When? Android 16 has been out over a year. My phone has a pending update to Android 17.

Real example: Tina Peters.

Again, no. The houses started out highly leveraged: not quite as much as my residence, but still very highly leveraged. It's possible that caching out a couple of years ago might have produced higher returns, but there is a lot of tax to pay when I cash out. I bought one house, then, after it had appreciated in value, I re-mortgaged it, taking some cash out and used that as a deposit on the second house.

I started with about $20k, not $100k. That was possible back in 2002. For most of the life of the mortgage, the after-tax cost of the mortgage, taxes and maintenance was similar or less than than the cost of rent would have been. Renting would not have provided a stream of funds to invest, over and above buying.

I have also turned a similar starting investment into significant asset value through buying a couple of houses to rent.

There is no way that I could have built up the same wealth without buying my house back in 2002.

I disagree with this advice. I still choose to work, but I have financial independence, which came from stretching my finances to buy a house in the SF Bay Area some 25 years ago.

The key changes that prompted me to buy a house was getting a green card, and a temporary dip in house prices from 9/11. I recognized the risk, but it paid off handsomely for me.

It's the norm because it makes the licensing agreements slightly cheaper.

Well, of course. It was a white couple driving an expensive car.

But, on the other hand, they failed to check that the license plate matched the plate they were looking for. The stolen plate was reported as either "34 DTM" or "34 03 DTM" (the article isn't too clear on this point: the report to Flock was "34 DTM", but it's not clear if the original police report was for that plate or "34 03 DTM"). In any case, these plates did not match the plates of the car that the author was driving.

One would think that checking the plate would be the first thing the police would do before apprehending someone, but apparently not.

So, well behaved, but incompetent. I am not sure that such incompetence qualifies as well-behaved.

If you are OK with Microsoft backing up this information without your explicit permission, then fine, use a Microsoft account. I just pointed out how to avoid this backup (although you will be nagged to set up backups).

I assume that this backup will also include the GUID that was discussed a day or two ago, so even re-installing Windows won't eliminate this tracking.

This is why you use a local login, instead of a Microsoft account.

Microsoft has been making this more and more difficult, but I think that, after setup, one can create a local login and then remove the Microsoft account.

Windows 11 doesn't have an option to turn off updates, only postpone them.

The only way to prevent updates is by disabling the service.

And, what about alternative browsers? Do they send this also?

OK, so what is on the ngrok site that triggers this?

Not explained here, how is this information accessed remotely? Does Edge (or any other browser) send it in a header? Is there Javascript on some websites that makes the target send it?

How do you feel about charging for on-device features, that work without an Internet connection, like this one?

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/...

Except that this feature runs entirely on-device. It works without an Internet connection. They want people to pay to use the hardware they already own outright.