George Orwell was an optimist. In 1984 he proposed that the government would have to force people to have telescreens in their homes. Here we are in 2026 and people eagerly pay their own money to install them on behalf of faceless advertisers... and the government do nothing to prevent it.

This is what happens after a half a century of sabotaging public education.

Some friends (in their 30s) bought a very expensive smart TV a couple of years ago, and they insisted on using the stupid voice thing. I have no idea why. It was consistently wrong and took much longer even than using the shitty on-screen keyboard, which I had always thought was the slowest way to interact with a TV. Nope, voice activation is even slower. Must be even worse if you have an accent.

They are called "smart speakers" because if they were truthfully named nobody would buy them. "Pervy microphone that records everything you say in your house and uploads it" is more accurate.

This would be a great compromise. Unfortunately I find it hard to see how they can add this feature to the list of features that make people buy a new TV. "Offline update capable" maybe?

I need an app on my phone to watch TV?

It's a network effect. You might find that your local cafe doesn't have a website but they are on social media. Is the shop open? You can't check their hours online without using social media (or hoping that the "AI" in your web search scrapes and summarizes the information properly.) You could phone, but was the phone unanswered because they are closed, or because they are open but too busy making coffees to answer the phone? Sure, it's not a critical life-support application, but it's part of participating in the local economy. Back during Covid, my local government used to publish updates on facebook before anywhere else. Stupid, yes, but what can you do.

Hell, my local vintage computer club doesn't have a website. They organise everything through facebook, even though they of all people should know better.

So yeah, maybe it is "entitled" to expect to be able to buy food and drink at a local business, or engage with people who share one's hobbies. I don't like it, I don't use it, but that choice does have consequences. For me, being free of Zuckerberg, Musk et al is worth it, but that choice has consequences and I can understand why other people make different choices.

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad you haven't just rolled over and accepted big Tech :-)

As my .sig suggests, I agree with this one. When GMail suggests AI summaries of emails I used to enjoy clicking the "thumbs up" when the summary is wrong, though of course that goes away when you use a different email client. While we're talking about email summaries, this was part of what pushed me away from GMail, especially for travel related stuff. I hate that Google puts their summary before the real email from the airline/travel agent. and that summary is WRONG! I'm glad I never trusted those summaries, because I would have been screwed, and missed international flights. it really annoys me that Google are burning all those kilowatts to make things worse than they were before. Also there's no easy way to opt-out, short of jumping through all the hoops to use a third-party email client.

And thanks for the clarification re. walking/biking. It's easy to assume everyone on Slashdot lives in the USA, which of course is far from the truth, and opens up a raft of other priorities like managing local weather, international travel and backups. Good luck out there.

Again, my experience is just one anecdote, but it was the opposite of what you describe. No smartphone, no app, no prior preparation and I departed on the roadtrip with only 35% charge (thanks to Budget Rentacar). I got where I needed to go and the "worst" thing was that I had time to buy a couple of souvenirs instead of just a coffee while I was charging.

I had a similar experience renting an EV in 2024. They gave it to me only about 35% charged. Now, the thing about renting a car is you only rent one because you need to drive the damn thing. So handing one to a customer with less than half its range is a dick move. And if you're renting a car, you're probably not a local and have no idea where the "best" places to charge are. I was lucky, I was able to mash buttons on the infotainment and find a charger en route. Yeah, one charger (rural Colorado). Fortunately, the charger was functional and I was able to just tap a credit card - no stupid app was required. If the rental firm had left a charging cable in the trunk I wouldn't have needed a charging station at all - overnight trickle charging at my destination would have been *just fine*.

If I was a bit more paranoid, I'd say someone encouraged the rental firms to push EVs specifically to highlight their deficiencies and bias people against buying one for themselves. Owning one is way easier than renting one, because if you're at home you know the area and where to charge for cheap (or just charge at home). You also have the luxury of being able to set out on a long drive with a full battery.

NATO did it in Serbia ~30 years ago. IIRC they used clouds of graphite ribbons tossed from the air into electrical substations.

That sucks.

And gasoline is close to five bucks a gallon. So if he assumed a kilowatt hour is about the same as a gallon of gas (around here, we know it isn't), he might have expected to get charged for about ten of them.

I always assumed they did ban those things in military facilities. It seems like plain common sense.

This has been going on for years with other manufacturers. https://www.ftc.gov/business-g...
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...

I hope so, I really do. But past experience suggests that most people simply don't care.