Posts by DS999

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

I wouldn't have answered the phone on vacation

I'd let it go to voicemail, then decide whether to call them back. If I chose to, I'd insist on full replacement of vacation days affected by this (i.e. if I take the call on Tuesday afternoon, drive in and work on stuff and go back to my vacation Wednesday afternoon that's Tuesday and Wednesday that need replacement since both were affected) plus a bonus vacation day to compensate for the disruption. If they refused, I'd wish them good luck on cleaning up the mess and I'll see them when I return and hang up and not answer subsequent calls unless a voicemail is left agreeing to my (quite reasonable, IMHO) terms.

Some might be afraid to do this due to fear of future retribution (lower raise, less chance of promotion, etc) but think how someone willing to give up their vacation without compensation will be viewed? They will know that is someone who can be pushed around and is afraid to push back, and unless you have a really good boss protecting you (which you don't, because you got a call and went into work on your vacation without any compensation made) they will take advantage of that situation again and again in the future.

Another good reason why you should either not tell your employer where you are going for vacation, or lie and tell them it is much further away and you are much more unreachable than you really will be. Going to another country used to be like going to the Moon as far as ability to be reached but with satellite communication beginning to become possible on phones eventually you won't have an excuse even if you are on a dogsled mushing towards the North Pole!

Netflix changes CEO-sharing arrangement, teases paid password-sharing

Re: Netflix will die...

It was obvious to everyone that the situation Netflix was in a decade ago where they were the only one monetizing streaming so they had almost all the content for a low price was never going to continue. That was a brief accident of history before others were ready to stream at the scale Netflix could.

If you had a "one stop shop" today it would cost as much as cable/satellite subscriptions do. The entertainment industry was never going to willingly accept 90% less revenue by trading $100+ subscriptions for a single $10+ subscription. Anyone lamenting that didn't happen doesn't understand basic economics.

Now you can say "I would rather have everything under one roof because it is easier to find stuff" and that's fine, but you are either paying $100+ per month for unlimited access to it, or are you paying per view. Because again, studios are not going to willingly surrender 90% of their revenue.

Time to buy a phone as shops use discounts to clear out inventories

Re: Who needs a new phone?

They failed to correctly build/QA a fridge performing its most basic function? Well I probably wasn't going to consider Samsung anyway, this story makes it even less likely I give their stuff a look.

Re: Who needs a new phone?

The mistake was buying a fridge that could possibly need "customer support" versus "repair".

I'm in the process of remodeling my house but when I get to my kitchen in a few months there no chance I'll be getting a new fridge with a screen, or that even offers a way to connect for wifi! The only fancy thing it'll have is a water dispenser/icemaker.

Apple's biggest markets are in richer countries, so they have their highest market shares in the US, some EU countries, and Japan. I suspect if you look at a map of the EU with per capita earnings the countries with higher earnings have more Apple share and those with less have less.

Probably would see the same if you did the same exercise in the US states. States with higher incomes like California and New York almost certainly have a larger iPhone share than states with lower incomes like Mississippi.

University of Texas latest US school to ban TikTok

Re: Now that unlimited or nearly unlimited data on cellular is more common

Yeah I forgot Apple has a built in VPN and I imagine knowledge of how to enable it among Texas students will be shooting up in the near future.

Now that unlimited or nearly unlimited data on cellular is more common

Students can simply log off the school wifi and use cellular data.

I recently switched from AT&T prepaid to Verizon's prepaid service (Visible) which includes unlimited data. It is at a lower priority than postpaid Verizon customers, but unless I'm at a big sporting event or concert it is unlikely to matter. Considering they had a deal where I'm paying $15/month for the next year (when it reverts to the normal $30/month price) it is hard to complain about something that will only affect me a few dozen hours a year.

They have a higher priced plan ($15/month extra) that has the higher data priority again with unlimited data. I may check to see if I can switch to that and back to the cheaper one without losing the discount. If that's true and the switching is prorated...

Intel, AMD just created a headache for datacenters

Better have a big laundromat!

I'd site it next to a cement facility. I think it is something like 10 tons of cement per megawatt of heat, so a 10 megawatt datacenter could produce 50 tons of cement per hour assuming you could recover and concentrate 50% of the heat. I'm sure 50% is optimistic but even at lower efficiencies is still enough cement this would seriously be worth considering - especially as this could be marketed as "green cement made with 100% waste heat with no CO2 impact" and sold at a premium price to builders of LEED platinum buildings.

I would imagine liquid cooling makes it a lot easier to recover a larger percentage of heat, and also makes it easier to concentrate to the levels required for cement production.

Before someone says "10 megawatts for a datacenter, who is doing that other than maybe Amazon and Google" consider that a 40 kilowatt rack means a datacenter needs only 250 racks to hit 10 megawatts of compute consumption which doesn't sound quite so massive any longer!

Indian official reveals 'plan' to build a national mobile OS

India is big enough to do this

Sure it would be just another Android, but an Android that is Google free and linked to Indian services instead of Google services.

Developers don't need to target it specifically, it is in the best interests of both developers AND the Indian government that standard Android apps work on it. That guarantees it is a success with Indian consumers.

The win for India's government and people is cutting Google out of the picture and supporting India based companies for search, maps, etc. instead of relying on Google and keeping the ad dollars inside the country instead of sending them to Google.

It doesn't hurt that Apple has a sub 5% share of the smartphone market in India, meaning nearly the entire population is your potential customer base.

Let me X-plane: Boeing R&D unit sheds rudder, ailerons, flaps for DARPA project

Re: 'Dead stick'

The batteries are to power the control surfaces and allow maneuverability, not to propel the plane forward like a jet engine. i.e. an alternative to the ram air generator, which provides power for hydraulics but does not propel the plane forward (indeed, it is trading airspeed to generate that power so you're somewhat worse off than you would be with batteries)

Re: 'Dead stick'

I would imagine this issue could also be solved with batteries, without the potentially problematic (depending on when engine power is lost) loss of airspeed from a ram air turbine

If your DNS queries LoOk liKE tHIs, it's not a ransom note, it's a security improvement

Re: Am I being Dense?

Google is only concerned about AUTHORITATIVE name servers, and probably for 99%+ of domains are operated by large ISPs and registrars. What they're doing doesn't matter for the caching name server I am running in my wireless router. For the remaining <1%, they'll be using open source stuff like named or dnsmasq, or commercial offerings like Microsoft's (I assume they have their own name server because of course they would do that)

So they work with the big ISPs/registrars so their software (which is probably partially or even fully custom) is compliant, and authors of the software used by those who like controlling their own to support that. Then it is just a matter of a long waiting game for authoritative name servers running non-compliant software to be replaced or upgraded.

Plugging end-of-life EV batteries into the grid could ease renewables transition

So there's a simple solution

Don't hook up old cells to un-clever battery management systems.

As for why not reuse them in electric bicycles, that's because weight matters in a bicycle and using cells that are only 60% working or whatever is a lot of wasted weight. Most electric bicycles are still pedal powered at least some of the time by their owners, you might need to lift them up steps etc. and they already suffer a weight penalty. Why add to it?

Will 2023 be the year of dynamite disinfo deepfakes, cooked up by rogue states?

Re: The beta test wasn't good

There has also been disturbing progress in your AI, considering where it was a few years ago. If it starts producing better posts than anything I'm capable of I will surrender to the machines and volunteer to be plugged into the Matrix. Hopefully I can be someone important, like an actor.

Russian criminals can't wait to hop over OpenAI's fence, use ChatGPT for evil

We're doomed

I haven't really played with ChatGPT so I don't know if it is really an advance or just a lot of hype, but open source AI software is going to be a real problem for scams because it'll make them harder and harder to notice even for those of us with a lot of experience.

Imagine an AI that learns from its mistakes performing social engineering on a company's employees. Using deepfake videos it could even do a video call, without any language/culture barrier issues that some schlub a scammer hires to do that job.

This could be the start of a new wave of cybercrime, where even those of us who believe we are too smart/experienced/jaded/etc. to ever be fooled might see ourselves fooled.

Apple's M2 MacBook Pros, Mac Mini boast more cores, higher clocks and bigger GPUs

You can always make the die a bit bigger, and put whatever is in those spots where you'd think the "missing" GPU cores are in that expanded space.

It almost seems as if they had already done the layout for a 20/40 GPU core design then had to do some rework and rather than redo the entire layout they just erased a GPU core and used that space for something else.

The author's assumption that the 19/38 GPU core parts were made with 20/40 cores and binned is pretty reasonable, since Apple has been using GPU cores for binning for a few years now - even in iPhone SoCs. I guess since they are using a pretty mature process with high yields binning isn't an issue so they can sell parts made with 19/38 GPU cores as having 19/38 GPU cores.

Wyoming's would-be ban on sale of electric vehicles veers off road

Re: Just a symptom...

Try running your chainsaw on coal and see how far that gets you

Re: Just a symptom...

Wyoming might have a lot of coal, but how much active mining is there in the state? They would need to import all the heavy equipment needed for mining, since they don't make D11 dozers and big rock trucks.

They may think they are self sufficient in their fantasies, but they are only self sufficient if civilization falls apart and everyone left is living a Mad Max existence.

Russians say they can grab software from Intel again

Re: Reality is starting to bite...

None of them are really "standing firm with Putin". If they were they would be sending him all the weapons he wants rather than limited supplies or solely non-military aid. Iran is the only one really helping him militarily in a way that affects the situation with Ukraine (or rather the situation for Ukraine's civilian population since Iran's drones are being sued against them)

The others just see opportunity in the form of discount oil and getting to thumb their nose at Uncle Sam either because it plays well with the population and serves other goals of the leadership (China) or just portrays the leadership as "independent of outside influence" (India)

People who thought sanctions would have immediate effect

Didn't understand how they work. It is a cumulative thing, between the massive brain drain in the tech/engineer/etc. crowd from people fleeing the sinking ship before all the lifeboats were gone and people fleeing to avoid forced conscription in an ill equipped and low morale army, and all the duplicative work the Russian economy will have to do to work around sanctions or roll their own solutions for stuff they used to buy off the shelf the GDP will take a big dive. A massive dive, if you used math that didn't account for "productivity" in the form of building weapons in the GDP but as useless which it is as far as increasing the wealth of the people of a nation.

Within a few years, if Putin is still in power, Russia's economy will be worse off than it was under the darkest days of the USSR. Even if Putin is removed and isn't replaced by someone just as bad or worse, it will take decades (at least) to get back to where it was before Putin's ill advised war due to all the people who left. Because if they are gone for more than 2 or 3 years, most will have put down roots in their new country and will not return to help Russia rebuild the shambles Putin leaves behind.

Twitter starts auction to flip the bird, furniture, pizza ovens, gadgets galore

Re: How shit is your grasp of value....

Why not sell it if they no longer need it? Should they pay to store it in case they decide they need it again someday?

With fewer employees, and Musk cutting all the perks because he wants people to keep their noses in their monitors working rather than taking breaks to eat pizza or sit in comfy chairs, this stuff is useless to Twitter. Even though it will be a rounding error compared to all the money they are losing now.

Third-party Twitter apps stopped dead with no explanation from El Musko

Re: Too big to fail?

There was a time when most people would have considered Myspace too big to fail.

Clearly Mastadon is not going to take down Twitter, its federated decentralized model is just too complex for the average person in the street to deal with, but I'll bet there are at least a dozen startups that have formed in the past six months attempting to replace it and within a couple years one of them will have succeeded.

Hopefully they also replace Facebook and Tiktok as an accidental bank shot!

Re: The meltdown continues

What this will eventually do is allow the non-extremist leftists and rightists to communicate like adults

No, they will be shouted down by the extremists who will dominate any platform with "maximal free speech" where you can make just about any threat you want so long as it isn't a threat to Musk himself (the level for speech to Musk being "very minimal free speech", because he subscribes the stereotypical dad philosophy of "my house, my rules")

Self-driving car computers may be 'as bad' for emissions as datacenters

Re: The power usage may very well go down

sooner or later we will reach the "this is really good" point

How many deaths per year will be the "this is really good" point where you think everyone will agree advancements can cease?

SpaceX tells astronomers: Fine, we'll try to stop Starlink spoiling stargazing sessions

This is a worldwide issue

So solving it on a US only basis isn't sufficient. Nor will any of these agreements matter when a company based outside the US like in China decides to launch its own globe spanning satellite constellation.

The UN ought to be taking this up, as SpaceX and anyone else launching such large low orbit satellite fleets are an issue for astronomers around the world not just those in the US.

US think tank says China would probably lose if it tries to invade Taiwan

Re: Fervor and China

They can't do "ethnic cleansing" in Taiwan. The people living there aren't a different ethnicity.

I don't get all the fervor over a Chinese military attack on Taiwan

They view the Taiwanese people as being the same as themselves, so one has to look at this as a civil war not a war of conquest as it is always portrayed. They aren't going to want to end up with a lot of dead Taiwanese with those left alive hating the people and government of mainland China for generations. Having to maintain Taiwan under permanent military oversight is not the endgame they seek.

What China really excels at are long range plans. The US and most of the west struggles to look further ahead than the next election, while China makes plans covering decades and sticks to them long enough to successfully execute them.

So what China would do is infiltrate Taiwan's government, business and media world and try to slowly swing public opinion towards the idea of reunification. Even if that takes decades. Now whether that's possible is another matter, but that would clearly be their preference. The biggest obstacle is that the more authoritarian China gets, the less desire the people of Taiwan will have for that outcome. The example of Hong Kong was a disaster for China as far as getting Taiwan to willingly return to the fold. If they would have allowed it to remain quasi independent and still "Hong Kong" even today there would be a lot more people in Taiwan willing to consider reunification.

China's increasing tilt towards authoritarianism also risks that the mainland people sent over to infiltrate 'go native' and prefer living under the Taiwanese system so they don't even try to fulfill the objectives assigned to them.

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: Weight is relative...

Yes, worrying about cars weighing 4000 lbs instead of 3000 or big SUVs weighing 6000 instead of 4500 misses the mark. Road damage is so overwhelmingly caused by trucks - and specifically their cargo - that the added weight of battery packs doesn't matter.

One potential benefit of electric autonomous trucks would be that we can reduce the load from 80,000 lbs to a lower figure. That would require more trips, but with autonomous trucks able to operate round the clock (assuming battery swaps instead of waiting for hours to charge) versus human drivers at the truck idle over half the time would allow halving payloads.

Presumably an autonomous truck could also avoid potholes when possible or slow down when traveling over them to reduce additional damage to already damaged areas of road.

Draft climate law threatens fines for datacenters that don't cut their carbon count

Re: Close 'em.

CO2 is bad for animals though. At 1000 ppm mental performance in humans falls by over 10%. So even if you decide to pretend climate change isn't a thing, continuing to burn fossil fuels will eventually make everyone stupider. Which appears has already happened to some.

Re: Close 'em.

Texas is unlikely to still be a red state 10 years from now, just like the rust belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are likely to be red states by then. Demographic shifts occur over time, companies need to take that into account if they are relocating thinking one party is more "business friendly" than another.

With the nutjobs in charge of the republican party now thanks to the spineless speaker of the house who gave them everything in his grab for power, who knows whether being in a red state would be a good thing for them. Just look at Disney, they piss off the governor and he passes a law targeted specifically at them. Why should other companies believe that relocating to Florida is a good thing so long as a vindictive little man motivated by personal grievances is in charge?

There are some very large datacenters that have net zero CO2 so it is quite doable, and that's more likely going to be what the big companies do. Apple and Google already lead the way, they are unlikely to be concerned with this Oregon law.

But sure, go ahead, root for companies to move to red state havens where they can burn fossil fuels with abandon, dump toxic waste into rivers and all the other terrible outcomes would result from your wet dream of a zero regulation libertarian paradise. Oh wait, you don't want toxic waste dumped in rivers? Sorry, a regulation that prevents that harms business so it must be allowed!

FAA grounds all US departures after NOTAM goes down

Re: Pot? Kettle here.

Couple hours of halt versus days of chaos and people sleeping in airports for several days in a row. Not quite the same thing.

The NOTAM system was also nice enough to go down after the holidays were past, and on one of the lightest flying days of the week. And in the early morning, so few if any people will end up stranded overnight for even one night.

I am curious if this was a hardware failure where redundancy failed to kick in or a botched software upgrade. Overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday is exactly the time one would pick for such an upgrade, as it would incur the minimum potential disruption.

Larry Ellison mea culpa as traffic cop stops Big Red boss on own island

Eminent domain

Can only be used for a purpose that's in the public interest.

So a government can use it to condemn houses to build a new road, and in some cases a private business can use it (via the government, who alone holds that power) to e.g. build a pipeline that will benefit consumers / the economy / national security / whatever.

I've never heard of nor can I imagine eminent domain being used by a private citizen. There's not much public good associated with "one rich guy won't have to worry about speeding tickets anymore".

Why is that weird?

He bought the 98% of it people were willing to sell (probably all pineapple plantations)

He can't make people sell their property, or purchase public land like government buildings for police stations, etc. Though he's got enough money he could probably make an offer for the remaining 2% at 10x market value with the sale is contingent on everyone agreeing to it. If there was even one holdout then the offer is void.

Apple aims to replace Broadcom, Qualcomm wireless chips with its own

Re: Cutting off nose to spite face

Qualcomm could refuse to sell modems to Apple but cannot refuse to license their patents used in cellular standards to Apple. Their shareholders would probably revolt though, giving up billions a year in revenue just because your customer is making changes that will reduce the amount of revenue you make from them is generally a pretty poor business strategy.

If there were no other companies in the world that could provide a modem to Apple maybe they'd consider it as a way of squeezing them, but Apple could call Samsung, HiSilicon, Mediatek or various other companies that sell cellular modems. Each of them has its own problems (i.e. Apple prefers not to do business with Samsung where it can be avoided, difficulty in getting modems from Chinese companies like HiSilicon in the current trade war, etc.) but they would find a way to make it work if Qualcomm decided to go thermonuclear on them.

Re: Apple's pricing problem with Qualcomm

Sure Apple will have to pay Qualcomm's licensing but Apple has been building their own wireless patent portfolio so Qualcomm will have less leverage over time.

Apple also won't have to pay to license patents they don't need. For instance the current chipsets include support for Qualcomm's proprietary 3G CDMA technology that's being phased out in the US - and which isn't a standard so FRAND rates for patents don't apply. Apple's modem will most likely be LTE and 5G only (yeah I know 3G and even 2G are still "in use" in Europe but that's mainly as support for legacy devices like alarms so most spectrum has been or is in the process of being refarmed for LTE/5G so the chance of being in a place where 2G/3G is the only connection available is slim and becoming slimmer by the day)

Not having to license patents that apply only to Qualcomm proprietary stuff or older tech will reduce licensing fees.

Re: Walled Garden or Prison

Apple is willing to let its proprietary stuff become part of standards, which they would not do if they were interested in lock in.

They offered Lightning's physical spec to the USB standards org when they were designing USB-C. The physical design for their magnetic connection to align wireless chargers is part of the Qi-2 standard.

If they wanted lock in, they would keep stuff like that proprietary. They want stuff that's better.

I could easily see them extending bluetooth for better audio quality if the standard isn't already doing that itself. It would still be "bluetooth" and operate like bluetooth when you use an iPhone with non Apple earphones or use AirPods with a non Apple device, but could be better when used as a pair. If they did so, they would most likely offer that enhancement to the BT standards org.

Rumor has it

The first iPhone with the Apple designed cellular will be the next iPhone SE coming out in spring 2024. Presumably they want to "test" it on a lower volume/less important product first, and if that goes well it would be used in the 2024 iPhone 16.

I don't think I recall

Apple ever complaining about Broadcom's unfair pricing. They've had tons of problems with Qualcomm and have gone to court with them, but AFAIK they have never sued Broadcom or been sued by them over wifi/bluetooth chips.

Re: Walled Garden or Prison

Apple can't make wifi that's not compatible with the rest of the world. What router are you going to connect to? Even if Apple started selling wireless routers again you only control the brand of router in your house, not at work, in airports, etc. etc.

Apple doesn't go their own way to be bastards, they go their own way when the existing standards suck. That's why Lightning was created, microUSB was a POS. USB-C is much better, but it came several years after Lightning. There would be no benefit to creating their "own" wifi, wifi already is overengineered as a standard for mobile devices. Who needs more speed than wifi 7 is already capable of going to a smartphone?

I'm guessing Apple wants to take wifi/bluetooth in house not because they want to "extend" them with proprietary stuff, or because they think they will save money. They want to do it to save power - or get better insight into and control over how much power it is using millisecond to millisecond. Currently they can precisely control the power the SoC and what's connected to it uses, but don't have as much control over cellular and wifi/bluetooth radios. While they have cost reasons to want to bring cellular in house, they don't have a problem with Broadcom's pricing like they do Qualcomm's.

Having wifi/bluetooth hardware and software under their complete control will allow it to be under the same global power management as the SoC. It will probably be integrated onto the SoC in its 2nd or 3rd iteration.

Pakistan’s government to agencies: Dark web is dangerous, please don’t go there

Not all that surprising

To hear the government of a country that isn't home to companies making money from ads say that.

It would be surprising to hear the US, where Google and Facebook are based, say that. If a US administration (of either party) made such a pronouncement, one could look forward to visits to Washington DC by Google's CEO and lizard boy Zuck, and a "clarification" statement issued to walk back the ad blocker recommendation once the appropriate bribes campaign contributions had been deposited.

Chinese Tesla owners protest another round of price cuts

When did iPhones cost more than today? Can you point to something showing the price for some time in the past and compare with today's pricing? Because I call bullshit on this claim, they have if anything risen slowly over the years.

Unless you are comparing old models, i.e. iPhone 12 price at launch vs price today.

Texts from your dog and brain-free astronomy: The best of the rest from CES

A $699 cutting board with a screen

Or a regular cutting board for less than a tenth of the price, and an iPad for less than half the price. Decisions decisions!

OpenAI is developing software to detect text generated by ChatGPT

Re: Apple is seeking to partner with indie writers and publishers to help them

With the extra 15% if you release on other platforms it seems unlikely very many will be interested in adding Apple as a second publisher.

If you compare a 60% cut to Audible vs a 75% cut to Audible and 30% cut to Apple, they need to have 1/3 of their sales on Apple to break even. Any less then it doesn't make sense to accept the higher cut to Audible for a "non-exclusive". You'd need pretty significant non-Audible sales even if you had the option of a publisher will to PAY you to publish on their platform!

China's Mars rover hibernates for a scarily long time

Re: Predictable problems invite solutions

I'm guessing like lunar dust it has an electrostatic charge and may not simply fall off if a panel was upside down, nor be too easily brushed off.

Qualcomm, Bullitt unveil satellite messaging for phones at CES

Qualcomm's solution requires their highest end SoC with highest end modem

So 95% of the Android market will be cut off from it. Either Iridium doesn't have the capacity to handle the load if Qualcomm included this in more mainstream offerings, or they want it to remain a premium offering. i.e. if it is restricted to only high end Android devices, maybe they get sold the ability to send non-emergency text messages at premium prices since they know everyone with the satellite capability has money to spend.

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Sorry I have no sympathy for "Henry"

Any idiot knows that if you put stuff in an area that's under construction, it is going to covered in drywall/concrete/etc. dust, paint, and potential impacts from various forms of debris. And also be exposed to various noxious chemicals in the air. He should have either had the shipment held, stored the tape robot in a storage area/facility, or at least covered it in plastic with all seams taped and some additional protection on top. What he should not have done is try to "save time" by unboxing, installing and configuring it and expect it to work perfectly or that tradesman will call him if they're going to be doing work in the area. Or would even know WHO to call.

When you have construction done it is your responsibility to protect stuff in the area from that. If you are having your kitchen ceiling de-popcorned for example it is going to get dust everywhere, so either you cover everything yourself, you get a quote that includes that protection (with some sort of guarantees against dust getting inside your cabinets or whatever) or you plan to deep clean your kitchen and its contents from floor to ceiling, including nearby areas where the dust will inevitably go (or the whole house if you leave your furnace/AC turned on while they work)

Honestly he's lucky the tape drives lasted a whole year before conking out. I wonder if he tried to have them replaced under warranty, and what the vendor would do if they found construction dust inside them?

More pre-Musk Twitter 1.0 execs leave the building

Re: And yet...

... somehow, it keeps ticking over, and they even keep making improvements (like adding a view count).

The view count would have obviously been tracked all along, the only change they would need would be to make that publicly visible. With a new decision maker comes different opinions on what constitutes "improvement", I guess Musk thinks making that public is good. Meanwhile other social networks are considering hiding stuff currently public such as number of "likes" or "views", due to younger people in particular placing way too much self-esteem into that figure when it can be seen by others.

Laying off or inducing to quit most of the competent staff wouldn't hurt any company right away, so just because it "keeps ticking over" doesn't mean those people weren't necessary for its continued operation. That's what you find out 3, 6 or 12 months down the road when something unexpected (or more likely several unexpected somethings) happens at the wrong time, and there isn't anybody left who has seen it before or even knows where to look to find the root cause of the problem. Then a 15 minute outage can turn into 15 hours, and a 5 hour outage into 5 days.

Rate of disruptive tech and science discoveries has slowed over the decades, claims study

The reason is obvious

As knowledge and technology advance, the baseline level one has to reach before being capable of a "disruptive" advance is higher. The longer it takes to reach that level, the fewer productive years remain. Even if retirement age increases over time, in a lot of fields (mathematics being a particular example) most of the biggest advances are made by those in the first half of their career.

The younger ones are more willing to work longer hours (greater stamina, no family yet) and more willing to consider ideas that those who have established reputations to protect may not. But if their productive period starts at age 30 instead of 25 due to needing more years of post-grad/fellowship/etc. to reach the baseline for contribution that may be five less years they have for useful contribution in their entire career.

Next-gen Qi2 wireless charging spec seeded by Apple

15W charging is "too slow"?

In what world? How quickly do you need to charge something that has a battery that already lasts all day unless you are literally on your phone all day?

Samsung has a 30W wireless charging system, so it is possible to charge faster. It is just mostly pointless.

Heck, I still use one of the original 5W USB-A charging bricks to charge my 14 Pro Max. It is charging when I sleep (every other night, because it only gets down to maybe 65% after one day's use for me) so why should I care how long it takes to charge? Slower charging is better for the battery, so there's no benefit to charging faster unless you have very limited time in which to do so.

I do have one of Apple's USB-C charging bricks that is 15W, I believe. I put that in my travel bag, figuring that if I ever get stuck in an airport for a day and have a short time to top up that's when I could use a faster charge.

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

Would be so easy to enforce paying attention

If they really wanted. Just have a simple camera that detects your pupils and where they are looking, which thanks to modern smartphone economies of scale would add only a few dollars to the car's cost of production. If you go more than few seconds without having your eyes open and looking at the road, it sounds an alarm, that increases in volume the longer you keep your eyes closed or looking elsewhere.

But Musk doesn't want to implement something like that, because he knows his customers are misusing Autopilot/FSD and knows that is part of the appeal of the car for some. So they make token changes trying to detect hands on the wheel, or detect cheating devices but they are making these changes with a wink at the customers using them leaving gaping holes for them to continue to defeat them.