From drone racers to pinball: Maker Faire Bay Area 2016 doesn’t disappoint | Ars Technica

From drone racers to pinball: Maker Faire Bay Area 2016 doesn’t disappoint | Ars Technica: "SAN MATEO, Calif.—Maker Faire never gets old. While we only scratched the surface after a 90 minute walk through the fairgrounds, the drone racing was the coolest thing that we saw on Friday afternoon. Every 10 minutes, a few drone pilots would sit with headsets and zoom their aircraft through a netted raceway, replete with an illuminated track. (Check the video below!)"

Lord of the things!

iFixit 64 Bit Driver Kit | StackSocial

iFixit 64 Bit Driver Kit | StackSocial: "Constantly taking your favorite gadgets in for quick repairs can get pricey. With 64 purpose-driven screwdriver bits curated from thousands of repair guides, you can take quick repairs into your own hands and save major cash. Armed with an Ergonomic Aluminum Handle, this is the all-encompassing kit to solve all "

Torx on that!

I/O 2016: Google launches Android N beta with speed boosts, VR hooks & iOS-drawn improvements

I/O 2016: Google launches Android N beta with speed boosts, VR hooks & iOS-drawn improvements: "Borrowing from iOS, users will be able to quick-reply to messages from notifications. "

Does this mean that iOS' haptic feedback is drawn from Microsoft? I, too, can butcher the language for my own Machiavellian purposes.

Sun’s head of Java sales: Android was “devastating” | Ars Technica

Sun’s head of Java sales: Android was “devastating” | Ars Technica: "'Java's not an operating system,' Civjan answered. 'Java's a platform.'

Civjan also acknowledged that despite the declining revenue, he was able to hit all his revenue targets while at Sun."

Another way of looking at Java: a crappy interpreted language with a bunch of class libraries loosely based on the designs of practically everything that came before it.

Java ME is best described as a hilarious joke.

3 IT skills that boost pay 22 percent - Business Insider

3 IT skills that boost pay 22 percent - Business Insider: "Scala, worth a 21.8% pay boost: Scala is a programming language that stands for 'scalable language' that has been experiencing a surge in popularity recently."

I wonder what the pay boost is for finding bugs in the Scala compiler that make Scala unsuitable for production work?

42 launches in the US - Business Insider

42 launches in the US - Business Insider: "A radical French technology school funded by $100 million from billionaire entrepreneur Xavier Niel is coming to Silicon Valley, and has plans to grow to 10,000 students in the next five years."

Here's the latest trend in paternalistic white ageism!

IBM's optical storage is 50 times faster than flash

IBM's optical storage is 50 times faster than flash: "Flash storage is too slow for your device's main memory, but RAM is expensive and volatile. Thanks to a breakthrough from IBM, phase-change memory (PCM) might one day replace them both."

Coming any day now. Like when I first heard about flash storage in 1983.

Microsoft releases Windows 10 preview for Raspberry Pi 3 • The Register

Microsoft releases Windows 10 preview for Raspberry Pi 3 • The Register: "Microsoft's keen to be associated with the Pi mission of teaching computing to kiddies. But Redmond also has its own interests to advance, namely that that Windows 10 IoT Core provides hooks a-plenty to Azure, with the cloudy service offering all sorts of as-a-services that thing-makers can use to collect and crunch data."

Strategic thinking at it's best.

The unreal price of old Apple tech and our Lust List of the gadgets we covet on The CultCast | Cult of Mac

The unreal price of old Apple tech and our Lust List of the gadgets we covet on The CultCast | Cult of Mac: "This week, on The CultCast: Apple aims to end music downloads; you can now live stream your aerial drone flights to iDevices worldwide; staggering facts about who’s making money in the app store; creators of Siri demo an even smarter AI; the ridiculous resale value of old Apple tech; and we reveal our Lust List of the gadgets we’re currently coveting."

20 years from now, the most significant thing about the "mint condition iPad2 for sale on craiglist" will be the nag screens for iOS 9. I guess that'll be nostalgia for the millennials. To think that Apple once lampooned Microsoft for annoying popup boxes. I guess one man's annoying is another man's timely reminder.

Unfortunately, despite the nags, iOS 9 won't install correctly then because the Apple servers will no longer be around to certify the OS upgrade. The good news is there will be a Linux distro that runs perfectly and includes a GPL iOS 8 emulator written by a disgruntled Apple employee.

When the EMP pulse takes out all the Silicon Valley data centers, I'll be running my collection of Snow Leopard-era MacBook Pros from a CD hardcopy. The dystopian futurist in me is waiting for the OTA upgrade that bricks every mobile device at once and the resultant class action lawsuit(s).