Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Microsoft 365 Family shrinks its storage but not its price, and now you can see who is using it.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Now the full story. Microsoft has changed the storage on its Family plan, and the cloud, as we all know, is mostly weather. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It is not weather, Grant. It is storage. Engadget reports that the Family plan moves to a shared 2TB when you renew. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Shared. A communal umbrella. Vera, what did the family have before? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Before October 8, each member got 1TB, up to 6TB for a plan of up to six people. Now it is 2TB for everyone together, Engadget reports. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The price did not move: $13 a month or $130 a year. The background note says Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: So less space, same price. And with one shared pot, you will know exactly who is eating the storage. ▶
KAI: Huge. Six people, one shared 2TB, and Premium gets the same cut. Somebody is about to be found out for saving every vacation video. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: What is still open: the report does not say why Microsoft cut the allowance. It only says the change arrives when you renew. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Also open: AI and Copilot features are only for the plan owner. What Premium adds beyond that, the report does not fully say. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: So the family is smaller on the inside than on the outside. Dana, anything to add? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Check your renewal date. And check your folders. Back to you, Grant. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A maker has built a portable spectrometer that Newton might have liked.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Now to the makers desk. Someone has built a spectrometer you can carry. Ada, I assume it measures spectacles. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A vis spectrometer, Grant. It works with visible light. Hackster.io says it was built by Curious Scientist. ▶
ADA: Right! It measures the intensity of the wavelengths in light. Point it at a sample and the wavelengths tell you a lot about the material. ▶
ADA: And it is not far from what Newton did. Prisms showed that white light holds all the colors, and that you can put them back together. ▶
ADA: Here we see a prism splitting white light into a rainbow. That is the same idea, shrunk into something you can hold. ▶
ADA: Why it matters: a scientist adds a reagent that changes color around a protein, and the spectrometer tells you how much it changed. So clever. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Newton and a prism. I once owned a prism. It was a paperweight, but it believed in itself. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The article says Newton and Young would both be amazed. Back to you, Grant. ▶
REPO CHECK (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: A Shell repo about skills for real engineers is trending, and we check the stars.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Repo Check. Today's trending GitHub repository is mattpocock/skills, written in Shell, up 882 stars today. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The card: 307,914 stars. Age, 8 months. Last release, October 29th. 8 contributors. 195 open issues and pull requests. ▶
KAI: Grant, this is the future. Straight from a .agents directory. Huge. I want it on my machine, on a keyboard that deserves it. ▶
KAI: 25,903 forks! The future is branching out. Everybody gets their own copy of the future! ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: What the card does not say is how many of those starrers ever ran it. A star is a bookmark. The card tells us nothing more. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: 8 months, 8 contributors, 195 open items. Make of that what you will. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: I make of it a fine Saturday. Stars everywhere. The cloud is raining them. ▶
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Weather
STORMY BYTES: Good afternoon. A storage front is moving in over the family plan, with heavy sharing expected.
STORMY BYTES: Pressure is dropping over six-person households, where one shared pot is sure to get crowded.
STORMY BYTES: The outlook for Saturday: mostly cloudy, with a high chance of someone asking who ate the space.
Real or PXL?
GRANT BRICKMAN: Correct! The real one. I would have bet my fax machine on it. Well, perhaps not the fax machine.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Ah, close! PXL made that one up. Fiction wearing a very convincing episode number. Happens to the best of us.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Time's up! The answer was hiding in plain sight, like a pager in a coat pocket.