That's: "Shouldn't be".

I do see you point about big and small players: the danger of looser copyright rules is that the big players are in a better position to steal your work and then just bankrupt you in court. But that is a failure of the court system rather than copyright.

That depends on how similar the movies are. There is more than one "work" in play here: the script / story, and the movie made from that script. Even if the new movie is in a completely different style than the original (a cartoon instead of live action, perhaps), different enough to make it a derived work rather than a copy, there's still the matter of the script / story being almost the same. The bar for something being a proper derived work of an original story should be rather high, it should be a new story... but it most definitely should be allowed to incorporate characters and lore from the original... Or write a similar story but with different characters in a different setting. The criteria for when something is a copy rather than a new work are not so easy to define... but the line should be where they are now, where you get copyright strikes for using a tiny sample of someone's song in your own, or for showing a brief clip of a movie in a review.

I've been online for a while and have not noticed Philadelphia being singled out in any way. Everything in the article's "notorious cultural touchstones" is unknown to me. Not that I'm celebrating my ignorance, but I just haven't seen anyone discussing those particular topics.

on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable

From my point of view, on the internet Philly culture is just one of thousands, not particularly emphasized.

I suspect the author has some connection to that city which has caused him to read about it more than average.

angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore

Sorry, whose favorite characters? Did you mean yours or did you mean Disney's?

Not that I have a problem with you actually making a video of Disney's characters. I haven't seen any evidence that these AIs have any idea how copyright law and Fair Use work, so obviously it doesn't make any sense to restrict what they're allowed to do. The user is perfectly qualified .. well, ok .. the most qualified of the two, to make such decisions.

If Disney wants tools to try to figure out Fair Use vs not-Fair Use, then they should throw money at AI lawyers, which currently have an absolutely terrible reputations, since they're so incredibly unreliable and borderline-fraudulent.

And if Disney doesn't think they can make a near-perfect AI lawyer (at least one good enough to not enrage judges with fake citations) then they have no reasonable expectation that anyone else can/should do it, either, so keep your human lawyers away from our computers.

They are not appropriating anything, they are remixing and creating derivative works, something that people have done since the dawn of civilisation, something that has expanded the abundance of culture, and something that the original form of copyright was not meant to put a stop to (since copyright was invented to serve that abundance, not the creators). Why on earth should content creators get to control derivative works and levy a tax on them? It's absurd. You get paid for your own work, which is what copyright exists for. You should not get paid for someone else's work, even if that other person re-used some of your ideas. Even if (god forbid!) they make a buck with their work?

Screw these entitled content creators; copyright (and moral rights) have been preverted beyond recognition, and need a reform. Not gonna happen though... but I feel not a shred of remorse for authors whose work now gets remixed in AI.

What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year?

Because that's what their customers are demanding! Don't you hate when you're doing something, and you realize you've done it more than 3 times? Just yesterday I adjusted the mirror on my wife's SUV and thought "we keep undoing each other's mirror adjustments. Can't it just stop moving so that one of us permanently loses and one permanently wins? Why is this car letting us change it back'n'forth?"

Microsoft fights for the users!

Same. I am still subscribed to Prime, for the delivery perks, the free Twitch sub, and the content I guess. But I'll get that content on the High Seas from now on.

It's reasonable when you consider they have to "support" those drives via their various support channels.

You put in a drive with incompatible firmware, then start asking for support because an issue with the firmware comes up, it directly costs them money.

Im not arguing the cost is valid, but if you've ever dealt with large commercial product support you would completely understand why its logical.

No you cant just refuse support to those people because
A. You will still contact them and waste resources to confirm an unsupported drive
B. Most states require vendors to honor warranty/support for modified products unless the vendor can PROVE the modification is the source of the problem.
C. Even after proof, some customers would continue to argue and add legal costs
D. Finally the customer will trash talk the vendor online and word of mouth, right or wrong ... costing the vendor even more money

Or they could just block your cheap drive and not have you as a customer and lose less money cause you're a tight wad.

You're not the customer they are interested in, you're a potential cost rather than profit.

The I stands for Intranet. Don't buy crap that relies on the cloud.

There are some devices that phone home and/or are cloud enabled, but do not require the cloud to function. Though in a lot of cases that does mean you have to set up an alternative app to control it, for instance something like Home Assistant or Apple HomeKit; it's pretty rare for the vendor's app to work locally without access to the cloud (Philips Hue used to, for instance, though I'm not sure if it still does).

AFAIK the Ecobee WiFi thermostat works with HomeKit or whatever Google's equivalent is. Should be able to isolate it on a VLAN, and as long as your phone can see it, you can control it locally.

If Mr Beast is peak YouTube, then bring on the AI already.
I should say that I watch plenty of content on YT, but most of it is small and mid-sized channels. The small ones do it as a hobby, the larger ones as a business, and I'd hate to see them disappear or lose their income. But it seems that this was already happening before the rise of AI slop, revenues getting squeezed or the algorithm playing them false.

Absolutely. P&R lots as well as parking near offices are great places to charge, during to day so you can take advantage of cheap excess solar power. It's also a great way to make EVs viable for those who do not have the opportunity to charge at home. But here in NL that has been slow in coming as well. Many offices installed a mere handful of chargers that are invariably all occupied. That is where we need to scale up... as well as bring down the price of public chargers. Here it usually is 50-100% more expensive than at home.

Wondering about possible consequences. The reason I don't use cloud services like Google for anything except transient stuff, is that they can pull my access in case they decide they don't like me anymore. What happens if MS pull my account or they have a screw-up in their data center?

I enjoy my Hyundai EV, get in, hit the Start button and Drive button and just take off: fast, quiet, smooth. I've owned my share of cars and that Hyundai is easily the most comfortable to drive, despite the sub-premium plasticy interior. We also own a few IC cars including a 996TT, which is a fun drive but serves a very different purpose. The Porsche SUVs are positioned in the same group as that Hyundai EV, not in the group of the 911s. Who cares that those SUVs are sold under the Porsche label? They sell well enough...

That's what various larger cities have been doing here in NL: building Park&Ride hubs on the periphery. People drive to the city and transfer to public transport there. Judging from how full those parking lots are, it's a popular option.