You're complaining about HP Inc's business practices. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. parted ways 11 years ago. (Hint: the latter's name is a pun on "ink").

There is no way the whole payment is taxable. Only certain *profits* are taxed, not all cash flow, and corporations have accountants who make sure any such profits are minimal.

Let's do the math:

($Fox + $Payment) + ($Roku - $Payment) = $Fox + $Roku

That's a zero-sum transaction. No $400M savings there.

> Meta doesn't really know how to do anything else with any skill.

They don't know how to do Facebook very well either: it's been pretty much stagnant and enshittified to death for the past 22 years, and it feels like a forum for greying people whose greying friends haven't bothered to move on either, or to get the date of the next annual meeting of the bridge club.

No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

one of those companies whose sole purpose seems to be annoying you by slapping their name as a watermark on a generic image you'd like to use in a meme, and force to spend 10 seconds finding somewhere else because you were never going to pay a stupid company to remove their mark on a bad picture you can find everywhere.

I wonder how those companies still exist, let alone make any money.

Anyway, the modern way to use copyrighted photos for free is to ask stable diffusion to regenerate it, because the AI companies have done all the data stealing for you and repackaged the stolen data into "models" you can use for free.

Building a reliable long-range monoplane in 1927 was a milestone. Flying it solo from New York to Paris was a publicity stunt.

Which of these two actions do people remember and celebrate today?

I think that these are all just adult album alternative format stations that keep playing that one Wilco record.

If AI services are becoming too expensive in the current environment, we can look to nature for help. There is a an abundant species of large mammals in the ape family that can be trained to do this kind of work as well.

I download all my books DRM-free from bittorrent.

My ebook reader is an ancient Sony PRS-650, it still works fine and it has no trouble reading files that haven't been messed up by Amazon. What a concept eh?

"What about the book's authors who aren't getting paid when you download their stuff for free?" I hear you say:

Yes, I wish I could pay for what I downloaded. But I can't. The best option I could find was to buy the paperback as well, so some of my money would trickle back to them. But that's mighty stupid and totally not environmentally-friendly.

I did try to pay an author directly once (the late Ian M. Banks) but he send me an angry email back saying even if he got money from me, I was robbing his editor and distributor, and I should just buy his book normally - which I would, if that didn't entail leaving an undeserved cut to effing Amazon.

So there we are: there's no mechanism to legally buy books that aren't hamstrung by DRM. So honest people who value their consumer rights can't be honest.

Wood burning is very much alive - both old-stylee polluting open-fires and stoves, and ultra-efficient pellet, wood-chip and wood dust burning in power stations. And it's renewable. Try visiting any nordic country some day...

Also, just because burning wood has downsides doesn't mean it has to be ditcheds it entirely. Solve the downsides instead...

Apparently, the elite also own all the newline characters.

Pica FTW!

CloudFlare was an aggressive global internet surveillance and privacy invasion operation. Now it's an AI-powered aggressive global internet surveillance and privacy invasion operation.

Why don't I feel excited about it?

As a matter of fact, yes. Specifically, to the Greenland region.

Although a golden bridge of grossly outsized proportions and festooned with tacky ornamentation would be much preferred.

Crypto grift, AI bubble and psychopathic billionaire CEO.