Math is so weird. We know of algorithms that are extremely Big-O efficient, even solving NP problems in polynomial time + a constant factor. The problem is that the constant factor is ... large. See also wikipedia and HN comments.
Now we know why the hobbits couldn't take the eagles to Mordor: roaming fees. (Yes, I know I'm the eight millionth person to make this joke, shut up)
I still feel like "1" is the wrong number of engines on an airplane but "yeah, it'll land itself" is a pretty cool feature. It apparently squawks 7700 and talks shit to the tower and recommends pulling the chute if that's the only other option. Mind you there's autoland and then there's autoland.
We programmers beat ourselves up about how bad we are at, well, everything and generally feel that Real Engineers are better. This is true, but remember that even mature engineering practice screws up. Sometimes it's caught in time and sometimes it's not. Sometimes we know what not to do and do it anyway.
Naming things is hard. "Pwnagotchi" makes it look easy.
I mentioned the causal-profiling app coz earlier and only now ran into this nice video that introduces both it and another neat performance tuning tool, Stabilizer.
perf is so powerful it's tempting to think we already have all the tools we need to make programs faster but any social scientist will tell you that imitating a longitudinal study with a cross-sectional one is ... hard. Social scientists will also tell you that getting IRB approval for sedating most of a rowing team to see who's not pulling their weight is even harder. One day there will be ethics on doing the same to computer programs but until then, let's enjoy causal profiling. Yes, you can (sort of) use it on rust code.
From the unevenly-distributed-future department: I recall at least two far-future scifi stories where being unable to call for help because of accidental unconsciousness were major plot points and now we've gone ahead and just blown that whole genre out of the water.
If we don't build a space elevator somewhere in my lifetime I will be very disappointed. Cambridge and Columbia are on it. At least we're manufacuring something up there.