Not worth mentioning at all. Artists use modern tools. If you don't like it?...cool, listen to what you like, but FUCK RIGHT OFF with that attitude towards other people who like the sound of electronic music or music made with modern technology. That stupid story is as old as time "these kids and their new hits...it's not "REAL" music." I don't like Taylor Swift. She's boring to me, but that's just me having bad taste in music. Most of my favorite music is objectively worse. I get tempted to complain about autotune because I don't like the sound...but then I just sound like every asshole complaining about rap in the 80s or synthesizers in what...the 70s? 80s? Oh noes...a drum machine?!?!?!...what is this world coming to??? So yeah, my opinion is that I don't enjoy autotune, but my opinion is no more or less valid than anyone else's.

Music is very diverse today and yeah...some is a lot harder to do than others.

However, I have ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT for music craftsmanship. Fuck off with that shit....I don't care how hard it is to play that guitar solo if it sounds boring and tedious. I don't care how many instruments they used in their song if it sucks. I've never heard a drummer rave about a drum solo that actually sounded good to me.

A lot of great music I've heard was from some teenager playing on his home computer with no musical training or skill. Hell, that describes the early rave scene I'm so fond of. You want to listen to music with traditional notation and exclude Taylor Swift because she doesn't use it?...fine....but you sound like an asshat yucking other people's yum and pretending you have some legitimacy.

I hate a lot of music myself...much of which is from very popular and talented artists...but that's my failing...not theirs. You can manufacture whatever excuse you like, but you simply don't like Taylor Swift...that's fine....but your opinion is just an opinion....even if it is one I share. She is objectively a talented individual who is dedicated to her craft and has a huge following. I have no desire to dissuade people from enjoying her music or prefer my favorite music more.

Some years ago, there was a website that was dedicated to images of "Gatso" speed cameras around Birmingham, UK being burned out using the "necktie" approach: A tire was hung on the camera, petrol [gasoline] was added and set alight.

I'll counter with this. What data is there about their effectiveness? How many crimes are prevented by flock cameras that wouldn't have otherwise? Are they crimes I care about? How many innocent people have been charged with crimes due to Flock errors? I don't honestly have a strong opinion. Most of the abuse stories are hypotheticals and I typically trust cops because I don't commit crimes and I not narcissistic enough to think everyone is out to get me.

However, as a cold rational person, I'd ask...how much are we spending? How much benefit are we getting? How much ACTUAL, not theoretical, harm are they causing. This is a simple cost/benefit calculation.

I will say I FUCKING HATE RIng cameras because my asshole neighbors and shitheads on NextDoor ARE a huge problem. In my neighborhood, back when I was giving NextDoor a fair chance, there would be weekly posts of people showing dogs shitting on their yards. A few of the assholes that doxxed their neighbors even admitted that the owner cleaned up after the dog afterwards. It's very clearly abused by private citizens with untreated mental disorders.

My old next-door neighbors were busy professionals with a toddler and a baby. The mom went out of town for a business trip that included the weekend. The woman living across from them was sure to tell her when she got back that a pretty woman was visiting their house late every night. They are old paranoid retirees and hated the husband and thought they caught him cheating on his poor white wife. The husband (Asian) is also a very busy professional. Once the wife asked for a description (25yo hot blonde)...her response was "oh...Amy?..(she brings out a picture from her photos app of Amy playing with her kids)". Yeah, she's a babysitter we hire from time to time. Technically, this was just an asshole with a window and too much time....but people like this neighbor aren't rare. I worry a lot more about shitty things with Ring cams than Flock, personally...mostly because I know what shitty things people do with Ring footage. I don't know what people do with flock footage.

However, I'll give Flock open minded consideration...but I need to know data on how effective it is. I know its not cheap. I need to know it has reasonable protections from cops stalking exes and shittiness like that. I need to know it doesn't have a significant chance of falsely implicating people for crimes.

Who is enjoying life more?..you or him? I think you got that backwards! Life is far more fun when your mind is in the gutter.

Someone needs to fail. This bubble needs to pop yesterday! The OpenAI guys seem nice and all, but we need a big public failure in AI. I want to be able to buy devices without a massive AI tax. The bullshit hype is insufferable, but the chip cruch is killing us all...promising stuff few of us want to get these overleveraged HALF TRILLION datacenters built...while taking things we enjoy: our devices, gaming-consoles, etc and making them expensive and in short supply. There's NO SIGN they will succeed at their goals...and if they do?...there will be a white collar jobs apocalypse....which we fund directly and indirectly.

We all know this bubble will pop. It should have popped by now! OpenAI seems like an obvious casualty because they're so overhyped and not backed up by an advertising agency like Google and Meta. We need more common sense and hopefully these guys having a massive public failure will cool the stupidity and get AI investment to sensible levels.

I don't need Siri to explain physics to me. I need it to follow commands. If I want to have a conversation, ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini do a better job, but I rarely need that. What I need daily? Siri to help me with my mediocre attention span and aging brain that makes me forget things when I move from room to room...."Hey Siri...set an alarm for 9AM tomorrow". "Hey Siri...remind me in 2h to run my wife's and my butt plugs through the dishwasher". "Hey Siri, remind me to renew my prescription"

An assistant doesn't need to be a professor and therapist. I'd prefer a reliable dumb assistant with a lower ecological footprint and cost.

Honestly, I'm happy with Siri's capabilities. Perhaps improve the comprehension a bit, but I learned how to annunciate a long time ago with Alexa, so voice assistants understand me well.

Let's pretend we're cold-hearted economists who don't care about privacy or liberty. How does this even make sense from a cost/benefit perspective? Who the fuck cares about peeling paint and overgrown lawns? How does it benefit the city to crack down on this? Even Illegal dumping, outside extreme cases, it seems like a very minor offense. Most Illegal dumping cases are like some cheap-ass dumps a mattress in a dumpster (requires a disposal fee in many places)...not some Captain Planet story where a megacorp is pumping poison into the water supply. There are certain crimes where zero tolerance benefits the city: murder, theft, etc. Overgrown lawns?...no...if someone has an overgrown lawn, you need to take care of it...but really, if you need AI cameras to tell you it's overgrown, it's not a problem.

There's no way this is cheap. There's little to no economic benefit to enforcing these laws. Even the fines collected won't offset a multi-million dollar project with pioneering technology. There's no way this project could be delivered on time and budget. Consulting companies always fleece local municipalities or they just sincerely don't know what they're doing because it is a pioneering use of technology and they underestimate how long it will take. These days, most fines are a terrible revenue source and cost more to collect than they bring in.

To me, there's ethics and economics...this violates objective economic sense and probably the ethics standards of about 95% of the population. What moron thought this was a good idea?

If Amazon had any integrity, and we know they don't, the would ban all altered images. Only actual photographs with no deceptive editing should be allowed. I buy many niche items and many Chinese seller have a LOT of awful, blatant bad photoshop for legit products. The products are often sized wrong. For example, I buy a lot camping gear. I saw an amazing stool with an impressive load rating and thought...this is PERFECT for the beach. I bought it and it was half the size of the image. I suppose shame on me for not checking the measurements first, but who the fuck would sit on a 10" stool? The stool in the image had to be like 14"...a nice comfy size. It showed a large man sitting on it. 10"? That's a foot stool, not what was sold and they used photoshop to deceive customers.

But even if I had checked the measurements, I've seen many products that are completely unlike what is pictured. The image is shiny, smooth, and altered. The actual product is dingy and has awful texture from bad metal casting. That's false advertising and fraud. Amazon will give your money back...but that transaction is illegal and a crime. Why do I have to mess with this? Why are they enabling criminals? All those criminals they enable? The returns have an ecological cost of shipping and returning. They waste my time. They also siphon customers from legit sellers who don't deceive their customers. It's shitty and should have been called out by the gov a LONG time ago.

First of all, didn't Oracle get it's start as a CIA product? The company is a shit show today, but you can't dispute that they were a leader in the 80s and even the 90s. Ask anyone who has served or even just worked in gov. They've dealt with poorly-maintained software written for a specific purpose.

The gov COULD write software in theory, but historically, they do more poorly than when they hire consultants to do so. The ideal is private industry with heavy accountability. Those private businesses use the gov money and R&D to write private sector software: Oracle RDBMS is a direct example, but arpanet to the internet is another.

Make no mistake. Larry Ellison is a friend of Trump and that's how he got this contract. Oracle's modern record is mostly shite. The only good software they have they bought from others. Their cloud services are subpar. This is crony capitalism and I am confident they didn't get the contract on merit.

However, making the gov a software company?...eh...not so sure. There are 195 sovereign nations on the planet. Have any nations had success doing what you describe?

Ugg...why?....Sure...good games for the price of Prime I suppose is a good thing, but with the exception of Sony/XBox, every gaming subscription service I've seen sucks. The Apple Arcade has maybe 2 or 3 games I've enjoyed and I've honestly never heard of anyone liking it. Netflix has their games...equally pointless, more gimmickey....but regardless....who the fuck wants this? Also, in every case, the games I recognized were already free to play or super-cheap. Games Pass gives you real games that were huge hits....it provides immense value if you like those game. In fact the lack of an equivalent of one on the Switch is the only thing keeping me from running out and buying a Nintendo Switch 2 right now!!! I love the hardware, but WILL NOT spend $70 per game for 2 weeks of entertainment.

Look, we're adults...new features cost money. I'd rather you don't offer me games and maybe play a few less intrusive ads in your HORRIBLE streaming service? I really love the Boys and Invincible...but beyond that?...eh...there's gotta be something good in there...I just don't know of any, nor has anyone raved about their series. I think most would rank them maybe #5 among the streaming services?

Offering gaming with video streaming is kinda like offering landscaping services at your local strip club. They're very different audiences with very different needs. I don't see any benefit or synergy.

If Amazon wanted to start their own XBox games pass rival as a separate product?...that could have some traction...but giving away shitty mobile games in prime?...why? Either keep your costs down or give us something we want...A PC-based Games Pass rival could potentially be interesting...a Nintendo-Switch based games pass would be amazing if done decently...shitty mobile games?..no!

From TFA:

It may not be what you wanted, but it's better than nothing and better than what Sony and Nintendo offer. I don't personally care. I am not into old games, but seems like a nice to have for people who are.

When? Android 16 has been out over a year. My phone has a pending update to Android 17.

Real example: Tina Peters.

Again, no. The houses started out highly leveraged: not quite as much as my residence, but still very highly leveraged. It's possible that caching out a couple of years ago might have produced higher returns, but there is a lot of tax to pay when I cash out. I bought one house, then, after it had appreciated in value, I re-mortgaged it, taking some cash out and used that as a deposit on the second house.

I started with about $20k, not $100k. That was possible back in 2002. For most of the life of the mortgage, the after-tax cost of the mortgage, taxes and maintenance was similar or less than than the cost of rent would have been. Renting would not have provided a stream of funds to invest, over and above buying.

I have also turned a similar starting investment into significant asset value through buying a couple of houses to rent.

There is no way that I could have built up the same wealth without buying my house back in 2002.