Having worked for Freightliner ( Class 8 truck manufacture ) on dashboard electronics back in the day, they encapsulated all of their circuit boards to prevent corrosion and intermittent problems ( even though a Class 8 dashboard is 8' up in the air ). OTOH my 2004 GMC Yukon had a flakey instrument cluster. Pulled it out and nothing but raw circuit boards everywhere. Ended up replacing the poor quality stepper motors that were used originally. Not having an encapsulated instrument cluster made de-soldering and re-soldering the stepper motors a breeze! But obviously the long term reliability and corrosion resistance of the dashboard was less of a consideration to GM than the extra cost of encapsulation.

You might try "The Hydrogen Sonata", the last of the Culture series. I found it hilarious with all the dialog between the AI ships. Also recommend "The Algebraist" as a non-culture space sci-fi from Iain M. Banks. I'm not a fan of horror, and Mr. Banks included that in some of the Culture books to their detriment.

I'm currently reading "The Apocalypse Factory" by Steve Olson. The semi-definitive atomic bomb history by Richard Rhodes is very East-coast / U235 centric. Steve Olsen's book gives a better look at what was going on at Berkley (where they discovered Plutonium) and at Hanford (where the first production reactors were built and Plutonium was chemically separated from the Uranium, scary stuff! )

After the fiasco that was 91.0, I rolled back to 90.09b, disabled proton, and am a happy camper again! Could be a while before I upgrade. I'll watch and see how they go, but prioritizing UX changes over bug fixes isn't a good path to success.

Is this the 21st century version of the "Broken Window" theory of economics?

Thanks for the Sir Terry Pratchett reference (from Soul Music) BTW: the Audio Technica AT series of large condenser mics are amazing. I've done studio voice prompt recording for voicemail and IVR systems with them ( the AT-4040 in particular ). I've had a chance to A/B compare them with $1K+ "pro" studio mics and I actually like them better ( less coloration, more natural sounding to my ear ).

Yep, same Dicks. ( for those that don't know Seattle, Dicks is the cheapest best burgers in the area ). He and Vern Rayburn would drive over at lunch for a "status report" meeting just so they could walk up the street to Dicks. Paul's only concession to being a billionaire at that time was he had a low profile security guy that would follow him around and just blend into the background. Other than that, you would never know that the two 40-year old guys sitting at the next table having a burger were anything but a couple of business guys on their lunch break. Back in the day also used to see Randy Hansen walking around lower Queen Anne ( I think he had an apartment in the area ).

Man what a shock! I was lucky enough to be working at a Seattle startup that Paul bought back in the 90s ( doing VoIP SOHO phone systems ). He liked to swing by office on a regular basis as we were just a few blocks from Dicks hamburgers on Mercer St (his favorite). He was really an engineer's engineer. We'd give him a status report on how things were going and within a few minutes he was up at the white board spitballing technical solutions to ASIC or network problems. I especially remember him coming by the day he bought the Seahawks. Paul was a big physical presence ( 6'2" 250lbs in those days ), but he kept going on about how after meeting the Seahawks players, he never felt so physically small in his life. Ignore the internet trolls. Paul was a good guy. He was a humble, modest, down-to-earth guy. There was always a pick-up basketball game on his court on Thursday nights. Jam session over at his place were legendary ( I never got to play with him, but every musician that I know that played with him was impressed with his guitar playing ). He left a huge legacy in the pacific northwest. We'll miss you Paul!

No that's the Death Race 2000 version of AI that accidentally got loaded by Uber.

I normally browse using firefox with noscript and uMatrix, but occasionally when I want to view a video, I'll fire up Chrome and copy/paste the link there. Did that for an article at latimes.com two weeks ago and got served up some malware advertisement that did exactly this. I was impressed. You wouldn't expect that a reputable site like latimes.com would allow malvertizements, and you wouldn't expect that chrome would have an easily exploitable javascript vulnerability. Had to use process explorer to kill chrome.

And then you need Harry Tuttle ( http://www.imdb.com/character/... ), rogue terrorist HVAC repairman.

Chris Schmandt did this a while back at MIT. Gestures plus voice recognition. Guess you can get a patent if leave out the voice recognition part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... ( original demo )

Just remember: in Ballard, the rules of maritime navigation apply EVERYWHERE! So throw that seatbelt out the the door, get that turn signal on, and for god's sake slow down! Then you can earn your "Uff Da" sticker on your 64 Valliant. Best Almost Live BIll Nye the science guy skit was crushing a steam filled oil drum with a fire extinguisher. Almost didn't work, but hey, Almost Live TV. Also "Bill Nye - Stop the rock" was a fun early CD game.