If AI was so great, this kind of influence purchasing wouldn't be required. Did Apple buy politicians in order to push the iPhone?

They're still SOLD, but they're not being produced. The prices for drives is spiking very quickly as remaining stock dries up.

I have two spares in the closet; they're about to become unobtanium.

I have tin ears and failing eyesight, but I can still tell the difference between streamed video and audio vs. what I've ripped from discs.

My modern desktop PC is in a modern case that has two drive bays (you can still buy them - Fractal Design Define R5), and is equipped with a flashed Blu-Ray drive that can handle UHD discs.

It's a bit of a hassle, but I can have whatever media I want where I want it, when I want it, the way I want it. Hunting down media is a fun hobby, too.

Anthropic was, at the least, making ephemeral copies of copyrighted works (i.e., the copy that existed in computer memory, possibly storage, temporarily).

I'm not sure (IANAL) that this concept has been applied to written works. For audio, however, the US mandates royalties in lieu of requiring a license - as getting a license would be impracticable.

I'm guessing that Anthropic is going get nailed for this aspect, as they likely would be required to acquire this type of license if they did what they did legitimately.

Who asked for this? How does it make the product better?

Pretty much any game that doesn't use Windows kernel-level anti-cheat will run pretty well. In some cases, a game might run faster on Linux/Proton. In come cases, a game might run a bit slower on Linux/Proton.

GrapheneOS is my daily driver. Some falsehoods that you're spreading:

Such as? I have the phone working with my banking applications, Android Auto compatibility is solid, and all of my apps run without issue. No more tap-to-pay, tho, but I just pull out my credit cards for that.

I've found that there's pretty much a 1:1 correspondence between being security conscious and having more technical acumen than a boomer-noob. I'd be amazed if you could find anyone in their potential audience (e.g., security concerned) that couldn't handle installing and configuring GOS on their phone.

I love GOS. I'm super grateful to the folks that have made it possible, and I was very happy to donate, too. They deserve it.

I'm guessing that this is a feature, not a bug (of the legal system).

Nothing wrong with a price hike for improvements. The problem is that the MTA had the money before the pandemic, but spent it wastefully.

NYC resident here. I think that the big issue is that the old mechanical signalling system has been an issue for decades, and that the MTA, even when it was flush, didn't prioritize it.

Hurricane Sandy took out several lines, and they claimed that they were going to upgrade to digital signalling as part of the restoration process. They didn't do it then.

The MTA, at one point, had an HR department that made up 25% of it's workforce (!). The history of waste, mismanagement, and misdirected resources is so damning that anything that they do should invite suspicion.

Chrome didn't succeed just on the merits. Google absolutely paid everyone and their brother to make it a monopoly, just like all of their other actions.

I'm sure that there's a better home for it than Google.

The author clearly doesn't remember what life was like before standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP and HTML. There was a reason why the Web won over AOL - the open standards.

Author also forgets Microsoft's attempt to create embrace-extend-extinguish supersets of Internet standards (i.e., Project Blackbird, poorly documented here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), and how they continued that, to a lesser degree, with Internet Explorer.

Chrome's near-total-domination means that Google could start to do really crappy things unless they're stopped. You think that Google wouldn't love to use Chrome for rent-seeking? Dream on.

Rip that browser out of their hands, now.

Forget about spying, security, etc. This is just the final nail in the coffin of America's decline. Social media was a powerful tool to project American culture into the world, and one of the last ones.

Jeans and rock 'n' roll? The Japanese do them better. TV? South Korea and Poland produce better stuff than the USA. Even saw an impressive Romanian show on Netflix. Non-American movies, boy bands, industrial design, cars... you name it, America no longer leads in any way.

Software and pizza were the holdouts, and it looks like pizza will be the sole survivor.

It'll be sold to one of Trump's supporters or new knee-benders - Musk, Bezos, Zuck, etc., at a fire-sale price. Reversing the ban simply keeps the value of the asset high.

This is a new spin on what happened after the Soviets fell - valuable assets sold for a pittance to political chums. This time, instead of the assets being state-owned, they're private, but dependent on the state to be allowed to exist.

Three out of four are not entirely true. I agree that neon pieces can be heavy, especially with larger diameter tubing.

My two neon pieces absolutely do not buzz at all. Properly made and powered neon is silent.

High voltage is only present inside the tubes. The transformers are very power efficient, and draw very little power from USA mains. There is no danger at all.

Flicker should never happen with, again, properly designed and constructed piece. In fact, mine had a bit of flicker initially (as I'm a novice), but eventually it sent away. In my case, it was due to some bends being a bit narrow, causing some issues withe flow of the gas/plasma.

Lastly: neon can literally last indefinitely, assuming no physical trauma. I have replaced LED bulbs that dimmed in a few years. Some of the original neon signs are still in use.