Isn’t it getting harder to find custom ROMs, now? Used to be basically everything was on XDA forums, but I’ve heard lots of custom ROMs are moving to they’re own websites/Discord servers/whatever.

I don’t think you’re understanding how trivial this is to detect:

Set up an open WiFi network in an area without any other open WiFi networks. i.e. almost anywhere outside of dense urban areas. Then you don’t even need to inspect traffic, just look at connected devices in admin controls. No devices should be connected aside from your monitoring device.

There’s no way the TV manufacturers are going to risk the legal quagmire that would come from this when there’s no plausible way to keep it remotely secret.

Super easy. Anyone who knows networking could detect new device connections on an open network they set up. I know next to nothing about networking and I could set it up in 10 minutes, 5 of which would be finding my old router in the basement.

So I’m not going to give this a moment’s thought until someone brings receipts. It’s not hard to check if this is happening.

Fake news, as far as I can tell. Lots of claims this is happening, but nobody has brought receipts. Considering how easy it would be to catch, and how likely illegal it is to connect to and use networks without permission, this is definitely an urban legend.

The author of the article is under the mistaken impression that bundling the “smart” features into the TV increases the price. It’s actually the opposite.

By injecting ads and bloatware into the TVs, the manufacturers earn more money, by far, than the cost of the features. A dumb TV would cost more.

The best solution is to decouple them; get the cheapest TV you can with the video quality/size you want, then attach your own device to stream content. I use a modified Fire Stick due to price, mostly with Stremio/Torrentio/Debrid, but there are lots of options.

Just FYI, I’m pretty sure you’re confusing “AI” and “AGI”.

Even enemy behavior is videogames is “AI”, but obviously is not “General Intelligence”.

I think the problem is Hollywood confusing the two terms, so people think AI = Skynet, but that’s not the technical definition in Computer Science.

Err… That’s definitively AI.

AI is just any computer algorithm that does a task that would be aimed to require human intelligence.

Identifying text in an image is a non-trivial task, so OCR is a type of AI algorithm.

That said, I assume “AI phones” are probably not using the term AI in the general sense; presumably they just mean that it uses MM-LLMs somehow.

The cynic in me is wondering if this is just Google trying to get around the movement to stop children from being given addiction machines* before they’re ready for them. (*Smart phones with infinite-content-stream “social-media” apps)

There’s a push to ban smart phones for students below age 16 at schools (and educating parents to try to get them to just give their children dumb phones until age 16 outside of school hours, too.)

But maybe that’s just me being cynical. This movement only started gaining steam after The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt was published earlier this year, afaik, and Google is hardly an agile company anymore…

I pay whatever is needed to get the features I need, within reason. My current phone was ~$500 CAD (XPeria 10 V). It was the only narrow phone with good battery life at a reasonable price with 8 GB RAM at the time.

Out of curiosity, why do you need so much storage on mobile? Massive music library in FLAC or something?

I am totally content with 128GB. It’s enough that I’ll never run out of space for my usage. (Well, aside from photos, but those get backed up in full-resolution to Amazon Photos as part of my Prime subscription).

Granted, most of my media consumption is ebooks, which are tiny.

Looks like a cute little puzzle game. I think my daughter might go for it; I just want to check first if it has any educational value for teaching algorithmic thinking.

There’s probably something in the terms about it, and it would take a very expensive legal battle to settle it. And I doubt it has enough legal merit to be taken on as a class-action lawsuit.

So, really, does it matter if it’s illegal? With the asymmetrical power imbalance, they literally don’t need to care about the laws. Realistically, no EU regulator is going to fine them for cancelling “a purchase made in India”, either.

Thanks! These look like they’re worth the time to download and try. They look like they might be great, especially the two fractions games.

idk, I couldn’t care less about 90Hz. I switched to 60 Hz to save battery on my last phone that had a 90Hz display anyway.

I love how narrow the Xperia 10 series is. It’s a great one-handed phone, and the 21:9 aspect ratio is great for getting a lot of text on the page.

But then you need to know enough about the topic already to know what is stable and what changes with newer versions.

Like, the “web dev boot camp” course I got from UDemy a few years ago as a guide for building a web dev high school course: I recently went back to to look something up, and the whole thing has been completely redone start to finish. Makes sense, considering that it’s updated to the newest versions of Bootstrap and other libraries (and who knows what else).

I know nothing about Rust, but I would assume there are at least some libraries that have major new versions in the last couple of years which might change best practices somehow? idk. But the harder part is not knowing what you don’t know.

Agreed… The second half of this “article” reads like an ad/puff piece.

A better researched article would go into the difference between API access, scrapers, and modifying the YouTube app, and question which of those YouTube will be able to detect. Maybe even discuss using region-pricing with a VPN to get YouTube premium for cheaper.

Related, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is a fantastic, timeless science fiction short story.

My jaw literally dropped reading that.

I think it’s time to go outside.

They’re out of keys now, FYI.

The math is also wrong.

You can’t apply exponential growth to the proportion of a total.

Growing from 1% to 2% (a 100% gain) is equally a reduction from 99% to 98%, a 1.01% drop.
Going from 99% to 100% (a 1.01% gain) is equally a reduction from 1% to 0%, an infinite drop.

Simple exponential modeling is the wrong tool.