If you’re in a studio apartment, you don’t really have a separate room for sleeping, so you likely have a tv visible from bed. If you move up to a 1 or 2 bed apartment, now you have a a living room, and a tv visible from bed is a choice. Guessing OP recently upgraded their living situation and is seeing how others do it.

The book Enders Game. I was will bullied in grade school. As was Ender. The overall theme is that it’s effectively impossible to maintain a defensive posture indefinitely. Be that always ready for dealing with bullies at school or home, to dealing with an alien threat becoming nearly impossible in three dimensions.

Ender comes up with the philosophy that you have to win, but not just win that fight/battle, you have to win so decisively that there won’t just be another fight later. While this turns out to be effective, it also results in genocide.

This resulted in a restrained version of the philosophy in me. When diplomacy fails, fight for your life, but know when you’ve won, know when you’ve prevented the next fight(s). And most importantly, know when to stop.

My blueray player broke, and my tv stopped showing me to use certain apps and I can’t figure out why. But a used PS4 cost me $85 and solved all my problems. And they left a copy of Minecraft in it, so I even have a game to play.

Counterpoint: my software allows you to access your banking needs. I’m financially on the hook if fraud occurs. Fraud occurs because your favorite “slap the monkey” game also installs a keylogger and network monitor. So I don’t allow my software to work if you have that installed.

I think you’re right that companies should not be able to tell you what software you can run, but users also can’t be trusted to keep their devices safe.

A lot of network, banking, and telephony protocols historically rely on trusting that there are no bad actors in the chain. Technology has added more links to the chain increasing the opportunities for bad actors to tap into it.

It’s a situation that needs better fixes. Maybe we just need to hand the current internet over to the bots and start a new one with security and privacy built in from the ground up.

Fully stocked pharmacy, comfy mattresses, tvs and video games, car batteries and inverters to run the entertainment, and sometimes even citrus trees to prevent scurvy.

Downside is that without power to the building you have a lot of work to do to dump all the fresh food before it stinks up the place. That dairy cooler alone would get disgusting real quick.

It’s always super frustrating that even on “high end“ pc laptops they’ll use some shitty combined Bluetooth and WiFi chip that will bottleneck everything.

As a software developer, that idea can fuck right off. India being on a half hour is enough of a pain in the ass. 6 more half-off time zones is just too much.

States can opt out of DST like AZ and HI. But the federal government doesn’t allow for states to opt in to permanent DST like CA tried to do.

I agree we should just ditch it at the federal level. But states are welcome to ditch it whenever they want, as long as they actually ditch it, and not try to make it an all year thing.

Of what I’ve personally driven, even for just a test drive.

Tesla S: meh Tesla 3: cramped for a tall guy Rivian truck: middle back seat is super uncomfortable. Only option is 1PD (one pedal driving) and I hated that. Everything else about it was cool Polestar: again, not good for tall people MachE: great unless you have to ride in the back seat. Plenty of room, but likely to induce motion sickness Lightning pickup: perfect, no notes except its overall bigger than it needs to be. Loading stuff up in the bed is more of a pain than it needs to be. Some people don’t like the range, but I’ve done a couple 1500+ mile road trips and never minded it.

Traded mine in for the lightning, but the MachE was a great car except it made the kids in the back seat car sick.

Fingers crossed this is a patent intended to prevent others from ever stooping to such evil, but it’s not like Sony has been clean when it comes to this kind of shit.