Babies are impractical. They're noisy and they smell bad, except for their tiny pink toes which smell delicious.

Always a safe bet, even when bought refurbished. I rely on ThinkPads to this very day.

... allowing sideloading and installing a completely open source boot process and OS. I don't know if that still is the case but a few years back Xperia phones where the last ones that allowed for this sort of thing. A good thing IMHO and worth supporting.

Kristi Noem (our ICE queen) is the one who shoots puppies.

It's not just Trump.
It's the entire MAGA Republican Party and their Project 2025.
Trump is just their useful idiot for now. They have many more waiting in the wings.
Their goal is to permanently establish a fascist dictatorship. They have made good progress.
It's damage will be permanent. They may be some return to sanity but we all have get used to living under an authoritarian dictatorship.
The rest of the world is rapidly moving to disassociate itself from the US since it is now completely unreliable.

Obviously, Intel has not kissed Trump's boots enough.
He needs to take a clue from Apple's Tim Cook and present Trump with a Gold icon. That's the proper level of boot-licking.

I also make a living from creative work and it annoys me as well to see someone blatantly trying to rip us off. But I think you and I both know that it's unlikely measures like this will prevent piracy for very long even if they are initially successful. The only thing you can truly control is the systems that don't belong to your user, so that's where you need to put anything you don't want them messing with.

Meanwhile as someone who is also a user and also doing other things than playing games on my devices - including some things where security matters much more than it does for anti-cheat measures in some random game - requiring any kind of intrusive access to my system just to play a game is a 100% reliable way or ensuring that I will never be buying that game.

Fortunately there is now more entertainment produced than I could possibly experience in a lifetime so even if it's the best game in the world I won't be too sorry to miss it while I'm playing something else that doesn't think it should have more control of my equipment than I do.

"OpenAI said it will not use federal worker data to train its models and agencies face no renewal requirements. "

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

OF "Models" are up a creek, when the basement dwellers can create a whole character to sell that will do whatever pays the most.

Which will drive down revenue for everyone except those skimming $ off the top, namely the OF owners.

The age of the internet where requests are honored has long been over. Tha fact that it has taken this long is an anomaly more than anything.

Websites are going the way of the Dodo due to AI. Once the data has been captured by AI, it is owned by AI.

The tax will be one expense but the customs clearance and paperwork will be the largest problem.
If I buy a cheap gadget (say $20) from China, it currently sails through customs quickly with no added cost.
When the de minimis exception is eliminated, it will raise the price by whatever the tax is plus all of the paperwork by the seller and customs to process the few dollars of tariff due.
I guess that's the point... make it difficult to buy stuff from abroad.
MAGA!

I'm pretty sure a pill isn't going to fix my lobsided skull or my staggered teeth and underdeveloped jaws. A problem evidently linked to wrong post-teething toddler nutrition rampant in modern societies around the world for roughly 200 years. There's even a book on the problem (Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic).

The other thing I don't get is using apps for everything.

I mean, I get it from the manufacturer's point of view. It means they can update things as they please retrospectively and possibly add new charges for functionality or services and/or implement spyware after the sale.

But from a user's point of view, why would I ever want my new home solar power and battery installation that has an expected working life of at least 20-30 years to be dependent on some random phone app to configure it? How many people had smartphones 20-30 years ago? How many people will still have them in 20-30 years? Exactly.

Nothing wrong with providing an app as well for the convenience of those who want it. But anything that is a permanent appliance or fixture in my home and doesn't fundamentally require external connectivity to do its job still needs to have 100% of its functionality available locally as well, without relying on external connectivity or any separate hardware or software platform for the UI.

When there is functionality that really does need remote connectivity, like say a power system that integrates with my electricity provider that offers flexible, demand-based pricing, there should be open standards for how these remote interactions work and it should still be possible to see and do everything else locally.

The world would be a much better place if governments and regulators promoted this kind of future-proof approach but sadly the public sector tends to lag so far behind in its awareness and understand of tech issues that it's not very effective at dealing with them.

... going balistic in a society that is 110% dependant on digital systems and networks up and running 24/7.

Nice. I like it.

And somehow I get the inkling that Visa and Mastercard won't be able to ignore this or brush it away.

People are too lazy to consider the alternatives.
Lots of people have shown how you can make low carbon cement but these fools would rather keep doing business as usual with the added expense (and carbon emissions) of transporting and storing carbon.