I don't want it, and I'm not going to buy it (in fact, I just bought a new fridge the other day and sought out a non-"smart" model), but as someone who's only recently started experimenting more with cooking, I can see the appeal.

It would be pretty neat if my fridge knew what foods I have and could recommend recipes based on it. And though it sounds ridiculous, it actually would be handy if it could remind me what I just used the last of or am running low on. Sometimes, you forget to write something down, and then you're stuck come lunchtime without mayonnaise (one guess what I'm low on). If it could warn you that the milk is close to the expiration date, because it has a camera that can read it, that would be genuinely useful.

Is any of that necessary? Obviously not. You can just use your eyeballs. But everyone has been in the situation where you don't know what to make, or forgot you ran out of $X, or $Y expired, etc. If (and it's a big if; I'm highly skeptical of the current tech) one of these smart fridges could address all that, it would be genuinely useful.

But I'm not going to buy it. We're only a few steps from fridge microtransactions. I'm not giving it a nickel every time I want some cream.

Since you clocked it as an opinion, the phrase, âoein my opinion,â isnâ(TM)t needed.

(That said, itâ(TM)s objectively true that no one needs these, as evidenced by the entirety of human history.)

It's impossible to say what might have been, because we don't know what, e.g., Apple would have done if BSD used GPL. Maybe they would have used it anyway and opened their contributions, but it's perhaps just as likely we'd see many different closed implementations and even more security issues across the major platforms.

Perhaps they were lazy. I read on HN (can't find the post) that even simple tools were failing 3/4 of tests, yet Canonical pushed them out anyway.

When vibe coding turns into lawsuits

AI's arguing with each other on the internet with no positive outcome is only a win for the AI company. Same with emails. If you send me 20 pages of AI slop generated from bullet points and I use AI to reduce it back to bullet points, then nothing of value was gained except we both paid openai for burning some coal and thats all.

Don't send or post any AI to me on any platform. I can run the AI my self when I feel it's needed.

The operator of the AI must be held liable for it's actions just as the operator of any other software.

There wonâ(TM)t be anymore original content

Genuine question: is it any different from us calling Deutschland “Germany” on our maps? Different countries, or at least countries that speak different languages, often have wildly different names for other locations.

I can't find exact numbers, but I did find a recently published Princeton study. According to it, grant submissions for the Competitive Grant Program closed in September 2024 (for a bill passed in 2021), and "[a]s of January 2025, over fourty (sic) entities, including a varied mix of municipalities, school districts, trade associations, and a hospital, among others, have been recommended for award of a combined $369 million pending 'budget review and processing.'" There's also a table showing grant status.

Additionally, it says "[a]pplications for [State Digital Equity Capacity Grant] sub-grants have opened in several states, including New York and Idaho." Since Texas "paused its sub-grant application process in March of 2025," we can likely conclude this part of the process, where the remaining $1.44B is allocated, is still ongoing.

It looks like the answer to how many people have been connected by the Act is probably zero. This shouldn't surprise anyone; however, proponents might point out we should judge the program's success after the funds have been allocated. Based on how these things often go, I won't hold my breath.

The program may well be a boondoggle, but Trump is, as often, his own worst messenger.

I'll ignore the "WTF" aspect of this, as that ground is well-trod by this point.

The videos and images they have are not representative of him. Not really. Not completely. They are representative of his best moments. Friends and family aren't keeping videos of the times he was angry, or argumentative, etc. This is fine and normal. But if you're going to feed those into an LLM and pretend that the result is "him", you've only got a simulacrum of part of his persona.

The whole thing is weird and, IMO, morbid, but I hope it gave the family closure.

The power output adjusts to environmental conditions

One might overcome fog or rain by varying light intensity in the laser.

Disclaimer: I work there

The beam is not dangerous and small interruptions are handled by error correction in the device itself and higher level protocols (like resending tcp packets).