The herding portion is actually relatively new, originally it was purely a cattle-management solution and they were running their trials in places where where you had cattle spread out over an impractical-to-keep-an-eye-on area. They spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the things both cow-proof and outdoors-environment-proof, making something IP54 isn't too hard when it's bolted onto a wall and there are no size constraints but doing it when it's strapped to a cow and as small as possible was a huge challenge, they kept finding new unexpected failure modes.

In terms of the herding, I'm guessing they either got feedback asking for it or, given that the things still have a significantly nonzero cost, were trying to find additional reasons to incentivise farmers to use them.

It's a pity the story went for sensationalism with the Thiel mention, the real story is that this is probably the first real advance in managing distributed herds since the introduction of the cowherd, of which there are very few still around. To see what the target environment is, here's an example, the first minute or so. Here's a I'm sure completely unbiased commentary from a farmer on using it.

It's good to see they're doing so well, at the startup stage a couple of years ago it was a lot less clear that it'd take off.

Nothing to do with herding them, it's to do with cattle management when you've got them spread over a large area. You can record where they are, whether they're getting enough food/water, whether they're sick or injured, etc. It's a huge improvement over either having no idea until you run across the carcass several months later or having farm hands spend several days each month going around guesstimating whether there are problems.

Definitely. It takes the cheapest cost on one side, the raw wafer, divided by the number of chips assuming a 100% yield for the wafer, and then the highest possible cost on the other, milspec-qualified packaged devices. It appears to come from Wikipedia, which is based on someone's recollections from 25 years earlier.

Nah, it's just snake oil.

"Hi, James Woburn of 23 Acacia Avenue, Minneapolis, SSN 776-04-1120, this is Copilot! I heard you wanted to install Office with Copilot. Let me help you with that. First, we'll get your Microsoft account set up for you..."

Of course it wasn't, that would be going against decades of practice. Changes in education are based on a technique called analytical advocacy in which (typically) a teacher observes that something they do seems to be helping one or two kids (alternatively, a non-teacher thinks that some new thing will help kids), they spend a lot of time writing about it and talking about it at conferences, eventually it gets noticed when the previous analytical-advocacy fad has obviously failed, and then it gets pushed into classrooms. All entirely unencumbered by empirical analysis.

Next!

Glad I'm not the only one who hates Signal's incessant bloated updates. Ten years ago it was an IM app. Now, tens or possibly hundreds of gigabytes of cumulative updates later it's still the same IM app, currently using three quarters of a gigabyte of memory to display a couple of chats. And the worst thing is that if you block its constant updates it disables itself. It's like the worst type of intrusive vendor bloatware, only you can't really get rid of it because all your friends use it and everything else out there is even worse.

Oh the humanity!

I can see why Amazon wants to reduce this though, that way you'll get your next hit a lot quicker, and can order more stuff you don't need for rapid delivery once the high wears off.

I've seen snippets and read reviews but I'm having trouble seeing it as anything more than another Man Alone film, but set in space instead of on a boat in the Pacific or trapped in a remote mountain range or somewhere in Antarctica or the other usual settings for this sort of thing. Possibly influenced by The Martian which was that but even more so. Friend of mine has been trying to get me to see it but I'm having trouble working up any enthusiasm.

I reckon there's billions to be made peddling schemes for oil pipelines that bypass the Straight of Hormuz.

Note that this claim is disputed. The average American quite probably does violate a lot more than three obscure and mostly never-enforced statutes a day, but the felonies are somewhat cherry-picked and not necessarily an issue, e.g. companies charged rather than individuals, possible charges brought up for political reasons, no-one actually charged, etc.

Incidentally, if anyone else wants to "successfully create plasma", you can buy the necessary gear from Aliexpress, with free shipping.

There's also the obligatory woof! woof! woof! comment that's mandatory in any discussion of quantum.

That was my reaction as well, given the way the current administration does things did a US router vendor make a $10 million contribution to the Ballroom Fund?

In terms of who qualifies, there is still at least one remaining all-US manufacturer, Adtran in Alabama, however their ESG report says:

which I doubt would make them any friends in the Trump administration, so they're not doing this for them.