(that 16 is 16 of my NiMH AA devices, part of the 20 "nicd/nimh cells")

According to my notes, I have here:

9v: 13
AA: 13
AAA: 17
AAAA: 1
C: 8
D: 2
coin: about 30
SLA/FLA: 5
LIFE: 4
lipo/nimh pouch and pack: 25
lipo cell: 9
nicd/nimh cells: 20
sealed plug-in charged: 16
sealed usb-charged: 27
uncommon disposable: 3

Those are not battery cells, those are devices. So for example, 16 of my AA devices use six AAs. (I have a crap-ton of NiMH AA, well over 100) and all of my C devices use at least three cells. So, sadly for me, there's a huge amount to keep an eye on. I realize I'm somewhat of an edge-case here, but that also makes me a good "how bad can it really get?" case study.

Welcome to Slashdot!

The point is that with PCs I can slap either of my boot/root devices (or an image thereof) into basically any other modern-ish PC and it will boot up and sing songs for me.

That's literally my point. Thanks?

If AI were flawless, then it would have a reputation for that, and people would trust it. As it is, its reputation is very bad, and a lot of people still do. If it were somehow flawless, then I would want it, but there's not even a concept of a plan of how to get from here to there.

In my opinion, the reason why phones abandoned replaceable batteries was at least partially because phones were being replaced so often.

If your batteries last 4-6 years, depending on useage, and most people are replacing phones every 5 years because the new ones did more, then most people stopped replacing batteries. The phone companies saw the numbers and just stopped making replaceable batteries.

Yes this did screw over financially wise people that thought replacing a perfectly good phone was stupid even if a new model was out. So what? The phone companies did not want to cater to people that were their worst customers.

Instead they catered to the replacing idiots and started up the planned obsolence path.

Because all western smart phones are spy devices.

I would be shocked, shocked to hear that russian phones were not already spy devices.

I reviewed all the gadgets in my house that have batteries. Not just non-replaceable or rechargeable, but ALL batteries. I'm a bit tech-heavy here so I was expecting there to be a lot, but the final count still surprised me. (and I'm still finding stragglers from time to time)

The "biggest offenders" I have are flashlights. I've got a few cheap "webcam" lights, as well as several house flashlights that all use built-in lipo pouches, which I can replace, but not the average consumer. And I've had to replace my car GPS batteries several times over the years. I'd bet 98% of these are thrown away as soon as their battery gets marginal. I like to maintain and repair my stuff, and it "grinds my gears" to see these made to be thrown away.

The other thing that annoys me is that most of these gadgets have almost no "battery management". When you plug them in, they charge to full, and hold at full charge if left plugged in, which will inflate a lipo pouch in a few months at most. And many of the others will allow their battery to deep-discharge to the point of battery damage or even placing the device in an unrecoverable loop. My Garmin GPSs are terrible that way. If they get too low, they'd be bricked for most people because they always boot up when their dead battery gets a little bit of a charge in it, which isn't enough to boot the device, and then the boot process crashes, draining the battery faster than it can charge. Recovering that requires removing the battery and manually charging it, which most users can't do since the battery isn't "user" removable.

And then I have the related problem of dozens of infrequently used devices that I could easily go a year between uses on, and when I get them out their battery is dead and probably slightly deeply-discharged. And I can't leave it on charge because it'll cook off the battery by the next time I need it. Which again is really frustrating.

Then there's the "big ticket items like the exploding (pun intended?) market on rechargeable yard maintenance. Be it a hedge trimmer or a mower. Nobody knows how to take care of their batteries, they don't tell you in the manual, and few have management, so they leave them on charge over the winter and the battery is half cooked by spring. Then after another winter on charge the battery is totally cooked and they have to replace a $40-$150 battery. It's quite the scam! Along with removable batteries, built-in management needs to be legally required for batteries over a certain price. Even my quad (DJI Spark)'s batteries are smart and will self-discharge to 65% if not used for 10 days straight - so it's not difficult to do even for smaller batteries, they just refuse to do it because they want to sell you new batteries regularly instead of making the batteries last.

Yeah, the EU seems to be the only place where I think there is a reasonable expectation that they'll get slapped.

No, it sounds like Microsoft has made the appropriate bribes in the new regime to avoid being beat up in federal court.

"Autopilots stay active in the background, understand how work gets done across your apps and systems, and take action without needing to be prompted each time," said Omar Shahine"

Actual autopilots require constant oversight, whether you're on a yacht looking or for shipping containers, or in a plane watching for mountains. That's why it's a good name for Tesla's Almost Self Driving misfeature. On that basis it's actually sort of a good name for this, in that so will these AI agents, though they won't be getting it.

If they wanted to give an air of confidence, though, they would have named it more cleverly than this, and without using a name already in common use for a semi related product.

I suggest general operating LLM enterprise management, or GOLEM ;)

WTS
YMBNH

That's great for you, but irrelevant to users buying laptops, which is the topic at hand.

Yeah, but that's the normal state of affairs, you don't need to point it out.

BUT MUH NATIONAL SECURITY! OF COURSE TRUMP SHUD DO WHUTEVER HE WANTS FOR THAT!

In USA, Aedes Aegypti is invasive and new, and it won't be missed. In most places in America, it's been here less than 30 years. Less than 5 years, where I live. I am confident that the ecology of 2026 is plenty compatible with the ecology of 2021.

If some obscure bird species that just moved in 5 years ago can't settle for eating the slower, bigger, less stealthy classical mosquito strains we'll have left, then it can fly back down to Central America where it recently came from.