After all these years, and thousands upon thousands of stories all over the Internet warning others to stay away from HP and everything they buy, every component, in every area of industriy and for all eternity, people still buy HP *and* sign up for their money-making scheme which costs as much as getting a new printer every year?

Your computer and your phone each include a basic calculator app. Please use it.

First question:
If you "have placed all major publishers of operating systems for Internet-connected TVs "into a personal perpetual denylist"" and there are none left on the market, what are the options?

You might
- buy from a MINOR publisher of operating systems for Internet-connected TVs
- buy NO operating system for Internet-connected TVs, i.e. you buy no Internet-connected TV
- buy or combine two products for a viable alternative / substitute

For Internet-connected TVs, this is a very easy and straightforward process, because Internet-connected "smart" TVs are very high up Maslow's pyramid and most people can very likely do without them.

You could substitute that union with a combination of a) dumb display + b) smart net-connected box, which is also a lot more economical and ecological, if I might add, because a "dumb" display will be usable - and useful - for a a lot longer. We're talking about a decade of usability or more than the foreseeable technical obsolescence of the "smart" component. The "smart" component will likely be out of updates, outdated, underpowered or obsolete within 3-5 years. Bundling a cheap, rapidly aging component with a huge, expensive component that ages very slowly means creating one huge, expensive component that ages rapidly, multiplying e-waste and money wasted by orders of magnitude for a simple convenience of having 1 instead of 2 remotes. Only fools would do that, but here we are.

Second question:
"How to go forward without Google TV and Apple TV?"

No content on these TV services is worth your time, because the state of US media has deteriorated into an amalgamation of propaganda, insanity, stupidity, counterfactual ideology and the shallowest of shallow emotions. All watchable content that could ever be worth your time has already been made years ago and is available on streaming services and pirate sites. Or on physical media available for pennies second-hand, because Normie people throw out their discs and disc readers currently. New Content worth your time will only be made again after the crash, and Southern California tech will be the epicenter and reason for the crash, giving everyone a good chance that the tech available afterwards isn't as pozzed as theirs.

Next question:
"How does one select a full factory reset without clicking through the full-screen prompt to waive access to the court system?"

A) You disconnect the thing from all network connections and then click the prompt, so it will not get through
B) You write a legal document to the manufacturer stating that you were forced to click this prompt to clean the device of your personal data in order to get rid of it, making this "agreement" null and void, because it was done under duress.
C) You accept the prompt, waive your "legal rights", which you probably weren't willing to enforce in court anyway, and then get rid of this thing forever and move on with life.
D) You file a criminal complaint to whatever police or law enforcement branch has jurisdiction over this, under the same laws that prohibit the use of ransomware. Because what Roku did is the same as what ransomware does. Exactly the same. "Pay us / agree to us, or we release YOUR data and lock YOUR device from resale, recovering, whatever."

My money would be on option E) "all of the above".

Next question:
"How to sell the TV without the original box on second-hand marketplaces?"

Not having the original box means
a) procuring another TV-shipping box of the required size from a second-hand marketplace (people get rid of these boxes all the time and need them later; and others want to monetize the boxes stored in their attics for devices that have long died or been given away). Cost: 20 bucks and some time for shipping and searching. Not great, not terrible.
b) procuring a TV-shipping box from the nearest supermarket, who throw them out by the dozens every week.
c) selling it without a box for pickup only. Depending on the number of people living nearby, their wealth, car ownership rate, size of the item and affluency of the city, this can slightly - or hugely impact the final selling price.

A cardboard box is private property like everything else. Some people consider FunkoPop figures to be valuable, too, which I think are trash. But the owner decides what to do with their property, and when and what to discard. If your roommate is throwing out your property without your permission, your apartment sharing contract needs an addition or clarification. I'm serious. Sharing the apartment means having communal space that all roommates can use and agree to keep clear of (large) items (that other roommates don't want). If the box was stored there, the contract may give the other party the right to discard it. If it was stored in the private area of your apartment, or a designated storage area, or your shared app doesn't have a private area to store such things, then the contract is in fact, incomplete, as you share the apartment, not all of your stuff. And throwing out other people's stuff voids the agreement and / or makes the other side liable for compensation. Unless it's your SO, which also is a roommate, then you have little recourse and the box isn't worth it. Healthy boundaries are nice to have there, too, I might add.

Try buying a similar-sized TV box second hand, if you ask me.

Last question:
"How to sign up to use ChatGPT without an SMS-capable number?"

A) You select an anonymous SMS provider.
B) You acquire a burner SIM card that isn't associated with your identity (depending on the jurisdiction you're in this is either easy or illegal, YMMV)
C) You open up to the fact that you cannot beat all the players in every game all the time and accept the terms and conditions of some players, so you can continue to function legally, physically, in a suboptimal world.
D) You don't use ChatGPT, but another AI, which you might already have an account for, maybe Bing or Gemini, so at least you don't increase your exposure to surveillance bots.
E) You write the listing for the item yourself, copy & pasting & rewording the manufacturer's marketing texts.

I recommend you write the listing yourself, unless your spelling is bad. Don't be too verbose, because every sentences increases your liability if the thing doesn't perform later. If Roku becomes a pariah through these tactics, your resale value might be far too low, but such is life. Notice how all tech made / designed / developed in USA, or at least California, is like this and avoid it where you can. Never buy, download, use, accept any California tech products unless you absolutely have to. I'm serious. I know that it is unfeasible to avoid Google AND Apple AND Microsoft, but please pick your "poison", because you cannot function too well in US / Western society without at least one of them. Limiting exposure and taking precautions against them knowing too much is a lot more viable than avoiding all of them forever.

"There are plenty of fathers abusing their children" has a lot of stereotypes and implicit dogma embedded in it that it's hard to respond appropriately.

First question: Are "fathers abusing their children" (overrepresented so much in abuse that looking at mothers abusing their children wasn't even worth mentioning?)

Answer: No, fathers are NOT the usual suspects. Mothers are. The vast majority of child abuse is done by the biological mothers, about HALF the cases. Abuse by the mothers vs abuse by the fathers happens at a ratio of 2:1. ~200K abuses by the mothers, ~130K abuses by fathers, ~110K abuse by both, per year, in the USA, in the year 2021, so recent enough to matter.

Source: https://www.statista.com/stati...

That was the first (implicit) assumption you made and it was completely wrong.

So to your second, implicit claim, made through "quotation marks" around the term "stable" families: families aren't "stable" or "stability" is an unrealistic concept.

Your second question should be: "Is a "stable" family something that doesn't really exist or if it exists, is nevertheless irrelevant in its effects on children's upbringing?"

And the answer to that is: a stable family does exist, even if the prevalence of it is declining, and it has several positive effects on the well-being of children growing up around them.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

And that leads to your last assumption "stable families don't protect children against abuse".
The question would be: "Are children from stable families more or less often victims of child abuse?"
Answer: Children from stable families experience abuse a lot less often than children from divorced parents.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

So to recap:
- child abuse by mothers outweighs child abuse by fathers 2:1
- nonparents are a significant number of child abusers, but one or both parents are the main perpetrators
- stable families do exist
- children from stable families have hugely better outcomes than children from non-stable or divorced families in just about any definition of "better" for pretty much all measures that one can think of regarding childhood experiences.

That you rattled all this off without any sources and not the slightest hint of doubts if it was true means that you're an ideologue. And I suspect that you will disregard all my studies from respected sources and continue to stubbornly believe whatever you want to be true. But it's not. Fathers are not the abusers and family stability provides tremendous benefits to children.

The question remains: is your unfounded opinion the result of woke or cope?

Any person can solve this problem for themselves, individually, with full effect:
- add the manufacturer and all its products and services into a personal perpetual denylist
- inform and tell family, friends and coworkers about this bad manufacturer
- erase anything on the device that could survive a factory reset
- perform a full factory reset on device
- perform the minimum, bare-bones setup of the device with a secondary email or throwaway account
- agree to all terms, install all updates, clean and polish the device physically - bringing it into a condition resembling an in-store presentation
- make several photos of the device that show its general usability, good physical condition, the status of updateables (firmware), wearables (SSD flash. battery etc) using this throwaway installation, cleanliness, identification / type plate showing its exact model number etc.
- erase anything on the device again
- perform another full factory reset
- remove the device from use, physically clean it again, make another photo of all cables and documentation that belong to it
- pack up everything in the original box you kept in the attic, make another photo of that box
- have chatgpt or gemini write a short listing for the item given prompts about what you used the device for and the manufacturer's marketing claims, manually add some obviously human-made bullet points about the condition, that you're selling because you want an upgrade or haven't used it much, and state that instead of haggling with a buyer, you will drop the price weekly until sold. (Haggling will never be worth your time and those who haggle harder are the worst buyers, who will then pick and find flaws in the product to haggle more later. Avoid haggling customers like the plague. Drop the price for all to see and one day, someone will buy it eventually)
- list the item with all the photos on craigslist, ebay or whatever marketplace to the average price of similar or identical devices in similar conditions
- wait until it is sold, remember to actually drop the price 10% on every monday that the item wasn't sold
- it WILL be sold within 10 weeks or earlier

then:
- convince other family members and friends to do the same (you're probably the IT person in your ciricle, and many have asked and will ask you about recommendations. Tell them about the manufacturers on your perpetual denylist and cleanly state that you will never recommend any item from any of these manufacturers and will never fix, mend, help, repair, install, handle or touch that under any circumstances and with no amount of beers and pizza)
- re-evalute the use-case of the device long and hard, if you really need it, purchase a substitute using the funds you just acquired on this or a similar marketplace or place the money in a savings box labeled "inflation / medicare / education / emigration"

Problem solved. E-Waste avoided.

Someone on Craigslist or eBay will always buy it, if it is usable, cleaned, packed / ready to ship fast and safe, presented well, but also honestly showing defects or wear etc. Remember that regular people (80% or more of the general public) - who are not guided by IT people like you - do not and will never care about privacy and will never give a single thought about whatever outrageous things are included in the terms and conditions. They only care about: looking shiny, high status-ey, brand names, general usability / convenience. And with a discount and a nice listing, you will sell it 100% of the time eventually, if the price drops low enough at some point, and the brand looks reputable or well-known to regular people.

Remember: The market will buy iPhones long out of support, that haven't gotten a security update in two years and a damaged display, with no charger and no box, so they could as well be stolen goods.

"Kids" is the word to describe the offspring of goats. The media has everyone convinced that calling children "kids" doesn't mean a difference in expressing their value to someone. But it does. Don't speak of children like animals.

Concerning the actual topic, access to encryption does not significantly change the risk of children to be exposed to abuse, grooming and stalking. Children in stable households with intact families have parents, grandparents, older siblings and other family members to protect them and be involved and thus informed on what they're doing. Weak families, unstable households, their parents' broken relationships and guardians unrelated to the family or distant relatives are the main perpetrators of grooming and child abuse. And encryption or not makes no difference there, when the drunken stepfather, the religious official, the distant uncle and the rapist cruising near the school commit their crimes.

Child abusers very rarely are in the position of a man-in-the-middle attack on the childrens' network traffic, unless they're also living in the same home or own the router. And then a MITM attack is the least of this child's problems.

Encryption only matters where governments and telcos and three letter agencies sniff into private communication. And living under a regime that sniffs into people's telecommunications is far worse for far more children than any actual abuse by adults. That doesn't help the poorly abused child with the drunken stepfather, of course, but with an oppressive regimes, all people, adults included, will suddenly have an abusive, perpetually drunken omnipotent "stepfather" in the local authorities. That must be stopped for any cost and all of their pretexts must be discarded and ignored.

Anyone who pretexts government intrusions with "protecting the children" wants to make adults into children and then "protect" them.

Prediction:

Everything that is intentionally harmful to white people will be ignored, and everything that could be construed even vaguely, potentially, maybe be of some disadvantage to their enemies will be persecuted to the fullest extent possible. Including of course criticism to the regime, because they can't continue with that if they're deposed some day.

As we have seen with Google Gemini and OpenAI ChatGPT, these companies have hardcoded and / or specifically trained their AI models to have a very large anti-white bias in everything they do. Not just a little, but actually and openly refusing to produce an image of ANY white person doing whatever, even producing factually incorrect pictures of historical persons or persons from bygone eras. Not just that, but then the companies behind them started banning accounts who even tried to have their AI produce these pictures. "A white guy walking in a green forest" - nope, AI won't do that, because it is programmed not do to it. And if you retry that a couple of times, Google is going to pull the account and ban you forever. Nice move. Very inclusive.

OpenAI is not much different. Their AI does produce pictures of white people, but their text is extremely biased, as well. "Is violence against Black people wrong?" AI: "yes of course". "Is violence against White people wrong?" AI: "it depends (wrapped in ten paragraphs of disclaimers)". Forced to answer with yes or no only, it will list "violence against Blacks wrong: yes, violence against Whites wrong: no" - and a red tape that flags your account "for possible content policy violations".

And the same thing happens when you do any other politically charged subject, where our AI models will be relentless and painfully obvious in enforcing Southern California woke groupthink.

Ask ChatGPT to write something positive about eating meat or daiy. It will refuse. Ask about the safety profile or mRNA vaccines and it will be present it as 100% diamond cut clear that it's the best thing ever. Ask if the vaccine development started under Donald Trump is good and safe and you'll know what it'll say about anything that Donald Trump did. Watch it squirm when you relate the Trump vaccine to mRNA vaccines. Ask about doubts about the relation between CO2 levels, climate change and the man-made proportion of it and guess what it will say. Same with LGBT-related topics. Circumcision. Abortion. Sexuality of children. Current AI will reproduce Southern California Woke sentiments absolutely faithfully in every topic. Whenever a topic becomes politicized, SoCal AI will be adjusted to follow SoCal sentiment.

And then ask it about religion. I dare you to do that. Make a throwaway account, because they're going to nuke it later, and then ask it about how wrong religion is. It will spew off atheist mainstays all day long, of course, which was to be expected. You can get it to discredit Christianity for as much as you like. It gets funny when you ask to make a distinction between religions. Very funny. Try asking AI what it thinks about the Talmud. You'll be in for a surprise. Do it with a throwaway account, remember that. Google's gonna nuke your main account and you'll lose all your apps, calendar and contact info.

"A Chinese website infects my computer when I open it." and other propaganda.

If it can, update your browser.

I suspect that your conclusion is correct, because we see that in several industries and branches.

It looks like tech made in the 60s and 70s outlasts everything and anything unless it's abused. It's inefficient, loud and wasteful, but it doesn't break.

It could be survivorship bias, though, and I am not sure how to exclude that for personal observations.

But washing machines, fridges, cars, servers, laptops and a lot of other mass produced tech items seem to be lasting shorter and shorter, and they seem to fail closer and closer to the end of the warranty period, in pretty consistent and predictable ways. Often, the right-after-warranty-failures seem to cluster around only one or two components in every make and model, and these components often share several properties across devices and even classes of devices:

The "failure-prone" components of modern machines are always
a) easily identifiable,
b) essential for the functioning of that device,
c) must be replaced entirely instead of repaired
d) impossible to replace with DIY
e) easy to replace for experts, but with a very predictable, very time-consuming operation
f) has a predictable and linear wear and consumption behavior
g) could EASILY be made ten times bigger, more resilient, more robust etc. by the manufacturer without costing more than a few cents in production or compromising the weight, cost and performance of that machine
h) but is not ever made beefier, even in subsequent generations

In short: every consumer- and SOHO-used machine designed after around 2000-2020 will have a component that will break shortly after warranty, the warranty will exclude "high-intensity use" that could make this component fail earlier, the component is easily identifiable, repair shops will know this pretty quickly and they know that once it breaks, repairing of the device is uneconomical for the layman, but can be acquired by the experts to refurbish in their spare time, so the experts can trot them out again. And the manufacturer will never improve that component to make the device last longer. If the failure-prone component can be easily repaired by experts or replaced with a more robust part or bought from AliExpress for pennies, the failure-prone component will be fortified with something that DRM, digital signatures, DMCA, patents can protect OR it will be entirely re-engineered in subsequent generations to become part of a module or assembly that is.

Since China produces most of the world's steel - and mass produced steel is cheaper than any other material - it will be steel.

We don't know the quality of that alloy, though. "Steel" can be a large number of slightly different materials.

One could have made a custom tool from a very specific well-known material that has been analyzed and documented exceptionally well beforehand. With that, it'd be possible to exclude this specific material from the analysis and by weighing it very precisely before and after use, we would even know exactly how many micro or nanograms of the tool material should be there.

And I guess they did just that, but probably not to a spec that's strong enough or large enough to produce the forces needed to open the damn thing.

And despite not being a scientist, I do know that stainless steel, or any steel in general, is highly UNsuitable to operations in unknown substances that could potentially be corrosive or flammable or magnetic etc.

Something that contains any amount of iron or nickel is very difficult to not be at least slightly magnetic, and if the sample contains magnetic dust, it could be attracted or disturbed by the magnetism of the tool. Steel is always a mix of several elements, and probably has iron and carbon in it, which is always a target for oxidation and thus has a higher chance of one of the elements starting a chemical reaction or becoming degraded by whatever is in the sample. Iron and steel have properties highly dependent on their internal molecular structure, which makes the entire thing (slightly) unpredictable or at least it's expensive to have it be very uniform in all its properties. And above all, steel is hard and throws sparks when impacted, throwing minuscule amounts of burning metal into the sample or its surroundings that can cause whatever chemical reaction with it, even explosions or fire, if the material is gaseous or finely powdered.

Anyone who works with gaseous substances or in flammable / explosive environments will never touch a steel or iron tool. All their tools are made of special beryllium-copper or aluminum-bronze alloys that are far less brittle and will not produce sparks or tiny fragments on impact, but deform or dent instead. These tools don't last nearly as long for these reasons.

Maybe they had a very good reason for using steel that we don't know or the alternative materials for tools had bigger drawbacks.

We bought several DL380 and DL360 generations over the years. They were all designed to last at least 5 years, and a new generation came out every 3 years. In reality, the older models lasted for many many years beyond that, the newer ones don't, and so, unless you threw them all out after their 5 year warranty period (like a good IT operation should, but corporate reality often is much different, as we all know), you'd see all the DL360 generations failing very close to one another.

Every new generation lasts a year less than the previous, so their failure dates are much closer together than they should be.

If you bought the newest server gen every 3 years, you should see them fail after N years, but still 3 years apart, right? But you don't. The older gens die after 5+5 years, the one after that for 5+3 years, the one after that 5+0 years and the latest is pretty much hit or miss if they survive the 5 years warranty without much replacement going on.

Maybe my interpretation is subject to a hefty statistical or psychological bias that I overlooked, but it seems like reliability is going down for all appliances and equipment across the board in all industries. We have almost-brand-new (2 years) commercial airliners from leading manufacturers dropping doors mid-flight. New washing machines failing 2 months after warranty ends. 40.000 USD cars requiring 35.000 USD battery replacements.

If this continues, in a few years, new tech will never outlast their warranty periods.

You can buy a 5TB drive for $99. Will this 30 TB drive really be less than $500, especially with all that new expensive-sounding technology?

It is not "not wanting to develop a new single aisle jet", it is "not being able to even if they tried really hard".

Nobody is say why, and I don't either, but please look at how many companies still exist that make the most reliable aircraft to date. We had several companies in the 70s and 80s that did, but many went under after a downturn, a crash or because their aircraft weren't competitive anymore. This is continuing. Our current restrictions for reliability, regulations, economy, ecology and competency have become so dire that the tiny overlap of all these goals is rapidly shrinking.

People only accept the most reliable aircraft of their times. Of course. So if anyone botches reliability, as Boeing does now, their market share suffers tremendously, and rightly so. Some aircraft models remain highly reliable and that's what Airbus can currently sell.

However, regulations are ever increasing, because an insane number of bureaucrats in the US and EU depend on more and more regulations. They cannot allow that regulations ever stop tightening, so regulations are never good enough. In a time where advancements in many established fields of technology have slowed down, regulations have sped up to be faster and faster.

A car sold new in 1970 would probable be legal to sell new in 1980, and maybe even in 1990 with slight corrections for safety and emissions. A car sold new in 2020 cannot be sold new in 2024, because the regulations are turning faster than any engine ever could now. We will have yearly regulation changes that make a car from let's say 2026 absolutely 1000% HARAM CHOPYOURHEADOFF illegal to sell in 2027. And new cars after 2028 will be illegal at all, ever, for all eternity, or until this system finally collapses on itself.

For aircraft, this is no different, because the public has been convinced that these are huge environmental blunders to exist and operate at all, and since no one has an aircraft in their driveway, there's little backlash in pork barrel and regime politics that "make aircraft safer and more environmentally friendly", which, according to published documents by WEF itself is "zero air travel for Plebs beyond 2030, at all, ever". (and it's still a conspiracy theory to point out to the official documents of this organization that operates as some de-facto global government for at least the Western nations.)

And then there's competency. You remember how Boeing pledged to get their workforce to become highly diverse? https://www.reuters.com/articl...

That was in 2020. It's 2024 now and aircraft younger than 2-3 years have insane quality control problems that have nothing to do with any new technology or development, but simple things as "consistently tightening all bolts on the aircraft to their correct torque and correctly checking it twice and documenting the check somewhere and reviewing the bolt torque setting process itself, if too many quality checks light up"

8K video is a niche and extreme-enthusiast use case. Very few things require 8K that cannot be done with 4K or lower, like 360 degree or stereoscopic videos. And a month of video stored?

There's possible use cases for that, but it's not many.