I'm probably one of the very few who's been in the microcomputer industry since its inception way back in the 1970s.

What a ride it has been!

I recall building my own systems with 8-bit processors and just a few hundred bytes of precious ram. Clock speeds were barely a megahertz at the time but still we managed to overclock these systems and run 110 baud TTY connections at almost 200baud (non-standard of course).

The only language available back then was the native machine code of the processor being used, all hand-assembled unless you were lucky enough to have access to a minicomputer and a suitable cross-assembler.

Even once microcomputers became available in retail stores as something you could buy off the shelf, things were very basic (no pun intended).

During those early days, Microsoft was the language company (mainly selling BASIC) and Digital Research was the OS company (selling CP/M).

And that's how things went for a few years... until IBM released their PC, when everything changed.

Suddenly Microsoft was the OS company (PC/MSDOS) and Digital Research was relegated to being a language company (primarily Pascal MT+).

It's been a wonderful 50+ years and to be honest, I'm surprised that Microsoft is still around. I guess the fact that it is speaks to the power of a de facto monopoly when properly managed.

What will the next 50 years hold and will Microsoft still be in business when the calendars tick over to 2075 I wonder?

So black is the new blue?

Do I see a TV drama series in the making?

At least the acronym won't have to be updated.

But if you have no internet... how would you get the update? :-)

No bricking then.

The only problem with this is you have to go stand in the sunlight to charge it.

As if I don't get enough spam in my inbox, now it's here as well.

Thank you for your post, I will be sure and avoid the company you mention and advise my friends to avoid it as well.

The video you upload to YouTube, the music you upload to your own website... etc,etc. It seems a little broad to me.

Gemini is pretty crappy at most things and when I use the LLM chatbot it spends more time apologising for getting things wrong than it does presenting useful information.

Yesterday I tried Cursor as an LLM android code generator and was very impressed with the results. I haven't tried the AI assist in Android studio but I'll be comparing the two in coming days. Just as well this announcement was made -- I was *almost* going to lay down $20 a month for Cursor but if Gemini can do the same or better, I'll save some $$.

I agree... I started with Netscape Navigator way back in the dial-up days (1995) and today I use Firefox. However, if they start baking ads into my browser (privacy-respecting or not) and screwing around with AI then I'll finally say goodbye to this browser and find something that works the way a browser should.

Remember... *not* having ads and *not* having AI will soon be a powerful point of distinction and USP in the browser market. Don't give that up Firefox!

From 2012 ... great minds think alike (although not identically) -- some just think of it sooner: It's all about time

So true. Even when you tell it to turn off shorts on the main page it smuggly advises that they'll be turned back on in 30 days or something.

What part of "NO SHORTS" does YouTube not understand?

Why even offer the ability to turn off shorts if you're going to turn them back on in a few weeks' time even though the user has made it clear they don't want to see the damned things?

"deeply sorry for the mistake he made," --- NOT A MISTAKE... a purposeful decision to endanger other poeple's property and lives by flying his drone in an area where it has been deemed too dangerous to do so.

As a very active member of the drone community and an international advocate for *reasonable* regulation, I believe this guy should have got a custodial sentence. Many of the regulations controlling recreational drone flyers are excessively restrictive but no rules have any effect unless they are enforced and the punishment is proportionate to the level of offending.

A guy in Philly got fined $182K for flying his drone at night in the city. No property was damaged, no lives were put at risk. This guy actually *hits* an aircraft, causes tens of thousands of dollars in damage and puts lives at risk, even if only because the plane was out of commission for a week or so while being repaired.

Something is wrong with this picture.

No, it's just a somewhat delayed Y2K bug that took just over quarter of a century to kick-in :-)

Yep, and a tax on Netflix would probably push a lot of Netflix subscribers over the edge. Many have already balked at the never-ending subscription increases and having a BBC-tax lumped on top would be the final straw for a lot.

Surely Netflix could file suit that this was an unreasonable anti-Netflix move by the UK government?

Perhaps DeepSeek has been massively over-hyped and they don't want the (Western) world discovering that it's nowhere near as capable as claimed?

Heatpumps are a great way to heat/cool houses in temperate climates but when you start getting extremes then you have to be very careful about the type of unit you install.

With simple air-sink heatpumps that have an air cooled/warmed radiator outside in the environment there are limits to their effectiveness in very cold temperatures -- as many people in the UK discovered to their cost during a recent cold-snap that saw temperatures fall to as much as -20 deg C. The effeciency of a gas furnace remains constant regardless of outside temperature but when the outside temp is too low and you're trying to suck heat from the ambient air, the efficiency can fall through the floor -- resulting in poor heating and high energy bills (due to that poor efficiency).

In countries where sub-zero temps are commonplace it's often a better option to use a ground-based heat source. This means laying pipes underground where the temperature remains higher than above-ground. This can provide much better performance.

Unfortunately, it's often much cheaper just to use an above-ground heat-pump with an air-based radiator/heat-exchanger setup and so bad outcomes can occur.

You also have to wonder don't you... if a heatpump can effectively produce 3KW of heat with 1KW of electrical energy -- why don't we have over-unity perpetual motion (I know the answer but do you)?