Interesting, GRC (Steve Gibson, IIRC) used to have something like that for Windows way back when.

It was nice to be able to keep tabs on what apps were doing, but of course, it was a different era, one where you ran "programs" and they were mostly self-contained and offline.

Nowadays you run a stripped-down web browser and everything you do is backed by some remote API or another.

> On TV, Copilot takes on a "friendly, animated presence" that resembles

So, this is "your plastic pal that's fun to be with", right?

Can't wait for the models with Genuine People Personality to come out :-D

Fellow Deutsch duo student here, on a 5y streak (paid plan)

While I do see the occasional AI slop in there and it's annoying, I think the product is still good. My own complain with it is that the course is too short, you'll finish it before getting to more advanced concepts or sentence structures, and then what?

Myself, I've restarted the course two times (using different "from" languages each time) in order to keep practicing, but when I finish this third round, there is no other language that I speak and can use to practice German. What's next then? What are you looking at?

Myself, I like to complement Duolingo with a daily listen to "Langsam Nachrichten", news bites read slowly and with simple vocab, from the Deutschewelle: https://learngerman.dw.com/de/... (I have it on my podcast app, new episode ready every day)

I also always liked Coffee Break German, but haven't tried their premium course yet, only the free podcast (which is really good) https://coffeebreaklanguages.c...

Bis bald!

Someone got paid to come-up with that, even if all they did was a half-assed prompt to generate it.

And a few people saw that at a meeting and concluded it was good enough.

Sad times, that monstrosity is all distorted and looks horrible.

Not that I claim to understand any of the science here, but wanted to say that your claim about time "running faster in the middle of a void" brought to mind the notion of the "zones of thought" from the fantastic book series A" Fire Upon the Deep", by Vernor Vinge :)

Well, to be fair, it is easier to fire than it is to hire (strictly from the standpoint of judging competence).

When you hire you go from a limited set of interviews and maybe some testing and dynamics. When you fire you (hopefully) are being supported by a track record which shows that for whatever reason, it did not work out (not always, there's also blanket firing for "reasons".)

That's a good option too! When I read the summary I was inclined to suggest that they bolt the experiments on the next iterations to the sides of the craft instead of the floor. Just in case, you know :-)

Minor correction there: you mixed latitude and longitude ....

- Oiapoque is at 4 degrees latitude North (above the equator), and
- Chui (not Sombrio) is at 34 degrees latitude South

Solar noon does not indeed vary much between them as they sit at a similar latitude (52 West for Oiapoque and 53 West Chui). What varies, immensely, is the duration of the day and night cycles, which vary little on Oiapoque (close to the equator line) and a lot in Chui (further away).

Still, the point about Brazil needing two or maybe three timezones is a valid one.

I have solar already, but I'm not willing to have a lithium-ion battery pack installed, those things are a bit too scary and my insurance may not approve anyway. But this new tech might just be the ticket for timeshifting my solar output. On a fixed install like this size (and weight) is less of a concern, but safety and price are paramount.

A backup is not a backup until you attempt (and succeed at) a restore

I noticed that the range on my 433MHz garage door openers was substantially reduced Fri/Sat/Sun, but only during the day, during the night all was normal.

Also, a RaspberryPi (plastic case, unshielded) where I run a small home server 24x7 with great uptime kept locking up and requiring to be power-cycled on the same three days, but once again, only during the day.

YMMV, but that's what I observed from 29S 54W. (not able to check for aurora australis, as it was overcast and rainy the entire time)

Three Matrix movies

(and even that count is off by two according to some views)

Let me offer you my own take on this: I've been trying DuckDuck Go and Bing as options to Google, but I still (generally) get better result with Google, so it's been hard to switch.

That said, the thing about google is that you have to craft your search with very specific terms, and then on the results you must skip the first five or so "adds disguised as results", and then either you have what you're looking for in the first few "real" search results, or it won't be there at all and you have to modify your search.

I have NEVER found anything relevant in the next few pages, so I don't even bother clicking "next"

(only exception to that is perhaps image search, but even with that, next pages are more of a curiosity than useful content)