I mean they didnt do it to an actual living creature, but yeah its still pretty fucked up if you think about it, we emulated a brain and then dropped it in literally a virtual recreation of 'hell'...

Do not create the Torment Nexus.

The problem here is that when you turned on the TV for the first time and clicked the 'I accept' button, you agreed to the recording, and probably agreed that you'd be responsible for letting anybody else who might be in range of the TV know that they're subject to recording.

Is that going to hold up in court? Who knows, but can you afford to spend the money to find out? Somebody eventually will, and you'll get a coupon for twenty bucks off of a new TV as the settlement.

Yup.

The Switch 2 has an argument going on between 'full cartridges' that actually have the installer and game data on the flash cart, and 'game key cartridges' where the only thing on the cart is the digital license, and when you insert it, it downloads the game from the Nintendo cloud, and the GKC lets you run it.

Which means you can loan/sell/give the GKC to somebody, and now they play the game, but without an internet connection, the GKC itself doesn't do anything for you.

Xbox discs since the One have been both; the install media and game data, plus the license key. I suspect PS5 discs are the same, probably PS4 discs. Hell, maybe even PS3 discs.

Nice, so now... I can sleep well with the confidence that my home directory can will get corrupted and my entire os might become useless just because. And that I'll have no warning about any of it until my entire os catches fire, because there aren't any meaningful logs anywhere.

Here for it.
This is the change we needed.

Okay, but, and I'm trying to read this charitably... aren't you just verifying the presence of a file in your photo directory?
What about the existence of any given file gives you the provenance you need to prove "reality?"

Folks who wanna do that have been using gopros for years, theres maybe arguments to be made about a more exact POV vs slightly above or to the side for certain things, but theres still not a whole lot of reasons to use secret spy glasses instead of a superior but more obvious gopro besides secret spy reasons.

There's nothing wrong with storing some things *also* in cloud services.

But when it comes to copies of important things, two is one and one is none.

Now imagine saying this about, say, Japan.

I've noted the comments here about how this is old news: that's true. But it will be novel to some people who didn't live through it, and even for those who did, it's a necessary reminder. Japan is ruthless, unscrupulous, and unethical: they will do anything. They're not the only ones, of course, but they're arguably the most dangerous because of their size, wealth, and longevity. They're the enemy of open standards. They're the enemy of open source. They're the enemy of open protocols. They're the enemy of America. They're the enemy of The West. They're the enemy of security. They're the enemy of privacy. They've always been the enemy and they always will be, because it's in their DNA: it's impossible for them to change.

So any time -- ANY TIME -- there's some statement or initiative or announcement that they're going to support freedom/democracy/etc., any of the things I listed -- the first things that should come to mind are these wise words of Ash: "It's a trick -- get an axe."