Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates

To many folks, Excel is their operating system. It's not just spreadsheet software, but data collection, analysis, visualization, reporting, and processing. But the software – designed to be flexible – is not without limitations. So in line with losing Covid data because of file sizes and formats, we now have

Cloudflare silently deleted my DNS records

Interesting from the perspective of error-handling and cloud-services as fundamental communications infrastructure: If I intentionally set out to build a horrible user experience I’m unsure if I could top this. I naively expected that I would be notified by email before Cloudflare broke everything. In the absence of that,

A new way to think about your favorite game’s code

It’s surprisingly hard to archive a video game. Cartridges decay, eventually; discs become unreadable as their plastic degrades. Source codes are lost to corporate mergers and acquisitions. But what’s most dangerous to preserving game history isn’t a physical or corporate consideration: it’s the prevailing attitude that

A Ferrari That Bricks Itself

Dude comes straight from the dealership for a car-seat installation, but halfway through the car disables itself (I’m guessing some anti-tamper safeguard). Hilariously, the boys at Ferrari can’t remotely fix it because there’s no reception underground. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j914fh/dude_comes_

Land Rover’s New $83,000 Defender Is an Alpha Male Still in Beta

The bigger concern is the electronics. New owners have complained about minor, but annoying, glitches: a clock that works only intermittently, keyless entry failure, irregularities with the preprogrammed infotainment system, poor operation of the side-hinged rear door, even an engine stall at a stoplight when the stop-start function failed. Although