That's a ridiculous amount to spend on phone service. There are prepaid plans with unlimited data for a fraction of the cost. And unless you're tethering or streaming, you probably don't need unlimited.

New buildings for AI datacenters are clearly the plan. The weight per rack and the rack height are minor considerations compared to the electricity and cooling requirements. This is obviously the approach Tesla is taking, having custom-built the Cortex datacenter, and now with construction well underway for Cortex 2.

With 350kW/rack, a large datacenter is looking at hundreds of MW. No wonder Tesla had to build a new substation for Cortex 2. I haven't looked at what the other companies are doing, but it can't be that different.

My TCL TV has a game mode that you can enable. They say it's for reducing lag and disables some "image enhancement," but I wonder if it also disables ACR? It certainly helps with audio sync when the audio doesn't run through the TV.

Supposedly I've also turned ACR off in the menus, and I've blocked their ad server, so I'm in better shape than average.

I will say that I really like the Roku interface. Even if you never connect it to the Internet, the interface for selecting inputs is really nice. I have family with a Samsung TV, and I despise that interface.

We really need standardized protocols for garage doors. Chamberlin had a near monopoly on the market and had proprietary protocols.

If you want to make a compatible garage door opener, you have to use their HomeLink chips. My Tesla had HomeLink integrated, and it's awesome having the garage door just open when I pull into the driveway with GPS activation, but now they charge extra for this, in part because HomeLink is a proprietary chip, and they can't just integrate the functionality directly without an additional part. That's also why it's limited to only controlling three garage doors (which is an issue for some people with overly complicated lives).

Now it's a similar situation with WiFi control, where they have a proprietary protocol that goes through their servers simply so that they can charge a subscription fee.

What is needed is some good open standards.

An open standard for the RF signals: Let anyone implement the hardware. Allow for separate open/close signals, as well as the current activate signal. Allow for separate authentication for the signals, so you can do things like have a keypad access outside that only needs the code to open the door, not close it.

An open standard for WiFi control. This is likely already covered by Matter.

As a friend once said, "You don't penalize people for doing the right thing." But it's a legitimate concern that the system of funding roads from fuel taxes is going to collapse due to EVs. So the solution is to apply the new fees to all vehicles. This will encourage the transition instead of slow it. Also, they can start with the fee being much lower, so the estimated revenue matches the estimated loss due to reduced fuel sales, and they can phase it in over time as fuel sales continue to drop.

Is Apple's end objective here to integrate the modem into the CPU so that there's one less chip in the device? That should save significant cost.

It would be nice to use my TV for Zoom, but I certainly don't want the camera gathering data for its own purposes. The screen scraping that smart TVs do is bad enough.

I think you're confusing twilight with sunrise/sunset. The three definitions of twilight are the sun from 0Â-6Â below the horizon, 6Â-12Â, or 12Â-18Â. The time for sunrise or sunset is when the entire sun transitions to or from below the horizon.

My definition would need some tweaks for above the arctic circle, and all solar based times break down at the exact poles.

And of course, it all depends on exactly where you are, so I'm throwing out the entire concept of time zones, which were only invented because we didn't have automatically adjusting clocks.

Just block raw HTTP unless it's in a private IP address range. That should cover 99% of use cases where HTTP is still used. I would also consider allowing an option to blindly accept self-signed certificates on private IP ranges to encourage HTTPS for people too lazy to use Let's Encrypt or something like that, or are running older equipment on a local LAN.

I would assume these are already settings that just aren't turned on by default, as they seem pretty obvious.

The sign-in pages are stupid. Most of them are worthless click-throughs that should go away. A few do have you do some sort of sign-in, so they should be https.

But the whole process is a stupid hack. They did add a new DHCP option for sending a sign-in URL, but it was never widely adopted. That would have made it work much more reliably for everyone.

I propose we switch to Sunrise Time. Instead of AM and PM, we have Day and Night. The Day starts at sunrise and Night starts at sunset. So we would have times like: D1:30 (an hour and a half after sunrise) or N0:00 (sunset). We could also have negative time: N-1:00 (an hour before sunset). The day would start at sunrise, but if using negative day time, it would refer to the day of the sunrise, even though the same time expressed as positive Night time would be the previous day.

So someone might set their alarm clock to go off at D-0:45 on M-F to get up forty-five minute before sunrise on weekdays.

I'm sure this solves all the problems and nobody will ever complain again.

I've been saying this for a long time, though I would say 7am. Of course, sunrise time is different depending not just your longitude, but also your latitude, so we would be back to picking a sample location for each time zone. And this means adjusting clocks every night. Just slightly near the solstices, but more significantly closer to the equinoxes. So all clocks would need to have automated changes. This would be a great chance to get rid of all manually set clocks while creating lots of waste.

And then we would all complain that sunrise is either too early or too late, depending on our personal schedules and where we live in the time zone.

Oh, and Paul Eggert would probably veto the whole thing.

And Uber drivers are just one group about to be eliminated by technology. The same self-driving will also eliminate tons of truck drivers, though that will probably hold off until people are more used to the idea of self-driving cars on the road. (I would give it one to three years delay.)

We're in for some interesting times.

But Uber will have to build out its fleet of autonomous vehicles.

That's assuming Uber. Tesla is preparing the assembly lines now for the CyberCab, and they could be putting them out at thousands a week by the end of next year. There's a lot to be said for the theory that self driving cars won't be able to handle all weather and all weird roads, but from what I've seen, those are issues that may delay but not stop the self-driving takeover.

Yes, the ReplayTV interface was awesome. And the founder of ReplayTV went on to found Roku, which also has an awesome interface.