It’s called Live Plus.

If you’ve never heard of Live Plus before, it’s a feature on LG smart TVs that uses ACR (automatic content recognition) to analyze what’s displayed on your screen (via The Markup). LG then uses that data to offer “personalized services,” including content recommendations and advertisements.

[…]

On Samsung smart TVs, for example, you can disable targeted ads by going to Privacy Choices, selecting Terms and Conditions, and toggling off Viewing Information Services and Internet-Based Advertisement Services. On Roku TVs, ACR can be turned off by disabling Use info from TV inputs, which is tucked away in the settings menu under Smart TV Experience.

Saved you a click.

Or with water, frankly. Is the only option for the switch inside the bathroom literally in the sink basin? There shouldn’t be that much splashing in a work bathroom.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it depends a little bit on the model of the e-reader (color takes more out of it, etc), but I only charge my Boox every other week, and I take notes on it, read on it, the works.

E-paper is easier to use outside or in bright light, and the battery tends to last longer. Anecdotally, it also doesn’t hurt my eyes as much.

How good could you do on a slave’s salary?

The kid did build a podracer in a cave with a box of scraps.

Love the star lights!

I’ve only ever had it work for me once or twice, and it was always near the very beginning of a project when I was only losing a few days or a week of working code at most. When I discover that I fundamentally misunderstood or misjudged a core assumption and everything needs to be reoriented. Never when I already had code in production.

That’s fair, but even with that, it’s got to be easier to shove it into existing code. Especially if you’re trying to do it in a way that people don’t notice!

And actually, the Windows 10 start menu infamously had ads, too. So it can’t be that.

But this was four years ago! Actually it was released four years ago. This decision was almost certainly made before there were widespread code assistance AIs.

Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You’re gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.

I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager’s salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don’t have to?

Four years ago, Recall wasn’t a thing. Microsoft was caught as off-guard by the AI hype machine as the rest of us. So I doubt this was originally the reason.

Might be now, though.

Someone did a study on various means of welfare support, and figured out that doing away with all other forms of poverty easement and replacing it with an equivalent amount of UBI would actually save taxpayers a significant amount of money. And further, it actually costs way more to try to identify and prosecute fraud than the system actually loses to said fraud.

I think the easiest way to accomplish UBI, without dealing with a lot of rigamarole and nonsense, would be to figure out what amount “basic” should mean—you suggested $2000/mo, but for some cities that would barely cover rent, so maybe let’s say $3000/mo—and then have anyone who wants any form of government financial assistance register with the UBI office, indicating the compensation they receive at their highest-earning job. The UBI office would then simply pay them the difference between $3000 and their monthly paycheck. UBI office automatically cross-references with the IRS every year, so you can’t hide income without getting audited.

I generally agree, but rather than making it a specific number, I think we should tie it to some multiple of the poverty line or the average income of the lowest 10% or something like that. That way, if the rich want to earn more, they have to make things materially better for the poorest people in society; and if they don’t do enough, the government takes that money to do it for them.

It definitely said 181 before. I’m almost positive.

If this is something you’re actually going through, OP, you should know that (1) the trimesters can all feel dramatically different, sometimes even turning on a dime, and (2) it’s definitely always ok to call up your OB anytime if something feels wrong.

I’ve been ad-free for long enough at this point that I feel physically assaulted when I see one (at a friend’s house or whatever). It’s insane that we ever thought that was ok, and it’s become worse.

At this point, adblock is a survival measure. Piracy is self-defense. The first presidential candidate who campaigns on legalizing graffiti on billboards and mandating their eventual removal gets my vote. Burn it all.

Electron (and Tauri, and Neutralino) also offers some deeper OS integration stuff that browsers don’t do or actively block; direct file management, USB peripheral control, that sort of thing.

But for something like Discord, you’re totally right. You just need the browser.

Definitely a fair point. But for the most part, being in the country that collapses is going to be worse than being in a different country.

This is just me, and I’m no expert. But I kind of think that, if you’re legitimately worried about your country’s currency collapsing, you might want to consider leaving your country. Any sort of collapse that leads to hyperinflation or the large-scale elimination of financial infrastructure is probably going to be difficult if not impossible for the average person to survive, gold or no.

That said, precious metals are a niche enough market that I can’t imagine it not being rife with predatory sellers; companies that aren’t offering scams per se—you’ll probably pay them and receive what you pay for—but companies which are counting on people not knowing anything about the market and accepting a terrible price or poor quality goods.

Again, not an expert. But my end-of-the-world investment would be in shelf-stable food, easily-stored seeds (for planting), medicine, hand tools, high-quality camping gear, books, that sort of thing. If there is a collapse, those sorts of things will be immediately useful and also tradeable.