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)?

Bambu Lab (like most corporations) is *NOT* a charity nor a philanthropic organisation. Its goal is to make money. Their own interests will always outrank the interests of the customer.

A healthy cynicism should be maintained at all times and decisions made by the consumer accordingly.

Are you shure that BD players will still be available.

I think now is a *good* time to rip all your DVD and BD content to other media so you don't lose the ability to access it when your players break and can't be replaced.

It would be nice if the studios acknowledged that each disk represented a license for that content and offered the ability to download a modern digital copy on proof of posession of the same content on disk. Not going to happen though is it?

I have the same music on vinyl, cassette and CD. In effect, I paid for that license three times and have to pay again if I want to listen again on Spotify or some other streaming service. The licenses I've purchased are not recognised as such though -- because if the media is damaged they won't replace that disk/tape for only the cost of the media and handling.

The movie and recording industries are thieves.

I'm not interested unless the individual bits are cryogenically treated and the datacenter cables are woven from virgin yak hair by blonde-headed maidens.

Clearly they have no idea. For instance, do they realize that in WW2 simple firearms such as the Sten were often made using little more than a file and a hammer?

Even the Chinese Norinco SKS rifles were often made in small villages with nothing but hand-tools.

Why is it that brainless bureaucreats float to the top of the septic-tank of power?

Hey, Elon wrote a fantastic computer game while he was still at school -- I'm sure he must have placed it in the public domain so that the Japanese could make an arcade variant called "Alien Invaders". Then he invented the Hyperloop and, being the philantropist that he is, refused to patent it so that Goddard could could come up with the VacTrain (albeit a century earlier). Rumor is that, thanks to a weird temporal anomaly, Von Braun was a student of Musk's teachings in respect to rockets.

There is nothing Musk can't do if he puts his mind to it and when he does, people throughout history simply copy him!
</satire>

Slashdot is already just a shadow of its former self. I fondly recall the halcion days when being "slashdotted" meant your webserver would crash with huge volumes of traffic.

Today, even the most popular topics get barely more than a hundred or so comments and many barely make it into double-digits for comments -- a tiny amount compared to the thousands (or more) of posts that almost every topic got "back in the day".

This change to the way ads are served will simply be another nail in the coffin of Slashdot and drive away those who rely on ad-blockers to keep the WWW somewhat sane and protect them from the malware vector that some advertising can represent.

Ah slashdot, we knew you well but now....???

What drone?

So far we have seen ZERO evidence that a drone was involved. Examine the following:

1. the pilot didn't see a drone. In fact he was unaware of the collision until the aircraft landed and the damage was observed.
2. there have been zero credible reports of drone-bits being found in the hole on the aircraft wing.
3. there have been zero reports that Remote ID receivers or similar tech picked up a drone in the vicinity at the time of the incident.

Don't get me wrong -- it MAY have been a drone but right now there has been zero actual evidence released to support the claims being made.

This could have also been:

1. a bird.
2. a piece of material lofted into the air by the strong winds created by the wildfires (well documented in the past)
3. something we haven't identified

There's strong pressure from certain commercial interests to villify recreational drone use in order to clear hobbyists out of the 0-400ft segment of the airspace to make room for delivery drones and eVTOL air taxis. When you look at how long it actually took for the DHS, FBI and FAA to admit that the "mystery drones" over NJ and NY were basically just airliners, the suggestion that certain sectors are keen to vilify drones becomes even more credible.

Don't get me wrong... this may well be a drone and if it was, I'd be leading the lynch mob to deal with the idiot who was flying it -- however, as someone who is well versed in "sciencing stuff" I think we need a modicum of proof (ie: evidence) before we jump to conclusions. Remember the airline pilot who swore he hit a drone while landing at Heathrow? Yeah... it turned out to be a shopping bag. What we think has happened and what *actually* happens are often two entirely different things, sometimes driven by our biases.