Reddit is upset that Anthropic is taking a dubious approach to Redditâ(TM)s usersâ(TM) consent - when thatâ(TM)s Redditâ(TM)s job.

A site thatâ(TM)s switched its terms to grant itself the right to sell its usersâ(TM) content, blocked accounts for trying to delete their content⦠is upset that someone else is acting similarly dubiously.

By all means, Reddit, call it for what it is: You have something you think is valuable, others think is valuable, and you want to force them to pay you for it, not take it for free.

But donâ(TM)t pretend itâ(TM)s about user consent. Youâ(TM)re in NO way doing this to protect your users from exploitation, you just want to be sure youâ(TM)re the ones profiting from it.

A data point, in isolation, can be used to read in any explanation you like.

Elsewhere, itâ(TM)s widely reported that Steam survey numbers are swinging wildly across the board as Steam has recently had an explosion of growth in the Chinese gaming community, who tend to agree to participate in the survey more than Western users, in order to get greater representation.

The average CPU has decreased, the average GPU has decreased, and also Linuxâ(TM)s market share has decreased.

But what the survey doesnâ(TM)t say is whether the U.S. or EU markets have actually changed at all. Or whether the large Chinese market has simply moved the global average points hard.

Meanwhile, those who donâ(TM)t account for that are making pronouncements about how Linux is used much less for gaming⦠while numbers of players, numbers of installed games, have all likely remained very much the same.

Motorcycles are awesome. Theyâ(TM)re also pretty deadly. For all those reasons, most governments require you to reach a certain age, undergo training, pass a test to prove you know how to ride safely, carry a license they can revoke if youâ(TM)re a tool, get insurance to cover your own injuries and harm to others, and - other than in FREEDOM! states - wear a helmet and possibly other armor.

E-bikes are lousy motorcycles. While they are annoyingly slow compared to even 125cc motorcycles, they still go more than fast enough for head injuries to be fatal, roadrash to suck hard, and eejits to ride in regular traffic as if they can keep up.

So, carrying the same dangers, what are the safety requirements?

â¦

Yeah, that would be the complete list.

Letâ(TM)s give them to twelve year olds, whoâ(TM)ll refuse to wear helmets as theyâ(TM)re uncool, whoâ(TM)ve never seen a driverâ(TM)s handbook let alone read one or taken any kind of test. Insurance? Nah, donâ(TM)t need that, Americaâ(TM)s got awesome universal healthcare and if they slam into someoneâ(TM)s parked car because a kid has no idea how to handle it, just sucks to be the car owner. License plate for accountability? Nope. If a cop does pull the rider over for being utterly dangerous, thereâ(TM)s no license to take away, no insurance premiums to go up, no accountability whatsoever.

What could go wrong?!

Itâ(TM)s not that we pay badly. We pay really well. Itâ(TM)s just that this is a new era where making 10 widgets an hour, forty hours a week, which used to make a living wage, just wonâ(TM)t cut it anymore. Modern thinkers understand they have just have to be making fifty widgets an hour for 80 hours to make money in this modern world!

So five times the productivity for twice the hours isnâ(TM)t just you slashing payments to a tenth and people having to deliver ten times as much, itâ(TM)s just that theyâ(TM)re not thinking in modern enough terms?

Exactly!

Wink has been essentially bankrupt for years. They got bought out by Willwhateverâ(TM)s company but heâ(TM)s apparently not been paying staff and closed his office after a deal in Dubai stalled last year. Turns out having a couple of hit songs doesnâ(TM)t make you a tech visionary and brilliant businessman any more than Bill Gates buying a ukulele makes him a hit musician.

Lawyers are generally only interested in class action suits where they can win something. Taking 100% of the zero assets Wink likely has is still zero.

Wink Hub 2 added local processing. It made a lot of things a lot faster with no internet round trip as well as more fault tolerant.

Shame theyâ(TM)re bricking the system if you donâ(TM)t pay monthly for the service they told you you were paying for by buying the hardware.

Having had both generations of Ring doorbell camera, I can safely predict this only gives law enforcement footage of criminalsâ(TM) backs as they leave the area.

To give Ring credit, theyâ(TM)ve worked with me to resolve issues, they even sent me the v2 camera for free when they couldnâ(TM)t resolve issues with the v1. Their customer service has been exceptional... just with a flawed product.

Even with power saving as disabled as you can get it, even with a mesh Wi-Fi access point only half a dozen feet away, the process of it detecting motion, waking back up, trying to negotiate a Wi-Fi connection, trying to connect to the server and then starting to rec... wait, come back! Iâ(TM)m nearly ready to film you!

It just doesnâ(TM)t work. Iâ(TM)ve ended up putting Nest Outdoor cameras near the Ring doorbell so I can actually get usable footage. Nestâ(TM)s cameras donâ(TM)t work as a doorbell/useful intercom but they actually record footage of people approaching, which is far more cameralike than Ring.

Given the Ring Alarm systemâ(TM)s keypads regularly lose signal, while even closer to the access point, I fear Ringâ(TM)s Wi-Fi engineers may not actually know what Wi-Fi actually is.

Itâ(TM)s a shame. Theyâ(TM)re a great company with great customer service. But lousy internet on their things, which is kind of a key failing for IoT.

And so, for privacy zealots, donâ(TM)t worry: Iqf other Ring doorbells are anything like mine, the cops arenâ(TM)t getting anything useful.

And then, after you moved them back in house, you retired?

It all comes down to where the business wants their critical vulnerability.

They moved it from a smart guy on site to what was hopefully a decently staffed cloud service.

They were then at the mercy of the business having outages, their hardware having outages, the network connection having outages, their phone support having outages. All of these things led to a moderate chance - that came true - of a failure lasting for several hours at an embarrassing time.

So they moved it back in house to a really smart guy who knew how to maintain the hell out of very well optimized system and was willing to log in no matter whether he was on vacation, sick or whatever.

Which moved them to a single point of utterly massive failure, not a couple of hours of outage but weeks, if not semi permanent, if he got hit by a bus, into a car wreck, had a stroke, etc.

Given I'm yet to find someone who's taken over a proprietary system, without a great hand off, that hasn't cursed out the original guy... no matter how well that first guy thought he'd documented everything... recovery after that single point of failure is now hell vs a stressful few hours - if anything happens to you (or the guy you passed it on to after you retired) vs the more frequent issues with the cloud chain.

From my experience in San Diego:

Usually, if you call 911, youâ(TM)ll sit on hold for three or four minutes.

When you do get through, if youâ(TM)re calling for something as trivial as thieves returning to your house while your wife is there alone, donâ(TM)t be so inconsiderate as to call while itâ(TM)s raining or theyâ(TM)ll tell you theyâ(TM)re not going to dispatch someone until after the rain stops and your wife should just leave the house. No. Seriously. SDPD pulled that shit.

If you call back because youâ(TM)re seriously concerned about her safety, once youâ(TM)re done holding again, expect to be told to stop calling 911 for something as trivial as a potential home invasion.

Donâ(TM)t be surprised when you can drive the 80+ miles back from Orange County and still be there an hour before the police show up after the rain stops.

The police are a revenue generation service for cities. They do not serve. They do not protect.

Itâ(TM)s not a racist thing. They donâ(TM)t care about you, regardless of your skin color.

Having phones tell them where you are and get them to you a minute faster changes a two hour response to an hour and fifty nine minutes. The criminals will be long gone, regardless.

Mind you, it might help for ambulances, once you get past the lousy 911 hold times.

I choose to pay not pirate. Those who believe they can just take for free will never be convinced why it matters to those who refuse to take. But everything else follows as an economic argument only once you accept Iâ(TM)m a paying customer and compare means to pay.

Digital copies usually cost the exact same amount as a physical copy. Except the physical copy always comes with the digital copy bundled. So itâ(TM)s the exact same price for the exact same digital copy plus free discs.

Discs are usually a lot cheaper in sales than their digital copies, if youâ(TM)re backfilling a collection.

With price matching, you pay the lowest price, whichever store youâ(TM)re at, which almost always ends up cheaper than digital.

No matter how digital licensing terms change, no matter which services cease to be profitable and close, my physical copy remains.

I never hit an arbitrary limit of maximum disc players used. I regularly bounce off Vuduâ(TM)s maximum. A few games systems, a bunch of streaming devices, some smart TVs, a couple of phones, iPads and laptops and a married couple starts getting bugged to deactivate devices rather than freely use whichever one theyâ(TM)re currently using.

The federal government has sold out users. As net neutrality collapses, as users continue to get a single choice of ISP in each zip code and it sets bandwidth caps to stop digital video use and force users back to cable... my discs use zero bandwidth. I can watch my free digital copies when it suits me but Iâ(TM)m never beholden to cable ISPs.

When the internet goes out, my UPS stays up and I keep the exact same library.

1080P is now just about as good, streaming, over a decade after blu ray showed up. Even then, it often stutters and drops quality. A disc never does. And while itâ(TM)s great that streaming is finally there with blu ray, 4K UHD discs that play on any $200 Xbox One S still beat the hell out of most attempts at 4K streams over what US ISPs laughably get to call high speed internet.

I like being a collector. That wall of discs, as a quick trigger into memories of being a kid and watching Flight of the Navigator or the first time I discovered Cabin In The Woods is awesome.

I can loan a physical disc as often as I want (so long as Iâ(TM)m happy to trust friends and accept when it fails to return). I love that I can share my love with others. I love that I can introduce rare gems that are a nightmare to track down on streaming services.

But it really comes back to... The digital costs just as much as the physical and digital combined. If Iâ(TM)m buying anyway (sorry pirates, Iâ(TM)m a fool, I get it), why no have all the advantages of digital AND all the advantages of physical, for the same price.

System reports the door being open for longer than sixty seconds, dispatches cops.

Good luck to the delivery driver, assigned a key that logs their entry, trying to pretend they werenâ(TM)t there.

Knowing theyâ(TM)re definitely getting caught will deter all but the biggest morons.

And, yes, if you want this, install a NestCam or equivalent looking at the door to record anyone lifting anything or lingering.

What could possibly go wrong with the current model... where your hypothetical delivery driver, leaving his hypothetical truck with a hypothetical key has just given thieves dozens of packages and a tool thatâ(TM)ll back through the wall of any timber frame construction, defeating any lock you can design, just fine.

Outlier chances will always happen. But itâ(TM)s about risk vs reward.

In exchange for ten thousand less packages stolen from doorsteps, costing Amazon maybe $1m... one delivery driver is a tool and allows a string of breakins worth tens of thousands (as soon as he realizes, he calls and has the key cancelled, leaving time for one or two homes to get hit and the cops to be dispatched to whichever addresses report its use). Plus, Amazon arenâ(TM)t liable, UPS or whichever company he worked for is liable for his breaking protocol.

Cost to Amazon $0. Cost to UPS maybe $50,000. Vs $1m cost to Amazon.

I needed a car towing about a hundred miles back home. Most tow drivers need you to ride with them so you can receive your keys back at the destination. I needed to remain where the car had broken down and a two hour tow plus a slow and expensive Uber back would have sucked.

Because of home automation, I was able to send the driver with my keys, watch him pull up and unload my car, then open the door for him to drop the keys inside, watching him the whole time, before locking the door behind him.

I was out five minutes of my time vs four hours.

Yes, âoeIOT security!â Lots of panic. Systems are exploitable. You could get robbed.

But no matter how secure the locks on a house, a thief can go through the windows. Put bars on the windows and a thief can drive a stolen truck clean through your wall.

Someone determined enough is going to get in. But theft deterrent is always about making your neighbor a more appealing target and you not worth the hassle.

IOT locks donâ(TM)t change that by any perceptible amount. There will always be edge case hacks but few and far between, not the norm. Plus I have multiple other layers of security so the door is only one small part.

In exchange, I got four hours of my life back that time and have a bunch of other similar stories of the convenience that more than outweighs the very slight additional risk.

âoeWith your consent your personal data can be retrieved only by credentialed verifiersâ

However, without your consent, weâ(TM)ll share it with anyone that offers us money. And we never seek your consent.

Amazon and Vudu have both been selling $30 4K copies.

Alternatively virtually every disc now comes with an Ultraviolet (Vudu/bunch of other branded services) code.

Buy a 4K movie on disc for the same price as the Vudu digital copy and you get the 4K Vudu version plus discs that never degrade quality due to bandwidth and, best of all, still play when your digital merchant of choice decides to retire their service.

Plus Vuduâ(TM)s disc to digital generally lets you stick Blu-ray copies in your drive and convert to Vudu for $1 each as soon as youâ(TM)re doing ten or more ($2 each for less than ten).

Getting the discs as well as the digital copies, for the same price as the digital copies... it amazes me anyoneâ(TM)s been buying digital only for just as high a price.

Oh... and a lot of discs come with both Vudu and iTunes codes. So you commonly get discs and two digital services for the cost of a single digital service buy.