>"That is nothing compared to the damage they did by making taking over CentOS with promises and then breaking those promises."

Completely agreed. And the moves/hostilities after that were almost as bad. It poisoned RedHat forever in many, many people's eyes.

>The fact Rocky Linux [rockylinux.org]

And Alma Linux, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Falmalinux.org%2F which came first

>"exists is good"

Indeed.

>"Nobody needs RedHat and nobody should be making new installs using it."

We should actually turn focus back to Debian and somehow pour resources into that, making it the new definition of "Enterprise Linux". Because we CERTAINLY don't want it to be Ubuntu at this point.

>"They save the company a ton of money - one touch screen can duplicate 10, 20 30 or more gauges."

None of that should be on a touchscreen. It should be on a dashboard screen in front of the driver. The touchscreen should be in the center.

>"But when the touch screen breaks, you lose everything rather than just the rpm."

Not when you also have a proper dashboard display (looking at your, Tesla- what a horrible idea). However, yes, if that dashboard display dies, you are kinda S out of luck! :) But, even non-digital dashboards in some later vehicles have a master controller with single-points of failure as well.

So does the 2025 Ariya I just bought. Although the HVAC controls are capacitive- they have fixed positions, molded icons, backlit with color change for function, and with haptic feedback (although that lags a bit). Same with the drive mode, camera selection, and several other things- none are exclusively on the touchscreen. Although you can get to most ON the touchscreen as well.

Seats, position memory, wheel position, mirrors, lights, turn, wipers, cruise, locks, windows, liftgate, moonroof, roof shade, garage door, courtesy lights, volume, parking brake, shifter, brake hold, auto-beams, hazards, and lots of other functions are dedicated controls.

And lots of physical buttons on the steering wheel with cues for feel so you can memorize them over time. And voice control as well. And a large dashboard display that is customizable (in addition to the large touchscreen on the center dash. Plus an HUD for important info. It is all laid-out and designed very well, and extremely attractive. But the infotainment system is a bit buggy here and there.

>"But one does not bite the hand that feeds"

We have zero evidence that Google has corrupted Mozilla. And, again, if there were even a hint of it, Google would be in huge hot water, very quickly.

>"I do. I choose to pay slightly more for wind power rather than the default gas turbine power."

That isn't real competition like I can buy a Honda or a Nissan or a Chevy kind of control, from different companies, with different features and prices and service. Or I can get Internet from my cable provider, or a fiber provider, or from a 5G provider, or from a satellite provider.

Of course, I am not proposing we have different competing grids/poles/connections to the home. I am just pointing out there are downsides to it- lack of competition, lack of accountability, lack of innovation, lack of motivation, slow response time, lack of pricing pressure, etc. All the things one expects with a government-overseen monopoly.

If AI datacenters are ruining the pricing (or stability) for everyone, then at a minimum, their increased cost to the system infrastructure should be reflected in THEIR rates, not everyone's.

>"They'll pass that cost on to OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other customers as they should. Those companies will pass the costs back on to the consumers."

It gets passed on to consumers who use THOSE products, yes. But not ALL consumers, like it does now when these AI companies effectively raise power pricing for everyone right now.

I know quite a few people who don't use anything Microsoft, Meta, or OpenAI. Now, some of the costs will still get passed through in a lesser way for consumers using different companies who, themselves, use AI stuff. But it won't be as much or as direct.

I don't think the government should "ration" AI. But I do think they have some duty to prevent it from destroying the grid and grossly affecting home power prices. I mean, that *is* the reason the power market isn't really a free market (from a consumer point of view) and is being overseen/regulated/controlled. They are apparently doing a crappy job (which shouldn't be surprising).

Comparing to what happened IE is entirely different. Completely closed, corrupted tons of standards, was not really multiplatform most of its life, bundled with their OS, rarely meaningfully updated, ignored standards bodies. So that isn't a good comparison to what is happening right now.

>"What should Chrome have done differently?"

Not be evil? Allow more participation in Chromium? Not tweak their sites to work "better" than other browsers? Only add "standards" that are actual multi-browser standards?

>"I don't get is how it's unique to Google's chrome project and not universal."

It isn't universal because Firefox, for example *is* community-driven, is *not* driven by some massive, world-dominating company, is *not* trying to subvert real standards (that I know of), is *not* in charge of major websites in which they intentionally code to have a worse experience on other browsers, does *not* have a conflict of interest when it comes to ads and privacy like Google does. So it is not universal.

Fat bodyguards are less likely to leak your location and better at soaking up dangerous fragments. Prime minster obviously doesn't know what he's doing with the protective detail.

Amazon keeps flagging my orders as suspicious then cancels them. Worst part is it takes nearly twelve hours before they do that, so it's a waiting game. After I confirmed the payments were no longer pending with my bank, I re-did the orders, but Amazon also sent me a confirmation of delivery for the first canceled order... Third time's the charm, right?
I think they assigned a lot of back end stuff to an "AI".

The situation varies by region in the US. In some places there is just 'a' power supplier and that's the deal; in others there are several options(sometimes including choices between slightly higher fixed rates and ones that pass spot prices directly through, sometimes by generation type).

In all cases though, EU and US, the energy supplier 'market' is a bit of an oddball because it's substantially synthetic.

Unless you are such a big account that you literally get a direct line from the generator to your site it's not like anyone is slapping labels on electrons to make sure that Electrodyne LLC. electrons are being properly routed to Electrodyne customers: it's all a construct on top of the same basic arrangement as described above of the grid operator working with suppliers in order to have power available to service load; and metering customers on the other end.

Synthetic doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't work; assuming it is designed properly it certainly can; but it does tend to mean that the apparent vibrancy of the competitive scene can bear a somewhat unpredictable relationship with the state of supply. If you actually operate generating assets and want to sell the result you can do that. If you want to buy supply futures and bundle the resulting 'capacity' into something you can hopefully resell to end users at a profit you can do that as well. You can do a bit of both if you run generating assets that are heavy on a specific flavor, cheap base load or highly responsive peaking units or whatnot; and buy cheap base load from someone else if your peaking units are relatively expensive; or run base load and make up any shortfalls between what you provide and what your customers want at worst-case times by buying capacity from someone with peaking units; or 'virtual' capacity from someone with load shedding options, or some combination.

The system has its virtues(and is, to some degree, mandatory unless you want point-to-point wiring everywhere); but does have the habit of making it look like there are a lot more suppliers with uncorrelated prices than there in fact are. In a pinch you see a lot of...optimistic...assumptions about the cost and availability of spot contracts to cover unexpected load.

>"Capitalism in practice. Socialize the costs, privatize the profits."

There is no free market in utilities, at least not from the consumer perspective. I have no choice where I get my power. There is one power company and the rates are set by government control/approval. So try again.

>"Actually the best response is to opt out of the system and install solar/battery if you can."

Unless you can't. And the more people opt out, the fewer are left to pay for the connected infrastructure. Then that becomes unaffordable for everyone else. Although the idea is attractive, and I would love being independent of the utilities.

I initially shared your assumption; especially since 'cute/expressive avatar' is the aspect of 'robot' where a suitably rigged 3d model in the engine of your choice can get most of the effect(and a great deal more versatility) for essentially nothing; while environmental traversal or manipulation and sensing are where 'actual physical robot' start to get much more interesting; but unless they are very carefully hiding that desirable feature it seems like a no.

It seems especially tepid if you compare it to something like the "Loona V28 Robot Pet Dog ChatGPT-4o Smart AI-Powered Companion" that costs $50 less than the freestanding variant of the 'Reachy Mini'; but is dragged down by being a proprietary blackbox hobbled by no doubt dodgy firmware on a mystery SoC and a near-certainly alarming (lack of) privacy policy in terms of whatever hastily implemented chatGPT integration is powering it.

There's a thing that also isn't exactly going to terrify Boston Dynamics or change the face of the 5th industrial revolution; but it's both enough 'robot' to justify not just being a 3d character onscreen using your webcam; and something where an explicitly tinkerer-friendly version would likely be a lot more engaging. I'd be surprised if the designer of that one did much overt hardening; a proper job of that is expensive; but unless the user is in it for the reverse engineering just using some mystery ICs or glob-tops, an LCD that speaks somewhat oddball SPI; and generally not labelling headers or leaving debug consoles open can making modifications a real hassle without explicit anti-tamper efforts.

>"The upheaval at PJM started a year ago with a more than 800% jump in prices at its annual capacity auction. Rising prices out of the auction trickle down to everyday people's power bills."

And it shouldn't and don't have to. This situation is being caused by giant data centers with AI junk, so THEY should pay in THEIR rates for being the cause, not home consumers.

>"Prices will remain high as long as demand growth is outstripping supply"

Then assign the costs to the AI datacenter customers, not the home consumers. "Externalize" the problem to them so it better reflects the economic reality of what they are doing.

>"I like to use ghostery in addition to uBlock Origin. I miss the non-lite version."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Faddons.mozilla.org%2Fen-...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Faddons.mozilla.org%2Fen-...

Perfectly non-"lite"

As for malicious add-ons, there is the "Recommended" badge (that can be set as a filter as well) which helps a lot.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.mozilla.org%2Fen...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.mozilla.org%2Fen...

Not surprisingly, both UBO and Ghostery are listed as "Recommended", along with 99 others (out of 58,708 addons). I will admit that of the 7 I am using at home, only 2 are "Recommended". And of the 2 I use at work, only 1 is.

Oh, looking around, I didn't even know that there is an official extension to enable "Multi-Account Containers" which looks very interesting:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.mozilla.org%2Fen...

It would sound like an Alexa on wheels; but it doesn't actually have any wheels. It's basically a webcam with mic, speaker, and the ability to wiggle its 'head' for effect.

This is the 'disruption' that is supposed to be shaking a billion-dollar industry? 'taking on Tesla and Boston Dynamics with radical transparency(except on the order page, because why would you want to know about the camera resolution or battery capacity?)'; and apparently not much else; but hey, only $300 for the hardwired version.

Truly, actually being able to traverse or manipulate your environment is for legacy losers. Wiggling your head is the transcendent future of robotics!