Time for a joke.

And economist and an accountant were taking a walk when they noticed a frog. The accountant says to the economist, “I’ll give you $100 if you eat that frog.” The economist thinks for a moment, then agrees. A little later they come across another frog, and the economist says, “I’ll give you $100 to eat that frog.” The accountant thinks about it for a second and also agrees. As they continue walking, the accountant says, “So I got to see you eat a frog for $100, and by eating a frog myself, I got my money back, so I understand why I did it. But you had already eaten a frog and had $100, so why did you do it?” The economist replies, “Ah, but this way it’s twice as good for the economy!”

While all of thos could be true, downloading on your PC should be possible to queue multiple games, and doesn’t require you to leave your steam deck turned on. Go for that nostalgic overnight download vibe.

I honestly agree, and said as much shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. Based on the world’s assessment, they should have just steamrolled them, and didn’t. I also said it would behoove the world powers to reassess their nuclear capability and got a lot of downvotes. The facts as they stand now, though, is the NK can’t get a nuke to American territory, not even Alaska (let’s not talk about Guam and Samoa, even America barely acknowledges they’re part of America). Russia, on the other hand, might be able to, and we don’t know for sure they can’t. All they need is one good sub with working missiles. None of this really matters for Europe, and even 10% of their stockpile working would be devastating for the world, or at least the people living on it. I’d like to think that Putin put more effort into maintaining their status as a nuclear world power, but I would have thought the same of being a military world power, too.

Yes, those things can be done, and they’re good ideas. One key difference between the U.S. and North Korea thing is that Russia can, or at least is believed to be able to, use a nuclear response anywhere in the world. North Korea couldn’t threaten the U.S. with nuclear reprisal. But, yes, removing the entrenched and uncompromising leader is the first step, and that is much harder against a nuclear power.

Well, it was also proven that the Shuttle was a generally unsafe design. That seems like a good reason to unilaterally decommission anything.

Of course, none of that is possible against a nuclear power, because it first relies on unconditional surrender. I also don’t think any leaders in the world have to political will to do that, either.

I don’t hate them because they’re women, I hate them for what they eat! Which they do because they’re female. 🤔

I’d say harming mosquitoes (females only, that feed on blood) is better than vegan!

The newer EVs are switching to heat pumps for managing battery temperature. It’s more efficient than resistive heat, and can use the same system for cooling. This helps maintain range both by keeping batteries the right temperature and by doing it more efficiently.

And who in Winnipeg hasn’t heard of what happens if you let your gas tank get too empty in extreme cold?

The Deep? That you?

Maybe it would be less happy without the pain!

If they have control of updates, they can withhold updates or deliver malicious updates. So they may not be able to make them drop out of the sky*, but they can send an update that makes them completely unable to take off, or even crash upon takeoff.

*But they could install a kill command to turn off engines when a signal is received.

Mine is always in sleep mode, but I always have it plugged in with the charge limit at 80%. It may not be ideal, but it’s always ready. If I’m going to away from home for a few hours, it’s still fine. If I was traveling like the OP, I’d turn it off.

So, using the handy little tool you referenced, I scrolled down to see how much of those contributions were from individuals associated with Honda, versus contributions from the Corporation. We’ll, the total from Honda, since 1990, was $324k. The total that wasn’t from individuals, from the Honda corporation, was…$0. Meanwhile, if you want to find a year where that’s applicable to Toyota, you will have to go back to 2012, the furthest back that the history (easily) allows you to go on that site. And their total from corporate and individuals comes in at $8.9M.

My embarrassment knows no bounds.

The difference is assuming, rather than looking for evidence, and then doubling down like now, after being told that at least one automaker is making a point of not making political overtures.

If you care to pore over my post history, you will see plenty of comments from me making the same point to people saying, “I won’t buy an EV because of all the privacy violations,” with me responding, “All new cars have this problem, ICE or EV.” They then respond with, “Well, that’s why I won’t buy a car made after x year,” to which I respond, “Then why mention EVs at all?”

If you don’t want to bother educating yourself before making sweeping statements, don’t be surprised if someone calls you out on it, echo chamber or no.

Well, as long as everyone is being shitty, I guess we shouldn’t mention how they’re shitty. Except apparently some aren’t.

That’s pretty funny. It’s been legally mandated that bootloaders be unlockable in my country, which I’ve done before.

Claiming that someone stole what you stole is a little hypocritical. Not having a Pebble, and having discovered them just after they were shut down by Google, I’m glad Rebble did what they did. But claiming ownership seems a little over the top. Having an archive of apps available via a third-party site sounds like a win for both parties, except for the financial side. Certainly, not paying anything would be a benefit for RePebble, and not having an option to charge anything would be a loss for Rebble, but it sounds like an unmitigated win for Pebble and RePebble users.

RePebble seems to be very committed to going FOSS, up to releasing some or all of their code as GPL3, which is hard to argue around. I’ll be revisiting this saga in 6 months or so when I’m in the market for a smart watch.

You can mostly disable them. Delete your Samsung account, don’t agree to their terms of service besides the most basic one or two that is required. No defense of Samsung, just what I did to deny them as much as I could of my information until I replace this phone and never buy Samsung again.

I’m a pretty big fan of using fuck, but holy fuck, that was a lot. I wonder why you feel that passionately about it?

I deleted my Samsung account when an update about 6 months ago came along that basically wanted ALL your personal data so you could use AI for photo search, etc. Then I found out about all the other minor things they insist you have an account to use. So, yeah, Fuck Samsung! Now I need to find a phone I can live with to replace it when it stops working.