> The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table?
I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.
Not sure that works though for flogging, say, client IP to affluency data to advertisers, unless they can already reliably pinpoint the client IP to an address (which for all I know, maybe they can).
The roombas with cameras don't need an internet connection to work-- they need it if you want the app control features like scheduling. The imagery based navigation is still local.
When I got one in ~2019, I covered the camera and connected it long enough for it to get firmware updates (which annoyingly you can't trigger and it takes a few days)... then I firewalled it off to get no internet access.
I later figured out that if you let it connect and firewall it off it just sits in a tight loop trying to connect again hundreds of times per second which meaningfully depletes the battery faster.
Changing the SSID name so it couldn't connect to the wifi solved the problem.
I'd like to get a new one-- the old one still runs well (with some maintenance, of course) but the latest robot vacuums are obviously better. Unfortunately at least some are more cloud dependent and I can't tell which are and to what degree.
Amazes me that the Russians always seem to have the capacity for this sort of, I can't think of a clean word, let's inadequately say gamesmanship. When I'd have thought they have enough on their plate in Ukraine.
They have a strange attitude to the world and have had government funded people dedicated to attacking much of the world for decades. See this book review:
>“This must be the essence of our greatness. . . enemies everywhere” (p.20). The central thesis of Russia’s War on Everybody is that the Kremlin defines its enemies sweepingly, such that only a fraction of these “enemies” consider Russia to be their enemy. As Giles documents, “the Kremlin’s daily business” includes what some in the West would consider “acts of war” – poisoning dissidents, shooting down planes, election meddling, cyberattacks, and blatant political assassinations. Giles describes the Kremlin’s zero-sum worldview, in which anything benefitting others is a threat to Russia, and demonstrates that the Kremlin’s ambitions are far broader, and its methods more pervasive, than most realise. https://www.e-ir.info/2025/11/18/review-russias-war-on-every...
Anything necessary to keep up the sharades and appearance. He likes to play in the league of the big. Let's see for how long, until more cracks start showing up.
I've seen AI image generation models described as being able to combine multiple subjects into a novel (or novel enough) output e.g. "pineapple" and "skateboarding" becomes an image of a skateboarding pineapple. It doesn't seem like a reach to assume it can do what GP suggests.
A lot I expect. There were stories about VPNs being top of the App Store, etc. when the law kicked in.
Lots of people using Brave's Tor or Opera's VPN in their browsers, and free VPNs like Proton (which seems like a negative security outcome for the country to me).
I'd have thought the intel agencies would be pissed at all that data going dark, but haven't heard a peep in the media.
Seems like groundhog day, although I'm not sure I remember anyone telling me that software engineers were on borrowed time until relatively recently and I'd largely ignored it.
Yet one thing does seem different for anyone who just missed the dotcom crash, is that the roles available have fallen off a cliff while the numbers looking for roles seem to be up, at least in the UK. The UAE is even worse. I've spent 20 years hiding from recruiters and now they're all leaving me on read. Karma, maybe.
Same thing happened after dotcom. Same thing happened after 2008. Same thing will happen now during AI and the trump recession.
After every downturn ends, there comes a sudden hunger for engineers, and companies can’t seem to get enough. Some companies will even hire engineers just so other companies don’t hire them. Be ready.
I think the 2008 downturn (when it comes to this profession) was a little bit less severe compared to just after dotcom, or so it felt here in Eastern Europe.
But, to be honest, I do miss the "just after dotcom crash" period, there were lots and lots of interesting things people were working on back then, and the majority of it didn't involve making money. Maybe this is just nostalgia, because I first became a paid programmer in 2005, but that's how it feels 20+ years from that time.
I changed jobs in '08, '10 and was contracting by '11. Didn't notice any downturn from 2008 at all.
I'd only once in 20 years been turned down for a job I'd applied for. Every other job I applied for I was offered. I've applied for over 600 roles in the past year and barely had a handful of interviews. That certainly feels different.
Yes. Our control application, Korova, will be fully open source and maintained long term. It’s a native, lightweight application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The interesting thing is w gen Ai images, a reliance in terms of photographic evidence may come down to analog. Plus Kodak returning to film stock, the future looks bright for 35mm
I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.
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