Reason077

Pretty wild that even the PS5 still has a blu-ray player and that PS5 games still come on optical discs. No doubt this adds significantly to the costs of both the PS5 hardware and to the costs of game distribution.

I have a feeling the PS6 won’t have an optical drive…

How do you get to this URL without iOS wanting to open/download Apple Music? I don’t even have Apple Music installed…

If I had to pick one tune to listen to every day, that wouldn’t be the worst one.

... and the updates that come through the beta channel aren't clearly labelled as "beta" or "release candidate".

We actually have both, retrofitted about 5 years ago into a 1980s house. A Toshiba mini-split downstairs and a Carrier ducted system upstairs. The indoor units of our Toshiba mini-split are actually very quiet: barely audible unless you really crank up the fan speed.

In our case we couldn't install ducting downstairs (no space between the floors), but it was simple and cheap to do so upstairs because there was attic / roof cavity space in which to run the ducting.

A big advantage of the mini-split is that it gives you precise temperature control in each room, where as our ducted system only has a single central thermostat, and on/off control in each room. This is problematic for the bedrooms, which tend to overheat at night in the winter when bedroom doors are closed, while it remains cooler in the hallway where the thermostat is. I'm currently looking into an upgraded control system ("Airtouch 5") which should solve this by putting wireless thermostats in each room.

Maybe it could be sold as a safety feature.

Suppose you accidentally drive your car off a cliff. Accelerometers and other sensors (cameras) could detect the fall and activate the cold gas thrusters to rotate the car into a safe orientation and bring it to a soft landing.

It should even be possible to use the thrusters as an emergency braking system in case of loss of traction, rollovers, departing the roadway, etc, to avoid or reduce impact damage and injuries.

> ”It's being sold in two modes. One with cold gas (no combustion) … and one with real combustion rocket engines”

No, both versions use cold gas thrusters. There are no combustion rocket engines involved here.

The difference between the “thrust” and “rocket” versions is the number of thrusters: “rocket” has additional thrusters that enable it to fly. The “thrust” version just has them at the back for acceleration.

> “The articulated bus is a common sight everywhere”

Certainly not in London where they were famously banned in 2009.

Now days they’re uncommon throughout the UK, with UK cities having a preference for double-deckers. You do see them in use as shuttles at some UK airports, though.

> ”It's not a good look that the UK seemingly isn't installing air conditioning, decarbonizing heating, or adopting electric vehicles.”

The UK is definitely doing all three of these things. Though arguably not fast enough, for some of them.

Is there reason why retaining radiators is preferable to an air heat pump (either ducted air or mini-split)?

I guess it's cheaper to not have to install air ducting or indoor units if you can reuse existing pipes & radiators. But if you need to replace the radiators anyway, the cost might not be that much different? You'd get more precise temperature control, and cooling in the summer.

> "I was at a conference ... these morons had in mind that electricity demand should decrease"

For a long time (several decades) electricity demand has been decreasing in the UK, largely due to efficiency improvements. But now days pretty much everyone agrees that electricity demand will increase significantly in the future due to electrification. The UK has been planning for this for some time so if this guy was really from National Grid, he sounds like a bit of a rogue!

> "their great idea to deal with the shortage is intermittent availability of power. You won't be able to wash your clothes when you feel like"

No, nobody is suggesting that the grid will ever cut off power to anybody - certainly not domestic customers. The idea is that in a smart grid, big industrial customers often have the ability to temporarily reduce demand for heat or cooling or whatever. So if there is a signal from the grid that demand needs to be cut, automated industrial systems can (and already do) do that. The same goes for your car charging, water heating, etc. These things can automatically slow down during demand peaks in response to a signal from the grid, and you probably won't notice or care. You'll still be able to wash your dishes any time you want!

This is all definitely a good thing. A huge part of the cost of running the grid is in handling the biggest demand peaks, which might only occur for an hour or two per day a few times per year. If the peaks can be reduced and demand becomes smoother, then energy becomes cheaper.

Not just eBooks: the growing popularity of audiobooks has presumably had an effect on traditional book sales too.

Audiobook sales continue to grow strongly every year, where as ebooks have been flat or declining in recent years.

Each of these cases makes sense, though, because the scope of the wider companies had expanded well beyond their original product.

Unlike “Lake America” or “X”, they weren’t renamed just because of ego or out of spite.

Twitter -> X

Same playbook.

> ”Pretty much every modern influenza variant is a derivative of the Spanish flu”

Not really. While it was true for much of the last century that many “seasonal flu” viruses were direct descendents from H1N1 Spanish flu, the H1N1 that caused the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a distinct strain combining new genes of pig, avian, and human flu origins. Since then, derivatives of that virus have replaced earlier ones as the most common circulating H1N1 types.

And right now the most common circulating influenza is actually H3N2 from a completely different (avian) lineage with origins in the 1968 pandemic.

Impressive looking app! But I’d argue something like this doesn’t really belong in the Mac menu bar. The last thing most of us need is even more clutter in that space.

It’s a shame because years ago macOS had the perfect place for “quick information at a glance” apps: the Dashboard. But the Dashboard got killed off in mysterious circumstances, and I still miss it!

I had hopes that something like Dashboard would make a comeback with the advent of the new widgets framework, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Widgets can only be buried in Notification Centre (where they get lost and forgotten, buried under all the notifications) or on the desktop (same, plus needless clutter).

Apple, please bring back Dashboard!

How come both videos only go up to 2022 or so? Did we stop watching this star? Or is there just a delay on releasing the data?

I spent a few years at Red Hat. Great company back in those days. I wonder how mucb IBM has changed it but some of my former colleagues are still there, years later, so it can’t be too bad!

It does remain one of my regrets that I cashed out my vested stock options much too soon. If I’d held on to them until the IBM buyout I would have done very well for myself!

Eric Gullichsen sounds like a cool guy!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/latest/132554070/am...

The irony is that this article reads a lot like it was written by AI.

Are these contract prices really "per onion"? Or are they actually per pound or per kg? Up to $9.39 seems very expensive if it's really the price for a single onion.

I thought maybe they're some sort of special exotic onion variety, but I don't see anything to suggest that.

Still on 87% battery health on my iPhone 13 (not mini) that’s approaching 5 years old. Still an awesome phone with great battery life!

I don’t plan to update it beyond iOS 18 though, and the Lightning port is becoming more and more of a pain over time.

The iPhone X also had smooth rounded edges and was small by modern standards (bigger than the 3GS, though). Still one of my favourite iPhones.

Most people now days put their phones in protective cases, so the sharp edges don’t matter too much. And if anything, it makes the cases easier to design and smaller/thinner.

Try Garmin if you want a round smart watch. They get good reviews and the sporty types who own them swear by them.

Can’t imagine Apple ever doing this, though, because a round display is pretty terrible for displaying the sort of content and UI elements that iPhone/Apple Watch users are used to. Much of the UI and all existing apps would need to be completely redesigned.

> ” They are obviously a terrorist organization”

“Organization” is a stretch. Criminals? Sure. Violent thugs? Maybe.

The “terrorist” word, however, has been stretched and distorted for political ends. It seems like any crime motivated by political or religious ideology is now “terrorism”, and thus subject to much harsher punishment than those same crimes would normally receive.

By this definition, the Jan 6 rioters were terrorists - yet they received pardons.

Here’s a wiki article that I found helpful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistici/Inventati

“Autistici/Inventati (A/I) is an Italian hacktivist group that provides Internet communication services for left-wing activists. It was founded in 2001 by members of the anti-globalisation movement…”

Besides that, all those plasma screens running for >18 hours a day will be using a lot of energy, and generating a lot of heat that puts more demand on the air conditioning!

Replacing them with more modern screens would save a lot of power and money.

(I know a guy who still uses a ~20 year old plasma TV. It still looks great but it doubles as a heater in the winter time!)

> ”This means giving up all the advantages of central banking … It's a marker of a failed state.”

There are a number of countries/territories which have their “own” currency, but its value (exchange rate) is fixed directly to the USD:

• Hong Kong

• Saudi Arabia

• United Arab Emirates

• Qatar

• Jordan

• Oman

• Bahrain

• Panama

• etc

These are not failed states!

Roman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket:

https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...

This was back in 2024, when Argentina used to have severe restrictions on foreign exchange in an effort to (artificially) prop up the value of the Peso. This made it difficult for Argentine companies to purchase the foreign currency needed to import things like 5G equipment, hence this weird beef-for-telecoms equipment deal.

Argentina liberalised its Foreign exchange market in April 2025 so I'd imagine this sort of thing is no longer happening.