Because as climate change makes more of the planet uninhabitable and the population grows, someone will built a 'long term solution' and kill a whole lot of humanity off. The tools to do it keep getting stronger and more accessible. It's inevitable.

There is nothing wrong with removing the limits. I'm an older nerd, and I started coding with 72 character IBM punched cards, which were based on Hollerith cards invented to program semi-automated looms. Yes, the cards contained 80 characters, but the last 8 were reserved for auto-sequencing punch machines. Once you got your code right, you ran it through the sequencer which punched the last 8 characters. Then if you dropped the deck, you could run it through the sorter and it would sort them back into the sequence. And dropping a deck... well the only equivalent nowadays is trashing your backups and your source code accidentally.

I'm all for removing artificial limits on names as well, but overly clever names on variables is a dumbass move. I comment. I comment like crazy. Date_except_on_thursday_because_fizzbin is as dumb as DETF.

Corporate - Webex has been getting more robust as the Work From Home trend continues.
Personal - Zoom is spotty as heck, and terrifyingly bad on crappy rural internet (Satellite Wild Blue). Fortunately the family is all Apple hardware users, so we Facetime conference every week to stay in touch. And that works really well, AND doesn't require tech support for an 80+ year old great grandma.

Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter's student film. And a screamingly funny send-up of SF films of the late 60's and early 70's... done in a haze of herbal smoke. And containing some of the most human dialogue.....
Computer: "Sargent Pinback, it's time to clean the Beachball's cage."
Pinback: (whining) "Awww... I don't wanna !"

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0...

I recall in the mid 80's a colleague demonstrated to our boss that he could read the computer screen (CRT) inside the lab on his oscilloscope with a scanning setup about 20 feet outside the lab. Needless to say they had to build a semi-SCIF for the Top secret SIGNIT work the company was doing.

The same dude then developed a SIGINT technique a few months later. Which was classified Top Secret. Except he only had a Secret clearance. We kept telling him he had to report to the nurse for brain surgery.

the late Sir Arthur Clarke's quote... As civilizations search for more energy. the expectation is that someone will screw up. Remember the kerfluffle about the LHC creating black holes ? (Yes, I know, rogue physicist using crappy math pushed that idea, mostly because he was pissed at being kept out of the project)

Right. And these idiots used the name of a completely addictive beverage that, once hooked, condemns the drinker to a lifetime of consumerism ? I've heard of tongue in cheek, but jeez... why not just name it Liquid Heroin and be done with it ?

""...here's what makes this campaign great in my estimation - each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid. Nothing harmful. But definitely habit-forming. After ten weeks the customer is hooked for life. It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure, so it's simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest - three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar.""

Having managed projects ranging from R&D, defense systems, construction, and software development.. the MMM is all about work teams. Most successful project managers learn this sort of thing from experience (read pain and failure). Everybody thinks they have some sort of 'new concept' that is the magic bullet to 'solve software development problems'.

Forgetting that the one common element is... people. No matter WHAT methodology you claim to follow, I guarantee at least half of your team will think it's bullshit, and begrudge the paperwork that is getting in their way of just getting the job done.. THEIR WAY.

The best thing a good manager does is remove restraints and barriers, and filter bullshit. And let the team gel and get their shit done.

Some years ago my home network was zapped with a lightning strike that came in via the coaxial cable. Modem, router, and two switches died to save my computers. In military designs, we used opto-isolators to shield sensitive circuits from attack.

Despite the hysteria, this is not a 'broad attack threat'. The attacker needs physical access to the network, and will probably only compromise part of the network due to the energies and damage modes involved. Unless he's Nikola Tesla and carrying his own lightning bolt. Then all bets are off.

I do recommend that you isolate your network from power threats with surge suppressors on your coax line or RJ-45 line from your ISP, and of course your power lines.

Absolutely agree that it's much ado about nothing. AND bad statistics ! CERN as an example is a lot of nonsense... it's a HUGE project with a HUGE population of PhD's, grad students, undergrads, managers, technicians, and everybody else. All working towards a common goal. And the science developed by those thousands of authors is an enormous collaboration, enabled by ... yeah, you guessed it, the World Wide Web. Which was INVENTED at CERN to enable... Collaboration.

WSJ, you look like a bunch of idiots. Stick to talking about stocks and rich people stuff. You suck at science.

Is there a possible benefit to getting a battery with fewer charge cycles in a swap ? I sort of saw this concept as a way to get a refurbished battery when yours is reaching end of life, or has a few dead cells.

At work we have a PC Board component inserter robot that runs off a PDP-8. Programmed with paper tape. Yes. Paper tape. OK, well, plastic punched tape. There is a short stack of 'spare' PDP-8 rack units sitting in the crib just waiting for a failure. But you know what ? Digital Equipment made some rugged machines.

And in my old job in the defense industry we used a surplus Nike-Ajax missile radar, that was run off a synchro computer. I designed a digital interface to run it off a Z-80 processor.

One industry that died with direct PC sales (Yes, you Mikey Dell) was the entire Value Added Reseller industry. There are a few still around, but the serried ranks of 'experts' went poof. This can be equated with the attempts to bypass the Auto Dealership model by Tesla.

I encourage this. The idea that consumers are too stupid to buy cars without expert assistance is as dumb as the idea that consumers needed help to buy complicated computers.

Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte (Systems, Applications, and Products).

www.sap.com

Basically it's one of the two the largest Enterprise Resource Planning software companies in the world. Oracle is the other one. And since most SAP systems are run inside a highly protected corporate network, the self-promoting hysteria from this article is so much bullcrap.

SAP can send and receive email. Your guys should know that. It's a sucky 1990's email system, but it works.

Disclaimer... I'm one of those 'SAP Guys' and have been doing it for a decade and a half.