They're simply taking a minimalist launcher (like the ones here https://techlog360.com/best-cl...) and baking both a hardcoded DNS filter and blocklist... and slapping it onto a flip phone from 20 years ago.

From a device standpoint, it's like the "souped-up" version of a Consumer Cellular Iris (https://www.walmart.com/ip/Consumer-Cellular-Iris-Easy-Flip-Gray/6926754486?classType=REGULAR) or the Walmart/BLU/Tracfone $30 flip phones. With stronger components, it can run native Android rather than the slimmed-down KaiOS (derived from Android but not compatible due to lack of Android Runtimes).

Ultimately, a humongous yawn. Paying premium to NOT be able to check my Gmail acct to complete required 2FA log-ins (from any other device, honestly) is rather dumb and a real nonstarter. It's a mobile device, meant to do mobile things, like reading that email without being tied to a workstation or finding the number you need to call because the doctor's office sent an appt confirmation via email -- so dumb.

You're incredibly generous... I'd spend no more than $20 via Walmart gift cards (that's right, not from my own money... just from some gift cards accumulated throughout the year).

Streaming services already increase service costs just so you can keep accessing the archive at a later date.

Now imagine the increase in your monthly streaming subscription when the various authorities start imposing MORE taxes/fees atop your service costs... for the EXACT SAME CONTENT ARCHIVE... No matter how you slice it, every taxation authority would simply pile-on various justifications for ever-higher fees!

The taxation authorities would charge both the streamer and the subscriber because why not?! If the digital transaction is taxable, then every authority will argue that it is either sales tax, usage tax, business excise tax, or all of the above legal authorities for various line-items.

And even your MVNO would be subject to additional taxation because your dared to purchase your monthly service via an ecommerce check-out process rather than a telephone call or in-person handshake.

The consequences are rather chilling...

Astound Broadband (a merger of Wave Broadband and Astound of California, IIRC) was unable to upgrade my home's wiring to fiber for over a decade whilst increasing fees every year like clockwork (and they've added 50% monthly fees just on administrative costs alone!)... and it took all of 6 weeks for Quantum Fiber to install new fiber from the pole (and 1 more week to re-lay fresh fiber to repair kinks from the previous install on my neighbor's setup so now EACH building has its own dedicated fiber from the pole)... and the performance has been outstanding, pricing has been "for life" (in a good way)... and Comcast only offers dial-up speeds (in 2026!) for the same price as Astound offers janky cable over copper.

Astound + GFiber + Investment Partners will do nothing for existing homes; they're ALL about large apartment complexes and large developer projects -- it's the only way they'll monopolize their income streams regardless of local regulations that stipulate openness to ISP competition.

Of course, with AT&T acquiring Quantum Fiber, lord knows what direction the ISP landscape is going... and the anti-municipal fiber lobbying is forcing the corruption scheme to just keep on going...

You seem to NOT understand the scope of any such designation: The Pentagon's scope is everything within its purview -- distinctly NOT for things beyond the realm of the military's activities. Aspects pertaining to the federal Executive Branch (like DOJ) are outside of the Pentagon's scope.

However, the Pentagon's presidential briefings would make note of the designation for the US President to consider their own actions. And this is what President Trump did by declaring Anthropic is no longer welcome within federal government projects.

The designation does NOT inherently prevent Anthropic from doing business within other private (read: non-government) organizations worldwide. In fact, Anthropic's involvement was strictly as a subcontracted components supplier to Palantir's own Pentagon contract! For this reason, in order for the top brass to "kick out" Anthropic from the Pentagon, they had to add it to an exclusions list (which would contractually permit Palantir to source a different supplier).

All to say that the combination of the Pentagon's and President Trump's actions were contractually required to get OpenAI into the fold... and the real-world implications of the "supply chain risk" designation is rather overblown. I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir originally requested these actions themselves!!!

The "supply chain risk" designation is scoped solely within the confines of the Pentagon (in this case) and its contractor agreements. It does NOT mean that all suppliers are forever forbidden from conducting private business with said risk for private client contracts disconnected from the long tentacles of the Pentagon.

Also, with Trump effectively removing Anthropic from being utilized, that would negate any prospective risk due to it no longer being a qualified component to fulfill any government contracts. (And since the designation only applies to such contracts, the private sector is forever at will to utilize Anthropic for whatever non-governmental work they've been conducting forevermore.)

In other words, the potential "supply chain risk" designation combined with Trump's declarations forbidding Anthropic results in an entire nothingburger.

The actual chronology is something like this: In 2022, LibreOffice Online is effectively abandoned (all kinds of reasons tbh) so Collabora forks it to create Collabora Online. Fast forward by 4 years (February 2026) new LibreOffice leadership votes to veto/undo the previous abandonment vote, thus creating this conflict.

From the public discussion thread, it appears the new Leader wants to take/own the Online solution away from Collabora... in the name of FOSS or something unfounded other nonsense.

IMHO, Libre is trying to undo their past decisions but doing it all wrong. In other words, replaced ineffective leadership with other ineffective leadership. Sigh.

Writing off debts happens very often -- sometimes spinoffs are created for the sole purpose of concentrating debts into a singular entity for the explicit purpose of that otherwise-unknown entity to declare bankruptcy! This is part of the games corporations are legally permitted to do to allow an ongoing concern to not wholly disappear due to some bad bets.

The ONLY action in this Apple Card news that is extraordinary is how JPM recognized the charge (aka wrote off their part of the acquired debts) during the same financial quarter the deal is announced even though the bulk of the migration is taking place over the next two years -- for the card issuance to happen in about 2 years' time.

Just to repeat: writing off debts is common... recognizing those write-offs before public announcement of any deal is, however, quite unusual.

Credit approval rules/processes were securitized by Apple Corp itself (as it's their own branded credit card, after all) which was mostly for Apple hardware purchases with sticker prices and payment plans larger than typical daily consumer spending habits -- How often do YOU plunk down $2000+ on a brand-new credit card promotion for new computer hardware?

There have been stories about this delinquency rate but Goldman Sachs wasn't truly losing any money (Apple paid them back when purchases were from Apple Stores after all) except for GS' own fraud detection measures which might have been insufficient.

The end result? GS could not convert their consumer credit portfolio (across other brands also) into enough stable profit. They left the Apple Card product a financial mess and even provided a $1 Billion USD discount on the acquisition price -- to ease the pain of an actual well-oiled consumer credit company to incorporate the Apple Card business into their existing processes.

BTW none of this is 'unusual' or 'extraordinary' in the consumer credit space. All sorts of brands have been changing hands, and sometimes companies (like Discover) also gets acquired by larger fin firms.

The class action is being brought BY employees (or employees-adjacent) streaming subscribers... all legal fees paid by Paramount/Skydance law firms.

This is common dirty business tactics by the hostile takeover firms in hopes of torpedoing the already-agreed-upon M&A deal involving their business interests (in this case, WBD). Just watch any episodes of Suits (that TV drama about corporate law firms) and you'll quickly understand that there's no bar too low for corporate hostilities. (The show is dramatized but not wholly fictional!)

MCD = McDonald's Corporation stock ticker symbol.
KO = Coca-Cola Company's stock ticker symbol.

And it's about the PR brouhaha of these companies' AI Sloppy adverts... in case you couldn't connect the dots.

First off, your entire reply is too much an understatement of the lack of intellect demonstrated throughout the ranks of selfish brown-nosers.

Secondly, my favorite famous-person quote is by the late comedian George Carlin:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

You touch upon the layers of the 4K technology stack! There's more than just single-frame dimensions!

There's frame dimensions, frames-per-second (FPS), color gamut, and other data (including audio channels of their own specs) within the throughput afforded with 4K/8K.

And as with anything technological, real-world performance is roughly 50% advertised (theoretical) technical max. So for best 1080p/HD experience, I rely on 4K cable. And for my 4K? I use 8K HDMI cables.

Overall, even fewer people would recognize a difference upgrading from 4K to 8K -- especially when 720p-1080p/HD *content* is "good enough" for most content, although native 4K content is ideal for larger-dimensioned viewing ("big screen" TVs).

The 8K specs are in the same realm as the 3D-TV revolution; mostly a fad due to the limited availability of content that truly showcases its distinctive value proposition.

With Comcast and its media empire, ranging from NBC broadcast to Universal Studios to major sports teams to Xfinity ISP to cable TV to various digital/print publications to DreamWorks and other major movie studios and beyond (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for more), it is the epitome of a propaganda machine.

As the old saying goes, Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. https://quoteinvestigator.com/...

So anyone who remains within the bubble of that media empire is brainwashed into whatever narrative the powers-that-be determine the narrative to lean.

In response to point (a) -- Positive investments into the labor force are good for business (both in political and economic terms). The fundamentality is that your target consumer is derived from your workforce itself; if they're not employed, then they're without income upon which to spend on your consumer good.

In response to points (b) and (c) -- 100% agreed. Knee-jerk businesspeople are not insightful (no matter how eloquent their sales pitches may be) due to their ignorance to the actual factors and interconnected gears driving supplier costs. Sometimes the supplier simply demands higher prices due to the buyers not committing to longer-term buying contracts (see OpenAI + Nvidia/AMD for recent examples of mutual support).

In response to point (d) -- Their decisions were spurred during an insightful period in the 1990s' globalization expansion about nurturing the domestic economies before boosting foreign economies; for these guys and the domestic nature of their customers (it's rare for commodities to have global marketplace dominance), it against points back to my response to point (a) above: if your neighborhood is unemployed and cannot afford your product, then what makes you think other equally-unemployed neighborhoods could afford your product?!

Everything used to be domestically manufactured (with few exceptions) whilst limiting immediate corporate greed. But as with any wayward management tier bulked up with internal layers each pining for unearned payouts, many businesses chose offshoring. It's nice to see a case study illustrating how offshoring is not required; unfortunately it's a story that's falling on evermore deaf ears.