The noise argument is the most annoying as I've stood at the base of one while it was operating and even there it was only a quiet "woosh woosh" sound; you didn't have to go very far to not hear it at all.

Apparently I did too - just checked and you're right - they've crippled the mini again, probably to make us blow money on the studio version. Sigh.

...but then realized the mac mini finally has enough memory capacity to be useful, so that is a better solution anyhow...

FWIW, we *did* get notice of the data center move; fortunately, we have our own nameservers and they are both physically and topologically distant from each other...

...like it has been for the last 50 years...

It does look like they're actually making some forward progress at least...

The simplest solution is force them to conform to an open standard for interaction so people have a real choice in platforms

...beyond the common ones, I mean. And I deliberately never gave it access to my contacts.

...nowhere do they say exactly *what* data is being collected. Websites I visit are likely collecting more data than my Echos have any access to. When the article doesn't give you any useful information, it's just fearmongering.

Aside from the bandwidth calculations others have done, I work at a small regional ISP and even we have a netflix cache here - I can't imagine the larger ISPs don't as well. Something that popular is not going to affect upstream bandwidth at all, though it could conceivably impact internal networks.

I vote "no" and not buying into it, so it's almost guaranteed to actually do so...

...why I was always getting ray ban spam in my facebook feed...

...so far...my 3xl continues to work well (until I hit Submit on this post, probably ;-) )

I've been reading more books the last few years, at the expense of tv watching (though there's actually a lot of good tv out there too)

There are a bunch of the Starship robots running around Oregon State University. They're quite cute, but at one place I often see them, they need to use the crosswalk with a light that they go past to use an uncontrolled crosswalk a little ways away. The street they're crossing is very busy and they're rather conservative. One day I saw about a dozen of them backed up waiting to cross, though they did eventually make it (they were gone by the time I came back from picking up my lunch - you basically have to be a student or faculty to use them and I'm not and just off the edge of campus).

We just shifted to a 4-day/10hr workweek in February. I hate getting up at 6:30am, but I love having 3-day weekends - enough that when I had a chance to switch back, I didn't.