>"There is nothing more devastating for a family to assist to a loved one descent in Alzheimer hell."

Confirmed. I am going through this with my mom, now. Both her brothers already died horrible, drawn-out, emotionally-devastating deaths from Alzheimer's. I fear that any great discovery might be too late for her. And I suspect my turn is coming, eventually :(

>"But it appears that most American toddlers only need to wait a few years before they can get devices of their very own"

And what percentage of those devices given to children are locked-down to a very restrictive whitelist of apps/sites/communication? 5%? 1%?

Handing a minor unsupervised access to an unrestricted, internet-connected device should be considered child abuse.

>"every kid doing this should be sent through the discipline process"

100% agree. After one warning.

>"Further, where are all the other characters set up in Tron Legacy? Why should we care anything about this whole new crew of characters that seem to have no real connection to the previous stories? Legacy actually set up the possibility of an interesting sequel. Why aren't we getting that?"

^^ This

I haven't seen the movie, and probably won't, until years from now when it pops up on something. I did love Tron (when it came out) and also Tron Legacy was great, despite the "spooky" AI face mods. Maybe they weren't deep on story, but there was a good story. I didn't expect there would even BE a real story with Tron Ares, especially with no connection to any of the established characters. I guess my expectation was correct.

Maybe it is because I am much older now- kewl effects are not enough to cut it anymore. In fact, in the last decade, the extreme effects and pacing of them in so many movies are so over the top, they actually annoy and exhaust me. I long for more movies like Bicentennial Man, Cloud Atlas, Gattaca, Inception, Interstellar, Oblivion.

>"First and foremost for the underfunded fire response and fire prevention services. The Republican party in California in particular has been cutting funding their substantially."

Wouldn't be an rsilvergun post without SOMEHOW injecting crazy anti-right political rants. And what is this "Republican party in California" you speak of? How much power do they have?

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fballotpedia.org%2FParty_...

Democrats have held power over the house, senate, and governorship for the last 15 years, and control over the house and senate for the past 29 years. But yeah, it is a Republican problem, somehow. And how have THEY managed forests by controlled burning and prevention?

>"As an added bonus we don't have to talk about the fact that the climate change driven drought is what made the fire so bad."

Nice try. I guess if the anti-right stuff doesn't work, then swivel to the ever present "climate emergency" stuff:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
"Drought is intrinsic to the natural climate of California. [6] Across the Californian region, paleoclimate records dating back more than 1,000 years show more significant dry periods compared to the latest century."

And now go to https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.drought.gov%2Fstates... scroll down and click on 1895-Present and look at the graph. Then click on 0 to 2017 and look at THAT graph.

>"Loving Microsoft yet?"

I don't use any of their products. And there are many good reasons for that.

When you're angry about the Klan being portrayed as the bad guys...

>"given that many parents will not step up and do something about it"

It is child abuse. What do we do about parents who allow their children access to other dangerous things? We have social norms against it. We socially shame abusers. We have laws against it. We can prosecute abusive parents and/or take children away from them due to it.

>"do we therefore let the abusers run wild and make no attempt to hold them accountable?"

The only way to "hold them (companies) accountable" is to force ALL users to disclose their identity through "official" ID. This destroys ALL user's privacy, and (as we have seen numerous times) means they are going to store that information and it WILL get hacked/sold/exposed/used to track people. Destroying the Internet in the name of "save the children" shouldn't be the solution.

>"ships with the latest GNOME 49 desktop environment, defaulting to a Wayland-only session [...] there's no other session to choose from the login screen"

Yuck.
There are so many reasons to use Linux Mint, instead.

But, "congrats", I guess.

>"allegations that their platforms have created a youth mental health crisis."

100% the fault of parents giving their children unrestricted, unsupervised internet-connected devices. Would you give your children full, unsupervised access to your car? Gun? Alcohol? Chainsaw? Medications? Or allow them to go out and visit anywhere they want or hang out with anyone they want, and at any time? Or to talk to adult strangers, alone? Or go to a casino? Of course not. But that is analogous to handing them an unrestricted, internet-connected computer/phone/tablet/whatever for them to obsess over all day long, every day.

Stop pointing the fingers at social media and the internet and start pointing the finger at parents and their agents. There needs to be more tools for parents to create whitelisted devices and there needs to be a new social norm that it is not acceptable for children to have free reign on the Internet or to communicate with any random stranger without a parent's knowledge or consent. Limit and/or take away/limit the offending *devices* from children, stop trying to limit the services for adults and ruining the Internet for everyone in the "name of the children."

I hope this suit is lost. Because all it will do is further encourage companies to rape our privacy and for parents to skirt actual responsibility and parenting.

>"Wow awash google in cash and this is what they come up with. Mozilla needs fewer corp types and more technical types."

Unfortunately, they are caught in a bind where, like all companies and products, they seemingly "have to" put AI stuff in, or risk criticisms of possible obsolescence. I know this isn't true. You know this isn't true. Most everyone on Slashdot knows this isn't true. But there are a crapload of companies and consumers out there that eat this stuff up. I will be glad when much of this AI bubble bursts and expectations can come back to Earth.

Fortunately, it probably didn't require much effort, is optional, and isn't likely to regress anything.

>"Open source is the ONLY reason i buy intel"

^^^ THIS

Intel's contributions to Open Source most likely greatly returns on their relatively small investment in that effort. It creates good-will about their products and enables lots of people and companies to use their stuff with confidence in Linux and other FOSS. Intel doesn't have THAT much competition, and I doubt their few competitors are benefiting all that much from those contributions.

As an example, there is a very good reason I often specifically select an Intel multi-port Ethernet or SFP card. Because they are very well-supported in Linux, well-made, reliable, and perform well under Linux. That likely wouldn't be the case had they not worked with the FOSS community.

That is close. But I need 3 devices on/off and dim. This is what I am trying to replace:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthex10shop.com%2Fproduct...

Super thin, wireless, uses a CR2032 which lasts for several years. Press one of them for on/off, then use dim/bright to control level. Simple, works.

Neither would have any of the other anti-consumer policy changes that are liable to financially molest you.