Yep, still have the XP running - it's only function is for an old Epson scanner that they won't update the drivers for but that's it.

They won't be OceanGate-grade. They used PRCF that had already been rejected by quality control. That's a non-starter in aircraft.

As production has ended, if the A380 is genuinely necessary, then the economics shift somewhat. That doesn't mean they CAN be replaced, from the sounds of it they can't* (at least in many cases), but the inability to replace the aircraft would mean that options that aren't rational become necessary.

*I have to be careful here. If the wing is designed to be the absolute minimum weight possible, then I don't see how they could be without fully disassembling the entire wing and then reconstructing it from the ground up. And adhesives/welding might mean that just can't be done. At all. On the other hand, there's no obvious reason why you couldn't design a wing to have far more structural support than actually needed AND make spars deliberately maintainable and replaceable. I don't have an A380 handbook in front of me, so can't say how Airbus approached this. But it seems improbable that they're built to be swapped.

Tesla is already in trouble due to profound incompetence.

And the fact that this was in response to a blackout that lasted days

Either you're confusing it with a different blackout or this needs clarification. The power was back to 99% of users after about 18 hours, and although I can't access the primary sources I see citations that it was fully restored within 24 hours. Your main point still stands.

I still had 4G phone signal for an hour or two after the blackout. When the power hadn't come back after about half an hour I looked online and discovered that it was a national event rather than just my block of flats.

Good observations, though I am Gen X so after a childhood of editing config.sys to get retail games to run on the PC I have an incredibly high tolerance for putting up with that nonsense.

Its original use dates to WWII and was more akin to "military R&D engineer/technician": the people who developed radar, for example; or Barnes Wallis of the bouncing bomb and Lancaster bomber.

The use has generalised over time and would certainly include madcap inventors like Doc Brown from Back to the Future, who is very much not an ivory tower dweller. I would guess that that's the sense which was contrasted with engineers in the documentary.

In the vernacular of The Register, which the headline comes from, it is used quite generally for scientists or engineers.

From the summary:

IOW, they're sticking with their marketing pitch.

That's no longer the American Way (if it ever was).

The Trash 80s? Had a Commodore PET 3032. A whole 1 megahertz. On the other hand, the IEEE 488 meant that I could send a command to one disk drive to transfer to a second disk drive, whilst printing, with the computer then totally free to actually do other stuff. SCSI it wasn't, but for the time, it was an ingenious solution to a lot of problems.

Sheer luxury, lad! Sheer luxury!

We had to make our own bits and push them uphill! Both ways! In the snow!

Pah, youngsters.

However, some of you might be old enough to remember the April 1st when the front page turned pink and a link to Cute Overload caused absolute chaos. Did CmdrTaco ever get a pony, btw?

Wind is part of the cause, but the GS itself is an ocean current.

The reported drop ins SpaceX is understandable given the recent IPO.

As for most of the others, is a 2% drop significant?