Steps can be taken to make casual surveillance by police and other bad actors a little more difficult, such as turning off location services unless you really need them enabled. As far as I can see, though, the only way to keep the long, flexible nose of our government and corporate rulers out of our business is to poison the data pool. In this particular case, I'd just start with the consideration that there's no requirement for your phone and you to always be in the same place.

I like the poetic justice involved in me ordering plans for a guillotine from that thumbhead pr^ck Bezos.

All you have to do is look what happens when an entertainment giant like Disney gets hold of a franchise. They run it into the ground. Some franchises ruined by corporate greed (not all Disney): Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Mulan, Pirates of the Caribbean, the MCU...probably a lot more if I googled around a bit.

Mega-corporations want maximum profits, and they don't care how much damage they do getting them. And in current business terms, "maximum profits" means wring the asset dry, discard it and move on to the next acquisition. The idea of steady, long-term profitability seems to have died.

Less competition means less innovation, and when one CEO only has to call three other CEOs to figure out how they're going to divide up the pie, there's virtually none.

A fed is a fed. I see no reason to give two shits... or even just one shit... about how the trumpscum choose to organize and subdivide themselves or what particular costumes they wear. Those people goosestep under the banner of trump. And that is all I need to know about any or all of them.

As a Canadian, I look at the US and I can't help but think, "It might have taken a while, but the Confederacy has finally won the Civil War".

I believe there are good reasons to suspect this story is not true. If this was really a "Survival" style corporate retreat, I would expect instances of cannibalism. Without strong evidence for such behaviour, maybe a femur in the fire pit, or perhaps a couple of picked-clean ribs, I have to question what we're being told.

> So far the only reliable way to stop piracy has
> been to make a product that is better and have
> consumers that can actually afford to consume.

Isn't is amazing that the record labels continuously fail to understand this? For my part, even as far back is the original launch of the ITMS, my Limewire usage dropped dramatically because I could just buy the one good song on an album and not waste money on the filler. Convenience. At this point, I don't even know HOW long it's been now since I've fired up Limewire... not since Spotify and Apple Music became things, that's for sure... or if it's even still around. Convenience.

And it is well past time for the TV/Movie studios/networks to knock off the nickel-and-dime crap with a different streaming service per channel. Id Tim Cook wants to secure an actual legacy at Apple after his shameful kowtowing to mega; what he should do is channel Steve Jobs, get the studio heads together, and lay down the law like Jobs did with the record labels so that EVERYTHING is wrapped up in AppleTV's flat rate. There does need to be competition, so Netflix should probably become the Spotify for video. Do that, and movie/tv piracy will collapse too. Like I said... I can't even remember the last time I pirated a song. But I have actually hopped over to TPB and torrented movies that I actually OWN before, because they weren't available on Netflix, the DVDs were buried in a box in the basement somewhere, and it was much faster... AND MORE CONVENIENT... than going down there and digging through boxes to find the actual physical media for the movies I was in the mood to watch at the times.

You fail to realize that different people have different needs and priorities... and that is 100% A-OK. This whole "If this product is not the perfect product for me, Me, ME; than it is crap and should not be sold to anyone." business was tedious from the start and has gone on far too long.

My own laptop needs and priorities are light weight and long battery life. For my use case, those two stand above all other considerations by a fair margin. And if repairability suffers in order to shave off a half-pound or to gain another hour of battery life, so be it. So obviously, I'm on a MacBook Air. It is the right laptop for ME.

It sounds like you have different needs and priorities than I do. So that MacBook Air is probably NOT the right laptop for you. But you know what? That is ALSO 100% A-OK.

My point is that if the US, which at the time was one of the world's leaders in technological innovation, had put time and resources into developing renewable energy, the whole Free World would have weaned itself off burning fossil fuels for power. There would still be other uses for petrochemicals, plastics especially, but the Middle East's stranglehold on the world economy would have been well and truly broken. Looking back at the history of the last half century, including the environmental impact of continued fossil fuel use, it's pretty obvious Carter was right.

Excellent point!

Imagine where the US would be today if politicians had been just a little less greedy and corrupt in the 1970s, and embraced Jimmy Carter's commitment to renewable energy. Probably not a wholesale conversion, but during times like these, all of us across the Free World could just sit back with zero f^cks given and a bag of popcorn, and watch a bunch of religious fanatics burn the whole Middle East to the ground.

Everybody wins.

I can see it now. Instead of "Houston, we've had a problem." and Omega being awarded another Silver Snoopy; with the beast of redmond on board the ship, the mission transcript will read:

"This ship will self-destruct in 20 seconds. This is your last chance to push the cancellation button."
"Cancellation button? Hurry!"
"Where is it?! Where is it?!"
"It's gotta be here!"
"Out of order"?! Fuck! Even in the FUTURE, nothing works!"

Why not contract out program development to some of those Iranian hackers who seem to have drones flying at will over US military bases? It might not be a perfect solution, but it would probably be cheaper and better than the clusterf^ck they've had going on for the best part of a decade.

Seriously. I mean... $500, or *maybe* $600 for the Pro; that'd be fine. More than that, and I may as well just get back up to speed on PC gaming gear and build another PC of Theseus. Then... congrats Sony, that's better than a decade of buying NO consoles.

Then again, maybe it's just time for the gaming pendulum to swing hard back towards real computers anyway. It's been stuck on firmly on the console side for quite a while, and certian genres have definitely suffered for it.

> Trump's tariff war

Don't forget trump's ACTUAL war. I've had six figures scooped out of my retirement accounts and burned to ash since he decided to do at least ONE traditionally republican thing and launch us into yet another middle-eastern quagmire. The rest of the country is seeing the gas prices they used to attack California for. And it seems that the media is just now finally waking up to the fact that there's a shit ton of OTHER things that we make out of petroleum that are about to start to skyrocket.