Banks use these for repoing vehicles. You're being tracked either by the plates on your car, the EZ Pass for toll collection, the cellular connection in newer vehicles, the LoJack for higher risk loans or the phone in your pocket.

Firefox has an extension called Youtube Custom Speed. You can set arbitrary speeds from .05 to 16x in whatever increments you feel like adding. Not that it helps for the dipshits explaining how to type something in a terminal prompt, but it's definitely handy for speeding through laptop disassemblies and the like.

Chrome does appear to have the same thing so it probably works on whatever browser you like.

In Pocket Casts, the app I use, there's a playback speed control that can go up to 5x. I usually listen to podcasts at about 3x speed, which feels right to me. I lose a little nuance for audio fiction, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

16x audio playback speeds are typical for screen readers for visually impaired users. Maybe your wife configured something like that, but they take practice to get used to. I only have some familiarity with those because I used to have a blind co-worker and had to support his setup.

see subject.

It also seems to have pushed smaller companies to offshoring. If you're assembling a widget now there are varying tariffs on the components because you can't buy everything in the US. It quickly became easier to just have the item made in China and then you only have one tariff to pay, things are more stable and predictable.

I just want HDMI ports and ports for external speakers. No web browser, no 500 additional "channels" of streaming crap (does anyone watch those?). And definitely don't play ads on my TV.

But I did not like the TV shows. The Klingon Reboot alone was terrible. A starship powered with mushrooms? What? The spinning ship going into warp? Also silly. There were some bright lights and potential, but I lost interest. I know a lot of people loved Academy, but I made it maybe halfway into the first episode and realized I wasn't even watching it. And then there's Section 31.....

I don't know why I should care about limited compatibility for a subset of devices with another subset of devices. There's some of everything in my home. I found a tool called LocalSend years ago that allows me to do mildly obnoxious data transfers between arbitrary devices regardless of platform.

If you start messing with the accessibility options for text size on MacOS, you quickly wind up with a blurry mess. This is particularly obnoxious if you're looking at a very high resolution display and very noticeable on the menu bar. It's a wonderful example of Apple's one size fits some design priorities.

MacOS is a third-rate *nix that can run MS Office, but so is ChromeOS. Should I be excited that I suddenly have the option to run Photoshop on a $600 device with as much RAM as the phone I had in 2018, but still can't control the size of system fonts on the desktop? Or is it just a more expensive way to run a browser and an SSH to something I'd rather be using?

I'll give you a hint: It's the second one.

If they're being thorough, Snapdragon, Mediatek and Ampere (server) SoCs are also being sold in traditional PC forms.

I might be interested if this thing could run Linux and had Thinkpad-grade input devices, but as it is, it's just a web terminal that's locked to Apple's ecosystem instead of Google's. That's just not very compelling.

What big European player wants to put $6B on the table though? SAP is the biggest European software company I can name and that doesn't seem like a strategic fit to me.

...the five cameras in the corners recording everything. Just as long as a pair of Meta glasses aren't recording you.

But those monitor prices are crazy. They look pretty, but $3k for a monitor?????

I'm ready to cut all the services and just stick with YouTube Premium. The services aren't kicking out good shows anymore and how many times can I watch Narcos? I can get most of the football games that I care about OTA with a $20 antenna. I guess I'll stick with Apple TV also. They have enough new stuff that I find interesting and now it includes soccer and F1. But if I can get past the AI created crap on YouTube, there is some interesting and informative channels out there.