I think the only Premium TVs left are the business TVs that give you meaningful mechanisms to not have intrusive "Smart" features.

Is there a meaningful difference between a Sony TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features, and a Wal-mart TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features?

I guess I am blessed to not be an audiophile and not have flawless supervision :)

FWIW, I have:
- a 20 yo 720p dumb 42" plasma
- a 20 yo 1080P dumb 50" plasma
- a 1yo 4k Samsung 65" TheFrame TV

That last one was a splurge I wanted because the "Art Mode" is just too beautiful, and at the time, Samsung really had the only coherent offering. (I guess there are now "off brand" ArtTV attempts from HiSense and others.. i have no experience with them.)

On the ArtTV, we watch youtube or DVDs or XBox on it a little of the time, and all that stuff looks fine to me on the 65" Samsung. But the TV is otherwise displaying pretty artwork almost all of the time, and whatever Samsung has done with the screen, dimming control, bezel, etc, really does work and really is lovely. And you don't need a service or an app to get the experience - just stick a USB full of public domain masterpieces into the TV.

Even so, the Samsung ecosystem is pretty annoying. I can have it show my images in ArtMode, but i cannot have the "real" experience you'd get with a subscription - with Art XML metadata and stuff (artist, date, etc). We don't always remember what a piece is or who painted it when it comes up..

Anyway, AFAIK, the only way to get TVs that aren't enshittified spyware is a business SKU, right?

In my house, we use Steam to play "windows-only" games on:
- Devuan with XFCE
- Devuan with Cinnamon
- Arch with hyprland
- bone stock Ubuntu 24
- ubuntu 25 laptop w/ second GPU

From my POV, there's not much need to port games to Linux. With the heroic efforts of Valve, most Windows games now just work. Win32, DX, D3D, and whatever else windows game devs have been using seems to have become the defacto reference gaming API on Linux.

Steam makes it work on every linux distro we've tried.

In writing this, it occurs to me: The F/OSS ecosystem does a very good job of re-implementing someone else's API/products (WINE, Proton, LibreOffice, etc)

The F/OSS ecosystem does a comparatively poor job at independently developing its own technology and then standardizing/universalizing those choices. E.g. the transition from X11 to Wayland; the systemd "situation(s)", desktop environments... gui greeters, audio muxers...

I think Valve has done the right thing. They made existing games work on Steam; they made Steam work on most linux distros.

Making everyone use a reference linux platform seems to be a total non-starter.

We already have a reference gaming platform: Windows 7 thru 10. And what we learned in 2025 is that Steam on nearly _any_ Linux often implements that windows reference gaming platform better than Windows 11 does.

Well, you see, without anyone better armed to stop the knife-wielding maniac...

You know what, though? Just for kicks, just in case you're right, I just called my father in law, a recently retired ICE agent with many friends and contacts in ATF, and asked him who I should contact to turn myself in (along with the shops that sold them to me) for posession of an unlicensed 1911 and hunting rifle. I wonder why le laughed and hung up on me. Maybe because you're an idiot? Perhaps we should license speech, since apparently you think it's acceptable to require licenses for rights; you would never pass the requirements for that license, so... yeah, let's do that.

Slippery slope, my friend.

That's a lecense to sell as a federally licensed dealer. That livense is not required in order to own or posess any firearm in the US. Fuck, it's not even required to sell a firearm. Try again?

Glad to see that landed.

Victim != dead. 11 people shot is greater than 10 people shot regardless of outcome or treatment options, simply because 11 > 10.

This is 100% absolutely true. I bought my first gun toward the end of 2016 and I just don't know where to keep all of these bodies. I had never killed anyone before I owned a gun and, well, wouldn't you know it, ever since I bought this damned evil contraption, I've gone on to quadruple that number every single week.

Yes, that license earns him the privilege of flying a plane. It doesn't grant him the right to do so. Learn the fucking difference before you speak again in a discussion such as this one.

The point being made was that the absence of guns in the hands of people wishing to harm large groups of other people would simply lead to bombings, vehicle attacks, stabbings, and what have you. The issue isn't mass shootings, it's mass killings, and shifting from one weapon of choice to another doesn't change that.

You can take cover when you hear gunshots, maybe even fight back; but you're already dead when you hear the shockwave from that bomb that just went off. Keep that in mind while you're fighting to push would-be evildoers in that direction.

Of course, with a vocabulary like that, I wouldn't expect you to understand such simple logic.

Can I punch you in the face? I mean, without you fighting back.

How about me and 5 of my friends? Still don't want to fight back?

Even when we're tying your loved ones down and having our way with them before decapitating them right in front of you?

You see, there are some sick people out there; people who would (and do) actually do that. To you. And they may or may not have guns, but when it's a group of 6 invading your home, pretty much the only way you're gonna stop them is if you, yourself, have a gun.

Or you could just call the cops and tell them how many body bags to bring when they show up in a few hours, assuming they come at all.

I'm betting they would also hire someone who turned to Google for a solution after "ls" failed instead of simply giving up or doing a blind "rm". Problem solving is important, as is critical thought, and you just failed the latter portion of that test.

Interest doesn't even come into it. The claim was "you will have $100k plus interest" and I was only referring to the $100k -- minus the "plus interest". Interest would be above and beyond the $100k saved. Saving $100k at a rate of $25/wk would take just under 77 years. Period. Any interest earned on that is not part of the $100k, it's the "plus interest" part of "$100k plus interest". I repeat: The $100k in "$100k plus interest" is before interest and would take just short of 77 years to save at a rate of $25/wk. Follow yet?

What you seem to be understanding is that you'll have over $100k with interest if you set aside $25/wk for 42 years. And yes, this is correct. However, you're missing the fundamental difference between "$100k with interest" and "$100k plus interest". In case the above paragraph didn't clear that up for you, let me state it plainly: "$100k with interest" is a sum total of $100k after interest; "$100k plus interest" is a sum total in excess of $100k after interest, which starts as a sum of $100k before interest... which... again... would take just under 77 years to achieve at a rate of $25/wk, regardless of interest rate, because the interest does not count toward that $100k.

You didn't prove him wrong. Just so you know.

Ending up with $170k after setting aside $25/wk for 42 years is $54,600 plus interest. $100k plus interest would be a much larger number, and would take just shy of 77 years of saving at $25/wk. He's right, the math deosn't add up.

A very accurate assessment. Too bad more here don't follow logic.