One could hope you got a version on a disc that you could run when their auth servers are long gone but that is probably not going to happen

And it worked quite well.
Make it easier to just sign up to a streaming site to get access to the content than having to figure out how to pirate it.
I don't consume TV and movie content myself anymore. I did re-watch The IT Crowd again, but that was available for free on YouTube.

1. Not too long ago I wanted to see a new South Park episode only to find streaming it for free was blocked from my country. OK, perhaps I could find a streaming service, but none of those in my country had the latest episodes. I had HBO(MAX or whatever it was called at the time) but they did not have the rights to stream it in my country. So a VPN on my AppleTV did the trick.
2. My friend from Spain wanted us to watch some shows she had seen was on Netflix. of course those were not available here in this version of Netflix or any other service so VPN to the rescue again.

I understand why piracy are on the rise again. I am sitting here with my credit card, willing to pay to see something and i cant. So now our politicians here wanted to ban VPNs(facepalm) because people were using it to stream content on streaming services like I explained. So I wonder, if the politicians really works for the people, instead of listening to the lobbyists, why would they not ask the question. Why don't you sort your shit out so that people that are already paying for streaming and are willing to pay for it, can actually watch the content.

I have not used my Samsung TV remote in years, I control everything from my AppleTV. The TV has not been connected to the internet since I got it 4 years ago and installed updates back then.
A few weeks ago I had to change a setting and had to dig out my remote. it had lost pairing for the remote, but what was really strange was that I got an error that the TVs storage was full and it said i had to do a factory reset or contact support.

So what filled the internal storage in the years where it have not been connected to the internet?
I choose to ignore it. Perhaps a factory reset, see if there are any updates to it and the disconnect it again. IDK. The only problem i have is that it keeps going back to PCM instead of Dolby Digital out to my old receiver. (receiver does not support 4K, Apple TV does not have a optical out. Meh, I don't care, don't watch series or movies anymore. :) Just a bit of YouTube videos running while doing something else.

A minimal amount of jobs. Tax breaks so they don't pay their share.
IDK why people would want them there.

It became too expensive in the end. I got a few until last year, I would get a 2-3 Christmas cards, and I would send the same. We kept it up for the nostalgia but decided to skip it last year because the price of a letter was just stupid.
I know of people who would send out wedding invitations, but spend a day driving around and delivering themselves instead of mailing them and only us the post for those too far away.
IIRC the price was in the end over 5$ pr letter as a minimum. Where I live it looked like they would only deliver once pr week and from the print date on the letter sometimes it took them 14 days to deliver it. It was a poor and expensive service in the end.

If you look at the views 100% some AI generated content gets on YouTube, sadly people seems to view it.
It is not just shorts videos, there is AI generated stories, fake audio clips of famous people that is all AI, easy to hide if you pretend it is from an old radio show or a podcast, sometimes you can still detect it in the voice generation, them using modern words or formed sentences that they wouldn't have at that time.
And also many fake reviews. I recently came across a "Top 6 TVs to buy", by the second brand, I thought that the text felt off and they voice was to uniform to be a person, by the third there was errors like "3 reasons to avoid this brand" which then listed 2 reasons. a real person doing voice over would have caught that. and the rest seems like the same vague reasons over again.
That video got millions of views. You don't need to hit a home run on every video. The tools are here for writing the script, creating the voice over and creating B-roll from stock footage and/or AI generated. Everything can be automated easily with API calls.

IDK if people are too stupid or they just don't care. It sucks.
Once they are able to mimic true human limitations, I don't know what to do to avoid it, I would say that I would have to see a person talking in the video to give it true value but soon that will probably be cheap to mass produce in good quality with AI too. :(

Does not sound like "the next level". Next level would be to only to accept people who will, and can assimilate into their culture and social norm or at least not be a burden. Maybe they are already doing that. IDK. dont care really. :D

I added to my configuration of ChatGPT that it was important to me that what it says is correct.
Now it starts every communication with "here is the no-bs answer", "here's the straight facts", "this is what is going on, no sugar coating here".
Of course it still makes up shit 60% of the time.

The fun part of this is that politicians would be exempt from having their messages scanned. So apparently they did not have enough confidence in its security. :D

No, at the office there is deafning noise and constant distractions. an open office with no walls barriers, just desks with 80+ people in the same room. Laughing, chattering, phones ringing with obnoxiously loud and annoying ring tones they think is cool, people having Teams meetings at their desk, yelling into their head set because they can't hear themselves. People having meetings around their desks, talking past you to talk to others.
And I swear some people just come in to chat and spend 1/3 of the day just chatting about anything with people who pass their desk.

At home there is silence to focus on what I do, because I enjoy working with the things I work with.

And lets not forget that politicians are exempt from this monitoring. soo. is it not secure enough that they trust the privacy of politicians with this thing.

:D

Losing in a contest where all the money is owned by a handful of people.
Seems idiotic to cheer for that.

Trump continues âoenot to rule outâ using military force to invade our country? He had been very consistent on that. Unlike much of everything else he says.

IDK about the American prices, but my problem with it is that it is too expensive for something that is barely food. Even If you just accept that it is an unhealthy snack and you feel like indulging in it, the value proposition isn't very good.
A large meal is even worse, because it just adds more of all the cheap crap, water with sugar and more fries.
With half an hour of work, I can cook someting myself that tastes better, has more meat and does not contain all the crap.