But also the tariffs. Don't lift them though, that way there is more cheap CXMT DRAM for Europe. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Consumer computers might go away if we are not careful. It will all be cloud based because that is more profitable. Everything on subscription. Your computer is the minimum viable terminal for those services.

The firmware probably isn't designed to be secure, they likely instead have a box that does all the comms with the fridges, and connects to their VPN for remote control. The box only ever talks to the VPN so the only bit that needs securing is their corporate network.

That is how most of these devices work, such as connected cars. VPN to a fixed server, with a certificate to validate that it's the real one, and don't talk to anything else.

Because it saves them vastly more money than this hack has cost them.

They could use a one-way link for simple monitoring, but by having a two way link they can adjust the set point temperature based on real-time electricity prices. Unlike residential customers, large businesses usually pay a variable rate based on 15 minute demand pricing. The pricing is announced 24 hours in advance based on predictions for demand. They drop the set temperature a degree or two when it is cheap, and raise it a degree or two when it is expensive.

Fukushima was an inconvenience? Half a trillion Euros to clean up, and rising, and at least 200 billion Euros of consequential economic damage. Multiple full meltdowns, at least 51 deaths, and 164,000 residence displaced.

Modern reactors absolutely can melt down. I don't know where you got that idea from. The new SMR designs can too.

To be fair Google has supported Fitbit products for a long time and has been steadily upgrading Google Health. It does seem that they are in it for the long haul, although some people aren't happy with the new app and prefer the old Google Fit one.

I've had a Versa 4 for a few years and it's good. Battery life is decent, it seems accurate and proper scientific tests confirm that it is. The sleep tracking is the best you can get without spending at least 4x as much, and is accurate enough to be useful.

The latest Pixel Watch is screwed together, not glued. I imagine this Fitbit will be the same. As long as you properly replace the rubber seals (don't re-use them) it should be fine.

"XL" isn't a good name for it really.

JPEG-XL offers numerous improvements over JPEG, including the ability to do a lossless transcoding of a JPEG file for a ~20% space saving. That alone is very valuable for the web where there is a vast amount of JPEG data that can be reduced now.

It also has proper HDR support, although it remains to be see how well that will work in practice. The issue is going to be the conversion for SDR screens. Also browsers need to be careful with HDR images, or retina burning trolling is going to become a think.

For general use it offers smaller file sizes and better image quality than JPEG. It usually equals or beats most other lossy formats, but not always. It also offers true lossless, and visually lossless modes. The former is competitive with PNG.

The main downside is that performance is much, much worse than JPEG. For decoding, what matters to 99.9% of people, it is both slower and uses more energy (i.e. battery run-time) than JPEG. It may be a net benefit due to smaller downloads, but I'm not convinced.

The other issue is that the reference decoder is written in Rust, so if you want to use it you need to integrate that into your app. There is a C implementation but it's old and seemingly abandoned.

People who are just making little apps and scripts to improve productivity could benefit from AI. I've used it to do a few little PowerShell and Python scripts. I'm not very familiar with either language and don't have time to learn, so some little automation scripts that I otherwise wouldn't have had the inclination to make myself are valuable time savers.

For example I have a PowerShell script that takes unstapled magazines that have been scanned in a sheet feed scanner and splits them into correctly numbered individual pages. It has massively sped up the process of preserving old magazines. Gemini took a few attempts to get it right, but it got there eventually. I'd have probably ended up wasting a fair bit more time writing a little C# app if AI couldn't do it for me.

On the other hand, I'd never let it write embedded code for work. If I can't write it myself, I can't debug it either.

Similar thing in Japan. The food isn't expensive either.

I wouldn't want them to be relying on AI to do reviews though. Maybe two AI, looking only for issues and reporting them back, like you can have AI look for security issues with computer code. And a proper review done by a human.

I have a feeling that if they did that, the AI would flag up loads of critical, may lead to meltdown issues that are uneconomical to fix and deemed to unlikely to be worth spending money on. Which incidentally lead to both Chernobyl and Fukushima being far, far worse than they might have been. Both cheaped out on the containment building. Fukushima's were inadequate, Chernobyl didn't even have any because the risk of an explosion was deemed so low.

Firstly Starfleet Academy is set centuries after TNG and DS9, at a time when the Federation is trying to rebuild after the devastation of The Burn. The Academy has only just re-opened and started taking new recruits, and with the galaxy still recovering the feed of already accomplished cadets just isn't there.

That said, the TNG version in particular was ridiculous. They apparently traumatized cadets as much as possible to see if they were worthy of joining. Aside from not every cadet having the same traumatic experiences to draw on, that's just cruel and ignores the fact that the whole point of the academy is to prepare students for that kind of thing.

In SA the cadets are expected to be at the top of their game... Once they have been taught how to do that. We see them improving throughout the first season, until they are finally able to work well as a crew (under the leadership and supervision of Reno and other officers). Of course there is also an emotional and coming of age journey there, because that's what happens to young adults. Most Western militaries are aware of this and cater for it, as do universities.

Ake left Starfleet because she saw what it had become because of The Burn, and didn't like it. She accepts that was a mistake, and she should have tried harder to put it right instead of walking away. That's a great story and the reason she was chosen to lead the Academy - she both remembers Starfleet before The Burn from her long lifespan, and is strongly motivated to make sure the next generation of officers learn from her mistakes. That's also why she wants to recruit Caleb.

The rest is just because it's a TV show. We aren't there to watch lectures, and most of what they teach is made up pseudo-science anyway. Learning how to operate an imaginary starship that works however the writers say it does isn't very interesting for the audience. It's the same with the cadets getting into so much danger (and they do use the holodeck extensively when possible) - it's like how for some reason the various Enterprises we have seen over three seasons get into highly improbable situations literally every other week. On TNG they have families aboard, but regularly end up with the ship and everyone's lives on the line.

That's how TV works. Real life is repetitive and boring, so TV doesn't try to be realistic.

That's the wrong way of looking at it. You could make the same argument about airbags. The Takata airbag recall was a huge disaster, cost billions to put right, and ended up with them going bankrupt. But airbags do save lives and prevent serious injury. On balance, even with the recall of millions of vehicles, they are worth having.

Matrix headlights do increase visibility a lot. The really good ones are fantastic. Reliability seems to be decent enough, so very likely the benefit outweighs the cost.

Many cars have a dial you can use to adjust the headlights based on the number of passengers and amount of cargo. Hardly anyone even knows it exists, let alone uses it.

Then you have auto high beams, which are supposed to turn off when another car is coming but tend to react far too slowly. Teslas are terrible for it, but I've never seen a particularly good implementation. They need to turn the high beams off when headlights become visible around a corner or over a crest, not a few seconds after they are directly in front of your vehicle and the other driver has already been blinded.

Finally you have matrix headlights, which again are supposed to block the beam that is shining towards on-coming traffic, or the backs of same direction traffic. It tends to work better but also has reaction time issues.