London Stansted and Manchester (same owners) recently had "upgrades" where you have to walk along a street to get to the seating area and gates beyond.

That street is narrow, long and forces you to pass every single shop in the departures area. It's blatantly hostile design.

Kansas City airport (KCI) was replaced a few years ago. The previous design was three c-shaped terminals, each of which had a curb-to-plane distance that, before 9/11, meant coming or going was very fast. Arriving 15 minutes before takeoff was overkill. Time from deplaning to leaving the airport curb could be 2 minutes. People didn't pass more than one or two shops or restaurants, typically (sometimes none). Even after 9/11, despite public advice to arrive 2 hours in advance, it seemed that 1.5 hours or more was wasted just sitting next to the gate.

But for airlines, I seem to recall servicing KCI was expensive. I think more than once, various airlines left or threatened to leave due to the high fees, which affected ticket prices. Fees which could not be offset by charging vendors the typical enormous rental prices. The new security barriers prevented much of the already limited foot traffic.

DHS also didn't like the proximity to the curb, and threatened to close the airport. A new design was sought (and ended up being partly designed by a friend of mine), and so now the new one follows the typical pattern: funnel everybody into far-too-few security check points (always leaving some unmanned), then into a large concourse with lots of expensive ways to spend money.

Seems that people are more willing to pay airport markup while waiting, than to pay higher ticket prices.

Just saw a picture. What a marvel of efficiency, which of course means we cant have it since its a nice thing. Looking forward to my future missed flights.

Back in the late 90s when Ireland was starting to think about digital terrestrial TV a system called DVB-RCT was considered. Basically your receiver could also transmit back to the television transmitter. The system could handle thousands of concurrent connections, albeit each one had very low bandwidth - around 1Kbp/s in peak time.That was considered good enough for very basic interactivity and for authorising PPV purchases etc.In quieter hours or in areas were there were fewer receivers that bandwidth would be much higher, but in reality that would be rare.

In the end the company that the governement selected to start the rollout of DTT went bust and I don't think the system was used anywhere else. The developer of the technology abandoned it in 2006 as other connection methods (broadband/mobile data) were preferred.

On a similar note one of my childrens friends absolutely loves the taste of Nintendo Switch cartridges and licks them untill the bitter coating wears off.

His tastebuds must be wired different.

Is it any weirder than adults that like India pale ales?

Well, presumably he isn’t drunk after polishing off a few cartridges in a sitting.

A common discussion these days is the threat of a foreign app (TikTok) being used by a hostile government to track and influence Americans.

From my non-American perspective, the same thing is happening here. I distrust non-EU software by default.

That's a ridiculous sum of money that could be better spent on much more worthy things.

So was getting a man to the moon. Do you want to lose the AI race to the Chinese?

Why would I care? Do you really want Masayoshi Son in charge of a theoretical superhuman AI?

If it weren't for homeschooling my autistic daughter would be spending her day in the headteachers office shaking and crying due to her cripping anxiety.

Not sure about USA, but here in UK there are special schools for people whose autism really makes it unviable for them to be in mainstream school (whether that's a failure of the mainstream school, or just level of anxiety etc of the student). Such special schools are often wonderful, with the most amazing, dedicated staff. Usually staff have specialist training (albeit not always to as high level as one might like, due to underfunding) and much experience of working with autistic people. So, able to provide things that parents with no prior knowledge of autism, and jobs to go to and bills to pay, are less able to provide.

We are homeschooling our two teenagers. We live in Ireland which has a pretty decent education system and has a high percentage of students going on to third level education.

The problem is that it is really bad at handling children who are neurodivergent. My daughter is autistic and my son has ADHD and they just stuggled to fit in at school. They were filled with anxiety and the supports for them just weren't there. Spending on special needs supports is pitifully low despite Ireland being so cash rich right now.

So now we homeschool them and they are doing grand learning at their own pace.

But it's not just that that makes me favour home schooling. For me one of the biggest issues with state education pretty much everywhere the world over is the idea that at a certain age a child should have reached a certain academic standard and if they haven't then that is seen as a failure or at the very least a problem. This is complete and utter nonsense. We all learn at different speeds, some pick up knowledge early, some pick it up later. What matters is that by the time they leave school they are in possession of most of the life skills they need.

I also have issue with what is taught and how it is taught. Most subjects are taught with a focus on rote. Children are told to learn things, but aren't really told WHY they should learn things. That why bit is so important to help a childs mind develop.

For me there is also a bit of a morality issue. If you go an look at a school curriculum there will nearly always be something that you as a parent do not agree with. For me its the idea of teaching children that there only option in life after education is to get a job, be a good worker and keep going until retirement. I don't subscribe to that idea, I believe there are alternative life pathways. The problem is that if I send my children to a state school they will be forced to learn and accept things I fundamentally disagree with and that to me is morally dubious.

My thinking is that if I have device that doesn't allow me root access, then what I have is more than likely a device designed to keep making money for the company that made it or wrote the software for it.

But you know you don’t have root access before buying. Why would you buy it if you want root access?

I have zero experience in the android world, but a quick search tells me that Xiaomi Devices, Google Pixel Phones, OnePlus Devices, Redmi Note 4, Samsung Devices and MediaTek Devices at least are rootable, with some rules with various degrees of freedom for the procedure (in particular warranty is voided pretty much all the time when device is rooted).

Google Pixels are the few devices that enable not only to unlock the bootloader but also the ability to flash your own keys and still have secure boot together with full kernel sources availability (which is why Grapheneos only support them as far as I know).

As far as I know Mediatek (and vendors that use those chips) are usually not good with regards to GPL Compliance, which means no Lineageos if kernel sources are not available...

There's nothing wrong with wanting that, but as the author said those of us who want to opt-out should have the choice to do so.

If I buy an iPhone, I should have the option to completely disconnect it from Apple and be able to replace the OS with whatever I want. If I do not have the option to do that do I REALLY own the device? The answer is no bacause what I have is a device that I can only use the way Apple allows. When the phone is obsolete and Apple stops updates then all I can do is send it off for recycling since Apple won't allow me to repurpose it with new software.

You are putting a lot of trust in the manufacturers as well. For example, they have the technical capabilities to kill the second hand market in their devices if they simply decided to refuse to allow a new user to login to a device. Sure, you could still sell the hardware, but it wouldn't be much use if the manufacturer stopped it from connecting and autorizing. I know this is an extreme example and no sane manufacturer would implement it, but I think it demonstrates why having to option to disconnect is a good thing.

The same applies to all other devices that are locked down, things like smart TVs, IP cameras and appliances. Just look at how many early smart TVs are now dumb because the manufacturer stopped updating the on-board apps. There should be no reason why the owner of such devices should be allowed to do whatever they want with them to try and bring them back to life.

I agree, If I were an IT manager this sort of stuff would make me start looking at alternatives.

If an app/pluging/package is maintrained and published by X, I want to make sure no one else can interefere with it - even if they have good intentions.

What Automattic should have done is removed the plugin from distribution and told WP Engine to fix the problem. By doing what they did they have breached the trust of their users.

This is gonna be a hard move for some of the IT companies I've seen who have based their entire business around WordPress websites. They literally don't have the skill to use anything else as WP is all they know. Rip.