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Comment Re:Lockdown by the TV manufacturers (Score 5, Insightful) 101

>"5. Mandatory network connections. TV won't work unless it is connected to the internet. "

That is the only problematic one.

My TV, like all the previous ones, is a display. It is connected to a single HDMI cable. I don't give a F about anything else. I don't use audio, I never connect network, or anything else.

I simply won't buy a TV that requires a network connection (or includes one inside out of my control). I assume many others would feel the same. And if this starts to be a thing, I will do my best to educate everyone I know why it matters and why they shouldn't buy that model/brand.

Comment Boo hoo (Score 1) 95

Cry me a river.

Comcast/Spectrum just bought Cox. And my Cox bill is already over $200 a month for BASIC cable, downsampled to just 720p, at a low bitrate, and 300Mbs down internet for one person. And that is with their best "loyalty" discounts. So yeah, I am right on the edge of dropping cableTV, especially since the only reason I have it is because of love TiVo. TiVo is essentially dead (I still have service, but they don't sell boxes anymore). Cable TV has always been very hostile to cablecard devices, and they keep hiking prices more and more for worse service and content. It won't be long now before it goes bye-bye for me as well.

Coax/cable modems really suck when it comes to reliability. So yeah, that "fiber to home" part they are missing really does matter now. Crap, even if it was Ethernet from the pole to my house that would be much better. Numerous times I have had to get them out here, with great difficulty, to fix their crap on the poles so I can get a proper signal. Amplifier issues, water in their equipment, improper signal balancing, interference from stuff in other homes ruining things, etc.

Comment Re:Just me but... (Score 1) 51

>"It may just be me but I don't want ANYTHING to do with Elon Musk. "

It isn't just you. If you want to be an ideologue, that is your right as a consumer. And that does have power. Me, I prefer to look at what is being offered and decide if it is a service/product I need/want/like. Generally, more competition in this market would be a good thing. I have no great love of any of the current carriers. T-Mobile was my favorite for a very long time, but they have been kinda sliding downhill now.

Comment Re:How is the Ukraine war going? (Score 1) 64

I don't know if you're a russian bot or some deluded idiot, but it amuses me to do a breakdown of your post.

NATO turned what was originally intended to be a mostly peaceful show of force like the temporary invasion of Georgia into a war of attrition.

First of all the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Georgia involved a few hundred dead in the first two days, and another 5000+ civilians killed in the ethnic cleansing after that, all for a land-grab to seize control of territory covering half of Georgia's coastline that Putin wanted.

Secondly, the "peaceful show of force" "temporary" invasion of Ukraine involved hundreds dead, ballistic and cruise missile attacks on all of Ukraine's largest cities, and Putin publicly admitting the goal of overthrowing the Ukrainian government... and that's just within the first 36 hours. Within two and a half months Russian officials began admitting the intent to permanently annex parts of Ukraine, proceeding with a constitutional amendment a few months later claiming to annex vast territories that Russian had not remotely taken control of, and which Russia is not remotely capable of capturing. Donetsk alone has a population of over a million, two million if you include the metro-area. Russia spent months and many thousand of lives to capture, and later lose, villages in the range of low tens of thousands.

Remember WWI when the lines were pretty much static for years and then suddenly it was all over?

Yes, I remember. As I recall it wasn't exactly "sudden". As I recall... Russian casualties were around five million killed, wounded, or captured, the Russian economy was collapsing, Russia was running out of food, and Russian literally lost it's own capital to civilian rebellion. A few months later the Russian government collapsed and surrendered vast territories including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and its allies (known as the Central Powers). Right about that point the U.S. joined the war reinvigorating the Allied Powers. Germany&friends knew they couldn't win a protracted war. They attempted a quick win, and, in short, they failed. The Allied powers steadily beat them down, with the allies eventually breaking through the lines and progressively liberating territory. With the Allies steadily advancing and the war obviously lost, German forces began rebelling and Germany surrendered.

That's what's happening here. Russia has most of Donbas plus a buffer zone in some other regions that directly border Russia. Ukraine is throwing men at the front lines for Russia to kill but is running out. Territory held is largely irrelevant compared to the number of men killed and weapons destroyed.

So much to unpack there, but it's amusing how you cite "territory held is largely irrelevant" given that the tide has turned and Ukrainians are now the ones breaking through lines and liberating territory from Russian occupation. It's not much yet, but all the map trackers show the reversal. Russia is now officially loosing more territory than they gain. Russia WAS slowly gaining small bits of land, largely through sending meat waves of untrained ill equipped soldiers at Ukrainian lines until the Ukrainians ran out of ammo and had to fall back. However now 7 out of 10 Russians killed are killed by drones. The "no man's land" between the two sides is now many kilometers wide. Any Russian trying to advance gets hit by a drone. Russia has also losing on average 1 air defense system every day, and rapidly depleting. Russian supply lines are getting pummeled by drones. Russian refineries are getting pummeled by drones, with progressively worsening fuel shortages for both the military and for the increasingly rebellious population. Cheap advanced Ukrainian drones are taking out expensive crappy Russian drones, including Russian's new jet-drones. Practically every country on earth is asking Ukraine for their military drone tech, the Russians can't remotely match it. Russian's economy is also fucked, but that topic pretty needs a separate book to cover.

Interesting side notes on weapons destroyed. Russia is destroying it's aircraft almost as fast as Ukraine is, between incompetence and maintenance failures and friendly fire shooting down their own aircraft. Also the nation that is the biggest donor of tanks to Ukraine is... Russia. Ukraine captured countless Russian tanks intact because the Russian military is so abysmal incompetent and corrupt. And as I mentioned, Russian air defense units are depleting. The war is now approaching 5 years, longer than the entirety of WW1. Ukraine is a small fraction of Russia's size, and Russian is literally losing and headed towards another soviet-union-style collapse. The biggest shock to the world of this entire war is just how worthless Putin has made Russian military, through systemic corruption and systemic incompetence.

Polls show the Ukrainian population isn't interested in surrendering. They are defending their homes. It's simple, the war will end when all the soldiers go home. When Russian soldiers go back to their homes in Russia, and when Ukrainian soldiers go back to their homes in the currently occupied parts of Ukraine. Although that's not likely to happen until Putin either expires or is overthrown. Not only is he fanatical enough to drive his country to collapse in the attempt, he knows if he did end the war in failure he'd get killed or overthrown for it.

Anyway, pointless reply to a bot or a useful idiot. But maybe some random passer-by will find some bits interesting. I don't know about the rest of the world, but mainstream US news rarely mentions the Ukraine war anymore, and certainly not in any detail.

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Comment Re:Mozilla needs to compete again (Score 1) 87

None of that matters. That is not why people are not installing Firefox. It is because Google tries to force Chrome on all their devices and sites, and Microsoft tries to force Edge on all their devices and sites.

Most users don't even realize they have a choice for browsers or what the choices are and why. And in corporate settings, users have no choice. "Power users", as you mention, are the way less than 1%. And most Firefox users are not passionate about the theme (and yes, I do care, and use css hacks) or that occasionally the icons or tab design changes (LIKE IT DOES IN ALL OTHER BROWSERS TOO).

Firefox has been and will probably remain better than Edge and Chrome in many aspects. But users don't care about open standards, privacy, ecosystem security, best ad blocking options, most configurability, etc. They use what the machine came with, or what some site said "works best in" or some idiot tech support place says "we support only."

Comment Re:FIrefox losing to Edge (Score 2) 87

>"Firefox losing to Edge has more to do with the long-term enshitification of Firefox than any anti-competive behavior by Microsoft."

WRONG. 100% wrong. And how you were modded up is astonishing. Absolutely nobody has switched from using Firefox to Edge because of Firefox and you know it. The people using Edge are precisely because it is the default browser and/or due to Microsoft's aggressive efforts to promote/force Edge, and/or rarely, because there is something specific in Edge the user might want.

Firefox is orders of magnitude more respectful of privacy and control than Edge. It has continuously improved and can, overall, stand toe-to-toe with any other major browser. There might have been some features that were added some people didn't want (and could turn off), or style changes, but that occurs with ALL browsers. So what exact "enshitification" do you think has occurred ONLY IN FIREFOX that would lead a user to switch to Edge? Waiting...

Comment Re:Is this news? (Score 1) 87

>"I am seeing countless, mostly elderly, folks using Edge because they dont know how to convince windows to let them use chrome by default."

But using Chrome is no better for our ecosystem. They are both Chromium and ultimately Google-controlled. They both harm web-standards, freedom, security, and privacy. So that would still be a lose for everyone.

Comment "Safe" (Score 1) 115

>"But Heinrich started to wonder if the cameras were actually making students less safe after seeing news reports that data captured by Flock cameras in Illinois had been shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection."

Um, that *does* make them more safe. You might be ideologically at odds with enforcement of immigration law. But you certainly didn't seem to care about privacy when you had them installed, did you?

>"More than half of students at the far west suburban Chicago campus identify as Latino."

So? Are they here illegally? I am guessing the overwhelming majority are not and ICE would have no interest in them. Just like the police will have no interest in the 99+% of students that are not committing crimes.

I don't like Flock (or their clones) because I believe the invasion of privacy is too extreme and they don't have enough controls or oversight (like requiring a warrant for every use). They absolutely will help reduce/solve additional crime, but so would strapping GPS bracelets to all people or having curfews or banning cash or other overkill measures.

>"Students were afraid to come to class."

Ridiculous.

Comment Re:Well, duh (Score 1) 149

Hybrids *are* ICE. The wording of the article and summary is ridiculous:

"Gas cars are now a minority of the world's new car sales," reports Electrek." "Gasoline-only vehicles made up 49%"

All HEV or "hybrid" vehicles contain an ICE (internal combustion vehicle) and use gas, and are, therefore, "gas cars". And it is true that there are tons of HEV's being offered now.

Comment Re:Depends (Score 1) 282

>"With permanent Daylight Saving Time, the latest sunrise in Atlanta would be 8:45am vs 7:45am without. If you are trying to get to work/school by 8am, you are up in the pre-dawn hours either way."

Exactly my point I was making. A large majority of people will be in the dark on waking, leaving, driving, and probably even arriving to work/school, anyway. So it isn't going to totally "solve" the issue for most people. Although it is true there will be more times there is light when waking on the thresholds of the changes. Yet they completely gloss over the sleep disturbances that occur for many people when trying to adjust their schedule due to the time changing.

There is no perfect solution. Only tradeoffs, and it will vary by latitude. Hence, let States have all three options and they can decide what works best for them.

Comment Re:Depends (Score 1) 282

>"States are allowed to choose between implementing twice-yearly DST switches or sticking with year-round standard time... but they can't choose permanent DST?"

Because Congress made it that way. They can just as easily make it so States can choose all three options instead of just two. We can see how unpopular permanent Standard Time is, since only two States use that option. I suspect more than several would choose permanent Savings Time if given the ability.

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