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Comment Re:Package deals? (Score 1) 13

We might have cable tv, if that was the cheapest way to get internet in our house. I literally do not know, only one device is plugged into a coax cable in our entire house and that's the modem. I wouldn't even know where to look on my tv to see if they still come with coax connectors on the back, it hangs on the wall and there's a power plug, that's it.

Comment Re:How about the unbanned? (Score 1) 131

Forget the kids, they don't vote so they can be safely trod upon.

I care about the kids, and I don't think this is treading on them, I think it's pushing them to have IRL relationships, and that's a good thing. I say that as a nerd who had few friends when I was a teen (in the 80s), but even normal, social kids today have far fewer real friendships and many of the geeky kids like I was now have none at all.

We're a social species, we need and crave socialization, but social media is to real relationships like drugs are to the normal joys of life; a false but massively-amped substitute for the real thing, addictive and harmful. It's perfectly possible to get high or drunk from time to time and still enjoy real life, but you have to use the artificial happiness in moderation and control. There are really good reasons why we try to keep kids away from drugs and alcohol, and keep adults away from the really powerful and addictive stuff, and get them into treatment when they get hooked (well, in the US we mostly just put them in prison, but some parts of the world are getting smarter and focusing on treatment).

The same logic applies to social media. We need to figure out how to tame its effects on adults, especially those who are for some reason especially vulnerable and get very warped by it. IMO, it makes perfect sense to just try to keep kids off of it entirely, especially since we don't really understand it yet.

Comment You said "cheap" and "Wifi", but... (Score 5, Insightful) 139

So this isn't at all what you asked for, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway: Ubiquiti. You'll pay more and they're all PoE rather than wireless, but if you spend the money and run the wires (hey, you have to run a wire for power anyway, might as well use it for data, too) you won't regret the results.

Comment Re:Now we're just haggling over the price (Score 1) 95

Biden tried and failed, because it wasn't legal.

Actually he tried and partly failed because it was only partly legal.

But he definitely cannot create a new revenue stream and direct it however he chooses.

That might not stop him from trying, and unless Congress or the courts rein him in, it won't stop him from doing it. As I pointed out above, in this case it's unclear that anyone would have standing to sue (not taxpayers; it wouldn't be tax money -- maybe nVidia or China, but they like the deal), so stopping him would probably require Congress to act. And what are the odds that the Republican Congress would grow a spine?

Comment Re:Now we're just haggling over the price (Score 2) 95

It may have been more useful to have already known that it would not be possible for Trump to do what you described.

"Not be possible" is too strong.

It's clearly possible unless Congress or the courts prevent it, even though it is clearly illegal. But Trump is doing lots of things that are clearly illegal, which is why the courts keep issuing injunctions to stop him (and then SCOTUS keeps staying the injunctions to let him go ahead and do it anyway, at least for a while). In a sane world, the fact that an action is illegal would be a stronger constraint because the president would have to be concerned that Congress would impeach and convict him, and he would have to be concerned about potential criminal liability. In the world that exists, the GOP leadership in Congress refuses to do their job to rein in the executive, and SCOTUS has declared the president above the law so there are few practical limitations on his power.

So far, the only thing that seems to really make Trump back off is when the stock market crashes.

Nevertheless, a slush fund of several billion dollars per year that the president is truly able to spend with complete discretion would be a significant additional increase in power because it's not clear that anyone would have standing to sue, so courts could not intervene regardless of constitutionality. Congress would be able to intervene, of course, but, again, the GOP-led Congress has almost completely abdicated. I had to add "almost" only because they actually did stand up to him on the Epstein files (sort of; the bill left Pam Bondi with near-total freedom to withhold anything she wants, not legally, but practically).

Trump is more open than other Presidents.

No, Trump is more secretive than most other presidents. You're confusing "unfiltered and disorganized" with "transparent". I do have to grant that he's incredibly transparent about his corruption. Well, maybe. He has been transparently corrupt in lots of ways, but it still seems likely that there's more corruption which he's keeping hidden.

Comment Re:Future of Xbox (Score 1) 41

Consoles have a 7 year life, the Xbox One came out in 2013; it should have seen a fully new hardware design in 2020. So they're 5 years overdue ("series" are hardware refreshes, not a true "next gen" redesign) Microsoft has never been able to turn around the story of the failed launch the product is likely dead at this point. Microsoft wanted to own the media landscape and at this point they've given up on that vision for 5+ years.

Comment Re:Now we're just haggling over the price (Score 1) 95

But last I read of it, it goes into a fund controlled by the President -- a slush fund, in olden terms.

Where did you read that? If it's true it would be momentous. A totally discretionary fund of $2-6B per year (based on nVidia's projections of selling $2-5B per quarter to China) would give the president enormous unchecked power.

I've spend some time searching and haven't found anything to substantiate this claim. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to see where you got the idea from.

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 3, Insightful) 203

Car companies could sell midrange, mid-size cars, toyota sells these in pretty much every country on the planet, but they're nowhere as profitable as selling a $12,000 truck with a lift kit and leather interior for $55,000. Those vehicles exist but they've stopped selling them in the us because theyve found they can just exclusively sell high margin cars instead and maximize shareholder value

Comment Samsung always pisses on Samsung (Score 1) 87

Samsung is collection of several companies and if you've ever spent any time working with them you quickly realize that they all prioritize other Samsung companies below other customers. I don't know whether it's because of anti-trust concerns, or market strategy, or just rivalry, but I've never seen any Samsung company that operated any differently. I worked quite a bit with Samsung Mobile and S.LSI, who are even quite interdependent (though S.LSI depends more on Samsung Mobile than the reverse), and they constantly ignored and even dissed one another.

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 1) 96

The problem is that it's not intuitive that there's a special case traffic rule for that and I don't remember it ever being brought up in driver's ed

There's no way your driver's ed class failed to mention that traffic is required to stop for school buses with their red lights flashing, and I think it's unlikely that your written test failed to include a question about school zone and school bus rules. Mine (Utah) certainly did.

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