If it has to check in with a company's servers to function, they WILL either cease support or come after your wallet at some point.

Go with Home Assistant for control and devices that don't need to be connected to the Internet to work. Z-Wave, Zigbee and 433MHz are the things you should look for first before falling back to WiFi devices.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Their extraordinary claim was that somehow known chemistry was wrong. Their extraordinary evidence was 'belief', because the flaws in their experiment prevented any rational conclusion.

Retraction was the correct move.

I don't believe the US currently has the capacity to make a laptop from scratch, even at 20% above Apple pricing. Assemble yes, but manufacture no. If it's possible at all, whatever corners are cut will ensure it's unusable as a computing device.

It's also far more likely this is some kind of investment scam than an actual legitimate business plan.

It had humor, it had a plot, it didn't end with a big CGI 'vs nega' crapfest fight.

It was good enough for me to say that it was an improvement over simply more of the same.

Some times you just want to be entertained, especially when the world seems like it's getting shittier.

I don't need another superhero movie where it spends most of its time trying to depress me. It's OK to go 'full comic', drop the grimdark, and just have fun.

Why not LET IT DO THAT?

Tell everyone no garbage bags, just bins, and let AI-driven robots sort everything at the dump.

I'd like to see stats based on 100% of able-bodied, not-on-mat/pat leave, working-age, non-incarcerated people wanting to work, and then measuring the percentage of a standard work week per capita.

Total hours being worked divided by total available labour-hours.

You think the Republicans, who now control everything including the Supreme Court, who can apparently run masked thugs around the country abducting people, denying them due process, and send them to concentration camps, will limit themselves to gerrymandering and a bit of light voter intimidation and maybe another seditious assault on the government if they lose?

The US is in for some highly corrupt elections, and anybody who complains about it is in for a world of hurt unless they're rich, white, and connected.

>This is the final refuge of the defeatist: âoeTheyâ(TM)re already watching you, so why care?â

Please don't put words in my mouth. Try, "They're already watching you, so you're going to need to find another way to avoid them if it's important enough, and it'll take a lot of work".

Phone-to-provider encryption seems like a better option. The only unencrypted information to start with would be your provider's ID, so your traffic is routed to their systems for decryption. Basically... my best current guess for greater security? Give up your mobile phone number, use data and a VOIP app. Then the cops will have to get a warrant (assuming your VOIP provider worries about that) not only to know the content of your conversation, but even to know who you called.

You're never going to be able to hide your phone ID and location with current cellular technology, though. You're not connecting to a tower at all unless it knows you're a valid client, and once you connect to a tower they at least know your general direction (most towers have antennas facing each direction, and aren't omnidirectional) and can guess your range. If you hit three or more towers, they can start to approach GPS accuracy pinning you down.

Long before you have to worry about all that, the cops will already have you under surveillance. Every box on every pole around your usual hangouts could be a camera and mic. They could have put devices in your car or home. And I wouldn't bet on them waiting on a warrant to do these things. The warrant will come when they think they'll need to use the information in court and might get called on it.

Then unfortunately you've never worked for a decent company, because I have worked for several such small IT support providers. I have myself worked with Microsoft engineers on issues that were beyond my skill level and resistant to Googling.

>That's way too costly. Even many mid sized businesses and lower end large businesses won't pay the vast sums that kind of support costs. Instead they'll hire someone to do IT for them.

Yes. Small IT support companies that in turn have relationships with the major product vendors and can, when required, use them to get higher level support.

Please - show me where in Toronto there is a company that can do that - even if they only employ people who can remove & reinstall & do basic configuration, but can call upon top level, very capable dev-level support. I'd love to be recommending a path off of MS Office to my employer.

> Otherwise, there's a myriad of support options available which are completely free. Think of irc, forums, bug trackers, documentation, the various project sites, etc.

Insufficient. From home user through the 'mom & pop', all the way to the upper end of the small business... the users have to be able to pick up a phone and get support - including on site - or it's too much risk for them.

It's worse than that. They can carry the official force-issued cell phone and keep their own as well. And presumably if they're bad enough, there's no record of the personal phone because they bought it with and top it up with cash 'just in case'.

But police radio's been getting quiet and less interesting for years now anyway as they switch to mobile apps for the majority of dispatch uses.

And do reasonability checks with inertial guidance systems. I was doing that a decade ago, so I'm pretty sure it's just another GitHub download by now.

You can also have your drone accept an encrypted abort code. Presumably you're watching from a safe distance.