Parent of a 11y old boy in California here.

At first I thought the screen freak out was an overreaction. I do believe that screen time is a good way to open the kids to the world and learn many things. Over time my opinion has evolved.

I am now worried about "brain rot" content created by other kids and teenagers. I do joy allow "pay to win" and loot box games (Netflix mobile games are a good clean option). Games with heavy social aspect like Roblox are banned. And the worst part is our son just refused to do non screen activities and gave us tantrums.

After a big tantrum last month we grounded him from screens for 2 months, and his behavior has significantly improved. Home work is done faster and better, since it is not competing with screen time. He got toys such as Lego back out of storage, etc...

Are you sure about that?

https://massdata.com/the-zero-...

And cheaper. I only visited Japan once and only Tokyo. I was concerned that food would be expensive as Tokyo is considered to have high cost of living.

It turns that dining out is more affordable than in the San Francisco Bay Area (I know, high cost of living too), and we did not get a single bad meal. We always left full and satisfied.

With the current exchange rate, Japan is relatively cheap to visit.

It "can" does not mean it "does" ... yet. Part of the issue is that they definitely lost the trust of us the consumers.

IANAL but I feel that current activity probably breaches several laws such as the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act and the later amendments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are many issues with an EULA, for example most people do not really know what they accept, and the UI is designed to push you to accept everything. In many cases one household family member will accept the EULA, why does this make it binding to the entire household, or even guests coming to your house? What if your kid has a 10y old coming over to watch a movie and starts accepting all the prompts without your knowledge?

This also potentially breaches the Two Party Consent laws in states like California since the phone calls you take near your TVs can now being logged and pushed to LG servers, even with the TV 'off', and neither you or the other party have actually consented for that call to be recorded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I personally experienced LG is in breach of the right to repair law in California, so they knowingly break laws and do not care.

Or this: https://vimeo.com/60821380

I remodeled my kitchen last year and bought an LG oven. The latch cover, small plastic part was broken. I asked them to send me a replacement. Online support agreed, twice, but never sent me anything. I ventualky they said they would send a tech, after I inquired about cost they said that I might have to pay for the tech (around $150, and the new door over $500).

I reminded them of the right to repair regulation in California and that I would even pay a couple of bucks for the LEGO sized plastic hinge cover. They refused. I eventually posted daily negative review on their Facebook page. They sent a tech and a new door for free, and he broke the new hinge cover.

Never, ever again LG. I've owned several LG dishwashers (they break fast), an LG laundry machine, two LG 4K monitors. I've learned my lesson and when I had to replace my LG dishwasher yet again under 5Y, I bought a Chinese brand. It washes just as well and so far has been more reliable since I got zero issues with it.

I really hope LG sales across all they products tanks hard so it can be a lesson for the other manufacturers to start acting in the best interest of the consumers again.

Yes, the fans buy them as collectors items, even if they do not own a player.

If you have a neighbor with open WiFi, it can connect to it and send the spying data without your knowledge.

Even if you physically remove the built-in microphone the tv can still record you through other means.

That's some of the things the researchers found out.

The fix is to fully wrap your tv in foil to prevent the data to leave your house. The display will be hard to watch unfortunately.

The irony is the at if Apple and Google do leave the uk and eu market, meaning no more iOS or Android, then the ones filling the gap are not going to be Nokia or some other crippled EU startup, but it will be mostly Chinese companies with a Chinese made OS.

If you believe the US is evil and China is benevolent that's fine. More and more governments around the world criminalize failure to "goodthink".

With the stories of LG TVs constantly recording you even when the screen is turned off, I would hope that politicians would double down on privacy instead of destroying it, but the trend seems to be to criminalize privacy.

People should read/watch 1984 or even Minority Report, these scenarios are not coming, they are already in place.

https://www.gadgetreview.com/d...

Hard to watch tv through the foil.

I did not even realize that keyboards with individual colored lights were a thing until I read the latest release notes for Terraria.

The wiki has a good show of how the keyboard will have a flame animation if you touch lava in the game, or eyeballs when you fight some bosses. Kinda cool actually.

https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/...

Do I want it? Not really, it is more of a gimmick like the touch bar we had on MacBook Pros for a few years.

I just bought like new copies of Gardian of the Galaxy and Farcry 6 for just $10 each from a guy a few miles from me. The next day I got Mario Odyssey, Zelda Echoes of Wisdom for $25 each for my son's Switch from an other guy on Craigslist. I love the second hand market that is possible with physical media.

I do not care about getting the latest and greatest game, I just want games with a solo campaign I can play at my convenience when I have nothing better to do, including when the internets tubes might be down. As far as me and my son are concerned these games are new to us and costed us a fraction of what the 'digital' versions would cost and these games will continue working once the publisher decide to sunset the servers.

I know other games have servers locks, for example Grand Tourismo only lets you play a handful of tracks with no server connection, and so do many microtransaction games, but many games with solo campaigns are still awesome to play offline.

Of course I get it that Sony and Nintendo are not benefiting from my use of their consoles, but they do remove the ability for their direct customers to resell their old games library.

I do not know if that's the case but it feels like the first answer is trying to save compute cost and gives you a shortcut answer, then if you challenge the bad answer it then goes deeper, with a higher compute cost, and with more data being processed you then are more likely to have a correct answer.

The current models are probably not adequate for the current compute costs. So even if the models are capable of good results, it will take a few more years for the models to be more efficient and the hardware cost to go down. At some point we will get to a sweeter spot but that's for the future, it could be years or even decades away.

I used to like LG appliances, they do work well ... until they don't.

My final LG purchase was a double oven, which does cook very well. Unfortunately a very small plastic trim piece was broken, and it took me weeks of pinging LG support and social media teams to get them to replace it under warranty. I only wanted them to comply with the California right to repair law so I could just fix it myself, but they told me their corporate policies did not allow for that. When a tech finally showed up he did replace the piece by promptly braking the new one when installing it.

Shortly after that my LG dishwasher, previously kinda fixed under warranty, had the replacement controller board finally fry. I just got a Chinese brand dishwasher which works just as well but for several hundred $ less than the equivalent LG model. I like the looks better since there is no outside logo visible.

And yes, none of my smart appliances are connected to my home WiFi. Being able to program the oven more accurately would be nice, but not worth the risks.

BTW the prior GE ovens came with the house, they worked from 1968 until 2021, try to get 50+ years of use out of modern appliances.

Never again LG, never.

BNP Paribas, a large French Bank, paid a $8.9 billion fine in 2014. Not a small thing, even for a world class bank.

https://www.justice.gov/archiv...