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Comment Re:Good Idea (Score 1) 63

A guy I knew had an early Model S.

When he wanted to impress me with the acceleration he tapped a couple settings on the screen to put it into Ludicrous Mode

This was around 2013 or so.

I'm not seeing how this is a problem.

I have a V6 and a V8 truck and both need a manual low gear selection to take off like a rocket. OK, the V6 not so much but the V8 can spin the rear tires in 2WD mode.

I don't let the average drivers in my life use it.

They would hit a tree if they were given a Tesla that was always in Ludicrous Mode.

Comment Wire (Score 1) 5

I'm not sure if Wire has new management but I just recently learned they've gone fully open source, are working on federation, and are using an RFC-specified tree-based efficient group chat encryption algorithm. RCS is eventually meant to adopt the same algorithm.

Folks using Telegram Groups (which are unencrypted, actually) might have a look. Yeah, somebody needs to run a server if you don't want intelligence agencies to provide one for you.

I uninstalled Wire years ago when they wouldn't take privacy seriously (yeah, I filed a bug) but it seems like a second look is warranted.

Comment Re:Other developers.... (Score 2) 27

Would the $20 ONN sticks from Walmart work better for you?

I have an puck-style device of theirs which is just an Amtel SoC with GoogleTV Android on it. Probably doesn't get updates but then you don't let them have unfettered access to the Internet either.

I've sideloaded Jellyfin, SmarTube-Next, etc.

I used to have a half dozen Fire sticks and have removed all but one, in a kid's bedroom. They haven't banned Jellyfin ... yet... but aren't they dropping Android as well?

Comment teething (Score 4, Insightful) 112

"There'll be some teething problems," O'Leary said of the move.

That's putting it mildly.

Smartphones can crash, run out of battery or any number of problems. On important trips I usually have a paper boarding pass with me as a backup. Only needed it once, but I'm just one person with fairly normal travel amounts. Multiplied over the number of people flying Ryan Air, statistically speaking this happens constantly.

Frankly speaking, I think it's a gimmick to milk the customers for more money. Someone at Ryan Air has certainly done the calculation, estimated how many people can't access their boarding pass at the gate for whatever reason, and how much additional money they can make by forcing all these people to pay the additional fee for having it printed.

Comment Re:Are people this ignorant of basic online securi (Score 1) 79

Yes, but half the people have below-average intelligence.

We won't have a stable society if they're constantly scammed.

And I know some High-IQ people with no street smarts who got scammed by "Raj from Microsoft Support".

Really some dude from a trailer park might have a better BS detector, having lived a less coddled existence.

Comment Re:I wouldn't care if my taxes hadn't paid for it (Score 1) 89

Mostly true but not entirely. For the moment at least there are still applications such as airplanes where fossil fuels have no reasonable alternative. But yes, a large number of things that we currently power by burning long-dead dinosaurs could just as well work with other sources of energy.

And yeah, I think the whole world looks at the Middle East and is thinking: If you all so much want to kill each other, why don't we just step back and let you?

Comment uh, both, dummy ? (Score 2) 95

Obviously, sooner or later we will want to do things that require our physical presence. And be it because the ping time to Mars really, really sucks.

Robots are way easier to engineer for space than humans, even though space is so unforgiving that that's not trivial, either. The same is true for other planets. Building a robot that works well in 0.2g or 5g is an engineering challenge but doable even with today's tech. Humans... not so much.

But let's be honest here: We want to go out there. The same way humans have found their way to the most remote places and most isolated islands on planet Earth, expansion is deeply within our nature.

So, robots for exploration to prepare for more detailed human exploration to prepare for human expansion.

And maybe, along the way we can solve the problem that any spaceship fast and big enough to achieve acceptable interplanetary travel times (let's not even talk about interstellar) with useful payloads is also a weapon of mass destruction on a scale that makes nukes seem like firecrackers.

Has What If? already done a segment on "what happens is SpaceX's Starship slams into Earth at 0.1c" ?

Comment Re: Missing Rust Language Specification (Score 1) 70

> Bruh. Apt already relies on Perl, which has no formal language specification. What nonsense is this?

You are right, which is why I don't think this is a huge deal.

Though perl5 compatibility back to c.2000 is pretty good.

Today's rust code most likely won't run in 2050 on modern compilers.

But perl4 code doesn't run well today either.

Yet nothing in trixie needs to run anything from buzz - so as long as everything works within a version or two it's hard to imagine anybody being negatively affected.

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