I'm in Texas. Our governor lied about wind and solar during that massive freeze a few years ago. Both of those were back and almost fully working within days of the blackout. Thermal (oil, gas, etc.) took much longer to recover from freezing. It was possible to look at the graphs of power generation from the state 'energy market' system, and see how wind and solar were back at the previous level of generation after the storm, well before the oil and gas generators.

EcoTanks (and similar from Brother, HP, etc.) already exist. Ink comes in fairly good-sized bottles and the starter ink is predicted to last 2 years before running out in normal use. There are tanks inside the printer that can be refilled, as well as (in newer models) waste ink reservoirs that can be replaced to avoid the 'authorized technical maintenance required' error.

I doubt they'll ban ink bottles, because those are much easier to recycle once empty.

It made sense when the printhead actually did wear out, but they've gotten so much better at making printheads that it's just an excuse now.

There are far fewer printers that use the combined head+ink system these days.

Depending on how this policy is written, they may be making integral head+ink cartridges illegal, forcing consumers into buying printers where the printhead is part of the printer that isn't normally replaced when ink cartridges are changed. Once that head finally clogs, replacement is usually impossible, expensive, or risky buying 3rd-party refurbed heads.

I'm sure HP lobbyists are following this closely.

Reading through some of Don Knuth's stuff, I'd say he has a pretty good chance of beating the pants of Claude in this one.

"Are the anti-trust laws for consumer protection or profit protection?"

Yes, it is in fact both of those. Profit protection (for a competitor trying to have even a slim chance to succeed), and consumer protection (from too much lock-in to a particular company's business model).

"We have never filed anti-trust suits against... "

Really? FTC v John Deere January 2025. Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona too. Some farmers have started class action suits.

No, your point does not stand. It is likely illegal to force people to buy only your official replacement parts, it's just a new enough thing that it's still working through the courts.

And again, "they got away with it" is not an excuse for monopolistic conduct. There are many things that only become illegal if you've got enough market share.

Right, because Apple strongly (and programmatically) encourages people NEVER to use anything but their monopoly products. If you even TRY to install a 3rd party app store, the phone will put up a large warning screen claiming how terribly bad this choice would be for the user, their phone, and (probably) their family and pets. Android does as well, but it's a lot smaller and easier to bypass. Install the free Android dev tools and you can install anything you can find.

It's easy to claim no demand, when you can easily force people not to ask for it.

It will only study people who get caught. "I predict X murders Y" Y dies. X is probably charged.

If X is good enough at it not to get caught killing Z instead, the predictor won't catch them.

Criminology is, as always, the study of criminals who have been caught. The rest of them have gotten their favorite crime re-defined as a good thing.

I did the opposite, bought a Roku TV, and use it as a monitor for a cheap android box with Blokada on it instead of Roku's malware.. Works great, and any money Roku spends on implementing ads is a complete waste.

You are aware that many white supremacists have stated that it was great how a "Roman" salute happened during a right wing political rally/inauguration. (Not linking to it, because I'm not going to drive traffic to that website.)

Autism doesn't excuse actual right wing politics. It's really not THAT hard to avoid making a Nazi salute by mistake.

The actual remedy is taking the conflict to the Judicial branch, or impeachment. https://irp.fas.org/agency/doj... Most of the time the Court has said it's OK for the President not to enforce laws that the President believes are unconstitutional, unless the Court decides that the law IS constitutional..

I agree.

"AGI as we traditionally understand it" is not guaranteeing who "we" are in that Altman quote. It's probably just him and some others at chatGPT.

The only way to win is ... not to play.

Yes, Java (the official Oracle developer kit version) is proprietary.

OpenJDK, icedtea, etc. are not, and don't require going to Oracle for anything. You can even use them to learn about creating bytecode compilers as well as programming.

I've got at least 5, but who knows where the rest of the tiny things went.