I'm kinda impressed with this 'surreptitious' business model. I don't condone it, but I wonder what the money flow looked like before this hit the fan?

See my answer to
CaptQuark, less snark got
him a nice answer.

I admit my info is out of date. I lost a customer to this error message over 16 years ago and have since retired. Thanx for the correction.

The TDF should sue microsoft for slander. Specifically, when you try to open an ODF in an M$ product, you get a screenfull of FUD claiming it's malware, designed to scare away any non-technical user. It's an open format; they could just display it and try to save it in their own format later. This suit won't cure the problem, but it's a good start.

I doubt that drones can reach the altitudes that helium balloons can. OTOH, balloons are a one time shot; drones come back home for a charge and reuse. TCO and ROI must be a lot better.

On a side note, I live near the beach. Everyday I see small planes dragging a banner. I've been waiting for years to see a banner with just a drone at each corner, flying by itself with no plane.

One of my recent favorites was: "Lindsey Graham beats Mitch McConnell to Death"

We raise our small children on extremely sanitized data. The stories we tell them, the explanations in response to questions, even the facts we teach in early school all paint an ideal world. It's only after they've established an ethical approach and a sense of right and wrong do we start showing them the real world. We need to do this when training AI as well. Currently we throw all of it at them with little thought to establishing a base personality before expanding the data input. Of course we end up with a distorted mirror of the qualities of adult life; bots that threaten blackmail or encourage self-harm. You can't bolt ethics on after the thing has been trained on the complicated, often selfish behavior of real and fictional characters.

Also known as over 16 billion miles. Which is approximately 383 billion Rhode Islands: I did the math. Rhode Island is 48 miles by 37 miles, so I averaged at the mystical 42: 16,094,455,343 / 42 is a little over 383 billion.

Screw the mod points. You deserve national recognition, for both practicality and actually doing the math.

Why does it have to be locked to one device? If I have a few speakers around, maybe a laptop and my phone as well, why can't that AI software follow me around instead of making me carry it? This push is just to make people anthropomorphize their devices for emotional lock-in and a whole new level of brand loyalty. If it's so useful, why put it in a cage?

I use firefox under linux with ublock origin and Privacy Badger. I haven't seen any of these ads since people started bitching about them, and I watch youtube almost every day. I suppose this makes it easier for windows & mac users, but they should probably be running their browsers in a vm anyway just to avoid malware.

Other responses to my post have merit. You're just being an asshole.

Are you subby? You don't have to be so defensive. The first point you make is subjective opinion: I think landing is more impressive, . The second point is debatable, which I am happy to explore. Isn't a water landing easier than a million-dollar high-tech tower? How about proposing a more accurate phrasing for your third point, such as "Caught" or "Grabbed" rather than the still inaccurate "Landed"?

They didn't land it; they caught it in a net. It had hooks, not landing pads or struts. Accuracy would have given you the chance to double-up on 'net', as in "China Netted a Win", or "A Net Win for Reusable Rockets", but you took the lazy and inaccurate "landed." No mod point for you! As if I had any that could apply to a submission title.

This may be so, but if I were going under the knife I'd want a real human using telepresence rather than a fully autonomous AI. Machines aren't conceptually nimble enough yet when it comes to outliers and unexpected complications.