This story reads like a bad movie plot. If they hadn't already proved it in court I would never have believed the story.

It's shocking and terrifying that a major corporation would go on a personal vendetta like this. I'm glad the perpetrators went to prison and I'm happy for the victims to receive their pay day.

Still unbelievable.

Was that a standard warranty, or did you have the supplemental "Accidental Damage Protection" warranty?

Navigating Lenovo's warranty gauntlet is terrible. True. But, I've never seen them refuse the Accidental Damage Protection warranty.

If it's just marketing, as you say, how many followers can you get for the Poop emoji?

There's more to it than "just marketing". There has to be something of interest, regardless of how banal others might consider it, to get them to follow you.

A degree in Influencer, whether it's an AA or a PhD, is still better than anything in Women's Studies.

Surprisingly, there's only about a dozen people in a ton.

Unless it involves your mom. Then it's not even half a dozen.

How many followers does he have that he can be not huge and make a decent living?

And what is he streaming? Just his game play or does he put on some sort of show(big tits) to attract eyeballs?

That price is way too high for me to consider this against an Asus, Dell,or Apple laptop. All of which are either covered by warranty or disposable.

Get a laptop with Accidental Damage warranty. Don't worry about it. Get another in 5 years.

Come to think of it, my current laptop is getting on in age and I have no desire to replace it. Most especially at today's prices.

That anyone can make the money being made from "influencing" is quite surprising. And certain individuals, with high follower counts, are making an astonishing amount of money doing it.

The story doesn't say, but I'm wondering about the brand deals. Do these influences find and convince the brands to sign? Or do big brands like Secret Deodorant seek out and approach Tik Tokers with only 8k followers? Seems unlikely.

I wonder how long it will take until we see the American/European version of influencer factories"? Here's in interesting Influencer Factory article.

It's getting to be a weird world.

I wonder how many followers a Slashdotter could draw?

I think your vision!=sound. But, you're free to gloat as soon as Slate sells more vehicles than Ford does.

Shit, I won't even hold you the to F-Series sales numbers. You can gloat if Slate even beat the Ford Mach e, a low volume niche vehicle, sales numbers.

Until then, you're looking delusional from smoking hopium, to put it nicely.

Seems obvious, now that you've said it. I feel stupid.

Are you installing your AMD/NVidia drivers and companion apps without admin?

The root cause of this debacle is Windows update dutifully installing the LG driver, and its companion app. Drivers don't happen without admin permissions.

My point is that, in this scenario, it doesn't matter in the least what type of user account you use. Windows Plug-n-Play automatically installed the driver and app. Windows update uses the SYSTEM user, which has full root permissions.

Thanks for the link. I had never heard of them before.

But, you've made me burst out laughing that anyone would present a soon-to-fail Kickstarter project as a leader and claim that the best selling vehicle for 20 years is "chasing" it. LOL!

I had no idea that King Ranch was so expensive. It's ridiculous. But, as many of them that I see on the road, there's an awful lot of people with $100k to burn.

Who?

The Ford F-Series has been the top selling vehicle, in the U.S., EVERY year for 20 years or more.

What the ever-loving-fuck are you talking about "chasing"?

We want to connect whatever phone we choose this week to the car's screen. Next week, we may want to use a new app or a whole new phone. This is almost entirely solved by Car Play and Android Auto. There is no need for a car to have a built in and out of date map ever again.

We've made this clear, and the car manufacturers know full fucking well, that the consumer wants to connect their phone to the car's screen. The consumer does NOT want maps, phones, voice control, or everything else built into the car and going obsolete in under 5 years.

So, what is the advantage to the car manufacturers for putting this stuff in the vehicle. What's the benefit to Ford? Why are they spending extra to provde what the consumer has told them they do not want?

How would they restrict access to open weight models? Are they going to implement a Great Firewall of America? Are they going to block it like they block piracy? Super effective.