One thing to note - The science is still calculating. Yet. SpaceX (and presumably others) are allowed to continue and increase what they’re doing. This is the bass ackwards way to protect future us.

Its the same mentality as driving in a random direction for 20 minutes while someone looks in the car for the map on the off chance that when you get the map open you’ll be where you wanted to be anyway.

It has the potential (and at this point, just the potential) for planet level changes, and is being done by one group. Should I, a random dude, be able to do something that might possibly affect the entire planet, and the planet as a whole just have to wait and see how it turns out?

The hopeful thought that its probably nothing, before anyone can prove that it’s probably nothing, makes a bet where the short term wins are mine, but any long term losses are everyone else’s.

Nothing was taken away. It’s literally just combined with another port now. That’s not how either Apple or Samsung adapters work. The converters to a bit more than change the shape of the plug.

I didn’t respond to _any arguments you made. I thought you posed the question ‘why?’

[ confirmation bias at play. you have switched to bluetooth. it meets or exceeds all your needs. you don’t see much public indication to the contrary. you figure bluetooth is the best. ]

1. simplicity the cable just works. no configuration. no pairing .un pairing, figuring why it worked yesterday

2. Audio quality - bluetooth is lossy. we just were given AptX lossless in 2021 ( another confirmation bias ) “Sounds great to me” “I can’t hear the difference”.
   2 things are both possibly true though: I can’t hear the difference. Other people hear a big difference. this seems impossible to some people. As if their senses are the apogee of human sense.

3. lag. new codecs lower latency, but lag lag lag. You couldn’t possibly use your device as a synth/music instrument and ‘play’ the lag is far to great. Same with games.

4. whats the big deal. This is a bias for the plug users - would it hurt to keep it? we’ve always had it. The work is already done. Its already baked in the cake, why you gotta take it out?

5. Investment - I have really good headphones. I have really good earbuds. Yes there are adapters but they are finicky exactly when you want them to just work. They inevitably break. They often downgrade the sound - I have 3 usb to audio adapters for android that all hiss for no reason.

The issue is that when the marketers are selling us a ‘clean vision of the future’ they purposefully gloss over the things they are taking away. Then they paint the people who feel pain because of the change as neanderthals who wouldn’t know better if it bit them. When they do know better. They had better (for them) and progress made it worse (for them). To which the marketers generally say - you should be someone else.

167532282 :-) good times

You are not the only one.

This weeks game of ‘Internet pile-on’

its a good warning, but there’s no new info here.

• the scanners are usually not technically x-ray, some are mm wave, some are xray backscatter.
• the technology can see through clothes and produce a grainy bw image of a naked person
• the tech is very closed, and the customers are NDA’d into not letting the public know anything
• the enhanced privacy changes don’t change the device - its still taking naked pictures of people, its just doesn’t show them to the operator.
• before you look, as of a couple years ago there are just about 6 images from these devices out there on the internet. (iirc, there is a researcher who bought one off of ebay to study, but lost track of their work. )
• its in use in border patrol type operations to see into the trailers, trucks and cars.
• no one can prove they aren’t keeping a database of naked people. ;-)

https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy-pia-tsa-ait.pdf

https://www.rapiscan-ase.com/resource-center/technology/z-backscatter-x-ray-imaging

Which is a end-game around E2E. Saying ‘the message is encrypted’, but yes, I look at all messages before and/or after violates the expectation of E2E.

… its the scale.

we’ve had photograph manipulation since the photograph. we’ve not had the ease and scale which we are about to have. and its not the same.

anyone can open the box at the corner and mess with a traffic light. and has been able to since we had them. now give me the ability to mess with all the traffic lights in a city.

the difference is scale.

Media Contact: Office of Media Relations MediaRelations@fcc.gov For Immediate Release FCC VOTES TO REQUIRE CABLE AND SATELLITE TV PRICING TRANSPARENCY New ‘All-In’ Pricing Rules Will Address Consumers’ Confusion on Hidden Fees in Cable and Satellite TV Billing

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2024—The Federal Communications Commission today adopted new rules requiring cable and satellite TV providers to specify the “all-in” price clearly and prominently for video programming service in their promotional materials and on subscribers’ bills. The FCC aims to eliminate the misleading practice of describing video programming costs as a tax, fee, or surcharge. This updated “all-in” pricing format allows consumers to make informed choices, including the ability to comparison shop among competitors and to compare programming costs against alternative programming providers, including streaming services. TV providers often use deceptive junk fees to hide the real price of their services. The FCC is putting an end to this form of price masking, increasing competition, and reducing confusion among consumers. These new rules require cable operators and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to state the total cost of video programming service clearly and prominently, including broadcast retransmission consent, regional sports programming, and other programming-related fees, as a prominent single line item on subscribers’ bills and in promotional materials. The record demonstrates that charges and fees for video programming provided by cable and DBS providers are often obscured in misleading promotional materials and bills, which causes significant and costly confusion for consumers. These new rules continue a series of consumer-focused proposals to combat junk fees and support transparency for consumers. In addition to this “all-in” pricing, the Commission is preparing to upcoming launch of the mandatory Broadband Consumer Labels and has proposed to eliminate early termination fees from cable and satellite TV providers. Action by the Commission March 14, 2024 by Report and Order (FCC 24-29). Chairwoman Rosenworcel, Commissioners Starks and Gomez approving. Commissioners Carr and Simington dissenting. Chairwoman Rosenworcel, Commissioners Carr, Starks, and Simington issuing separate statements. MB Docket No. 23-203

Here’s a subtle thing…we say both the manufacturers and consumers have choices.

The manufacturer has the choice between all the thousands of possible ways to deliver a product, and picks one or two. A consumer has the choice between those two. ( or do without )

Those are all valid choices, but they are not alone of equal weight

most definitely that. not the other. The guy who played Pavel Checkov, the Enterprise’s navigator. Not the noted author born in 1860.

Yes, this is a bit outside the screen problem, but it is pertinent to car UI. Buttons/Joysticks give a form of tactile feedback, they don’t give positional feedback. Take a button. Pushing it does give tactile feedback (she feels that she pushed the button), but it’s quite possible that the button wasn’t pushed enough or long enough to register the push, same with joystick up/down. Flipping a switch for example is different. The position changes, and latches. She is certain that her intentions (turn on the light) were either carried out or not, because the switch with either be in position one or two. Buttons/joysticks require a second evaluation, to check that the button knows it was pushed. It’s a subtle difference, but serious. Sliding the gearshift all the way forward, we just know it’s done. Likewise pulling up on the handle, hearing the ratchet sound, I know that my parking brake is on.

What about the one sided ability to change a contract??

A year from now Roku pop up says “Click to Accept” , the text says **"this contract means you’ll have to give us your first born child? ** My reasoning says if they can do one then they can do the other. There is nothing that would prevent them from adding ‘fees’, or ‘subscriptions’ or simply turning off the device. (!)

This is egregious. We bought something. In normal commerce, the contract was set in stone at that moment. The seller can’t roll up 2 years later, change the contract, force you to agree before you can use your device, and then say , well maybe if you beg, you can opt out.

For more thinking about this issue for software/hardware makers a good read is “Enchanted Objects” by David Rose.

iirc. He says we’re in a ‘Glass Rectangle’ phase, where makers are stuck on screens, Like Xhibit in Pimp my ride - we put 22 screens in your car. They know how to “screen” and they use it the solution to all problems. It’s like an infatuation, where you just can’t see another way. There are entire sciences of Human Machine Interaction that explain why these designs are messed up, and the designers are aware, and have chosen otherwise.

2016 Actor Antov Yelkin who played Checkov is killed by his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, pinning him to his mailbox and fence. Because it didn’t have a gearshift. It has a thing that looks like a shift but is a joystick.

( no english major here, by far)

but I suspect my qualm is: which entity is the actor and which is the acted upon.

Disney did not act to remove the subscribers, but rather the opposite, the subscribers acted to drop Disney.

One might extrapolate that Disney’s previous actions directly lead to the event.

Does that stand to reason?

Do they mean 1.3 Million subscribers dropped Disney+ ?

If that’s what they meant, english would actually let them say that.

headline: “We’re still asking some people what they think should be done about the harm they caused.”

must be nice to get asked what you think you you might want to do about it.

1. I’m old enough to have been down this road a dozen times, and it has always ended in tears. The ones I bought into either came into the market too early, too beta, or too late, or just weren’t able to see it through or abandoned hope mid journey.

2. I think it has a great chance to be a great thing.

Why? The magic isn’t the Framework Ecosystem. It’s one thing, un-crapified modularity. The reason most of us can afford to keep a car working isn’t because of the great Mazda or Ford ecosystem of parts. Its because the un-crapified modularity of those parts. The designs are “open” (they’re not in the libré sense, but they are simple re-make or recreate ). That is why most of us can keep our cars going. If I need a headlight, or an alternator, or a throttle-position sensor, not only does Mazda make/have the part, there are a dozen other people who make the part. I not only get a replacement, but I get choices in a open market in a range of prices and qualities.
I imagine in 2032, even if the company Framework has disappeared, there will be a lady in New Jersey making inexpensive replacement modules. That is a ‘good thing’.

Its no accident everything on an Apple device is soldered down. If they made cars they’d grind down all the bolt heads and embed the engine in epoxy. It’s their ethos. If my macbook ssd goes bad, all they can do for me is sell me a new one. The beauty of the Framework is that each module can be replaced. So no, the typical user is not going to completely upgrade their laptop in 8 years. (but they could) But, most will want to replace that one broken part on their otherwise perfectly good laptop. Another way to think about it, lets say I have a 10 year old car, worth $5k. To replace every part might truly cost me $35,000. But the way chance works, it’s rate to actually need to replace every part. And the parts that need replacing are usually relatively inexpensive.

Some years ago Consumer Reports Magazine had a section where they’d list the costs of all the replacement parts of a new car. Was interesting. IIRC it was about 4x the cost of the car.

late to the party, but I had OperaGX do a clever evil thing recently - I have an old machine running MacOS 10.14 (for reasons), I had GX up, and I alt-tab’d and noticed there was the “don’t symbol” (ghostbusters) over the OperaGX Icon. I thought, “that can’t be right”. I’m running GX right now. I double checked, and I was using GX with several windows open. But the symbol was right - they had Updated OperaGX that I WAS running, WHILE I was running it, to a version that WOULDN’T work on the computer I was on. I eventually restarted GX, and got a 'You can’t use OperaGX with this version of MacOS". Jerks.

I dug around, and very roughly, the .app file is not the App. They use a folder off in Library to store the actual pieces of the app, and it there is a few different pieces, and the .app file points to the actual executables.

Anyway it was fun while it lasted. Never again.