Category: Technology
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Robot barista cafe expands to second location
A while back I visited Cafe X in San Francisco’s Metreon only to find its robot barista charged me for health care. I thought for sure the novelty would wear off quickly, but it seems every time I’m at the Metreon there’s still a bunch of people gawking at the robot arm shuffling cups around.…
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Why the new Firefox logo looks wrong, yet oddly familiar
Back in November Mozilla released Firefox 57, aka “Quantum.” It was the first major change to Firefox in many years with a new look, new extension system, and significantly faster performance. While it did break some of my favorite extensions this was a temporary problem, and despite a few bumps the upgrade was ultimately a…
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A robot barista charged me for health care
Robots are handling food everywhere these days. Whether delivering falafel or attempting to scoop ice cream, there’s no escape from food robots in the Bay Area. All of which is fine with me: I, for one, welcome our new robot food service overlords. What I’m not fine with, however, are spurious surcharges. So imagine my…
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Mini Strandbeest
I received an unexpected gift at work today; a Mini Strandbeest kit. Like a wildly complex Ikea furniture set, there’s dozens of parts to stick together, but it doesn’t take terribly long if you follow the directions. If you’ve been stuck under a rock for the past few decades and are unfamiliar with Strandbeests, check…
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How (not) to think like a product manager
A Medium post titled Clouseau: A Postmortem has been making its rounds on the internet today. While the title isn’t particularly revealing, the subtitle gives you the gist of the story: “How I vetted and dumped a startup idea in ~20 hours and for under $1000.” For those who haven’t read the article, here’s a…
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Microsoft Windows Enterprise Edition
The other day I got to thinking: what would happen if the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation was built with modern software? If it ran on Microsoft Windows, its own operating system might be bigger a danger to the crew than the Borg. Here’s how I suspect it would play out. …and…
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Graffiti just a list of Linux distributions
You know you’re in San Francisco when the graffiti is just a list of Linux distos. For touchier Linux users this list of distributions will no doubt invoke very negative responses. On one side you’ll have a bunch of whiners upset that their favorite one isn’t on this list. In some other corner there will…
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My solution to the world’s energy problems
For years we’ve been hearing about the benefits of harnessing clean energy. Our reliance on fossil fuels has caused toxic pollution, led to numerous wars, and has rapidly altered the planet’s climate. While solar and wind have potential, let me explain one untapped source of renewable energy: hot takes on Twitter. See, hot takes could…
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My own QML TreeView
It’s Valentine’s Day and here’s the point where I have to confess my love as a software engineer for QML. It’s a markup language for building simple modern UIs with Javascript controls, and can be bound to C++ and Python via Qt. Since it’s based on Qt it runs on pretty much any modern desktop…
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Anatomy of a free energy scam [updated]
Back in September a “free energy machine” which had crowdfunded a bunch of money on IndieGoGo came to my attention. When I followed up later, I found this same project had not one but two more crowdfunding campaigns, raising a grand total of $57,590. Now if you really built a free energy device — that…
About Eric
Travel, movies, comedy, tech, and whatever I find on the streets of San Francisco.
Contact: mrericsir “at” gmail.com
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- Full Queer Wrestling at Folsom Street Fair
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