Reason077

They were at this long before crypto. Look up "Bangladesh Bank robbery", for example, where NK hackers attempted to steal almost $1 billion from the Bangladesh central bank in 2016 (and were partially successful).

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.