No, it's not a good thing. I don't know where you're getting it from that there's somehow less advertising on the corponet, but there not only is just as much, there's an added level of constant personalized manipulation now on a scale we've never seen before.

At least the open web had free, uncensored, content, much of which not funded by advertising.

genAI is killing the open Internet. Killing it.

Burn in not a problem?

I've had a Samsung plasma TV (50"!) since 2012 and love it but it's gotten to the point there are permanent blotches of discoloured pixels on the screen. Not enough to be a major problem, it's normally only visible if what's being shown is supposed to be a large light colored area. But it's increasingly noticeable, and no amount of running supposed anti-burn-in stuff is getting rid of it at the moment.

Next TV will presumably be a smart TV. Other than "Not LG" I have no idea what it'll be, but I suspect the real "secure this device" thing will involve using it as a dumb TV - ie not connecting it to the Internet, no matter how much it begs, and just using HDMI inputs.

I have come across brand new still-manufactured dumb TVs in the wild, but they're typically low quality: Insignia was making them, at least two years ago, I was able to get one for my in-laws who are far too old to deal with "smart" TVs. (Something that really bothers me about current trends - after a certain age, modern "replacements" for tried and tested tech becomes unusable for people be it smartphones that require decent motor skills and good eyesight, or smart TVs that require a certain mind set and, well, good eyesight because you have to read a lot of shit on the TV. Welcome to late stage capitalism where everyone over 65 can just DIAF I suppose from the point of view of marketing companies.) Anyway, the Insignia was a classic dumb TV, just input selection and channel selection, as things have been since the 1990s, but the picture quality was f---ing awful. There were laptop LCDs in the late 1990s that had better contrast and refresh rates.

I'll give credit to the genAI people in one respect: they can market like nobody else. They've invented an entire soap opera about what AI is supposedly doing and people still fall for it.

> Comcast has received decades of subscription fees, and if they didn't allocate part of their budget to infrastructure, they have only themselves to blame.

It's a bogus argument but you're missing what they're saying and responding to something else. They're saying it's irrational for a competitor (competitors don't have the infrastructure yet) to sell for $30 a month when it costs $1,500 to install that infrastructure. They're not saying it would be irrational for them to charge it, indeed, they could probably do so.

The problem of course is that it's not irrational, it's Total cost of wiring up an area/# subscribers = $1,500. And some subscribers will pay $30, some $50, some $100, some way more because that same fiber is being used to provide legacy cable and telephone services to a particular class of customer, namely old farts, like half of Slashdot.

Yeah I said it. You're old farts.

Anyway, the point is it very much makes sense to use different price points to get as many customers as possible because that $1,500 isn't going to go away just because someone doesn't subscribe. If the only way to get the last few residents in that area is to charge them $10 a month, it makes sense to provide a tier for them too, as long as others aren't attracted to the same deal.

For the same reason, Verizon and T-Mobile are currently offering "back up" services for about $20-25 on their 5G fixed wireless network. Why? Because every penny that comes in justifies upgrading those towers.

Comcast - or rather their CEO, I'm sure their experienced employees were head desking at the comment - just doesn't get tiered pricing and somehow doesn't understand that a massive proportion of infrastructure costs are fixed and do not change based upon subscriber count.

I've done the same thing, I get it!

Also sounds (alas, all too commonly) that people don't know what "fascism" is, or what "left" vs "right" wing means, like the idiot GP.

Quick piece of advice, click the "parent" link if you want to know what someone is replying to.

A better question is what does it say to your thought process that you deny something is a problem because one or two people, but not the people who are actually qualified to talk on the issue and are saying it's a problem, are claiming the world is going to end in a year?

And why don't you apply that across the board. The same people who deny global warming seem also to be overly happy to denounce any attempt to have the government improve conditions for people on the basis that it's "socialism", despite most (usually all) European democracies having all the benefits that are being asked for, yet not a single one is a dictatorship. Clearly there are nutcases on that side, but nonetheless the "Oh AGW people are alarmists" people still somehow believe that the moment the US has a functional healthcare system available to all the government will turn into sOvIeT rUsSiA.

The scientists have, so far, made predictions that, if anything, have been too conservative and in reality GW has progressed far faster than the median prediction. Those are then facts. No other claims matter.

The UN is the one entity on Earth that provides an organizational framework for all of the world's governments. It has no powers to speak of, but it is a central meeting point. Nobody's expecting it to "guard goats", they're just expecting it to provide a forum.

You don't live in America? I could have sworn you did.

FWIW, in the US, which is probably the country that uses gasoline highest per-capita, the circuit panel is usually right in the garage. Not merely "next to". And there's usually already a 220V outlet there because home owners typically have the washer-dryer in the garage - even if they don't and have a separate laundry room, the garage usually has a 220V outlet.

You are aware of this concept called charging stations right? You know how your car can't make a 3 hour journey without being refueled? So they have these things called "gas stations" where you can refill your fuel tank? Well, it's the same for EVs. You can drive for 150 miles (approx 2-3 hours), stop at an EV charging spot, and then continue.

The beauty of EVs is that you don't usually need to. Most people can just plug it in at home overnight for 99% of the journeys they make. They only need the charging spots for those once-in-a-blue-moon traveling 1,000 miles towing a snowmobile situations. Whereas gas users are having to use recharge points (that is, gas stations) literally every 100-200 miles of driving.

Exactly. People have been driving cars for 25,000 years now. That's the natural order of things, huge roads, massive gaps between homes and the businesses that serve them, and unsafe forms of transportation to take them from one place to another. That's why governments across America refuse to legalize medium mixed-use density development, because merely legalizing something is the same as forcing people to use it. Look at Europe, where everyone is so upset they can't drive like the natural order of things, and have to walk or let the bus or train take them to places. It wasn't like that before global warming! 40 years ago Europe was just strip malls and HOA-controlled suburban developments. But then the liberals came in and forced everyone to live in walkable communities and have access to buses.

Madness!

Ah the nuclear shills have woken up today. Welcome to the day you get to push an agenda by making absurd generalizations about your opponents while ignoring the fact that your tech isn't actually the only fossil fuel alternative out there, and which, when done incorrectly, can cause major disasters rendering entire regions uninhabitable, something not true of, say, wind or solar (though, interestingly, reverse-true of hydro, in that when done correctly it renders entire regions uninhabitable. But at least you get notice! ;-)).

Keep fucking that pigeon though!

No, it's not. Trump is merely the latest, and honestly probably has no fucking idea either way. Predominately Republican establishments have done all they can to thwart any attempts to fund alternatives to high oil usage. The last time we even saw anything vaguely approach anti-AGW legislation was under a Democratic Congress, and was... cash for clunkers (and the contemporaneous pro-EV "Make Musk Rich" subsidies. Yeah. That. Even allowing people as individuals to choose to live less oil dependent lifestyles, by legalizing medium density zoning and building things like bike lanes, have seen stiff opposition from the RWNJs. This isn't new. It isn't something Trump or even the Tea Party introduced. It's been going on for 40-50 years now.

And ultimately, people voted for the Republicans knowing this was what they'd do. Half of them are on Slashdot right now. They'll invent lies from "AGW is a ridiculous liberal myth because all the scientists are in the pay of Big Not Oil" to "Allowing people to live in walkable neighborhoods and have access to public transportation is the same as banning cars and is what Hitler, who was so anti-car he created Volkswagen, did."

This wasn't done by any one person. Half the country pushed for it. They want to wreck the world. The only link to Trump is that you can clearly see people as nihilist as the anti-Earthers are, of course, going to push for the most extreme nihilists to get into power.