Sunday, August 07

Geek

Daily News Stuff 7 August 2022

Bordered In Black Edition

 

Top Story

  • Amazon is acquiring Roomba maker iRobot for $1.7 billion.  (Ars Technica)

    Given Amazon's habit of handing out Ring doorbell video footage without the tedious drudgery of asking or telling the owners, my inclination to buy a Roomba has abruptly evaporated.  At least a doorbell is - by design - on the front of the house facing outwards, not roaming around inside.

Tech News



FAQ

  • Why did you get a variable rate mortgage? Are you stupid or something?

    Long-term fixed-rate mortgages are almost unknown outside the US, and certainly don't exist in Australia. If you think about it, there's no way a bank would offer a long term fixed rate loan when interest rates are at historic lows, because they can only lose on the deal... Unless something is propping them up on the other end.


  • Are blockchains / cryptocurrencies / NFTs / stablecoins / decentralised finance a scam?

    Mostly, yes. Not entirely, but it's the way to bet.


  • You keep mentioning gluten-free stuff. Isn't that also a scam?

    Unless you have celiac disease, yes.

    If you do have celiac disease, gluten-free meals are the difference between living a relatively normal life and being a hermit subsisting on boiled rice and carrot sticks.


  • Who is that vtuber you referred to obliquely the other day?

    If I referred to them obliquely it would only be a retired Hololive member, and there's only four of those (not counting Hitomi Chris, who no-one remembers): Aloe, Coco, Rushia, and most recently Sana. And the reason for the obliquity is that all four have other online personas kept separate from Hololive for privacy / contractual reasons. On my non-technical posts I will sometimes be less oblique - or a quick Google search will probably tell you more than you ever wanted to know.


I Survived, Bishes Video of the Day





Disclaimer: Read Stardust instead, or The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:41 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: You Really Don't Want to Know at Sunday, August 07 2022 06:38 PM (5Qjf9)

2 Of course Amazon's buying iRobot now that I have one.  I can't wait to see how they screw it up and/or attempt to hoover more data out of me.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 08 2022 01:20 AM (BMUHC)

3 The product page for Amazon's still-unreleased Astro indoor camera-bot was already creepy enough before the news got out about them handing over video without so much as a simple notification. No doubt future Roomba models will merge in some of its features.

I have a soft spot for Sandman, and I thought they did a good job of cleaning up many of the cruftier bits, while still hitting all the story notes that fans expect. I have no idea how coherent it would be to someone who hasn't read the comics, and of course Mandatory Diversity affects both the casting choices and the story, sometimes for the worse. I don't think they really thought through the implications of making The Corinthian openly gay, for instance.

If they keep going with it, it will be interesting to see how they deal with the transsexual character whose handling was Very Progressive at the time but got him in trouble decades later for being Insufficiently Woke.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, August 08 2022 02:56 AM (oJgNG)

4 Twitter has my phone number because when I adopted it fairly early, you were able to post via SMS. I tried to use that feature recently and not only is it broken, but their help pages for it are also out of date and broken.

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, August 08 2022 04:50 AM (BzEjn)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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