Once precedent is set, it will be open season to sue for damages unless they can show changes. Now, changes could end up just a disclaimer every time you log in, but "do nothing" is not an option.

Don't care. If your shit shows me ads, it's not getting into my kitchen. Note to self: Don't buy appliances from Samsung anymore.

Yes, I am vocal in how much I hate ads. I believe the CEOs of advertising companies should get one hit with a stick for every time their ad bothered someone even in the slightest.

Exactly what I'm saying.

The fact that users and enterprise customers are not demanding better software from Microsoft with the same fervor their ancestors demanded that the witch be burnt speaks volumes.

And I'm specifically talking about operating systems here. Software can crash for all I care. I'm fine software quality being all over the place, the market can sort that out. But operating systems are natural monopolies and the foundation for everything else. We should not accept shoddy quality there.

They do. That's why that Mormon guy could just grab a list of those organisations from the relevant government website and went to each location to show they're fake and exactly how much money they are defrauding the government on camera

We are obligated to ignore stupid laws. To mock them, to flaunt them and ultimately get them removed.

We are not sheep.

Users should never be able to do things that cause crashes in the same way that drivers should not ever be able to press any button or press any pedal that causes the engine to spontaneously burst into flames.

I'm also a Mac user, but let's not boast here, shall we?

My personal guess would have been at least 10x. Did Microsoft bribe the study authors?

Dude, are you living under a rock?

These bands are creating new music. But the money that allows them to do so comes from their old music. I have bands in my collection that have been making music for 30 years.

No they don't. They don't even make ok money. Tours are expensive and a lot of people, from road crew to venue security, take their cut before the musicians. The big guys, they make a killing on tours. But the small ones sometimes don't even break even.

In fact, a common wisdom in the industry is that touring is worth it not because the tour itself makes profits, but because it builds a fanbase and drives what is called "catalog discovery" - both old and new fans looking buying the albums with the songs they liked (and for the old fans, didn't know).

This study: https://www.giarts.org/article... says that 28% of income across all the musicians surveyed comes from tours. The share is larger for the rock/pop sector where it nears 40% but even that isn't easy money. And if you consider that only 20% of the rock/pop musicians make more than $50,000 a year, then it becomes a hollow statement.

Plus, it goes directly against your first statement - while on tour the band is not creating new music. So if you want to drive musicians more towards constantly creating (which most of them already do), then you can't make live performances the main income source.

There is more than one study and more than one way to look at it. Especially for streaming, having a catalog matters, especially for the smaller artists who will never have a charts-level hit:

"In 2024, nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify aloneâ"likely translating to over $4 million across all recorded revenue sources. What's remarkable is that 80% of these million-dollar earners didn't have a single song reach the Spotify Global Daily Top 50 chart. This reveals a fundamental shift from hit-driven success to sustainable catalog-based income, where consistent engagement from devoted audiences matters more than viral moments or radio dominance."

https://cord-cutters.gadgethac...

Also don't forget that many studies such as DiCola's "Money from Music" focus on the superstars and the big hits. That is true, the charts pop music generates 80% or so of its income within the few weeks it stays in the charts and then drops of sharply.

Honestly, I don't care about the charts and superstars. They wouldn't starve if we cut copyright terms to six weeks. I do care about the indie artists that I enjoy. Who after ten years get the band back together for another tour through clubs with 200 or 500 people capacity. I'm fairly sure they would suffer if the revenue from those albums disappeared. And disappear it would. Maybe fans would still buy the CDs from the merch booth, but Spotify would certainly not pay them if it didn't have to.

Everyone's (rightfully) bitching about this, and I agree, but none of that solves the problem.

What's the alternative? Give me a TV brand that gives you, ideally, a dumb TV, but alternatively a decent smart TV that is easy to work with.

Responsiveness is an important, and often overlooked, characteristic. It's important.

Brand/model recommendations; go!

Fun part? US government is actually pretty good at governing compared to alternatives.

Consider something like it's primary competitor of PRC, where bureaucracy is so hilariously bad that leadership has no idea what going on in the nation, and has to rely on things like electricity consumption numbers when they try to determine how much economic activity has taken place.

Unlikely, as this is a budgetary item. Managers can go to prison for fraud and be liable for damages if they failed to have the person working this role if it is indeed required to be filled for this task. It's a key part in how bureaucracy diffuses responsibility for mistakes, and one thing that bureaucrats tend to follow with religious fervor.

Far more likely scenario is one I list above.

This is the low IQ take. It requires not understanding the following:

1. How error rate works.
2. How error mitigation works.
3. How error correction works.
4. Who is at fault when #3 fails.