CPU architectures.
Today in chips with many more transistors, microcode affords the flexibility to respond to security issues and bugs and to provide support for all sorts of features (VM stuff, trapping, failover etc) without encumbering the underlying instruction logic with that stuff. There is a middle ground in transistor budget where microcode-less CPUs are common. They don't have the features and they do have an instruction set designed with that in mind. What we have seen with higher end ARMs is they are big and complex and so have bugs and the vendors can't work around the bugs because they don't have microcode.

My knowledge is about 3 months old now (the time since I retired from a large CPU company) and I'm looking forward to being more and more out of date over time.

RISC-V is a spec. A RISC-V CPU is an implementation of that spec and there is nothing stopping that implementation using "non free" microcode. In a large CPU, there are many good reasons to incorporate microcode and I expect to see RISC-V with microcode become common.

i'm still not paying the Adobe tax. AI art theft tools or not.

It's like an RF circulator but with audio.

My Juicebox is a first generation model. It is supposed to be internet connected but I did not let it connect. Then the company bricked all the connected ones with a crowdstrike style update. Fortunately mine never got the update because I kept it off the internet. So it sits happily on the wall, charging my EV when required.

>"premium connectivity", which is required for live traffic information, and streaming audio.

Wrong. Premium connectivity (which I do pay for in the US), is not needed if you can tether your phone's data service to wifi your car can connect to.
I do pay for premium connectivity because doing that is a bit of a faff. Cell service isn't free so I don't mind paying it. Tesla app is not crap. Tesla's UI is not crap.
FSD is crap though and I'm not forced to pay for it.

If Tesla pulled a BMW and started to charge for things they should not charge for, like remote starting the HVAC or using the seat heaters they would definitely lose my business. However they have not.

Android auto is fine but so is the Tesla's built in UI with maps and music and car management stuff. I own a Tesla and I've been traveling and driving a rental car with Android auto for the past couple of weeks. Android auto is somewhat clunkier than the Tesla UI, but works good enough for mapping. The Tesla comes with it's own phone holder, so no need to buy a phone holder.

I don't need my phone to use my Tesla. I can use the provided card or the key fob (which I prefer). But the Tesla phone app provides handy remote control features that you would expect.

Tesla do not charge to use the phone app to start up the HVAC.

They charge for the enhanced data service that lets you stream audio and navigation data while driving using the in-built cellular radio in the car. This is reasonable since it covers payment for the cellular services for the car.

If you have a phone with data you can put into tethering mode, the car will happily use that as a wifi AP and stream audio and nav data without the need for a subscription.

Salmon!
I'm looking forward to the additional supply of tasty wild salmon. I don't buy that hatchery junk.

Yes on all points.
If you are doing crypto or chemistry, if you have the expertise you will know how to test your creations and know how to get peer review from other experts.

My crypto designs may well be in the silicon you are using and believe me they have been through a *lot* of review, by colleagues, governments, certification organizations and other companies wanting to review the designs to know they are sound.

I would not push a design into a product without it being tested and reviewed every which way. It is very, very hard to get it all correct as an individual and in crypto you need to collaborate with and rely on others to put many eyes on your designs.

I'm not completely ignorant of chemistry. My father has a PhD in it and taught it at college. But it's not the path I took in life. Computers happened and I was off to the races with an Apple 2(euro)+ in 1979 which set the tone for my entire career. I'm not exactly famous, but I'm well known in my field. See the books in my sig for context.

"Leave the cryptography to the experts" they said.
"Don't roll your own crypto" they said.

Well how the hell is anyone going to become and expert without rolling their own for a while to learn the ropes?

I can roll my own crypto. I can build my own crypto hardware. Because I am an expert with the requisite skills and I only got there by rolling my own bad crypto until I got good enough to understand what's safe, what proven, what's helping and what's hurting.

I assume it's the same for chemistry. Try it. test it, repeat until you learn enough. There is an inexhaustible supple of learning materials out there.