I think there's a solid case to be made for both Apple and Nintendo that keeping control of ther platform ensures better reliability. I don't know enough about Nintendo to say, but my experience with their stuff vs. third party stuff is that theirs works better, even on the wii. Apple has, historically, made a way for some third party hardware stuff, partnerships the form with certain companies who seem to be able to extend functionality in an Apple kind of way, and with concomitant support of the products and their challenges. This creates an extra degree of reliability in the end user experience.

Of course the temptation to turn this into market manipulation always looms large, and Apple is not immune and I'm sure neither is Nintendo. This is why we have a robust consumer protection and regulation system . . .Oh wait. . .

I should very much like to see an 800W amp the size of an nes cartridge. The smallest amp I could find was an NAD at 30W about the size of a mac mini.

Before making the claim that the 'rich' pay the 'lion's share' of taxes, you should expand your definition beyond income earners.

Compare net worth to income, and you will likely see that very often high net worth correlates to very little income. I believe Jeff Bezos recent income was shown to be $0.00 for one noteworthy example.

I myself have benefitted from this tax structure. A few years as a self-employed I brought in six figure gross income, but by corporate structuring and perfectly legal categorization of income and expenses, I reported very little taxable income.

So yes, the US very much favors the rich when it comes to taxes.

Suicide Squad and Peacemaker were aces. A shame we canâ(TM)t get more like that.

They avoided the appearance, bit not the reality. Pretty sure most presidentsâ(TM) net worth climbs pretty high while they are in office.

Trump is different because his corruption is more gaudy and low brow and also in the open and now, maybe he could be said to be democratizing corruption.

I think jobs famously quipped, I want people to want to lick it.

Also the free (at least to students) MS Office includes copilot pro which is also chaptGPT, right?

And deepseek is free to everyone?

I suspect this more about chatGPT data mining than an actual bonus to the students.

I donâ(TM)t have to convince myself, itâ(TM)s objectively true that most of the links in the chain between the creative people (and athletes) and my eyeballs add little value for big cost. whether that justifies piracy is another matter, but capitalism is definitely not working for fansâ(TM) benefit here.

Seriously, right? Iâ(TM)m a nerd, I get star struck over cool new tech, and have since I took apart the family tv in the 4th grade. But pointless tech is never cool. ChatGPT is cool. Eliza was cool too. Claude is actually pretty useful. But this? I want *less* tech to be attached to, not more. I want a much smaller phone that will project a 3d image like in Star Wars. Now that would be cool tech. Even the watch is pretty cool. Cool enough for me to buy and play with, not useful enough for me to still be wearing.

Sorry, not sorry for the rant. People are starving and their homes are being bombed. This is an obscene expenditure of money and effort for pure fluff-thatâ(TM)s not even really cool.

The very first iteration of Siri, which IIRC was connected to Wolfram Alpha and other sources, and also the OS, was way better as I remember. Not only was it better at finding information, it was better at parsing my input into actual iphone actions, for example, setting a calendar event, calling someone, sending a text, and most importantly, searching the web directly for a particular phrase, or opening a website.

I have not played with Siri in several years, because it lost that functionality and I couldn't figure out how to make it useful, which is of course the bottom line of the tool. I want star trek level comprehension of my requests and corresponding accurate action. Give me that, I don't really care what underlies the interface or whether the interface is 'conversational.'

By small, I mean small footprint. Make it a class d amp for all I care if it has decent power and clean sound. But make it small! The size of a Mac mini is about right.

> LIARS that greatly enriched themselves off this grift.

It is true that research college professors do pretty well financially, but not nearly as excessive as even middle management in the energy sector. This has always been a baloney argument-that climate change is a scam perpetrated bu scientists for personal financial gain. In reality, those scientists might, toward the end of their careers, be driving 5 series bmw sedans, but they are a long ways from stinking rich like the fossil fuel people.

If climate science is wrong, then science is wrong, and we should all just hang it up and go back to feudalism.

I still lament the loss of freehand. I have never been able to get the hang of illustrator and back then it was so bad I just gave up and switched careers.

That's a serious drag. I guess we really are dying! /., the old folks home of the internet.

Have you heard of Fournier's Gangrene? Cause it makes your wiener fall off and is made worse by warming climate.