The problem here is that when you turned on the TV for the first time and clicked the 'I accept' button, you agreed to the recording, and probably agreed that you'd be responsible for letting anybody else who might be in range of the TV know that they're subject to recording.

Is that going to hold up in court? Who knows, but can you afford to spend the money to find out? Somebody eventually will, and you'll get a coupon for twenty bucks off of a new TV as the settlement.

Yeah, my bad, I just automatically assumed this would involve a transfer switch to avoid backfeeding.

Ah, silly me, I thought this would require installation of a transfer switch to avoid backfeeding.

And even if all it's good for powering is your fridge, well, congrats, now your fridge's contents can survive a power outage.

I used to run a custom home theater setup with all sorts of remuxing and transcoding setups, then I found Infuse for AppleTV. Just point it at an SMB share and it plays pretty much anything you throw at it, as is.

Yup.

The Switch 2 has an argument going on between 'full cartridges' that actually have the installer and game data on the flash cart, and 'game key cartridges' where the only thing on the cart is the digital license, and when you insert it, it downloads the game from the Nintendo cloud, and the GKC lets you run it.

Which means you can loan/sell/give the GKC to somebody, and now they play the game, but without an internet connection, the GKC itself doesn't do anything for you.

Xbox discs since the One have been both; the install media and game data, plus the license key. I suspect PS5 discs are the same, probably PS4 discs. Hell, maybe even PS3 discs.

You're gonna die of something, so make your choice.

every advance in technology comes at the expense of "rotting our brains"

example: calculators caused our brains to "rot", because we no longer are good at math

computers caused our brains to "rot", because we no longer need to manually process tons of data

AI will cause our brains to "rot", because now we have someone do our work for you.

yes, AI WILL replace some jobs, and at the same time it will help us do things that we couldn't do before. a bunch of new jobs will be created, as humans still need to code and train the AI. Will there be a time in which AI will be self sufficient? probably yes.

i'm also concerned about the environment impact. I'm really hoping this pushes humanity to develop and advance clean energy (solar, hydrogen, wind, etc)

The kind of 'forest management' you're describing is great when practiced around your settlement location, but nobody has ever practiced anything even approaching the concept of 'forest management' to the entirety of the Boreal Forests of Canada.

There's nothing wrong with storing some things *also* in cloud services.

But when it comes to copies of important things, two is one and one is none.

newsflash: DVD's WILL fail at some point too...

If the data is truly valuable to you, you will have multiple copies, and you will TEST the backups to ensure they are working

Today's "games" don't try to reward you in that classic sense anymore.

this still happens today. you have people competing to "platinum" a game and get all of their trophies. exactly the same thing.

if you prefer percentages, big open world games do the same. i recall working very hard to get 100% with gta 5 and rdr 1, the only 2 games i have ever gotten 100%

Now imagine saying this about, say, Japan.

I've noted the comments here about how this is old news: that's true. But it will be novel to some people who didn't live through it, and even for those who did, it's a necessary reminder. Japan is ruthless, unscrupulous, and unethical: they will do anything. They're not the only ones, of course, but they're arguably the most dangerous because of their size, wealth, and longevity. They're the enemy of open standards. They're the enemy of open source. They're the enemy of open protocols. They're the enemy of America. They're the enemy of The West. They're the enemy of security. They're the enemy of privacy. They've always been the enemy and they always will be, because it's in their DNA: it's impossible for them to change.

So any time -- ANY TIME -- there's some statement or initiative or announcement that they're going to support freedom/democracy/etc., any of the things I listed -- the first things that should come to mind are these wise words of Ash: "It's a trick -- get an axe."

If you have to go back 26 years to find something to complain about, you really don't have a basis to complain.

Well, I bought Triggerheart Exclica on Xbox Live Arcade back in 2006 on an Xbox 360.

I can go download that game, right now, on my Series X, because, gasp, it's the same account.

So if I were to buy GTA VI for Series X in a few months, and type the download code into the 'redeem code' box, it ties that code to my account. See?