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Comment That's a bold strategy (Score 1) 5

It's a 5-year-old gaming console at this point. I'd imagine by now there's a decent supply of used ones available.

Personally, aside from a Nintendo Switch that I was given as a gift (and it's basically obsolete at this point), I'm team PC Master Race when it comes to gaming. If you're buying a console you may as well just take your money outside and light it on fire.

Comment Re:What did he expect? (Score 1) 75

On the flip side I do find many people who take their smart phones or tablets into the kitchen, take notes, write shopping lists, read recipes while cooking. If only there were a convenient place we could simply put a screen.

I have a whole collection of obsolete tablets that are newer than my fridge. My fridge keeps chuggin' along fine, keeping food perfectly chilled, while the tablets are just e-waste that I've been procrastinating on taking them to be disposed of properly (except for my 5th gen iPad mini, which is still somewhat useful for checking the Ring cameras and responding to texts - it's otherwise too slow to do much else). It seems like if someone really wanted a smart device stuck to their fridge, they should just attach it with magnets. That way when the tablet becomes too long in the tooth, you replace it and don't have to scrap a fridge that otherwise still works just fine at its primary function.

I feel pretty much the same way with infotainment systems in cars. If I was stuck with whatever homebrew app system GM implemented in 2018 in my Bolt, that'd be miserable, but it has CarPlay and Android Auto support.

Comment Re:If you DO have IoT devices... (Score 2) 75

The manufacturer's answer to this will be cellular modems.

A few companies have tried this with products that cost less than a car. Usually you're on the hook for a service plan if you want the connectivity to continue working, or in the case of what Bird did with a scooter they used to sell, they just announced one day that everyone is losing their connectivity and too bad if you weren't expecting that. Back in the day, Amazon used to offer Kindles with free cellular connectivity, but they discontinued that awhile go.

I don't think we're quite at the point where the economics really work out in favor of the manufacturer (unless they figure out a successful way to monetize it), so smart fridges will probably be reliant upon home WiFi for the for foreseeable future.

Comment Re:at least it hasn't exploded (yet) (Score 1) 75

Speed Queen is the only reliable washer/drier brand available in US.

They discontinued their old school design for the home/consumer market a few years ago. Their current offerings aren't meaningfully different from what other major appliance manufacturers are selling.

On a related note, I used to think the same thing regarding washing machines - that the "built like a tank" designs from my childhood were the best. Turns out they actually use a shit ton of detergent (which has become expensive in recent years) and are rough on your clothes. I switched to a modern front-load high efficiency washer a few years back, and somewhat recently also upgraded to a heat pump clothes dryer. Even if they don't last 20 years like the old school beasts, I'm saving money by using a lot less detergent, water and electricity, and my clothes aren't getting destroyed.
 

Comment Re:What did he expect? (Score 1) 75

Just telling people to not buy something with a screen is not only not going to influence them, it's going to make them dismiss you as just another old man yelling at clouds.

Maybe if we were talking about screens in cars, where it's a different way of getting information and interacting with the vehicle controls, but this is a refrigerator. It has one job - to keep your food cold, and nowhere in that mode of operation is a ginormous display part of the equation.

It's like putting a margarita mixer on a toilet. You could, but you shouldn't.

Comment As Old as Chipped Beef. (Score 1) 27

Or you could just have a NFC-like chip inserted into the animal's neck which can be cheaply scanned by rescues/vets and have owners contact details looked up (as we do in the UK: it is a legal requirement to have all dogs and now cats 'microchipped').

Chipping animals isn't unknown in America.

In fact, they do it often enough to make me question if "AI" is the generic clickbait additive in this story about a search script.

Comment Re: Mac OS has already started to pester me (Score 1) 55

Sure, it is not a big problem for SSH. It is a problem when you connect to a web site, especially as certificate lifetimes get shorter: you need the whole certificate chain from a root (that your browser trusts) to the web server, which means at least two public keys and signatures and often more.

The NIST-approved post-quantum options and PK/sig sizes (in bytes, for "security level 1", which is the lowest) are Crystals Dilithium 2 (1312 / 2420), Falcon-512 (897 / 666 but computationally expensive) or SPHINCS+-SHA2-128s (32 / 7856 for the smaller but more computationally expensive signatures; same for SPHINCS+-SHAKE-128s). This compares to 32/64 or 64/48 bytes for 256-bit ECC algorithms and 256/256 bytes for 2048-bit RSA. If you are fetching a few kilobytes of text or CSS, this additional overhead is huge.

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