Epicly long light novels are like that, too. Like in xianxia, they’re weak and looked down upon, but, due to [secret hidden ultra advantage], they advance quickly until they can defeat the bullies. Which brings them to a new tier of power where they’re weak and looked down upon, …

Some series do a good job of expanding the scope of things so politics start playing a bigger role, and they interact with people multiple tiers above their power for more continuity/scope, and/or move to new worlds/environments with entirely new structures, etc.

Others just do the same thing over and over again. Most do both, lol.

I find I can’t binge the same thing for more than a few weeks before I need a “palate cleanser” series before going back.

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.

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.

I’d just email the CEO, media relations, and legal (if you can get all their email addresses), inform them of their non-compliance with the GPL and ask them to resolve this swiftly before it needs to be escalated. Then if you don’t hear back in 2 business days, reply all again CCing someone they might care about: local media to their jurisdiction, the FSF, the EFF, etc.

I mean, sure… But a whole lot of people use Photoshop professionally without a license.

Krita is great, though. Their Android version is even fully featured, so you can use a tablet with a digitizer if you don’t have a drawing pad for your desktop.

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.

My level of research was to come to the comments hoping someone had explained the weird numbering jump already.

JFC. Stand-up meetings with people dialed in to the speakerphone. Buzz-screech all meeting every meeting.

I watched most of this video (in the background) the other day. I have a technical background, but I’ve never made a “real” game. It looks like a really good tutorial for newbies to making games.

I look forward to seeing the later videos!

Also, I found it an odd coincidence that he chose the exact knight sprite I used for a Scratch tile-based-game tutorial project for a lesson a few years ago. CC0 assets are awesome.

To add to the other suggestion, you could set your default ringtone to silence, then set a custom ringtone for “priority contacts” so they can actually ring you.

Not the one. I love it, but it’s not a good first game suggestion, ha ha!