Agreed; our Waterpiks have sucked (my wife still wants the name brand) while my "Chinese knockoffs" have lasted longer, and are easier to keep clean.

I think it's generally advised as an addition to normal flossing.

I've battled bots/scrapers for ages, Long before "AI".

No, of course they shouldn't behave that way. But they do. It just has to be dealt with.

... I have no doubt that manufacturers wish to cut corners.

But, I do have doubt that in something like cars that they would do so completely against consumer wishes.

Oddly enough, so far it's pretty easy to turn off.

I had to lose some genuinely useful functionality to do so though - Gmail used to surface things about packages arriving, etc., but that got pulled into the new AI layer and thus got turned off (by me).

How would they know?

Seriously, remove the excessive code comments or what have you, and how the bleep would they even know that you used an LLM to help generate your code?

It's like pompously declaring that you won't accept nails pounded by Craftsman hammers, because of a labor dispute or something.

The cognitive dissonance, it burns, lol!

"We didn't want him to create a space force!!!!!" - nerds

Does "AI slop" actually mean something, other than "something I don't like"?

.... to load a /. story and see in the top rated comments 3 anti-Israel, pro-Iran comments.

Just weird to see what has happened to people's brains over the years.

If "something" means getting back to going nuclear, and also figuring out carbon scrubbing solutions, then sign me up.

But if "something" just means "random emoting and demonizing", then no thanks.

Proof that "TV rots the brain", lol!

Now excuse me, while I go watch another Gilligan's Island.

A video on their website. Looked like even with the battery cover off, there was a thingie you had to screw to fasten the battery in. Again, not a bit deal at all. Didn't look any more (and probably a lot less) onerous than the screw for a battery cover on a children's toy. Hm, maybe I just answered my own question ...

Why do you have to actually screw the battery in?

Not a big deal (given the alternatives today), but I remember swappable batteries, and you just had to pop the cover off, pop the old one out, pop a new one in.

You could.

Just like for your music collection, you could hit 300 used CD shops, rip them all, have your own backup system, etc. etc., etc. Sure.

Yet somehow, Spotify exists ...

... before or after the skunk pot, the shiny hubcaps, the $300 sneakers, and the $2000 iPhone?