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[^] Quote: In the Neu-ChiP project, the team will layer networks of stem cells resembling the human cortex onto microchips. They will then stimulate the cells by firing changing patterns of light beams at them. Sophisticated 3D computer modelling will allow them to observe any changes the cells undergo, to see how adaptable they are. This imitates the 'plasticity' of the human brain, which can rapidly adapt to new information.
The size of the fiction in "science fiction" just shrank a few parsecs ?
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Edible scrabble tiles. Different chocolate flavors.
Heated mouse pad. For those cold winter coding days and nights. Oops, already done. 10 Best Heated Mouse Pads on the market in 2021[^]
A physical widget that has real buttons like the old VCR style play, pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, eject. Maybe with a rotatable shuttle. Found this.[^]
[edit] oops. I thought I was in the lounge. Well, the heated mouse pads are cool.[/edit]
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Lounge Good one 
The odds are that if you thought of it, then it probably already exist somewhere or will soon. That is the nature of progress. Although it is irritating when a company advertises something as new tech., when in fact it is old tech in a new package.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Marc Clifton wrote: A physical widget that has real buttons like the old VCR style play, pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, eject.
I can see that physical widgets with Braille writing would be useful for the blind, but why would the rest of us need them? Are there really so many cases where you need to use electronics without looking at the panel?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I'm into such discussions all the time: Why should we waste resources on braille marking of buttons in elevators when when no blind people are expected to enter the house? Why waste resources on wide doors when no wheelchair user is living in the apartment? Why should we abandon door sills when you can simply step over it? And so on.
So you reject visits from grandma, who with her walker will stumble over a door sill? Your old friend who ended up in a wheelchair at age 35 after a car accident cannot enter your apartment. Your child loosing her eyesight last new year after a fireworks accident will not have access to any of your entertainment systems.
"We'll take care of that when it happens". Sure. When you make friends with a wheelchair user, you will widen your doors. I might believe it. When your MIL begins stumbling in anything that is not flat, you will remove the door sills. I might believe it. When your daughter goes blind, you will replace all sorts of controls with braille marked ones. Well, that one I am more tempted to believe that you might actually do. (Besides, visually handicapped people have an impressing ability to adapt to lack of adaptations!) If your son ends up in a wheelchair, the risk of you having to break up from your local neighborhood to find another suitable house is significant.
This concept of 'Universal Access', that the physical environment at the outset should be accessible to everyone regardless of physical disabilities, has been gradually accepted, at least in some cultures. Including UA concept from the very beginning usually has a small fraction of the cost of later remodeling. Often, it will also improve the quality for users who are not absolutely 'dependent' on them. Say, signs that can be read without straining the eyes of a seventy year old won't hurt a thirty year old, even if he doesn't 'need' that readability. Removing the door sills that make your MIL stumble also makes it easier for you to pull the vacuum cleaner from one door to another. And so on.
Currently, I am not in need of no special adaptations of my house. With the planned remodeling, I want to ensure that I can continue living here, in my own home, even if I end up as physically handicapped. Repeatedly, I have to defend it: Lots of people see no value of preparing for eventualities. I do. Even if my friends say things like "why would the rest of us need them?"
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A new survey of over 9,500 developers, of whom 4,400 actively participate in open source, finds that 54 percent of respondents feel that individuals should be paid for their open source work. How does 50 cents a bug sound to start?
Creating or removing, it doesn't matter, does it?
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Let me preface my comments by saying that 87.6% of statistics you see on the Internet are made up...
Surely the majority of open source projects have no money, since they have no monetisation plan (or ability to generate one as an independent entity). So no one is going to get paid for contributing to such a project.
The comparatively few projects that are big, growing, successful and who do have money (or whose contributing companies have money), already have employed contributors. E.g. As an extreme example, most Linux Kernel contributors are being paid for it by their employers and are in fact doing it as their day job. (If volunteer coders wish to contribute, is there any discretionary fund to compensate them? I don't know, I'm curious.)
This leaves the probably relatively small proportion of OSS projects that are important but still have little or no funding. An example of this category would have been OpenSSL. We only realise that these under-funded, largely volunteer-contribution projects are in such a vulnerable state when one of them is compromised.
In summary, open source development is riches for the successful few (employees of major contributing companies or superstar devs) and hope and hard work for the majority. Like most areas of endeavour in life, I guess.
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Isn't that called "having a real job?" 
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I am waiting for my CP points to get translated into real money 
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Sure - one point is worth approximately one dollar.
A Zimbabwean dollar.
Circa 2015. 
The Zimbabwean government stated that it would ... exchange Zimbabwean dollars for US dollars at a rate of US$1 to 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars ....
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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That can work : Dilbert Comic Strip on 1995-11-13[^]
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Oeh; I wouldn't stop them. Last few bosses refused to include the name of the 'ware we used, even if that in breach of the TOC.
If half of the people using my code pay me, I go fulltime Rimworld.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I see two main classes of OSS:
Either, commercial companies making good money and pay their developers well, and will try to improve their image in the market by opening the source code but not really expecting (maybe not even wanting) any significant contribution to the software base. A subclass is hardware manufacturers publishing their drivers for someone to port to the other OS, to increase the hardware sales - that is another way of improving their image.
(Note: I know a lot of developers making contributions to OSS code bases maintained by others: Their companies make heavy use of free OSS, and their contributions to extend/modify the OSS is what they would have developed as proprietary software if the OSS was not available. So these developers are well paid by their own company, and act as an extension of the first OSS class.)
Or, someone developer not much above the amateur level (or maybe not even above), doing software development in his/her spare time, publishing the code to boost their image as great developers.
There sure are other classes of open software, but these I see as the major ones. The first group needs no payment. The second group ... Well, some of it doesn't deserve any payment. I can see that a clever amateur (/dilettante) might hope to earn some money on his hobby, the way some other hobbyists do.
But I don't see who should pay them. End users of the software? Making mandatory some sort of begging routine in all OSS, activated at every run? Or a begging mechanisms for other developers that they have to get through before they get access to the open source software?
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Whatever happened to programming for the sheer joy of doing it? I've been programming for over 40 years - because I like doing it. I feel lucky that someone would pay me to do something I do as a hobby.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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#realJSOP wrote: I feel lucky that someone would pay me to do something I do as a hobby.
I've been programming almost as long, and still feel the same way. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who see it as nothing more than a well-paid job. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Microsoft is posting a message on its Windows 10 release information page that versions 2004 and 1909 of the OS are now ready for broad deployment. It's safe: only nine months after first release!
Sorry for those expecting a new icon. I guess we have to wait a while longer.
modified 5-Feb-21 10:36am.
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Your link seems to be wrong - it takes you to an article about Assessing your site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Dang. Well, that’s more important.  Fixing
TTFN - Kent
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Of all the scientific disciplines, pure math, also known as theoretical math, is arguably one of the most cerebral. They invented something to keep office chairs warm?
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A team of physicists from Israel has designed...
xkcd: Physicists[^]
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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A mathematician is not a physicist.
As for Israel..
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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The vast majority (90%) of businesses believe software developers played a critical role in overcoming competition during the pandemic, research published by Twilio states. Huzzahs all around (but probably no raise, sorry)
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To ensure this experience is as good as possible, we have been working on optimizing Visual Studio to handle solutions that contain large numbers of .NET 5 and .NET Core projects. You can move on up from 'Hello world' now
"We have also seen a decrease of up to 25% in crashes reported due to resource exhaustion." <- And there was much rejoicing...
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Quote: "We have also seen a decrease of up to 25% in crashes reported due to resource exhaustion."
Let me guess. They run GC more often now? 
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