If you want to have an AI agent manage your local filesystem for you, would it be safer to run a local agent like OpenClaw vs cloud-based like Perplexity?

"Where's my screwdriver and my plumber's helper? I'll open up his mouth and I'll shove it in."

There was a time when shopping for a car (new or used) had "cool feature value" that was bundled into the purchase of the car. Some cars had heated seats, heated steering wheels, premium sound, etc. We perceived those options as adding emotional value to the vehicle, and that those nifty features came with the price of the vehicle. With subscription pricing, the thrill of car shopping shifts from discovery to accounting. What used to feel like a personal touch is now just another line item on the final bill. Since the subscription options don't affect the core functionality of the vehicle, people will ask, "Do I really want/need those features?" Budget-conscious people will look for what used to be called "base model" vehicles.

I hope they make these available to the US.

I worked at Amazon. The volunteers will be tracked. Those who don't volunteer, regardless of their reason, will see negative remarks under "Customer Obsession", "Ownership", and "Bias for Action". Then will come a PIP meeting with HR. "We can see you're having some trouble meeting Amazon's performance bar. This PIP is not a termination, it's a chance for you to really shine and show us you can do it!"

I completely agree, but we need to bring back classic investigative journalism for that. Old school journalism, where the nosey man/woman with "inside connections" and a strong hunch for finding the story behind the rumors, is long gone unfortunately. No one wants to pay for newspapers, so newsrooms shut down one by one. AI aggregation of news is literally just the equivalent of "prison loaf" - all the scraps and leftovers of what little actual reporting exists scraped from websites, chewed up by an LLM, and spit out to sound far more accurate and meaningful than it is. What's sad is how many will consume it and say, "That's all the informational nutrients I need!"

Didn't Packard-Bell PCs from the mid to late 90s have soldered RAM chips?

Windows 11 is basically just a social media platform with device drivers. Maybe not everyone wants a cloud. Maybe not everyone want to automatically share photos with social media. There's a lot to not like about Windows 11. It's clearly becoming another walled garden with traditional spyware habits built in. You can't blame those who just want an operating system.

Bloat is the reason I'm looking at other Android phones. From what I've read online, specs and reviews, it looks like the Pixel 7 Pro is a decent choice.

I don't think the point of the article is the cost, but who actually owns/controls the vehicle. When you buy a car, and you add on heated seats (for example) at the time of purchase, you pay a price for some "package". But then it's yours as long as you own the car. You own the heated seats. In this article, the car company owns the heated seats, and they're just letting you rent them. Stop the subscription, and they remotely shut off your heated seats. It sounds ok in vanilla supply and demand theory, but we know it's going to get completely out of control. Treating cars like computers on wheels is going to end up screwing drivers financially and technologically.

I don't understand how the FBI can keep tabs on millions of American citizens, to spot suspicious behavior (we're told), and yet all the big corruption stories on Wall Street completely surprise them. What does this tell us about who they're watching, and why? They're obviously not interested in catching criminals.

Symantec has been doing this for some time now. The last version of Symantec AV I used was in 2003. I was getting pop-ups and warnings about my AV expiring, and I still had eight weeks left on my 1-year subscription. And, I mean nagged every day. I didn't agree with the marketing tactic, so I finally uninstalled their product and never bought it again.