Category: Technology (Page 2 of 12)

The European Space Agency is going to miss American money.

November 20, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

SPACE: Will Europe’s flagship space science missions survive NASA’s budget cuts?

Flagship European space science missions conducted in collaboration with NASA face a possible combined funding shortfall of nearly $2 billion due to budget cuts put forward by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The European Space Agency hopes its member states will come to the rescue.

Europe’s flagship space science missions may be worthwhile, but they aren’t ours, so why are we funding them? It’s only about twenty bucks per American taxpayer, but do that for 10,000 other foreign agencies and projects, and it starts to add up.

Technology won’t save us from old folks.

November 15, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: Old Age Will Be Different in the Robotic Age

Machines could soon help elders get out of bed, bathe them, even provide them with emotional support.

I always figured this problem would be solved by the Japanese inventing competent Elder-bots, the Chinese making cheap knock-offs and an American start-up company offering free robots that tended to the feeble as it harvested confidential medical information to defraud Medicaid. That won’t happen.

What’s the code?

November 13, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: Why Every Family Needs a Code Word

If you receive a call from someone who sounds just like your grandson and says he needs money or a gift card, the best thing to do is hang up and call your grandson. But if the voice is so convincing that you can’t bear to do that, ask for your family code word.

This happened to my mother. She got a call from somebody who identified himself as her grandson, and needed money to get out of jail. The same thing has happened to the elderly parents of several of my friends.

Coffee should be easier than this.

November 9, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 1 Comment

I was about to buy my sixth Keurig, when I wised up. The ‘descale’ light means the coffee maker is getting ready to shit the bed.

We live in the future, just not the science fiction future.

November 6, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human.

The 5-foot-6-inch robot shuffled to the dishwasher, pulled the door handle and slid a fork—tines up, naturally—into the silverware holder. Then it grabbed a towel to wipe the counter. Later, it folded my sweater and fetched a bottle of water from the fridge.

Don’t try living in a science fiction future, it’s a sham.

A new car is so much work.

October 31, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

I bought a new truck. After 13 years, it was time.

Enshittification is real

October 27, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Vox: Why every website you used to love is getting worse

Facebook is the poster child for enshittification. At first, it was a big improvement over MySpace. Everyone signed up for, it was great for a while, then Facebook made changes to make more money, until is sucked. Everyone was on Facebook, so nobody wanted to leave.

Going back to the Moon, and for real this time.

October 18, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Nasa plans first crewed Moon mission in 50 years for February 2026

Maybe there is too much going on or it’s the fracturing of news media, but there are big things happening that people aren’t talking about.

In four months, humans are going back to the Moon. The Artemis 2 mission is to perform a lunar orbit, no landing, similar to Apollo 9 in 1968. Apollo 9 is the mission that yielded the moving “Earth Rise” photograph.

NASA sensor platform is a surprise.

October 13, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Texas woman surprised as lost hunk of NASA equipment lands on her farm: ‘It’s kind of surreal’

She seems like a good sport. Did she change outfits or do girl farmers usually dress cute?

When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn’t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.

She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor’s wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers.

Henry Ford is a greenhorn at this aviation business.

October 7, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Here’s what was in the NYT, on October 7, 1925.

“They tell me a paper has quoted me as saying the first commercial airplane reliability tour proves the airplane to be reliable,” said Mr. Ford. “Maybe I said that, but I doubt that the tour alone could prove such a thing. I’m a greenhorn at this aviation business, but I can see that it is going to be a great industry.”