I use my desktop with 2 - 3 monitors, a large keyboard and trackball any chance I get. This has to do with how horrible input devices are on both laptops and phones. I can't stand typing on a touch screen. I can't stand pointing with a trackpad. Or clicking, since I click the wrong button 50% of the time, without the tactile feedback. Aging/vision decline also makes small screens unsuitable, both phones and laptops..

I have so many electronics that have lasted much longer. I have >25 year old AVRs still working, for example. The things that tend to fail are those with mechanical parts. My SACD changers have all died for that reason. VCRs - yes I still have a nice converter one, actually got it repaired, it typically for $1000 on ebay despite its clock ending in 2015. 100% of all HDDs I had in the 1990s failed eventually after years of 24 hours use in BBS, also. My DDS-4 tape drive is still working, and tapes are fully readable. I have had multiple floppy drives fail. I still have a working USB FDD, or at least it was working the last time I used it. My 1990s eras LSI and Adaptec SCSI controllers still work - had to plug them in to restore the tapes. Even OS/2 still boots on my 2016 Z170-AR motherboard.

The power switch on one of my large HAF cases has failed, and I can't repair it. I switched the reset button to the power button as a result. Everything else mechanical works.

For more modern parts, I have a SATA-2 64GB Kingston SSD from 2010 I'm still using in production. None of the SSDs I own have ever failedI have a big stack of smaller SATA ones, Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, Patriot. No failures. For NVMe I also have a pair of Crucial NVMe 2 TB, another pair of Adata 1TB, a pair of Samsung 2TB, Five Teamgroup 4 TB. None has ever failed.

I have 8 x 14 TB HDDs on my NAS, bought in 2019. Still completely SMART healthy, no funky noise,

The only parts I have had fail recently are two Bequiet SFX-L 600W power supply that were bought the same month in 2022, running at 0rpm for 4.5 years, with a 3 year warranty. I replaced them with some 2008 era Raidmax I had in a drawer, that run at a few hundred RPM.

For strictly solid state electronics, I have had one GPU failure in 32 years of building PCs. I have had a few sticks of DDR4 RAM fail. Currently have about 400 GB of DDR4 sticks, all working, many from 2015.

My 20 year old Roland MIDI equipment still works, with the exception of a converted 25 year analog organ pedal. The contacts failed and result in repeated notes, making it unplayable.

I still have a perfectly working Note 20 Ultra. Only in a drawer because of lack of security updates.

So, I would say it's total BS about the short life span of most consumer electronics. I have so much evidence to the contrary. And I didn't mention any of the 700 smart devices. I expect most of the 230 LED smart Wifi bulbs will have about the same life span as the previous LED bulbs, most of which were put in service 10 years ago based on the date on the sharpie, and all still work - I just don't know who wants to buy 230 used LEDs.

You're welcome.

Maculopathy called., and want solid colors back, no gradients.

Yeah. I can't even read anything on dark background with the maculopathy.

It's "Beep beep", actually.

Or, as the captions on Youtube road runner cartoons state : "Beat me".

Because stupid humans might wrongly entrust AI agents and let them manage critical things like the power grid, water systems, weapons.

you're right - I still encounter numerous people blaming the grid failure on renewables that I read it into your reply.

Though my snow & ice covered solar panels and PowerWall kept my house running.

Electrical generation failures were widespread such as Texas natural gas production dropped in half

A large portion of the decrease in natural gas production was from declines in Texas, which fell over 10 Bcf/d during the February 8–17 period

The South Texas Nuclear Power Station, about 60 miles southwest of me, lost half it's output

One of two reactors shut down at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station an hour southwest of Houston, knocking out about half of its 2,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

Also part of the natural gas failures were self induced A giant flaw in Texas blackouts: It cut power to gas supplies

Producers who depend on electricity to power their operations were left with no way to pump natural gas. And that gas was needed more than ever to generate electricity.

And despite some frozen turbines, wind was generating more than expected at the start of the outage:

Power supplied by wind (green) is coming in ahead of forecasts. ... An ERCOT director told Bloomberg that problems were widespread across generating sources, including coal, natural gas, and even nuclear plants.

So blaming the grid failure on renewables is is either ignorance or deceitfulness.

The longest outage I've experienced was 3+ days after Beryl blew through the Houston metro. I slept in my Model 3 to have AC during the night, without any risk of being asphyxiated in my garage, then recharging it during the day from my panels.

TFA has the correct headline. TFS does not.

Just noticed the 11717 MW was lower than the 17,000 so took a closer look, while that axis article was updated August 14, 2026 it used data from 2024:

according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System for 2024

More recent data from July 2026:

Texas has now passed California to lead the country, at 17,082 MW against 15,698 MW.

Texas has 7,905 MW of battery storage, putting us at #2 in the US behind California's 11,717 MW, and I'm paying 12 cents a kWh.

Check the Previous Day on ERCOT's Fuel Mix you'll see the same thing is happening in Texas, though ERCOT's graph shows the sun in orange instead of yellow and our battery storage is shown in maroon instead of blue.

I use an Optoma UHD65 4K projector. It doesn't have Wifi. It has Ethernet, but strictly for remote control. Otherwise, HDMI and VGA. It can't phone home.

Exactly. I can no longer solve them. I always use the audio now.

LLMs used as chatbots are fine. LLMs hooked up to harness agents that can perform actions is a different matter.
Since the agents are not legal entities, legal responsibility falls on those who operate them, ie. corporations or individuals.

If corporations aren't getting criminally charged, and no one is personally going to jail, perhaps everyone who is running agents should be setting up a corporation. I bet there is a market for liability insurance for unintended agent actions, too.