This is why I block users who share garbage after the first few times I notice it. For example, this will be the last post I see from OP.

Windows Phone seven was three years away from unveiling and nearly 4 from release.

Kobo and Boox are both great alternatives to Kindles.

Nobody would define that as mainstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micturition_syncope

200m active users on a platform that has 1.4 billion accounts? Okay.

I always send an iCloud link for photos when I know that there’s someone who may not be using an iPhone. I’m not sure why others don’t. It’s especially useful when sending large numbers of pictures.

If they enable iCloud sync for messages it will update everywhere, they can also make sure they have Text Message Forwarding selected on their phone. They’ll get the messages in a timely manner (I get mine at the exact same time as my phone) and read messages will be reflected in all locations. I’ve been using iMessage on a Mac, iPad, and iPhone in some combination or other since the feature was offered, and the only issue I’ve ever had with sync was when I did a clean setup on a new Mac instead of a setup from backup. The above options weren’t selected.

There is a small sliver of Google that wants you as a customer. Maybe that’s the sliver that makes the Pixel line, but Pixel phones are not Google’s business, Google’s business is acquiring your information and selling it or leveraging it to increase ad revenue. Google is not a hardware company, though they sell hardware. Google is not an entertainment company, though they will sell you movies and music. Google is not a consumer software company, though they do provide software and services targeted at consumers and businesses. Google is an advertising company. If you buy hardware from them, and you like it, that’s great, but they are less concerned about your experience as an end-user than they are about acquiring your data to further their ad sales. If making a quality experience for you as a user Improves the likelihood of acquiring more data, they improve the quality of your experience. But if an improved experience hampers their ability to acquire more revenue through ad sales, they will hamper your experience or shut down a product that isn’t directly increasing their data collection and add sales. See: rolling everything content related into the YouTube brand and increasingly hampering the experience of those who use ad blockers or privacy focused browsers.

You may consider yourself a customer of Google, but until you’re giving them millions of dollars every quarter, you are just a user. Google’s profits from every hardware device they’ve ever sold is just a rounding error on a single quarter of the massive amounts of money they make selling ads.

I know it sounds like a cliche, but you are not Google’s customer. You are a “user” and Google sells users to their customers. Your data and attention are their products.

This is how I understood the comment:

Wrapped gets Spotify a lot of positive buzz. Layoffs while that buzz happens may get less notice, because people are on the “look at all the neat Spotify numbers” train and essentially advertising good vibes for the platform.

This is how I understood the comment:

Wrapped gets Spotify a lot of positive buzz. Layoffs while that buzz happens may get less notice, because people are on the “look at all the neat Spotify numbers” train and essentially advertising good vibes for the platform.

Blu-Ray discs can carry offline updates that blacklist other discs. All players must support these updates as part of licensing the technology. All your blu-rays may play today, but if an update comes along to revoke the license on a title and you play a disc that carries the update that enables that revocation, it won’t play back on your device. It’s occasionally been used to disable known pirated discs, and so far hasn’t been used on licensed materials, but “so far” is never much assurance.

Blu-Ray discs can carry mandatory software updates that change the functionality of playback devices, add “protections” against “piracy”, and could potentially revoke licenses of content on other discs.

Media companies are prepared to screw you over regardless of wether or not you but content from them. I do believe in paying for content, but I don’t trust any modern distribution to last, so I have a couple backups of all the media I’ve ever purchased. And for formats that make it difficult to back up, I sail the seven seas.

Fair enough. I use an Apple TV and Infuse in my living room on my main TV, so I didn’t even think about how the 4 needed to have things transcoded for it. Infuse natively decodes almost everything I throw at it. How do Harmy’s despecialized compare to 4k77?

Even the Pi 4 runs Kodi just fine.

Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 4 is pretty good, and you can run moonlight from within Kodi. Of course, you have to find a reasonably priced Pi…

EDIT: Also, I use this setup in a spare room, but use an Apple TV in my living room for identical purposes. Though I use Infuse and the actual Steam remote play application.

I think the general public isn’t stupid in this instance, I think they’re just cheap. I have a friend who filled his house with Echo speakers and bragged that it was less expensive than a couple HomePods or Sonos speakers. When I pointed out that Alexa made shopping suggestions after a request he made, he kinda brushed it off, but a few months later he disconnected them all when he noticed private conversations around the house were influencing his Amazon recommendations. He’s fortunate enough to have learned from his mistake and been able to afford to fix it. A lot of folks see a 4k streaming device for $30, compare it to something like the Nvidia shield or the Apple TV, and think it’s a great deal. When they find themselves frustrated by advertising a couple days, weeks, or months later (or maybe desensitized to it like a frog in boiling water), it’s too late. They’ve already spent their money, and/or assume that this is just what all streaming devices are like, so why spend more for this experience?

Stupidity? Probably not, just cheapness and an ignorance of how low cost hardware stays low cost.

These features are abnormally asymmetric to the point of being off-putting. General symmetry of features is a significant part of what attracts people one to another, and why facial droops from things like Bells Palsy or strokes can often be psychologically difficult for the patient who experiences them.

General symmetry, not exact symmetry.

Those arm positions occur over the course of a fluid motion in a single second. How long does it take for you to drop your hands to your side or raise them to clasped from the side? It doesn’t take me more than about half a second as a deliberate movement.