They added AI to their Logi Tune software not long ago. After some backlash, they made it able to be disabled, and not run in the background all the time. But subscription mice are the second step in the wrong direction. I've used Logitech mice since 1991, but I think I'll be looking somewhere else next time.

The internet is full of forums. These forums have instructions on how to repair old cars, rebuild a radio, repair your HVAC, whatever. Many of the instructions were written by people who are now dead and illustrated with photos that were on public image hosts.

When Photobucket collapsed hundreds of thousands of man-hours evaporated.All those tutorials became useless.

The web routed around that and rebuilt some of that information, and new information, using Imgur.

It's about to disappear in the same way.

The internet proper may not notice much, it's true... the ancient world didn't notice that much when the Library of Alexandria burned either. And yeah, a lot of the stuff in the Library of Alexandria wasn't all that important at the time, or maybe ever. But once it's gone it's gone.

At least with these image hosts the Internet Archive tends to rush in and try to preserve as much of that history as it can. Ok, fine.

What happens when Google pulls the plug on Youtube? The *last two decades will disappear* with respect to cultural history. TikToks and snapchat already do.

We are heading into a corporately induced Dark Age, living in a time that will not be part of any consistent historical record.

That's a big deal. It's a big "part of the internet" on a historical scale.

"The Veldt," Ray Bradbury, 1950. A family lives in an automated home with a room called "The Nursery," which simulates various experiences based on the preferences of the children.

AFAIK this is the invention both of the holodeck and of the "the simulation can kill you" trope in a computer/automation context. Others may have been before him but there's a sense in which "computer simulation" isn't a concept that makes any sense much earlier.

I'm certain I've read stories from earlier where events in a dream or vision had real-world consequences. Basically the "it was all a dream... or was it?" thing.

It was just a little too dry.

Slashdot still maintains exclusive compatibility with 7-bit characters.

That was one of the two thoughts I had.

The other was that it'll be fun when you forget that the cable is connected to your belt loop, and get up to throw away a cup, or get more ketchup, or what ever, and wipe your laptop.

The first time I networked two of my own computers together it was from FreeDOS to Linux. It had to have been around 1997. I couldn't afford network cards, so I got a null-parallel cable, and connected them using PLIP (Parallel Line Internet Protocol) (like SLIP, but a byte at a time instead of a bit). The Linux machine then acted as a gateway connecting to the Internet using a modem and PPP. I was impressed that I had a TCP/IP stack in DOS.

PLIP was pretty quick at copying files between the two machines, much faster than my Internet connection.

This might do what you want:
http://forscan.org/
FORScan is a software scanner for Ford, Mazda, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles, designed to work over ELM327 and J2534 Pass-Thru compatible adapters

This seems familiar. I had the original Motorola Atrix 4G, and when it was placed in a dock with an HDMI output (or the laptop dock that included a screen) it booted a Linux environment that was also based on Debian. It was very limited in what applications could be run.

So how can 62 senators pass a bill that supersedes the constitution? The constitution specifically states 2/3 of present senators must agree with the president in order to pass a treaty (article 2 section 2). The fast track law says a simple majority can pass a treaty which would then have the same force of law as the constitution.

This seems illegal.

I live in Iowa, we got 7 inches of snow today, the guy 1 block down from me has a heated driveway, he has no frozen water issues that I can see, but I haven't asked him. Concrete is porous, the snow probably leaks slow enough to seep through the concrete to the unfrozen ground below.

I agree on the stingray issues, etc. Which is why I bought one of the few thermostats that does not talk to its corporate website, it talks to my server and my server alone. Same with my home automation server and the Zwave switches and motion sensors and the electrical stats are down in house as well. Most of the consumer friendly thermostats, home automation stuff, and electrical trackers agreggate this info at corporate HQ and present a nice friendly website to the consumer, while stealing the data and selling it. But there are options that do not do that.

Your house plays a warning tone on your bedroom speaker you to let you know your teenager's window was opened after 10pm on a weekend night.

Because I raise my teenager like a veal in a hermetically sealed room. If she's opened the window, it means she wants fresh air. I don't need my house to parent for me.

Think of it like a firewall. If I want the kids to go out, I tell them they can go out the front door. If they go out the windows, that is opposite of parental authority.

These are some of the things you can do with a 'smart' house. pick and choose what you want to install.

Except, you're not going to "pick and choose" what you want to install. It's going to be a package deal and all of it will require an account where the data is stored in the cloud and the activities of my teenaged daughter are being sold to the highest bidder, ostensibly for market purposes.

Except I did pick and choose all of those, installed piecemeal over the last 15 years. My house already does all that and none of it goes out to a cloud account. All of it stays on my personal server that has a firewalled + snorted web interface to the outside world for my access alone.

Friend, how hard is to turn on a thermostat? You realize there are thermostats with timers on them for people who are away from their house for a long time, and they don't require an IP address or account with iPrison.com.

I have a large house and I am lazy, If I am in the basement and I decide to kick the heat up 3 degrees, I can do it from the comfort of my sofa.
Again, pick and choose what interests you. If its not your cup of tea, great. If you cannot see why someone else might like some of these features I don't know what to tell you.

If the "Smart Home Revolution" has been prioritized ahead of personal jet packs and a robot to go shovel my driveway, there's something seriously wrong.

Shovel? The next thing on my list is a heated driveway, not a robot. heated driveways have been around for 20 years, and cost about the same as a snowblower, if you are installing a new driveway anyway.

Let me paint you a picture. Your house graphs the indoor and outdoor temperature with mrtg along with when your furnace or AC was on. It graphs the per outlet electricity usage on a minute by minute basis. Both graphs can go back for years. Your hallway and bathroom lights turn on and off automatically based on motion sensors, only they are smart enough to know that if you get up after you go to sleep you want hte lights to only come on at 50%, not 100%. Your doorbell rings and you get emailed on your smart phone with a picture of the front door of your house. Your house plays a warning tone on your bedroom speaker you to let you know your teenager's window was opened after 10pm on a weekend night. The camera system notices someone pulling into your driveway and pops up a picture in picture of the driveway on your tv while you are watching a movie. You decide to come home from work early so you login from your phone and turn the thermostat setback off, to warm the house before your arrival. These are some of the things you can do with a 'smart' house. pick and choose what you want to install.