Really? I've never, ever heard that pitch for AI.

Apple's got many faults, but their hardware has a very premium feel. I presume this is where Dell's additional hundred bucks went, because Apple's used to doing that and Dell isn't. They think they are, but they aren't normally as good at it. But they're going to deliver this PC with Windows, and there might be Linux issues — there's no way to know until it's in reviewers' hands exactly what hardware is actually used around the parts we know about. And unless you specifically need Windows, it's very hard to imagine getting excited about spending more money to run that.

I have to admit that I find the lack of a headphone jack offensive, but I wouldn't even consider buying a Dell that's trying to be a Macintosh over an actual Macintosh, and I say that as someone with very little respect for Apple. I don't hate Dell, but I've never been impressed by them either. I would describe them as "less terrible than HP".

The fact that it's a garbage off-brand speaker makes it more likely that it's possible, because people with valuable brands are the ones who are most likely to want to prevent you from changing it, and also the most likely to actually design their own product internals or have them designed to spec. The cheap brands are most likely to grab a complete PCB off the "shelf", or even more likely than that, just have their crappy brand put on someone else's complete product.

But, and it's a big one, they won't be offering the user the tools to do it with. They'd have to figure out who actually made it and/or what chip is on it in order to identify the tool, then they'd have to track it down, then they'd have to maybe short something on the PCB because it's not necessarily as easy as holding down a button, they'd have to do it on a windows PC or at least by attaching a USB hub to a windows VM so that when the device inevitably changes IDs during the reflashing procedure it remains connected, or with some kind of reflashing tool which is cheap but which they definitely don't own.

Also, the amount of energy required to reverse it... it's hard to see where that could possibly have come from.

The name of the product is "Bomb", and "Bomb" is the default Bluetooth name.

I don't know whether that makes you advice invalid, or all the more salient.

ROTFL

Social engineering redux... except now you only have to convince a sycophantic and overly helpful AI.

For their hardware. When you want to move to someone else's hardware, will it still be solved?

He was clearly only trying to differentiate to determine the scope. Save your professional offense for an offensive situation.

Compared to AMD's drivers, and ATI's before that, they have always been far and away superior. AFAICT, AMD still can't do drivers, but at least we have the option of FOSS drivers which work on Linux. There are no Nvidia drivers worth a shit on any platform today, except for CUDA.

Yeah, I'm sure IBM didn't intend for business customers to buy the PC.

Wait, what?

Many people incorrectly think of proxies and VPNs (especially VPNs) as a security and privacy enhancement, but unless you're operating the proxy/VPN server yourself they're just as likely to be a massive security and privacy risk. The problem is that they concentrate all of the traffic you'd most like to keep secret in one server, and depending on exactly how the system works, may require installing software on your local machine with ~root permissions. If the operator is malicious, this is a really dangerous combination.

These are useful tools for location shifting and -- in fairly rare cases, and with VPNs only -- from hiding traffic from malicious. But third-party proxy/VPN services should always be viewed with suspicion. Obviously this is even more true when the provider is Russian... though it's pretty likely that wasn't made clear to the people who used the service.

A person can be sane and immoral, sane and moral, insane and immoral or insane and moral. "Orthogonal" is perhaps a little too strong, since it implies the absence of any relationship, but certainly all the combinations are possible.

Since the consumer only cares about the amount they pay, any reasonable person would understand that's the only number actually being discussed. Amazon should simply not commit fraud, and AGs should simply prosecute when they do. But they're not in the business of protecting our interests, which we know because they almost never prosecute wage theft (which exceeds all other theft combined.)

Not going to ARM is an even better option right now. Let them get that ecosystem sorted out so that every platform doesn't need a special snowflake bootloader first.

Disney is the dumbest of manipulators. They find a trigger and they push it, and when they see it working they make it their whole identity and just keep pushing it. When baby-yoda-we-didn't-know-was-named-grogu-yet used a force power for the first time it was neato because of the reveal. But after that it's just too convenient. This is a problem star wars had always had. Force powers become easier or harder to use when it's necessary for the plot. Problem is, the modern writers aren't smart enough to figure out how to work it out, and whoever's deciding what makes it into the scripts is a poor gatekeeper.