"t's a fucking CAR why would I need software updates?"

I have a 2025 Ford Escape and it's had a few software updates since I bought it.

The last one was to an update to the gear change module, according to the changelog notice I got on the screen when it was installed.

Yes, sadly, they do not cure mental illness.

AI call taking seems to be getting to be more common and, I guess, very inexpensive.

My plumber (one man and a truck full of tools out working on his own) has an AI answering his phone now. I called him a while back and a woman answered the phone. Ok, I thought, must be his wife answering the phone. She asked what I needed and said that she will pass the information on, then asked a further question that was related to what I had said but that was worded too... "formally", I suppose, for the subject under discussion (an outstanding order for air conditioner part that I was had called for an update on) and I suddenly realized that it's not a person I'm talking to.

And this is a one-man plumbing operation, not a big corporate entity.

Again, this is one guy

Truth Social I'm sure. As hard as it is to believe, there are still people who think Trump is a genius, and still want to "own the Libs".

"Do you blame the 19-year old airman working the military ID desk"

If you're working for an organization that's engaging in immoral, unjustified and/or illegal activities, and you're not already on your way out the door, then you're part of the problem.

Regardless of whether the organization is governmental or solely commercial. Or both.

Actually, it's exactly the same issue. Just using a different program.

The pdf redaction folks drew black bars over extant text and hid it that way.

The excel chap clicked on "hide this tab".

So both of them used what they assumed was a method to hide the data. It turned out to be nothing of the kind, of course, but in both of these situations they made exactly the same mistake using exactly the same set of expectations and ended up with the same results.

And how many times have "redacted" pdf files been found to have simple black bars draw over text that still exists in the pdf file.

How are these people not in prison?

I got Google Play Music for my family back when that was a thing. It was the same price as Spotify, had the same catalog, and included any music on Youtube as well. The fact that it included ad free Youtube was just a bonus. These days that has morphed into Youtube Premium, and I still pay for it. I am mostly there for the music, but the ad free Youtube is not terrible.

The interesting thing is that it is pretty clear that most people just watch the ads. Youtube had $60 billion in yearly revenue last year. More than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers combined. Roughly $20 billion of that is credited to Youtube Premium which is bigger than any of its Hollywood competitors.

There's a reason that Peacock is being included with Youtube Premium and not the other way around. Youtube is worth something. Peacock, not so much.

Things have changed dramatically since the heyday when everyone had a cable subscription. I used to work for SlingTV (and then Dish), and I had a front row seat as the whole industry imploded. Every year the television networks and movie studios would sit down and renegotiate their contracts. Despite the fact that viewership was always down at least 10% year over year they always wanted price increases. If the cable providers pushed back (as Dish often did) they would lose access to channels, invariably during football season when it mattered most.

You see, as technology started allowing people to purchase their entertainment piecemeal it soon became clear what parts they were willing to pay for, and which parts they weren't willing to pay for. Hollywood thought that people paid for cable subscriptions to watch their scripted television. It turns out that, for most people anyway, the part of television that they were willing to pay for was live sports.

That's why Disney won't sell you ESPN unless you bundle it with everything else that they sell, and that's also why Disney is suing SlingTV for reselling access on a daily basis. SlingTV's "sports pass" allows you to pay for just the games that you want at a ridiculous price. Disney should be stoked, but instead it has sued because it wants to force sports fans to continue to pay for their other channels.

Almost no one is watching traditional scripted television these days. The few hits that the networks do have tends to be reality TV stuff like "Dancing with the Stars," where the audience can watch people compete in real time. Youtube (not YoutubeTV) has at least half again as many viewers as their next highest competitor (Netflix), at any time during the day, on traditional 10 foot devices (your living room TV). That's not counting people watching Youtube on their phones or their computers. Youtube is killing scripted content on living room televisions, during prime time. During the day its an order of magnitude worse.

Take a look at nielsen.com and take a look for yourself. It's absolutely grim. Look at the shows that are doing relatively well, they are all either sports or sports commentary. That's literally the only reason that anyone watches anything besides YouTube and Netflix.

Apple spent over $20 billion building up a content catalog. At their height they were spending nearly $5 billion a year making shows. They made some great shows and got rave reviews. Amazon spends $1 billion a year for the rights to Thursday night football. That is arguably the worst football game of the week. However, Prime generally gets as many viewers for a single game as Apple has total subscribers, including all of the free subscriptions that Apple gives away. It's not just Apple that is shifting away from scripted television either. Take a look at any of the streaming sites (including Netflix) and you will see that all of their recent moves have been to try and compete for the sports market. That's definitely what YouTube is doing by bundling Peacock.

Hollywood is currently circling the drain. Everyone is up for sale right now. No one is watching scripted television. They certainly aren't paying for it.

If a student was reading the assignment using something that didn't render html colours then he would read that instruction and figure it's a test to see if he read the assignment instructions completely.

Some bands (Van Halen?) used to do that, and maybe still do. They have multi-page technical specifications for what they need at a venue for equipment or lighting, whatever else, and somewhere in the middle of all of this fine print they'll put something like "We require a bowl with exactly six red jelly beans in the dressing room." Then when they arrive to do the concert if they don't find six red jelly beans in the dressing room they know that their specifications had not been completely read and could then take steps to verify that what really mattered to them had actually been done, whereas if the jelly beans were present then they knew that the specifications had been thoroughly scrutinized and acted on.

The chances of that having happened here are probably nil, of course.

I get the impression that it's the lack of consistency that's the problem.

If you're in a noisy environment where something is being hammered, then that hammering noise continues more-or-less nonstop and unchanged for however many hours.

Traffic noise is constantly changing. Whoosh, whoosh, VAROOM! A few cars, a big truck changing gears or engaging jake brakes, then a smaller truck then truck goes by with a load of metal junk rattlinging in the back, then there's a police siren then... The noise may be constant but it's not consistent. It's ever-changing and unpredictable from one moment to the next.

"the cloud is nothing more than someone else's computer."

The cloud can also be your own computer at home, while you're on the road.

I wonder if or how they could prove there was any data on his phone before they entered that password.

Maybe he reset everything himself before arriving at the border.

Ok, I'll admit that isn't likely what happened but isn't that a reasonable doubt?

"It used to be that most peripherals didn't require much to function, and either software that ran at the user-level with minimal drivers or else features functioned directly onboard said device let it be controlled."

You don't remember WordPerfect for DOS? It came with several disks containing nothing but printer drivers for almost every brand of printer that was available at the time.

Same thing with Amiga desktop publishing software like Pagestream, and so on.

There were drivers on disks or CD's that came packaged with network cards for Windows 3.x and so forth. Usually Trumpet Winsock plus a custom driver for the specific network card.