I have mine connected to a Raspberry Pi and a Google Chromecast. I can update the Pi myself and if the Chromecast fails, gets EOLed or just enshittified, I'm out $30 and still have a functional TV with the Pi. Then I just throw some other inexpensive device on it.

By contrast, the 'Smart' TV leaves me stuck. If it gets enshittified or EOLed, I don't have much in the way of options unless I can figure out a way to lobotomize it and make it a dumb TV.

Meanwhile, the all-or-nothing Smart TV removes real disincentives for enshittification.

So no, for the consumer, it really does NOT make sense. For corporate executives rubbing their hands waiting for enshitification day, it makes a lot of sense, unfortunately.

The thin is, the artists WANT to keep the prices down because they (or at least their managers) understand that fans able to get tickets and see concerts is a driving force for their fandom. You don't get big or even stay big by only being seen by a few wealthy patrons (or their kids).

Actually, they own a few and have a contractual lock on many many more.

The big problem with these "smart" things is that it's getting hard to avoid them. Several years ago I was looking for TV. A few dozen "smart" TVs to choose from but exactly 2 non-smart TVs. I don't mean 2 models, I mean 2 TVs in the whole store. Luckily one of them was suitable.

If you bought one of these things, you deserve it. :)

This reminds me of a story too. I was working at a place just rolling out Microsoft Office 365 and the whole 2 factor authentication thing. We started looking at the devices people had registered for MFA. Obviously, you mostly had various smartphones and a few people even used iPads or other tablets. But this one guy had a Samsung smart fridge as his device. He explained that, "I work from home and have a desk in the kitchen. So it's easy to confirm the authentication from the refrigerator screen. And this way, I know I won't just lose it someplace like I might lose my phone!"

But seriously, I really dislike this trend of making basic home appliances Internet connected and/or computerizing them needlessly. My old Black & Decker 4 slice toaster finally gave out on us last week. I was shocked by how much a new toaster costs now! I was expecting to run out and grab something for maybe $20 or so? Nope! Many of the highly rated models are well over $200! The cheapest I could find was about $45, for one at Costco that has 2 digital strips down the front. One side lights up with icons of toast, in various levels of darkness, and the other depicts all the different foods you mgiht toast; bagels, waffles, pastries, toast...

We got it home and tried it out, and guess what? When you select toast with a darkness of "3 out of 6", shown as a medium brown? It absolutely burns it! The lightest setting just ejects warm, untoasted bread. I couldn't find any point to a setting on the thing other than the second-lightest one! Highly inaccurate. All of this seems really unnecessary, when the light/dark knob on my old toaster worked just as it was supposed to.

Some of it will take care of itself. You can only veg on the couch so long before you die from otherwise preventable disease.

The percentage affected may be smaller than it seems. Some want to veg and watch sports all weekend because they were forced to bust their as all week in a job they hate. Take away the job (and the need for the job) and they might get more active in their free time. The unemployed who sit and veg mostly have no money to do anything and have lost hope in getting a job.

Though I'm sure there are some di-hards that reallywould sit on the couch until they de-compensate and die. But that is a choice they make and it would solve the problem.

Much of the world's Capitalism...

Do you really think a significant portion of the U.S. Adult population really want to go to work?

I remember a fair number of people in the '80s getting fooled by Eliza, a collection of heuristics designed to create the illusion that the computer understood what was being types and formulating reasoned responses. Of course, it was doing no such thing.

Modern chatbots do a much better job of it. 'Good' enough that susceptible adults sometimes go over the edge into a full mental health crisis after a month or so interacting with them.

The constant affirmation and un-wavering support makes the chatbots the ultimate yes-man. We have all seen what happens when celebrities and people in power become drunk on their own yes-men.

It's worse than internet echo-chambers. At least those don't tend to let the conversation get that personal and specific. Chatbots will get as personal as you wnt and they are designed to never break engagement (how will the company keep gathering underpants if the chatbot keeps saying no?).

And all of that with adults. Now imagine turning all of that on a young teen that hasn't had time to mature enough to know better. YIPE!

Proven by the fact that a few have hacked Windows 11 to run fine on machines that supposedly can't run it.

I wouldn't trust those hacks in production, but they prove the possibility. Of course, I don't trust ANY Windows in production.

The machines that can run Windows 10 but not 11 really have no legitimate reasons they're incapable of using 11. It's generally artificial barriers put up by Microsoft because the chips lack a feature or two they're trying to make a new standard.

In a few cases, it's literally nothing more than an oversight! My co-worker was just telling me about a specific model of Xeon CPU he's got that has some long "sub-model" vs a simple model number like 5360 or 5500 or what-not. It has every single function in it that Microsoft says is needed by Win 11, yet you can't put 11 on it. Why? Only because Microsoft neglected to list its specific model/sub-model in its database it uses to determine the machines capable of installing 11 on them.

If they want all these people off Windows 10, they could design 11 so it runs more like 10, with a few of the features disabled that require the instructions the older CPUs lack, when it detects those processors.

Apple did this with iOS multiple times already. A new iOS version still runs on older phones but with a few features disabled if those specific features need the newer phone's CPU to work.

On one hand, every parent of kids or teens today has to feel the struggle with social media influencing their journey to adulthood. Sometimes it's just a harmless fad that generates a ton of sales for some useless toy or gadget. But often, it's about the added complexity of a world where their "friends" can be people anywhere in the world who they only communicate with online, and who parents are often powerless to "vet". It's about questions of "bullying" and how far an institution like a public school can really reach to address it, when it starts happening online. It's about uncertainties of whether all the "screen time" creates real mental or physical health threats.

But when it comes to technologies like a chat bot? I don't think there should be these legal expectations that they do such things as guiding people to other resources to get help for the issues they talk to them about. I don't even think the authors of these chat bots necessarily considered the idea a pre-teen would confide everything in one and treat it as their "only true friend"? As a rule, they're harmless as long as they're not actively suggesting adult or illegal activities, so giving them "age ratings" of 12+ makes perfect sense.

Troubled kids or teens need to be given REAL help and warned away from relying on automated AI solutions.

You're missing that both a bleed air system AND poor maintenance are required for this problem to manifest.

Presumably the other planes with a bleed air system are getting better maintenance, so haven't been a problem. No idea how the 787's maintenance is, but since it doesn't have a bleed air system, the problem of dangerously contaminated cabin air hasn't manifested.

More specifically, this happens when engine oil or hydraulic fluid leak into the engine while bleed air is being drawn.

Even if it seems to save some money (probably not THAT much in the end), it'll still cost them.

In 10 years, the Vibe coding kids will be middle-aged vibe coders, but the entry level engineers would have been senior level engineers. Eventually, once you were ready to retire or move to management, one or more of them would have been the new you.

Instead, now when you retire, they'll be swimming in a sea of middle aged vibe coders and nobody left will have a clue how to fix the horrors that they produce. They won't be able to hire a new you from outside because the other employers followed the same strategy. They will be no replacements available.

They might be able to eek out a few more years by paying someone a king's ransom to come out of retirement for a couple years, but for obvious reasons, that won't last forever either, even if they can afford it.

That depends on the product. In some cases the product is perfectly good, but the reviewer doesn't understand how to use it and apparently didn't RTFM.

There's a reason TIFF stands for Thousands of Incompatible File Formats. It's probably time to take TIFF behind the barn.