Motorola beat Google to market already. The Motorola Moto Tag 2 was announced January at CES went on sale in North America on June 30, 2026 (the original Moto Tag 1 was released in 2024). It is a Bluetooth + Ultra-Wideband (UWB) tracker that works with Google's Find My Device network. It is IP67/IP68 water-resistant and has a replaceable CR2032 battery. I was able to purchase it direct from Motorola (owned by Lenovo now).

Gmail & Drive need improvements to control file size management and to enable backups.

1. Gmail needs to add the ability to delete large attachments while keeping the email text. A workaround is forwarding the email to yourself with a slightly different subject line and delete the attachment, but it should be much more convenient than that.

2. Drive should allow Google-Doc and Google-Sheets files to be downloaded in their native format (or in a zip file) for backup. And enable them to be uploaded again. Forcing users to export them as docx and xlsx files is a stupid lock-in tactic. Converting back and forth somewhat mangles the files on each conversion. Gdoc-docx and gss-xlsx conversion aren't perfect and require human fixups.

3. Hint: Lock a docx or xlsx file when it is uploaded to G-Drive so it is not auto-mangled when someone clicks on it for viewing. Google should allow multiple files to be selected and locked at one time rather than require people to lock them one at a time.

4. Useful feature hint: Upload a photo of text to Drive and open it as a Doc, and it will do OCR and convert the photo to a text document.

Funny, I forgot it was there. I am used to ignoring it.

I'm going to start using it again now that I have Open Shell to give me a proper Windows 7 Start menu.

Chrome could borrow a few easy ideas from MS Edge.
Have 2 or 3 rows of recent sites on a new tab instead of only 1.
Paste the title of a URL link instead of the long URL gobbledygook when cutting a pasting from a web site into a document or email.
Anything else?

To generate thrust in space, a craft needs to eject reaction mass from a rocket, ion thruster, or some type of engine. The engine might indeed be solar powered, but we will need to transport more reaction mass to the shade disks periodically to keep them operating.

The space mirrors could be useful. A more useful idea would be to launch "shade disks" that are stationary at the L1 Lagrange Point between the Earth and the Sun. They could provide shade for cities and polar regions that are too hot and cool them with partial shade. The challenge is keeping them fueled so they can move to track where the shade is needed as the Earth rotates. Question: Do the Lagrange Point forces allow us to position a disk such that we don't have to expend a lot of fuel just resisting the solar wind?

Ha! Thanks for that link to the short story.

"Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters"

2020 ARS Story: Cory Doctorow’s book, Radicalized, is up for a CBC award. To celebrate, here’s an excerpt.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming...

Is there an archive of the 2026 Factbook anywhere? Project Gutenberg only has up to 2010 available.

All editions - https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

2010 edition https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

Siglent oscilloscopes charge a subscription for features too. I am fine with the practice because it reduces costs to sell one piece of hardware, but enable higher end features for those that want to pay extra, but Siglent does it in a scummy manner.

They sell a scope with all features enabled, and then a month later things stop working and you have to pay more money. It is not clear when you purchase that things will stop working. Some essential features of spectrum analyzers stop working. (And Murphy's law says they will stop working when you need them. :) )

Siglent does offer some very nice scopes at a good price, and I recommend them. But they provide a demo unit with all features enabled, and you can't tell what will go away after a month when you buy the base model.

They should have a menu allowing features to be turned on and off during the trial period.

https://about.gitea.com/
Gitea can be used for either hosted or self-hosted Git repos.
"Open Source - Free, self-hosted Git service under the MIT license. Full control, unlimited users and repositories."
Our company uses it with Redmine for tickets.

Let the gamifications begin!

Yes, but there is a nice simplicity to an AVR microcontroller that makes them enjoyable to work with for small projects, and makes them learnable for newer hobbyists and students. ARMs are great, but they are overly complex.

The USA seems to ignored the purchase of competitors in most cases. Why is this any different? FedEx bought TNT Cargo which was a much for affordable air courier just to kill their competitor and expand their business. Air shipping costs have gone up as a result from what I can see.

For greater security, your organization can host their own Gitea server rather than be exposed to the MS security gaffes at Hithub. Check out Gitea.com and https://github.com/go-gitea.

"Gitea = Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD"

It is stupid for advertisers to just play the same ad over and over and over. That also annoys customers who will avoid the product.