Here in Norway, you can not buy a sim card without some sort of ID, physical or electronic (we've got bank certified online IDs we can use for sig documents, online purchases with credit card etc). However, if the carrier was caught selling your PII they'd be in massive trouble. Fines could be up to 10% of gross revenue, as per the GDPR.

One man's jailbreak is another man's severe security bug. If an actor with resources tries to break the phone- e.g. if ICE is used against "enemies of the state" (which Trump has branded Democrats already) - having all of those holes patched is good. This makes it harder for Cellebrite, three letter US agencies etc to get access to your data. It also makes it harder to resell stolen phones, so they're less attractive targets for criminals.

Thank the Trump-Lord that coal and natural gas plants are free, eh?

That doesn't make sense, unless there is an overlap in skills. E.g. why should laying off support staff mean that you can't hire AI experts from the rest of the world, to give one example? As long as there are real checks for salary levels- you're not doing this to save money - why should this be a problem at all?

In addition to games and gaming consoles and services linked to these, Sony also sells headphones, microphones, cameras and accessories in the electronics space. E.g. they sell the arguably best wireless headset, the Sony wh-1000xm6. As you can see from the name, they suck at marketing. They also provide a lot of OEM audio equipment for cars - they're partnered with Ford, Volkswagen, and Toyota. They produce a lot of imaging sensors, that are used in many cameras and cell phones. They also have a massive movie and music division.

OpenAI's US Ad Pilot Exceeds $100 Million In Annualized Revenue In Six Weeks means the revenue in 6 weeks was about $10 million.

That's a rounding error - was it worth destroying the product image over? I almost wrote "and their reputation", but the deal with drunk Fox news-host currently roleplaying as a secretary of a department that doesn't exist that had dipped into gutter already.

Ogg is used by large parts of the industry: It is used by the most popular streaming service, Spotify. Not only is the Spotify client widely used on PCs, TVs, and all kinds of streaming boxes etc - a lot of audio equipment also has Spotify connect. All of these devices support Ogg.

As for why not everyone is using it - mp3 had the inertia, and AAC is better than Ogg for the same bandwidth. For mobile devices, that matters. These days, free lossless codecs (FLAC mostly, some ALAC) are taking the spotlight - alongside proprietary spatial audio format, like Dolby Atmos.

Indeed. Providing anonymous emails to avoid giving your real information to spammers, tracking companies, and other commercial entities is one thing - but providing it so your authorities don't get it is a completely different ballgame. If you want rule of law back in the US, you need to get "MAGA" out of power completely and let the GOP rebuild as a conservative party while out of power for a long time at all levels. Maybe you even need a completely different party to emerge.

I disagree with Apple really should have just been honest with its pro users and said "We no longer care about you,"'.They've abandoned a very specific and shrinking segment of pro users, but the vast majority of pro users are covered by today's lineup with Mac Studio at the top. There just aren't that many things which need a traditional tower anymore. And I'd argue that almost no-one needed the Mac Pro - as you excellently explain.

One minor peeve - what is "pro" today? Most office workers can do their work just fine with the some of the cheapest equipment you get - isn't that "professional" enough? Even most developers can do most of their work on laptops these days - and if they need more horsepower, that's likely to be on the server side anyway. Don't they count? And what about project managers, lawyers, and CEOs - aren't they "pro" either?

They were targeted as a workstation, not a "Mac in a PC-like chassis for home". So they had Intel Xeon CPUs, AMDs workstation line of GPUs, ECC memory etc.When looking at similar offerings, they weren't priced that bad.

Even more than the PCI-lanes, there wasn't hardware to justify it. With Apple Silicon, the GPU is built in and you can't fill the case with cards from NVidia to make it a CUDA-monster or handle graphics beyond the (impressive) abilities of the combined CPU/GPU.

If adding 3rd party GPUs was possible, the use case for actually buying a tower might have led to a huge increase in sales - relative to its existing sales level, of course.

One of the lessons we've had as the Federal, multi-branch nature of the US governmennt has frustrated Trump is that the government may be fucking us over, but it's not doing it in *unison*. It's doing it piecemiel, on the initiative of many interests working against each other, just as the framers intended. The motto on the Great Seal notwithstanding, there are myriad roadblocks to consolidating power in the hands of a single individual. It takes time and repeated failures. This is why the second Trump Adminsitration is worse than the first; they've figured out ways around things like Congressional power of the purse, put more of their henchmen in the judiciary, and normalized Congress lying down and letting the president walk all over them. It's a serious situation, although fortunately Trump isn't long for this world.

The main foe at the moment is Russia, and they surely know where the carrier is. If Iran is interested at all, they get the information from their allies in Russia.

While that's true, a responsible generation aims to boost the next generation to a *higher* level than the education they received. The world has become more complex and faster-paced, and even if that weren't true, the consequenes of aiming high and falling short are better than the consequences of aiming for the status quo and falling short.

So while I'm 100% onboard with skepticism that technology will magically make education better, I think the argument that "the education I got worked for me should be good for them" isn't a strong argument. What we need is a better ecducation that would have been a better education fifty years ago: stronger math, science, and language skills, general knowledge, and, I think critical thinking and media literacy. Possibly emotional intelligence -- it's kind of pointless to teach people critcial thinking skills if they are carried away by emotions.

There are no economic or security reasons to blockade Cuba, so that leaves *political*.

It used to be believed that bullies were low status individuals who are lashing out out of frustration. But research has shown that bullying is an effective strategy for achieving and maintaining social status. In other words it's a political winner. So the focus of research has shifted from the bully to the people around him who enable the bullying. The inner circle are the henchmen -- people without the charisma and daring to initiate the bullying, but join in when the bully gets things started. Around them are the audience, the people who wouldn't risk participating but enjoy the bullying vicariously. And around them are the much larger group of bystanders, who don't approve but are waiting for someone else to stop the bullying. Then off to the side are the defenders, who stand up to the bully.

Perhaps the least appreciated supporting factor in the phenomenon of the high-status bully is the silence of the bystanders, which is dependent upon the perception of widespread approval. Since you can't visibly see the the line between the approving audience and the apalled bystanders, the silence of the bytstanders is absolutely essential in sustaining the bullying.

Lot's of Americans are apalled at the idea of using military force to inflict suffering on the Cuban people. But that's only politically advantageous *because* of *them*. Tney are indistinguishable from the relatively small number of people who are thrilled when Trump announced he can do anything he wants wtih Cuba. The gap between actual approval and *perceived* approval is absolutely critical in establishign and maintaining any kind of authoritarianism. This is why would be authoritarian leaders are so focused on punishing and marginalizing any kind of expression of disapproval.