Yah, but I could see in 100 years where, if we can't cooperate globally on anything, we'll end up with each country's communication and surveillance satellites orbiting their moon bases, with a much smaller orbit. We'll manage to clutter up the moon too (assuming the species survives long enough to meaningfully colonize the moon, which isn't necessarily a given).

Nobody is going to watch cable news for hours on end (or doom scroll news feeds) to hear "stuff is bad, but we're muddling through it, we're being asked to keep our masks on, stay home to the extent we can and keep our distance from others when we can't.". It's much more lucrative to have have talking heads blathering either about the end of life as we know it, or how it's all a hoax. People are increasingly using mass media for confirmation bias, and rejecting any information that doesn't square with what the chatter is in social media. The News industry is increasingly not "news" anymore, much less about reporting than it is opinion aggregation. Cable news, consolidation of local TV station ownership, syndicated programming, etc. Take your pick, these are all trends that are about maximizing shareholder value as opposed to any civic duty to accurately inform the public.

Both industries employ lots of decent people (farmers, store clerks, graphic artists, proof readers, etc.) that nonetheless are just absolutely ruthless in their efforts to profit from addiction (cigarettes and free content).

Seriously, fuck both of these industries. Now that the FCC isn't lead by the most punchable face on the planet, perhaps we could have some oversight into how these oligopolist companies licensing public spectrum are actually treating the public. Free Market isn't going to fix this, because there is no free market for a finite and expensive shared resource (spectrum). This is why we have FCC, and if they can control when I can hear the work Fuck on television, then they can damn well set some boundaries over how my behavior is sold to parties without my knowledge or consent.

^ THIS. Please. Functional Bluetooth headsets with audio that doesn't like an old POTS phone would be nice.

If you have the wrong people, that's a management issue. Investors who poured money into this turd are not going to go find the coders, they are going to find the management that was paid to be accountable for the work product.

Any sizeable software development project is a three-legged stool: functionality, quality and budget (or time). You can have any two of the three.

AI will analyze Slashdot's code and determine how to make it properly support unicode characters, including directional single and double quotation marks.

I can see it now... They'll recast it with a bunch of C-lister's in a sequel called "King Me!", where her adorable daughter picks up checkers and teaches the boys at school that girls are smart too!

The format of a limited series works for me. I get relative assurances that I'm going to get a full story, completed character arcs, etc.; and that I am not going to be subjected to cliffhangers that may or may not get resolved if the actors decide to sign-on, Netflix decides to cancel, etc. (ex The Dark Crystal AoR).

The Queen's Gambit series was well-executed, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The period pieces were immersive, and Taylor-Joy did a very good job (giant expressive eyes, she can move chess pieces with her mind, sort of like a cute girl version of baby yoda). As mentioned earlier in this thread, chess itself was incidental, it could have been just about anything that is high-pressure competitive endeavor. It was nice to see something intellectual get used though, as opposed to yet another "sports prodigy overcomes adversity" movie of the week. Chess worked well in the story since the competition could happen in solitude (playing the games mentally) with very little resources (growing up in a orphanage). It was also a more plausible field to deal with and overcome male chauvinism than other attempts I've seen.

I hope the series really did as well as claimed, and that we'll see more of this sort of thing as opposed to more watered-down Michael Bay-esque action movies, science fiction that previously would have gone to SyFy (back when they had original science fiction) and non-scary horror films.

On the Ink Jet front, I have a Brother MFC J995DW which works with all my devices, including my Linux workstation. The value proposition is this: you pay a bit more for the printer up-front, and the ink cartridges will hold more and have to be replaced less. So far, compared to Epson and especially Canon printers I've worked with, my ink spend is significantly lower. My only gripes are the paltry paper tray capacity and no auto-duplexing on the scanner. For entry-level, moderate printing use, it's worked well for me.

I don't mind being show advertisements. I do have a problem with being surveilled, having my bandwidth and CPU chewed up by video, and having my information and viewing habits distributed to third parties without my knowledge or consent. These are the reasons I run ad-blockers, disable auto-play, etc, run in incognito mode, etc. If the advertising industry were to do business in an ethical, transparent and honest manner; there would be far less of a counter-industry in developing counter-measures to what has become "business as usual".

Bought the Pixel 2 for $350 a few years ago, and I have yet to see a phone that has is worth spending more for my use case (email, browsing, video conferencing, some utility apps, light photography, little video or gaming). I wish my battery life was better, but outside of industry reviews, I encounter almost nobody who says "oh, last time I charged my phone was yesterday, can I borrow a spare charger?" (i.e. everybody always makes sure their car, their desk, etc. can charge their phone). The only thing that is going to make me switch phones at this point is the USB-C connector port no longer holds a cable securely.

Having a stock Android phone that can fit in my pocket, retain some charge for most of they day, allow me to read my email, and can take a decent picture is fine for me (and I know, I'm not everybody). For me, an upgraded mid-level phone that costs less than a month of rent is an adequate value proposition; especially if it gets timely updates. While there are other phones at this price range that are going to have better specs, those specs won't matter much to me, far less than getting timely security and OS updates.

I'm glad Google is targeting the mid-tier market instead of trying to out-Apple Apple. I don't understand the mindset of buying a $1,200 phone when you don't have enough money to save for anything, but that's probably my age showing.

I have a 6th gen X1 Carbon running Linux Mint. I have had good luck with just about everything except for the fingerprint scanner. It'd be nice if Lenovo would finally release a functional fingerprint driver/library/whatever for Linux.

Probably makes more sense to set the rules up front than to have to apologize later, especially if they are going to let Linus contribute ;)

Because it's Slashdot Media, I'm actually looking forward to the inevitable Dupe articles.

Just did this on Linux Mint. Thanks for sharing.