Why kink shame, man?

Possible furry issues aside, the real problem with the whole AI toy situation is that they are being used by the corporations making them as a gateway drug. Get the kids used to interacting with AI enabled devices, and they'll move on to bigger, more complex AI devices as they grow up. And since we seem to insist that all time belongs to the corporations, and both parents should absolutely be dedicating most of their day to the corporations that employ them rather than raising their kids, a situation that's been getting substantially worse over time, not better, parents use interactive, or sometimes even passive, devices as babysitters. Radios, televisions, iPads, and now interactive AI toys.

It used to be saying the corporations would prefer us to be born to their devices and stay addicted to them until our death would be mocked mercilessly as a silly, irrational fear. Now it just seems like the direction things are headed, and it seems the vast majority of people aren't even thinking about trying to fight that trend. Or are too tired from work and the constant, nagging suspicion that even that's about to be taken away as an option now that we've set up the entire existence of society to depend on it, to have any fight left.

Price spike? You have to pretend to be an AI datacenter to even be eligible to purchase memory from Micron. Which, I assume, will require a purchase well beyond what any individual could ever reasonably need, unless you happen to actually own your own large-scale datacenter.

They're doing that to every facet of society, from governing to education, why would science & technology be exempt?

I never could understand the Oscars. It was always about Hollywood celebrating their own amazingness. It just always felt like a whole bunch of uber-elites getting together to stroke each other off over how incredible they were. I've probably seen a total of about a half-hour of it in my entire life, mostly because it just feels icky to see.

When it's profitable to the already rich. Duh.

Sweet summer child. You think this is complete? They won't be happy until people have force-installed tech gadgets at birth that pipe ads directly into our brains while we sleep. We're aiming to enshitify the entire human experience, not just online interaction.

Antitrust stopped being a thing we enforced a long, long time ago. It's honestly surprising how long it took to reach the movie industry, considering the way we've been letting the business world consolidate different industries over the last few decades. Sure, there's some chatter about it here or there among the political class, but for the most part it's half a step forward, twenty steps back when it comes to enforcement.

From the outside, the entire AI spending spree looks very much like a giant capitalistic circle-jerk. Maybe a few people get their rocks off, but in the end, nothing of value is actually made. It's just massive piles of money circling around and around through the same circle of douchebags, all so that they can *say* their earning massive piles of money, while in reality it's just the same few millions / billions, circling through the same hands, over, and over, and over, and over. There's no actual end-product, and no actual profit, as each company's profit is simply passed on to the next jerk in the circle, or passed back to the previous jerk.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Tell me, you saw the Brooklyn 99 version in your head, didn't you?

I'm overall not big on for-pay services in general these days. I do have Paramount at the moment since I got an entire year for like $50, but guarantee that'll get canceled before the year is up because their normal rate is absurd for what they offer. But having a year to traipse through the older Star Trek universe and a few other selected titles is fine. AppleTV service just hit me in exactly the wrong way as Disney streaming did. That company has gotten enough of my money and I need more incentive than the slightly tantalizing promised raping of a favorite series of books from my youth (Foundation).

I'm old. I prefer separation. Integrated is a shorter way of saying, "breaks quicker and you lose everything at the same time the first part breaks."

And I don't personally trust Roku, but there are a lot of people that do. Thus far Apple hasn't used its spying power to try and foist advertising on every moment of the experience, so I've stuck with my AppleTV boxes, though I refuse to use their "pay us for two decent shows and a bunch of dreck" monthly streaming service.

This reality won't have quite as happy of an ending as that scene. Our turd won't end up being a chocolate bar.

Get a new TV and never, EVER let it connect to the network. If you need to stream on it, buy a separate box of some sort. Roku, AppleTV, or just an old laptop with HDMI on it. It's almost impossible to buy a spy-free TV these days, but keeping it from accessing the network still seems to be a safe bet. No telling how long before they determine it's "cheaper" for them to include an always on cellular modem in the base unit because too many have decided not to let them on the internet after purchase, but right now that's still a future problem.

1. Asshole Indicator
2. Facial Data Collection Unit
3. Ultimate Life Monetizer
4. All Data Is Mine
5. On Demand Data Rapist

Someone needs to train the AI to click around the web like a user, so that the web companies can keep their ad revenue up once they've knocked us pesky humans off the web.