It’s really not free. Piracy is still a bit of a chore. It’s just less of a chore than juggling a dozen streaming services, shitty and inconsistent apps and playing the whole “what major corporation’s subscription service has the rights for this show?” game.

They ought to try sucking less.

The big media corporations have been pushing legislation and legal crackdowns since the 90s and it hasn’t made a dent in piracy. They’ll keep trying of course, but it still won’t work.

My biggest issue with this whole debacle is that the non-profit board hasn’t clearly explained itself to the pubic or its employees. There’s an ethics discussion that absolutely positively needs to happen and there needs to be some sort of governance in place around a myriad legal and moral issues from copyright to displacing human jobs and that can’t happen right now because we still don’t know what the fuck the board was trying to accomplish.

I’m all for responsible stewards of AI, but I don’t think this board is it. They’ve cut themselves out of any future governance ability in any event.

I really don’t know what to think of this thing. It’s a bit like a combadge from Star Trek with a camera and small monochrome projector. I like the idea behind it, handling most of the utilitarian features smartphones bring without the games and social media distractions. The AI stuff is neat, but I don’t know how well baked any of it is and that’s really going to be what makes or breaks something like this.

Price is a bit high, and I don’t know how I feel about the subscription–I guess it’s not bad if you think of this as a full cellphone replacement, but that’s a tall order with something this new and dorky. There’s probably a 90%+ chance this becomes short-lived vaporware/abandonware, but who knows. I’d love to see something succeed that gets people’s faces out of their cellphones and back to interacting in person more.

I’m hoping the slow creep of right to repair laws will help with this. Forcing manufacturers to provide spare parts, documentation and diagnostic tools to independent shops I think will inevitably lead to more open devices in general.

There would already be a vibrant community of smartphone Linux distros right now if bootloaders were unlocked and manufacturers were more forthcoming with documentation.

If they design the process efficiently it shouldn’t burn too much battery to update the system image. The phone just needs to power up, connect to store wifi, apply the image and shut down. Doesn’t even need to power up the screen.

I would guess the savings accounts just aren’t bringing in as much in deposits and there are more small accounts and higher operational costs than they planned for.

He didn’t fail. He did what the board asked of him which proved to be more unpopular than they all had expected. So they gave him an obscenely generous severance package and sent him on his merry way.

He’s been rewarded and they’re just trying to position it so it looks like the company leadership gives a shit and won’t try the exact same thing at a later date.

Apple deliberately makes it appear that way so the competition looks bad.

They don’t really advertise the fact that they’re quietly intercepting all of their customers messages to other customers and routing them through a proprietary network.

And if you dare leave, messages from your old iPhone friends mysteriously won’t arrive unless you proactively deregister your number from iMessage or it eventually expires out.

I agree. I loved both, but I think B5 hit harder and is more relevant.

The effects were what they were. B5 had like half of DS9’s budget. DS9 still used mostly practical effects and models until season 6 which hold up better too, especially vs. early TV CGI.

I didn’t understand your comment at first because I thought the cartoons were both women. (I guess the one on the right had a bit of facial hair and masculine features.)

Switching it to two guys wouldn’t make a difference but I can see how male-left, female-right might look worse. But it really shouldn’t.

It’s a short cartoon. I read it as a playful, consenting couple having fun with each other. I don’t think it’s one partner luring the other in on false pretenses of an emergency and forcing them to perform oral sex. The gender arrangement shouldn’t affect that.