I think the only Premium TVs left are the business TVs that give you meaningful mechanisms to not have intrusive "Smart" features.

Is there a meaningful difference between a Sony TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features, and a Wal-mart TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features?

I guess I am blessed to not be an audiophile and not have flawless supervision :)

FWIW, I have:
- a 20 yo 720p dumb 42" plasma
- a 20 yo 1080P dumb 50" plasma
- a 1yo 4k Samsung 65" TheFrame TV

That last one was a splurge I wanted because the "Art Mode" is just too beautiful, and at the time, Samsung really had the only coherent offering. (I guess there are now "off brand" ArtTV attempts from HiSense and others.. i have no experience with them.)

On the ArtTV, we watch youtube or DVDs or XBox on it a little of the time, and all that stuff looks fine to me on the 65" Samsung. But the TV is otherwise displaying pretty artwork almost all of the time, and whatever Samsung has done with the screen, dimming control, bezel, etc, really does work and really is lovely. And you don't need a service or an app to get the experience - just stick a USB full of public domain masterpieces into the TV.

Even so, the Samsung ecosystem is pretty annoying. I can have it show my images in ArtMode, but i cannot have the "real" experience you'd get with a subscription - with Art XML metadata and stuff (artist, date, etc). We don't always remember what a piece is or who painted it when it comes up..

Anyway, AFAIK, the only way to get TVs that aren't enshittified spyware is a business SKU, right?

In my house, we use Steam to play "windows-only" games on:
- Devuan with XFCE
- Devuan with Cinnamon
- Arch with hyprland
- bone stock Ubuntu 24
- ubuntu 25 laptop w/ second GPU

From my POV, there's not much need to port games to Linux. With the heroic efforts of Valve, most Windows games now just work. Win32, DX, D3D, and whatever else windows game devs have been using seems to have become the defacto reference gaming API on Linux.

Steam makes it work on every linux distro we've tried.

In writing this, it occurs to me: The F/OSS ecosystem does a very good job of re-implementing someone else's API/products (WINE, Proton, LibreOffice, etc)

The F/OSS ecosystem does a comparatively poor job at independently developing its own technology and then standardizing/universalizing those choices. E.g. the transition from X11 to Wayland; the systemd "situation(s)", desktop environments... gui greeters, audio muxers...

I think Valve has done the right thing. They made existing games work on Steam; they made Steam work on most linux distros.

Making everyone use a reference linux platform seems to be a total non-starter.

We already have a reference gaming platform: Windows 7 thru 10. And what we learned in 2025 is that Steam on nearly _any_ Linux often implements that windows reference gaming platform better than Windows 11 does.

The modding of this comment is ridiculous. You may not like the conclusion but this is how we should hope people engage on a community forum. You know, by explaining themselves in detail. Obviously it's debatable, but 100% unassailability should not be the threshold for being modded up or down.

I think endless copyright and the advent of more server-side applications are somewhat related but mostly different things.

Also, I suspect (hope? dream?) the days of extending copyright indefinitely are over. One of the big excuses with the Bono act was that it put us in line with the rest of the world (read: Europe), I don't think there have been any extensions to Copyright beyond the status quo globally to support that. I also think the 98 fight woke a lot of people up to this racket and there will be major push back.

We live in an age where the ability to create new works is more democratic than ever and my guess is people will be more enthused about leveraging that to reimagine and elaborate on older works than ever. I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with The Great Gatsby and The Trial.

Having said all of that, maybe I am naive. I certainly expect Big IP to put forward some nonsense nakedly self-serving argument to extend again but I think a lot of the consolidation we've seen on media production side indicates they know the jig is probably up.

Maybe I am misreading you, but to act like there is no difference between Feudalism and Capitalism is a stretch that even Karl Marx would call you out on.

How exactly? I hear this a lot but I don't see much empirical to support this claim. I ask as a "black" person from the US.

Where the hell do you live that $10,000 a month isn't enough to cover your costs of living and save some money?

I love you.

I've been doing this for 30+ years professionally. If she's comfortable with Windows then stick with it. I tell people that ask me to go up to the store and find one that's comfortable for them. By that I mean, does the keyboard fit your hands, do you want a full numeric keypad, make sure the screen is the size that work for their eyes, pick it up and figure out if the weight is good, etc. Have her do that then, as her employer, find the one that best fits HER needs. You're not buying 800 laptops, just one.Then go configure the best make and model that fits those requirements. It sounds cheesy but an employee happy with the tool that they're going to spend most of their time on is a productive employee.

I'm old but I vote Voyagers! The ! is actually part of the name.

My bad, 96863066.6668 gallons of farts per hour.

Man, I have been farting all day. An average of 8 seconds per fart. There are are 7.7 billion people in the world. Let's say 35% of those people fart 8 seconds per fart. That is 2.695 billion people farting for an average of 8 seconds per fart. That is roughly a little less than 22 billion fart seconds per day. Or 366666666.667 farts per hours. The average volume of a fart is 0.264172 gallons. That equals 366666666.667 gallons of farts per hour. Talk about man made global warming. We should tax farts.

And take some basic and intermediate accounting classes. If the company takes off you'll actually be able to understand what your accountant is saying.

Why can I use my Moderator Points on every post but this one?

Or, as it is in the United States, what Google doesn't want you to see.