I’m conflicted on the projects like that one right now. It’s super clever to monitor the network traffic for specific dash buttons trying to reach out, but it also feels super janky and I don’t feel like I can justify putting the effort to set that up when it just feels so fragile. Especially with the caveat that if the amazon block you have to setup for it fails then the device just becomes a paperweight.

Genius idea, but I’m going to hold out for the unlikely possibility of someone figuring out a firmware level hack.

Amazon was effectively giving them away for free for a large portion of their lifespan. You’d have deals where you’d pay for them and then get a coupon for actually using them equal to the purchase price. I feel like I even remember a few times where the coupon you got worked out to slightly more than you paid for the button. Basically, saying that someone ‘bought’ one was usually only partially true.

They did have a few legitimately good uses. Had to have something that needed restocking sporadically but you also didn’t think about often and could wait 2-3 days to receive when you realized you were out. A lot of prerequisites there, I used the ones for trash bags and detergent often.

It’s mostly just a shame the amount of ewaste produced at this point. I still have a box full somewhere in hopes of finding a use case.

Can say the same about the forks in my house.

Because I stole them from those restaurants.

If you’re fighting a singular male lion on it’s own… They’re not brave without their pack and they’re way more ‘bark’ than bite. It’s just like a black bear, be as big and loud as you can. Do not ever run, this triggers an instinctual urge to chase. Alone in the face of a fight it’s not sure it can win, the Lion will want to run though. That will just buy you time, closing the gap and actually winning the fight will depend on circumstances, but you can get the upper hand in a lot of ways.

Whatever happens, be thankful you’re not fighting a Tiger.

On the other hand, every person who has killed a United Healthcare CEO has played Among US, checkmate.

Ecstasy of gold is this one, Metallica played this too with the San Francisco Orchestra and it was as epic as you’d imagine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYI09PMNazw

One we’re looking for today though is this one (the main theme):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9EZGHcu3E8

Doesn’t quite have that same riff, but some of the musical themes were reused in ‘The Trio’ which finished up the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiIe2znA1ao

Admittedly, it’s hard to find a song based on someone just writing out the sounds they think it makes and I feel like any Ennio Morricone score really should be thought of as a singular piece in harmony with the movie itself. This was one of his best, one of those movies where the dialogue could be optional, sometimes you didn’t even need to open your eyes to understand what was going on.

Yeah, like seriously, how are they pricing those lego bricks?

The appeal is pretty easy. You can collect items from any fandom you can think of and have the style of the figures match each other almost perfectly and look ‘natural’ together. The style chosen has a lot of detractors, but even some that don’t necessarily appreciate it are willing to compromise if it lets them make a little action scene of thor fighting vegeta.

That’s me, I’m the one who compromised.

It is very obvious this studio does not know what they are doing and has learned little from their previous releases and from other contemporary games.

I think they’ve learned that they don’t have to care about that to be successful. We have to keep reminding ourselves that success by these studios does not have to be defined by ‘making a good game’. Starfield was a great success financially and there’s no reason they should change gears from that perspective.

Starfield has made around $700 million.

That’s a fair point. Microsoft says that they don’t… but, not that they can’t. It’s especially tricky on iOS.

I found a guy on linkedin that has the same name, just slot him in and pretend nothing happened, wouldn’t even have to change any of the campaign marketing. Dude looks to be in his 20s and manages a coffee place, definitely more than qualified.

This makes me irrationally angry because whenever I hear this, putting the time it took to ask would have been enough time to just type up a few sentences in an email that would explain everything everyone needed to know and then we’ve also got it in an easily searchable format so we can reference it later if needed.

I may be a little bitter.

The ‘But, everyone is a bit evil’ argument is such bullshit, the concern here is obviously the extent of the surveillance, but no one can say you’re entirely wrong because the definition of that is so broad.

It’s kind of technical, but there are comparisons on the report itself, even a fancy table, to other popular shopping apps and there are some legitimately troubling items. For anyone else, I’d recommend skipping direct to the source:

https://grizzlyreports.com/we-believe-pdd-is-a-dying-fraudulent-company-and-its-shopping-app-temu-is-cleverly-hidden-spyware-that-poses-an-urgent-security-threat-to-u-s-national-interests/

If I have to choose between keeping nature around and not having to buy an iron again, is gonna be a tough choice.

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Plex operates a service on their end that mostly covers you if you fuck up the network routing. It’s probably the least user friendly part of the setup, so kind of a big deal.

There are resellers in the US who will set you up with the infrastructure to do it yourself. You don’t need much and it’s less expensive than you’d think, almost turnkey.

Demand is more than high enough in poor areas too, they probably made a really good return before it shut down.

You might be overestimating how much content that was. Streaming services try to maintain an illusion of neverending content but last I saw except for prime, the amount of content they offer has been trending down.

Those numbers are fairly accessible for an average person with 3 or 4 large hard drives.

Honestly, I use it because it does a better job than who we usually use, the items it adds to the Job descriptions usually actually exist.

You’re right that is a real loss. Really, an Alexa that didn’t require a personalized amazon account could still be huge if they could figure out how not to have to justify the costs of running the servers. I think that unwillingness to let Alexa be just a voice assistant is the key roadblock. In a similar vein, Alexa for business could have been a really big deal too if they could have worked it out a bit faster but now I think interest has mostly died out before it had a chance to be adopted.

I’m not a huge fan of the company and I think it’s a coin flip as to whether they would just completely screw it up, but I wonder what would have happened if someone like Crestron had taken a real interest instead of just half-assing an integration.