I used to always own at least one console, despite mostly being a PC gamer. I felt like the console was more of an appliance, really. Power it on and it has one job. Even if I came to accept the idea of buying games digitally on Steam or elsewhere for my Windows gaming PC, I never felt like it should be the same experience on a console. It's nice to own a physical library of game titles your friends or family can look through on a shelf and decide what they want to pop in and play. It has "permanence" - even if the game itself requires an Internet connection and supports online multiplayer gaming.

I guess I could be swayed to be less concerned if the manufacturers would play fair with all of it, but IMO, they really don't. As one example? My wife's kid bought an XBox 360 and owned a number of digital games on it. Microsoft decided to ban him from their network permanently, and without any warning or real explanation. He wasn't running hacks or cheats, and he wasn't threatening other gamers with violence or anything of the sort. He did have an odd nickname/handle (something about killing a unicorn?), so he finally decided that's what offended some people and got him banned. After all that money was lost on the console and digital purchases - the entire family decided to never again buy an XBox of any type.

My wife had a similar hassle involving the Nintendo Switch and her favorite game, Animal Crossing. To be honest, I don't even play the Switch so I'm not even that familiar with the whole thing. But it had something to do with her buying the game on a physical cartridge but then Nintendo trying to move everything to digital games only. They provided a means to use the physical copy to authorize your account to download and play the digital one, but that wound up hampering how she wanted to play the game across three different Nintendo Switch consoles she owned while retaining her saved game.

No... nobody I know thinks we're "leading the world in banking technology". We're well aware how backwards the systems are. That's likely a big motivator for people to dabble in crypto and to use all the electronic payment systems that popped up, from Venmo to Cash App.

It's endlessly frustrating. At least 20 years ago, I was sure paper checks would vanish because of the utter lack of security they provide people. It seems like they came from an era where one's signature meant something? (If you think about it, that theme runs deep in our Financial system. Every credit card transaction prompts you for a signature. Yet if you ever have to challenge/fight fraudulent charges, you'll find the card companies don't give a crap if your signature matches what they show was scribbled for the transaction. You're still just as liable for it. Sign with a stick figure .... doesn't matter.) But yeah, give me a paper check and now I have your home address, likely one of your phone numbers, a copy of what your signature looks like (should I want to forge it later) and your bank's routing number + your account number. It's pretty common to ask the person paying to write down their date of birth on the check too. How are people ok with this?

Credit card processing is pathetic too, really. I was selling some 3D prints just a few weeks ago at our booth at the local Farmers'/Artisans' market, and a guy gave me a card that only worked with a mag-stripe. I had to run it with Square by manually keying in his card digits! I thought mag-stripe was rendered obsolete by now!

Poor guy reminds me of that goofy uncle in the family who means well, but just has no clue how anything *really* works.

Historically, I'm not sure there's ever been a situation where some kind of "sovereign fund" was created to collect taxes, where it didn't wind up getting raided or re-purposed in some manner by politicians down the road?

But even beyond that? There's really zero reason to mandate a huge, 50% tax, on AI companies doing more than X amount of annual revenue. You know what will happen then? It'll drive them to break themselves up into a number of smaller businesses that avoid the tax. But it'll be business as usual otherwise. You can't stop someone from owning 50 smaller AI companies instead of one big one.

Well, yes :-) I was trying to correct the basic error without writing much...

NO. It is a crime to FALSELY shout fire in a theater. Huge difference.

Interestingly, I remember at one time, the whole "Fake it until you make it." slogan meant something much less devious. It used to be a slogan people said about a small business managing to present itself as much bigger than it really was, while delivering on promises and work that would usually only be expected from a much larger business.

To me, that was actually a positive/good thing. It was your classic case of an over-achieving startup, doing more with less and winning outsized contracts that helped it grow to be a formidable competitor with the established players.

I took the financial hit years ago, when I resold my high-end configured Intel Macbook Pro to move to the M1.

As soon as I saw the benefits of the M series processors on the platform, I knew it was the way forward. The Intel Core i9 version of my Macbook Pro had overheating issues where it would throttle its performance down every time it did anything demanding for more than a few seconds at a time. That's just wasted performance at that point.

The battery life on M series is insanely good without feeling like you gave up any processing power at all, which sealed the deal for me.

The idea of Apple using Intel CPUs was always, in my opinion, kind of a hack on Apple's part. They realized IBM wasn't going to live up to their initial promises to keep innovating the "Power" CPU to keep it competitive. There wasn't any real alternative for Steve Jobs and company at that point. They were left "high and dry" unless they just ported everything to run on the same processor all the Windows computers were using.

The M series gets the Mac back to being truly unique again. You're not just buying another Windows laptop on the inside, wrapped in an "Apple shell".

While it constitutes a weak argument that "it won't be worth making a new StarGate series because only the original fans would watch" ... I can't argue it may not have been the best series to do more with right now.

I used to love Stargate, as did some of my good friends. But this wasn't one of the sci-fi shows that only got a couple seasons and then got canned too early. This was a very successful show that arguably ran its course, with a LOT of material to watch.

I'd say there'd be more justification to bring back Firefly, or even just do one more good season of "The Expanse" that does justice to the last novel in the series of books.

I know quite a few people who refused to vote, in at least selected elections. Had zero to do with being cowardly or lazy. It's much about a realization that after studying the people on the ballot and what the candidates running are likely to do/support? None of them reflected anywhere near what they wanted to vote for.

If there's one thing I think that drug America down a slope to stupidity in politics, it was the huge push to "get out and vote, no matter what!" Swarms of totally uninformed people went to the polls and voted based on any number of ridiculous preferences -- more to get the little "I Voted!" sticker to wear around and feel good than anything else.

The "vote for the lesser of evils" thing isn't a great argument for voting either, ultimately. Sure, there are times when you dislike both candidates but feel like one is a "devil you know" and won't surprise you, while you may deem the other too risky of an unknown. But ... that's also a pretty strong reason Trump won re-election, if we're honest about it. Democrats didn't run a better opponent who people could "hold their nose and vote for" if they generally leaned more conservative in their political beliefs.

Our third party options are realistically non-starters, and that will continue unless one of them has their own huge financial resources to throw at running for office without needing their party's backing.

Does it? Let's see what Ubuntu does ...

Désolé, pas désolé

I mean, come on... This one screams class action. I just got an email link to a list of current class action suits I could click on to see if I qualified, and none of them were over as clear cut a complaint as a company purposely crippling software initially promised to keep working.

Just read her Wikipedia article. Should have thought of that sooner. Thanks for the push.

Yup, 2016 was the most recent crime she was convicted of, and it says terrorism in Germany does have a statute of limitation.

Thank you. Answers a lot of questions, such as did they artificially age 40-year old photos for the facial recognition.

Far as I know, there is no statute of limitations for major crimes like murder and terrorism. But it varies by state and has varied over time.

I spent four years in the navy as a supply clerk dealing with paper work and petty bureaucrats. I learned an outrageous number of ways to not cooperate while seeming to cooperate.

I appreciate digging up the response. I have long since lost the patience to deal with bureaucrats.

There is something decidedly amiss when the monopolist defines its own limits.

One vote every 2 or 4 years, for which insider controls the monopoly, is a pathetic outsider limitation on government.