This concerns me from the standpoint of using FireSticks for TV signage purposes.

Our workplace uses the "ScreenCloud" software to turn a number of our TVs around our offices into digital sign-boards displaying things like employee birthdays and general office news, calendar info, etc.

We already had issues where Amazon decided to lock down a newer model of FireStick to the point the ScreenCloud app refused to run on it anymore. At first, the makers of ScreenCloud expected us to "root" each FireStick and do a bunch of steps to it in "developer mode" so their app could keep working on one. Then, Amazon locked them out of even that work-around. It seems the two companies got together at that point, and the result was a requirement we buy some more pricey variant of the same FireStick that's designed just for use with ScreenCloud!

We live in a society where like it or not? We marginalize crimes that involve theft of property or money, vs violent crimes against people.
Hacking almost never escalates to the level of it badly injuring or killing other humans. (You *might* argue it did if you could prove people hacking firmware or software running life support machines in hospitals was involved, or direct attacks on a person's pacemaker? But even outliers like this would be more the realm of the CIA than individual hackers.)

But even IF you imposed severe punishments for hacking? The problem is with catching these people. Sure, they tend to get caught eventually, because most criminals don't know when to stop. But you rarely recoup all the money they took from people or organizations. They probably couldn't ever get it all repaid even if you somehow forced them to work for the rest of their life for employers who turned over 100% of their paychecks towards restitution.

Just got email yesterday from Belkin, to tell me Wemo devices including their hugely popular Wemo mini plug and Wemo wall switch, outdoor switch and 3-way switch were on a list to be shut down in January, 2026. They're yanking the cloud server support required to make them work, and saying the only thing they'll still do after that is work on a LOCAL network via HomeKit.

It's not just Apple. Any of these vendors of "smart" devices get to dictate when they kill off the functionality. If it requires cloud servers, then all you did was buy some hardware that works with THEIR systems, on THEIR terms and conditions.

I use an Arlo video doorbell on my front door, and initially? I was fine with not paying for their optional monthly subscription that allowed uploading video to the cloud. I was content to use it so I could view live video when someone rang the bell, and to get push notifications when people walked within range of it. Well? After some relatively recent update they did, it seems I lost the ability to configure the zone the camera monitors for motion. They just monitor the whole darn thing if you don't pay for their subscription to "unlock" that capability. Worse yet? There's nowhere in their software to configure it to just stop alerting for motion. I had to suppress it on my iPhone app via the phone's own application settings.

It sucks but I don't see any alternative except buying only devices that give YOU full control over them on your home network. And a lot of those reduce the usability and convenience vs ones utilizing the "big cloud" offered by players like Apple, Google or Amazon.

As someone else here already commented earlier; "Call the lawyer!" isn't always the most financially smart move. I mean, in this particular case? Just dumping the shared family Apple accounts and setting up new ones would be a quick, self-service way to break free of the controlling ex. If the loss of all the purchased content is the sticking point? It's very likely they could repurchase all of it for less money than a divorce lawyer would bill for the time to sort this mess out.

Is there some collection of important photos stored in iCloud? Could be a real problem here, BUT, you also really should have been making a backup elsewhere. Anyone with a Mac probably has their photo library backed up via Time Machine, for example? (Just because the Photos app uploads new photos to iCloud automatically doesn't mean it doesn't store the originals on the Mac hard drive and they all get backed up.) Besides, it's probably a far more clear-cut "ask" to demand the ex turn over a copy of the photo collection on a USB memory stick or whatnot, if you want to address that one thing in court later.

I say all of this as someone who went through "the divorce from hell" a long time ago. Despite my ex literally cleaning out my entire house (got a full size moving truck and gave away some of my electronics and furniture to friends, in trade for helping move everything) AND taking my sports car and forging my signature on the title to sell it off without me knowing? It *still* made more long-term financial sense to just have a settlement hearing with her, vs a lengthy/costly divorce trial. The fact is - anything a judge would have declared she owed me or had to return would have gotten me nowhere. She already liquidated all of it and was a deadbeat after that who owed thousands to her landlord too, and spent the rest of her life sponging off other people. The lawyers are the only ones who really "win" in divorce cases.

I've done a lot of food delivery "gig work" over the years, as well as having friends in the restaurant industry who deal with it from the opposite end.
The apps like DoorDash absolutely rip you off as a customer. They add large percentages on to the restaurant's normal food prices and then you still have to pay the driver a tip, which is really a "bid for service" since you pay it before even getting your food. In the past, they really soured some smaller restaurants on them too, with stunts like adding them and their menus to the service without even asking the restaurant first (and would generally just set those up so Dashers paid with their pre-paid debit card upon arrival).

I don't quite get restaurants saying the food delivery is "killing them" though, either? If your food is popular enough so lots of people will pay huge upcharges just to have someone deliver it to them? You should be able to sell it at a profit and get the benefit of your place not being too full and turning dine-in customers away.

Most of the time? The places I see who claim services like DoorDash hurt them are just upset they have to adapt a bit. Their one cook in back can't make food fast enough and they won't pay for more labor, for example?

I think there's a strong argument to be made that people often consider Apple's control over their app store (and indeed, control over their hardware and software ecosystem in general) to be a FEATURE?

The fact that Apple vets apps that get published on its App Store adds value for a certain class of consumer. I completely get that there are people out there who want to buy only devices that give full freedom to install anything on them they can get their hands on. But a whole lot of people simply want to buy a reliable smartphone that they feel is relatively safe from malware/spyware or other "bad actor" applications.

I'm one of those people who usually owns/uses a combination of Apple products and other computers running Linux or Windows. I like the toolbox analogy... that while you might find your screwdriver an incredibly useful tool you're regularly reaching for? Sometimes a hammer is far better for a given application. Apple's whole ecosystem is, IMO, superior to the buggy mess of drivers/software and sometimes poorly tested OS updates in the Windows world. But when I want to play the latest AAA game title? The Mac is usually the inferior tool. And by the same token? I like the consistency of iOS devices over Android, where various handsets have front-end apps bolted onto them, depending on who made the device -- and where Android OS updates quickly become unsupported on many of them. I also like them for being able to give one to a fairly non-technical person while not fearing they'll click to download an app that steals their data and locks them out of the handset.

Buyers and sellers don't negotiate on the App Store from Apple but neither do they on most web storefronts I know of? If you don't host your own, you're stuck paying what the hosting service charges you to have a presence there, period.

I completely get arguments about such things as Apple refusing to accept app submissions based on the apps "competing" against their bundled offerings. (So for example? Apple blocking acceptance of a wallet app for crypto-currency - which I recall them doing during the frenzy of people mining LTC and BTC with off the shelf PCs using GPUs.)

I don't at all follow the logic that Android and iOS are "so entrenched" that owners of either type of device will rarely switch to the other platform? I know so many people, personally, who went back and forth between an Apple iPhone and an Android of some type. If nothing else, people start to get a little bored of the phone they've had for years and get curious about trying the competition's device out.

I also disagree that in most cases, developers take issue with Apple and Google taking a cut from purchases made via apps. I think most people completely get the value in someone else distributing your app for you and incurring the bandwidth usage/hosting expenses involved. Most of the bickering comes about when they want to sell extra content or subscriptions related to the app by directing customers away from the App Store. That's really a separate issue, IMO.

I hadn't even considered this, but I think you're right. Microsoft doesn't really stand to lose anything by getting rid of the console hardware at this point. They probably realized the income brought in by selling the hardware isn't even worth the marketing costs, the need to provide warranty coverage, etc. etc.

Everything they sell to play on X-Box can run just fine as a native Windows PC game, and there's a convenient Microsoft Store included in every copy of Win 11 for people to shop in and download the titles.

Yeah... this would be my bet, honestly? Most of the other suspected causes mentioned are really things you'd be hard-pressed to pin as things only the millennials would be predominantly exposed do. Ultra-processed foods, for example, are consumed in large quantities by Gen-X -- because they were the "latch-key kids" who got used to the whole idea of fending for themselves at an early age. As a pre-teen or teen trying to fix their own meals, they turned to all the fast/easy solutions available to them and it became ingrained as the way to eat, over time. Circadian rhythm disruption? Come on now... You're going to tell me nobody ever worked odd shifts until they came along?

The glaring issue is stress.

If you bought one of these things, you deserve it. :)

This reminds me of a story too. I was working at a place just rolling out Microsoft Office 365 and the whole 2 factor authentication thing. We started looking at the devices people had registered for MFA. Obviously, you mostly had various smartphones and a few people even used iPads or other tablets. But this one guy had a Samsung smart fridge as his device. He explained that, "I work from home and have a desk in the kitchen. So it's easy to confirm the authentication from the refrigerator screen. And this way, I know I won't just lose it someplace like I might lose my phone!"

But seriously, I really dislike this trend of making basic home appliances Internet connected and/or computerizing them needlessly. My old Black & Decker 4 slice toaster finally gave out on us last week. I was shocked by how much a new toaster costs now! I was expecting to run out and grab something for maybe $20 or so? Nope! Many of the highly rated models are well over $200! The cheapest I could find was about $45, for one at Costco that has 2 digital strips down the front. One side lights up with icons of toast, in various levels of darkness, and the other depicts all the different foods you mgiht toast; bagels, waffles, pastries, toast...

We got it home and tried it out, and guess what? When you select toast with a darkness of "3 out of 6", shown as a medium brown? It absolutely burns it! The lightest setting just ejects warm, untoasted bread. I couldn't find any point to a setting on the thing other than the second-lightest one! Highly inaccurate. All of this seems really unnecessary, when the light/dark knob on my old toaster worked just as it was supposed to.

The machines that can run Windows 10 but not 11 really have no legitimate reasons they're incapable of using 11. It's generally artificial barriers put up by Microsoft because the chips lack a feature or two they're trying to make a new standard.

In a few cases, it's literally nothing more than an oversight! My co-worker was just telling me about a specific model of Xeon CPU he's got that has some long "sub-model" vs a simple model number like 5360 or 5500 or what-not. It has every single function in it that Microsoft says is needed by Win 11, yet you can't put 11 on it. Why? Only because Microsoft neglected to list its specific model/sub-model in its database it uses to determine the machines capable of installing 11 on them.

If they want all these people off Windows 10, they could design 11 so it runs more like 10, with a few of the features disabled that require the instructions the older CPUs lack, when it detects those processors.

Apple did this with iOS multiple times already. A new iOS version still runs on older phones but with a few features disabled if those specific features need the newer phone's CPU to work.

On one hand, every parent of kids or teens today has to feel the struggle with social media influencing their journey to adulthood. Sometimes it's just a harmless fad that generates a ton of sales for some useless toy or gadget. But often, it's about the added complexity of a world where their "friends" can be people anywhere in the world who they only communicate with online, and who parents are often powerless to "vet". It's about questions of "bullying" and how far an institution like a public school can really reach to address it, when it starts happening online. It's about uncertainties of whether all the "screen time" creates real mental or physical health threats.

But when it comes to technologies like a chat bot? I don't think there should be these legal expectations that they do such things as guiding people to other resources to get help for the issues they talk to them about. I don't even think the authors of these chat bots necessarily considered the idea a pre-teen would confide everything in one and treat it as their "only true friend"? As a rule, they're harmless as long as they're not actively suggesting adult or illegal activities, so giving them "age ratings" of 12+ makes perfect sense.

Troubled kids or teens need to be given REAL help and warned away from relying on automated AI solutions.

Ha! Same thing I thought. The reality, whether you're talking New Orleans or anyplace else is -- the money gets spent to repair and protect the areas that bring in the most continued wealth. Racism has nothing to do with this.

If you have an area that's full of tourist traffic or that continually draws in the super-wealthy for amenities like the great golf courses or waterfront or ?? You've got an area that generates enough revenue, it cost-justifies having to rebuild there occasionally when natural disasters strike.

Everyone else is living there at their own risk, really.

To be honest, I noted LONG ago that "withdrawing cash from out-of-network ATMs likely has a fairly big cost" and tried to avoid it. I never kept up with exactly what those fees were, after that. I simply learned to plan ahead better. If I need cash, I tend to take it out from my own bank or credit union and if I need it broken up into smaller bills? I try to spend it someplace that has to give me cash back on the purchase.

Last I checked though, most big credit unions are part of a cooperative network so you can use any of their ATMs without any fees (at least up to, say, 20 transactions per month).

Can we step back and look at a slightly bigger picture? I mean, come on.... if Trump had anywhere NEAR the amount of influence some of you pretend he does, we'd already be a very different country than we are. If anything, the fact he's been elected twice now and if I turn off the news, I hardly notice anything is different in my daily life tells me the President is far more of a "figurehead" than I used to realize.

No .... if anything? I think America may be experiencing a recession/recovery cycle that's more shallow and quicker to complete than what we had in the past. For example, we rebounded quickly from everything that happened during COVID, despite unprecedented factors there that harmed small business.

People are generally still afraid of any perceived downturn, but some of that stems from what they know happened in the past -- when a recession was deeper and longer-lived.

America is very much a service economy today, with manufacturing a distant second. That tends to stabilize things to some extent (at the cost of creating more jobs that don't lead to higher-paying career positions). EG. You might have fewer people making 6 figure salaries as tool and die experts, but you also have more people who earn a steady, predictable income doing retail sales or restaurant work, or might be self-employed as a handyman or painter. The rapid changes of supply and demand for hard goods doesn't lead to mass job losses when factories close, etc.