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Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.
  • $130 menu price but regularly goes on sale for $99. Still not cheap (especially compared to the "free" ad platform built in to the TV) but lessens the sting a bit. And much less likely to be abandoned by its manufacturer and get exploited.

  • Tech Giants Withholding Products Because EU Regulation like GDPR
  • This is more bark than bite, imo. They're just threatening to withhold products at this point, but as the article points out:

    • Europe's a big market and profit focused companies aren't going to give that up just to make a point
    • Those that do will just encourage European competition to step up and fill whatever gaps might appear, which is just fine by the EU.

    So... go right ahead. Let's see how this really plays out.

  • I tried to us an iPad like a Computer
  • There's no technical reason an iPad can't run full-blown MacOS or even Linux & Windows; Apple just locks down the hardware to prevent it. I dream of one day having strong enough right-to-repair protections that companies won't do that anymore and we'll be able to install whatever we want on the equipment we've purchased, but I'm also not holding my breath for it.

  • Aliens haven't contacted us. Scientists found a compelling reason why.
  • It's not so much that we're boring, it's that we're so far away and not trivial to send mass and energy towards.

    I think that a sufficiently advanced civilization that could come over for a visit wouldn't want to.

    I also think a sufficiently advanced civilization with the curiosity and desire to learn about us could do so via probes and we'd never know they visited us.

  • Aliens haven't contacted us. Scientists found a compelling reason why.
  • It's also likely that an alien species capable of interstellar travel doesn't want anything we have. Our resources aren't anything special, they have no need for slave labor and we don't produce anything of interest to them. It's a long drive. Why burn the gas and waste the time?

  • Rabbit R1 AI box revealed to just be an Android app
  • Plenty of free apps get monetized just fine. They just have to offer something people want to use that they can slather ads all over. The AI doo-dads haven't shown they're useful. I'm guessing the dedicated hardware strategy got them more upfront funding from stupid venture capital than an app would have, but they still haven't answered why anybody should buy these. Just postponing the inevitable.

  • MKBHD - Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies?
  • Reviewer opinions on both Humane and Fisker are pretty consistently negative so this isn't some mean YouTuber with an axe to grind situation.

    The products are bad and people shouldn't waste their hard earned money and time on them. Venture Capital firms may lose money, but that comes with the territory. Not every venture is a win.

  • NASA says it needs better ideas on how to return samples from Mars
  • If you're meeting the cycler in its orbit, you're already on a free return trajectory back to Earth by definition. You need another burn if you want to stop at Mars and another burn after that to leave and get back on a trajectory to Earth. In any event, you need to bring all of that propellant one way or another through some combination of independent launches. I'm still not seeing what a rendezvous with the cycler craft is doing for an unmanned mission. Any delta-v you take from the cycler has to be put back via refueling or reboosting at some point or another.

  • NASA says it needs better ideas on how to return samples from Mars
  • I'm assuming that's what OP means. An Aldrin cycler is a cool idea and I'd love to see one developed some day, but I don't see how it helps unmanned missions significantly. You still need to independently launch and accelerate whatever you want to send to the same orbit for the rendezvous.

    Makes sense for creature comforts (like life support and radiation shielding) for the long cruise but why bother for a robotic mission?

  • Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
  • It's a shame this isn't working out, I was really hoping it would turn out to be a better way of doing self-checkouts.

    The little convenience store on my way to work is nice, but I guess it falls apart in a larger store situation.

  • Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
  • I'm converting from Firesticks once the new Apple TVs come out. I'm sick of the constant upselling and Amazon's been putting much more effort into blocking me from using a custom launcher than basic stability and usability.

  • Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment
  • I did, when I bought the device. And if the manufacturer does a good job, I'll recommend them to friends and family and likely buy more of their products.

    The FOSS community does most of the heavy lifting with security updates anyway. Most of these things are running Linux, so they've already helped themselves to that community's work.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)KN
    knotthatone @lemmy.one
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