I use cash as a payment tool when it suits me. Each payment method has its cost, risks, and rewards. I use cash:

• where sellers offer a cash discount and I'm not likely to need the protections a credit card provides
• for smaller transactions (under $20 or so) especially where credit/debit drags me into a "How much do you want to tip" dialog on an electronic screen
• for private-party buying/selling transactions (garage sales, Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, street fairs) where cash eliminates trust concerns on both sides
• randomly, if for no other reason than to f*** with anyone who is trying to profile me through electronic records

I am amused at people who consider themselves sophisticated because they never touch cash. I'm frustrated at how the electronic payment industry has inserted itself into virtually every transaction, adding a couple of percent onto costs for everyone. Cash has an important place in business, and I don't want to see it eliminated as a tool - so I "use it" as a preventive against "lose it".

Thank you for setting me straight.

I read through the article. I expected it to detail the ways in which Apple was able to profit from tracking users while the other companies were not. There wasn't much there. The only issue presented was the problem other companies were having with the fact that Apple made user tracking a choice that the user makes, and (I guess) most users choose no tracking.

It seems like these companies found a sympathetic government that they could "lobby" to try to change Apple's decision to build their device so that the users were in control of whether or not they could be tracked. And the German government seems to be sympathetic to the idea that these company's "business model" is based on tracking, therefore they should not be denied their tracking.

I thought European countries were the epitome of data privacy? Color me confused now. There must be more of an argument somewhere in there. Otherwise, the German ministers can go sit on a Panzer.

Shitty(?) RAV4 driver here. The RAV4 has some enshittification, primarily in the raft of "Connect" services Toyota seems to think people will buy. (I haven't subscribed to any of them.) But I think you paint with too broad a brush. Where I live, practically every other vehicle is either a Subaru or a Toyota, with many of the Toyotas being RAV4s. So statistically speaking, if shitty drivers are evenly distributed between makes/models, you'll see more "shitty RAV4 drivers" than many other makes/models.

As for the physical controls, the RAV4 doesn't do too badly. All of the HVAC controls are physical, and many other functions can be controlled through steering wheel buttons or voice commands, at least on a mid-grade model.

With respect to the "radio", I have rarely tried to tune in a radio station through the screen controls while driving. 1) I carry a large music collection with me on my mobile phone, and I generally listen to that while I'm driving. The interface between the phone and the car remembers where I am playing my music such that when I get in and turn the car on, my music starts playing where it left off the last time I was driving. If I want to change it, I use the voice command interface on my phone to select something else from my collection. 2) the RAV4 itself has a "voice command" capability (at least in the mid-grade model that I have), and much of the car can be operated by saying "Hey, Toyota" and then a command. When I want to listen to a particular radio station, I say "Hey, Toyota - tune to [frequency] [band]" (e.g., "Hey, Toyota - tune to 92.9 FM").

When I'm driving, eyes on the road and hands on the wheel is a priority. The shift from physical controls on the radio itself to steering wheel controls and then voice activation has been an interesting evolution, but I'm adaptable. And, at least in the Toyota, the volume control remains a physical knob, on the left-hand side of the "media center". Others may vary in their approach.

I like the idea of the cash (or other asset) being destroyed, as that does mitigate the obvious conflict of interest. I would add that in the event the person in question subsequently does prove the cash/asset was not obtained through illegal activity, that they get made whole. That would put a penalty on the LEOs being wrong.

Neither is as good as just getting rid of civil asset forfeiture. No one should be deprived of their cash/assets except through due process of law.

You might not be able to imagine circumstances where someone would carry more than 5,000 euro/$5,000 dollars (by order of magnitude these are the same value). But that's just your perspective, and at least in the United States it is a fairly narrow view not shared by everyone.

A few years ago (mid-2000s) I found a Jeep I wanted to buy offered for sale in Kentucky. I lived in Maryland. I got a one-way ticket to Louisville, rented a car at the airport, and drove to the seller's house where I inspected the Jeep then bought it. I drove it back to Maryland.

The price for the Jeep was somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,800 (I don't remember exactly how much). The seller wasn't keen on checks, personal or cashiers (both can be fraudulent). I flew with the money in my pocket. Buying used cars is a very common reason for traveling with fairly substantial chunks of cash---No intention to deceive or evade necessary.

Everything is negotiable. Just tell them no, $2,500 isn't enough. If they really want the content, they will eventually offer more. If you are happy with the $2,500, then take it. What is important here is that the expectation that the author needs to approve the use of their work in this way gets firmly embedded in culture as well as law, and this seems to support that. Unless of course, all of the "no" answers are ignored and the material ingested anyway (through some kind of "programming error" or "freak accident".)

I personally don't want to read AI-generated books or articles unless the AI can produce truly compelling content. So far that hasn't been demonstrated. Whether the knowledge of artificial production alone is enough to cause rejection of material no matter how compelling it is intrigues me as a question to be answered.

Any parent who would let their pre-teen hang out in an inner city pool hall should feel very comfortable with their kids having unfettered access to communication platforms that put them in contact with anonymous individuals.

Any game/social media/comm platform that wants to get $$ from services provided to kids should be able to satisfy parents that there is no way anonymous individuals can chat them up. Letting kids play with their friends from their own neighborhood is risky enough; it provides a good training ground for kids to learn that not everyone has their best interests at heart while not letting things get too far off the rails.

This isn't a censorship issue. Kids can exercise all the free speech they want with their friends and neighbors. As they grow older and hopefully understand the risks, they can take on totally anonymous communications mediated through blind communication channels if they want.

I think the Toyota "Hybrid Synergy Drive" that has been used and evolved in the Prius since 2000 in the US (and 1997 in Japan) avoids the issues you predict hybrids will suffer from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Synergy_Drive. It replaces the automatic transmission with a planetary gear sets that combines the ICE output and the input/output of two motor/generators. It seems to work quite well, and has an extensive operational history that does not show an increased cost of ownership. I know several happy long-term Prius owners, and my latest car purchase was a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid with the current version of the Hybrid Synergy Drive. It works quite well. I replaced a 2000 Toyota 4Runner with the RAV4, vehicle that has roughly the same dimensions, passenger capacity, (slightly less cargo mass but almost the same volume). It gets 40 MPG instead of 17-19 MPG and has 500+ miles of range instead of 350 or so. Unless I'm on a trip, I hit the gas station every couple of weeks and spend 5 minutes to fill it with 8 or 9 gallons of gas.

There may very well be an EV in my future, but I needed a new car this past July and there wasn't a BEV that met my needs. I spent 4 months reviewing options for BEV, PHEV, Hybrid, and ICE before buying the RAV4 Hybrid. At the same time, I have a friend who absolutely loves his Tesla X/Y/whatever. He commutes about 90 miles day round trip, charges it overnight at home in his garage, and it meets his needs and wants (he loves torque, and traded in a late-model Challenger to get the Tesla). EVs will continue to grow in market share and deployed units, no doubt. But they aren't the greatest thing since sliced bread, at least not yet.

Flock's defense that all their cameras do is take pictures of vehicles in public is disingenuous, and I hope that this case results in a big restriction on ALPRs.

If the cameras were simply used to take pictures, or were only used to locate a specific license plate for which their was a compelling reason to locate it for law enforcement, then their argument would (perhaps) be sufficient. But the ALPRs are used as part of a system to continuously photograph ALL vehicles traveling in a given locale, identify them, and store the timestamped location in a database. In other words, they are part of a continuous surveillance system that most definitely (from my POV) creates an unconstitutional search capability.

I may not have a special right to privacy with respect to any one or small number of places in which I (or my vehicle) appear in public, but when all of my appearances can be collectively noted and formed into a comprehensive overview of my behavior, it is not significantly less intrusive than if a GPS-based tracker was placed on my vehicle and used to build the same comprehensive overview.

This isn't a bad survey, albeit missing details in order to present a digestible overview: https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/networking-the-web/

An "AppleTV" is a little streaming media terminal. It plays content using one or more apps that are installed from the AppleTV app store. The apps are things like "AppleTV", "Hulu", "Netflix", "Amazon Prime", "Smithsonian", etc. The "home screen" for the device has a background that shows whatever content is "up next" in the app that is currently highlighted. I.e., if I was using Netflix when I last used the device, then the next time I turn it on it has a background that shows what content is "up next" on Netflix. It does not constantly push you towards Apple's content.

If you enter the AppleTV app, it has a variety of options. The "home" screen shows you all of the "up next" content for all of the apps that you have allowed to share their "up next" information with the AppleTV app. You could theoretically use this as a launchpad for each of those shows in their native app, but I've found that it didn't work well enough for me to use in this way. The "AppleTV+" page shows you the content available with an AppleTV+ subscription

Apple's nomenclature can be a bit confusing, because there is "AppleTV the device", "AppleTV the app" and "AppleTV+ the service".

I don't feel pushed to go to the AppleTV app. I primarily use the apps for Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock (NBC), and YouTube.

I tried out the AppleTV+ service when they gave me a free subscription, but found it somewhat confusing to determine what would come with the subscription versus what would cost extra. Some of the content seemed like it might be good, but it wasn't compelling enough for me to dump something else (how many paid streaming media subscriptions does one need?).

An AppleID only needs a payment method on file if you plan to buy things with it (like renting a movie through the AppleTV app). I have a few bucks on mine from an Apple gift card, but no credit card on file.

The thing that is hallucinating here is Sam. He thinks we only have a thousand days or so before our AI overlords arrive, and he wants to have more AI temples in the US than anyplace else. Nothing like the true believer to evangelize/proselytize.

There is a lot of risk and only a little benefit to two-way data communications built into current production automobiles. Eliminating the two-way data communications makes much of the risk of remote control, remote monitoring, and remote data collection disappear. I don't want these risks even if they are isolated to domestic sources and so not stem from foreign sources.

[JARRING CHORD]
[The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain [Palin] enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles [Jones] has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang [Gilliam] is just Cardinal Fang]

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

[The Inquisition exits]

https://genius.com/Monty-python-the-spanish-inquisition-annotated/