No violence to sea creatures is to be expected. Well, except maybe the tasty ones. We'll have to find out which those are... SCIENCE!

Professional, or soulless corporate?

Well, he renamed it and made minor changes around the edges so he could claim that it was broken and he fixed it. And then, of course, proceeded to violate the agreement he signed.

Excellent post, just a couple of comments.

First, it's interesting that Nikkos said "a previous administration", without naming it. It was, of course, Trump 1.0.

Second, international treaties on refugees don't require a country to accept every refugee and there are multiple examples where nations have made agreements that modify which county must handle asylum claims. For example, the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement specifies that asylum seekers must make their asylum claim in whichever country they arrive in first. If the US and Mexico had a similar agreement, then refugees could not enter from Mexico at all. Trump tried to get Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country agreement, but Mexico refused -- and it probably would have been invalid anyway, since Mexico might not satisfy the requirements of a "safe" country under the US law that authorizes the signing of Safe Third Country agreements.

Instead, Trump signed the "Migrant Protection Protocols" agreement with Mexico, which was the "remain in place" agreement. You said that no other country should be willing to put up with it, but Mexico did formally agree to it, though only to avoid tariffs. Of course, Mexico has declined to renew the protocols in Trump 2.0 (though Trump announced they had, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately denied -- Trump's habit of unilaterally announcing that an agreement has been reached obviously doesn't really work).

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why countries might agree to various limitations on asylum processes to manage refugee volumes, and these agreements are often perfectly valid under international and national law. Trump, of course, doesn't care about legality, or humanity, only what he can get away with.

Pro tip: walk the store in the opposite direction. When you walk like everyone else, you'll be trying to overtake slow walkers, couples with a stroller who somehow manage to block the entire 5m wide aisle, groups. Walk against the flow, and you'll be parting the crowds like Moses did the Red Sea. And if they appear not to make way, look slightly to the side as if you are not looking at them. They'll move.

As a former landlord I have spent a considerable time in Ikea...

Matter is just an application layer comms protocol, and yes it's open. Often combined with Thread, a low power radio comms network (The new Ikea stuff uses it), in which case you need a Thread hub, or a Thread border router that acts as a bridge to your LAN and by extension to the Internet. Matter devices may or may not require the cloud.

I have a bunch of thermostats and TRVs (Tado brand) that use Matter, and can be added to my own Matter hub (Home Assistant), to the manufacturer's cloud, or both. There are several brands that follow this model even if they don't use Matter. The good news is that you can continue to use these devices or add new ones even if the manufacturer has gone out of business or shut down their cloud. The bad news is... many of these devices need some configuring; often highly specific settings that can only be done through the manufacturer's app. They'll continue to work but you won't be able to reconfigure them.

Matter allows devices to expose device settings, but it seems that not all manufacturers bother, or they are too specific to fit into the generic Matter types (for instance: heating schedules)

I suspect that these streams are costing Youtube money. They can't monetize them, and they have to spend effort shutting them down or they get in serious legal trouble. If things persist I suspect that Youtube changes its live streaming service in ways that make this impossible.

We will see though.

The problem, of course, is that Sports content is paying more than its fair share of the bill for all televised content. It is easy to see the large bills and assume that sports is a cost center, but the reality is that sport tends to pay its own way, while scripted television is much more of a gamble. To a certain extent that is why most scripted television these days is so formulaic. The television studios know that they can make money with modern versions of "The Rockford Files." That's why NCIS is in its quadzillionth season.

Severance is great, but it is a prime example of what I am talking about. Apple has spent billions of dollars on content at this point, and they are still hemorrhaging money. People like their shows, but they aren't lining up to pay for them. Shoresy is in a better spot, but only because Disney is doing its level best to tie Shoresy to ESPN and other sports related content that people are willing to pay for. The folks wanting to buy ESPN can get the rest of the Disney bundle for pennies. You can't just buy ESPN, you have to buy it with a television package. Disney does this because they know that if people have their other channels, then they tend to watch them. They are willing to pay a premium, however, for sports.

Hulu is cheap, and you can get it by itself. The same goes for AppleTV. All of these cost Netflix amounts of money $12 (or so) a month. When I worked for Sling it's entire packaging was based around making it possible to bundle ESPN for less than anyone else. If you want ESPN the least you can pay is $45/month, and that doesn't give you the other channel's sports package, that you probably want if you are a sports fan as well. It is very likely that the team that you follow will have at least one game on ESPN's competitors. That means that if you are purchasing from Sling you need the blue package as well (which is another $45, or bundled will total $60). You could easily sign up for all of the non-sports streaming channels for less than an Orange+Blue package (which once again is as competitively priced as it is possible to do). I was just looking at Disney's bundle, and you can get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN for $35/month, which is definitely the least expensive way to get ESPN these days. That's with ads, which are added even to VOD content. If you want to watch your VOD content without ads that's another $10. Linear content (like watching cable) always comes with ads. Sports fans can't dodge ads ever.

I bring up pricing like this to make it clear which parts of television customers are actually willing to pay money for. If you don't want to pay for sports (and I don't blame you), then you can easily pay $12/month and switch between streaming providers and watch whatever shows you want to watch. All of those services allow you to easily stop and continue your subscription, and none of the content is likely to go away. Heck, chances are good that, if you wait long enough, you can watch the shows that you want on one of the free services. In most cases they are literally giving away old scripted content. The problem with this model, is that it doesn't make Hollywood enough money to be profitable with their current structure. The reason that Disney (and everyone else) bundle channels the way that they do is because they know that they can't afford to gamble on scripted content unless they bundle those risks with the proven money generation of sports content. More and more people like you, who don't want to pay for sports content, are opting for less expensive alternatives that still get them the shows that they want.

This market contraction is why Hollywood is so focused on franchises that have historically been popular. So instead of new shows we get derivatives of things that were popular in the past. Scripted content is risky, and as it gets uncoupled from less risky sports content producers do whatever they can to hedge their bets. So we get a re-re-remake of the TMNTs, Spiderman, or we get another cop show. Recently we have also been blessed with shows that have been popular in other countries or markets (that is legitimately cool in my opinion), but that is also likely to dry up as entertainment becomes more global.

Which leaves what can be done on Youtube budgets for anything remotely risky. Which is fine, I suppose. Personally, I like watching people restore old sailboats. That's not something that is ever going to be more than a niche market, but on Youtube that's enough of a market to make it financially viable for a few people. Maybe with AI it will even become possible to do good SciFi with that sort of a budget. Who knows? One thing is certain, it is definitely interesting times ahead.

> It's a useless technology anyway

I hope this quote someday goes on to be as infamous as "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." but Slashdot probably isn't relevant enough for that any longer.

Yeah, because the customers don't want anything else. Itch.io is great ... if you want random indie stuff. GOG seems to have no idea what to recommend and you either get games from 1992 or hentai VNs with a porn patch so they're not technically selling the porn, with little that's actually interesting.

Plus, IBM owns RedHat. So that's probably something. Then again, maybe that is the hyper growth software and services bit that they want to keep.

There are several brands that work totally local (ZWave, Zigbee)
There are also some that can use either the cloud but also work locally. Your story shows why one should be ware of such devices. Some still require the cloud to function, or to change settings, even if they can be operated without the cloud. So you keep them online, there's an update, and something gets broken. Philips Hue will no longer function without registering ab account with the company. Tado removes functionality (allowing thermostatic radiator valves to demand heat for a room even if there's no wall thermostat) for newly added devices: that now requires their monthly subscription. Support for certain APIs get dropped. And so on.

I don't say it often but there ought to be a law, regarding services tied to physical devices owned by the end user. No diminishing functionality when a device is updated, no hiding formerly free functions behind paywalls or subscriptions. And cloud service guaranteed for the reasonably expected lifespan of the last device sold officially (not of of clearance or second hand)

My hyperbole got the better of me again. You are not the only one. Little House on the Prairie is remarkably good television. It definitely beats doom-scrolling on your phone.

Getting together with my college friends to watch Star Trek the Next Generation was awesome. Those are definitely core memories. But even then there were issues. I never got into Babylon 5 because I worked while that was on. I recently decided to watch them, but it's not the same thing.

My kids (I have 6) get together every Sunday to watch "Dancing with the Stars." They are always a bit sad that they are days late to be able to vote, but the fact that they can watch on their time means they get to watch it together. I feel that's progress. Quite a few of those style of shows have call in votes specifically to drive viewership at the same time to boost numbers.

Netflix Disc was awesome. I also miss that a lot. If you aren't interested in live content you should be able to get the shows that you want at an incredible deal. These days I personally mostly watch Youtube. But I sometimes sign up for a month of one of the services to watch a particular show. They basically all allow you to cancel any time. There are also DVR tools that record over the air television that are pretty good. Depending on where you live you might be surprised at what is available. Plus, there's always piracy. Another advantage that sports television has over serial shows is that live television is much harder to pirate. Chances are good that your friendly neighborhood pirate site has all of the episodes of whatever it is that you want to watch.

If you are paying sports fan prices for television without watching sports, then you are definitely not getting a good deal.