Ullluvunn!

Have you seen Waymo?

Statements made in quarterly financial calls are a very particular level of legally binding, so CEOs sound like that because they are terrified of making promises that won’t be kept.

Keep in mind that in quarterly financial statements, any forward-looking promises made are pretty much legally binding so CEOs never give specifics.

This is short-sighted. The amount of extra power the computer draws at a high power state while performing boot-up tasks makes the sleep power draw a better option. Not to mention the sleep power draw happens at off-peak hours where the grid can provide more green power vs. the dirty mid-morning peak power. The break-even point that I’ve calculated across the machines I’ve plugged into my meter is approximately 3-4 days. With a big ol’ “it depends” sticker slapped on top.

Edit: and my lazy methodology doesn’t even account for the extra energy used by the machine throughout the day when it has to cold-start various programs and tasks without any caches.

Double-edit: if you want to go the extra mile you can use the “hibernate” feature of windows after force-enabling it or the “pmset sleepmode {whateverthefuckitis} “ of macOS to split the difference. Or you can take a shower that’s literally 10 seconds shorter because heating shower water for literally only 10 seconds will use more power than any of these things. I strongly implore you to calculate your trip to the grocery store in kilowatt/hrs as well. Optimize where it matters!

You can wake a Mac by clicking the mouse or hitting literally any of the hundred+ buttons on the keyboard.

…also this power button is dumb.

They’ve used that exact same symbol since they first added an Ethernet port to their computers in the early 1990’s. It was one of the first mass-market computers with integrated Ethernet. It literally defined the standard when there was no standards body for such a thing.

The port that put the “i” in the original iMac

Reality is more nuanced than this. You can absolutely be HIPAA compliant while using “cloud” servers as long as they are sufficiently isolated and secured. The requirements are definitely insufficient to protect your data from a Motivated State Actor™ but they are good enough to keep your data away from an abusive family member or crazy ex. I have worked on systems that handle patient data as well as other systems with restrictions I can’t discuss and I can assure you patient data is much easier to move around and handle compared to state secrets.

Edit: funny story, I just got back from a doctor appointment where they asked me to sign a consent form for recording and transcription of the visit by a computer system. It’s definitely happening, in practice.

Do you defensively punch your grandmother in the face every time you see her, just in case?

No, we really haven’t had on-device voice recognition that meets any definition of “decent”. Anything reasonable phones out to “the cloud” for decent voice recognition.

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My ice cream came with bronzer smeared all over the cone last time I went there.

Reverse justification answer: to more securely verify your identity when signing into your Microsoft account

Real answer: selling ads and building a free database for Microsoft that accurately maps IP address->physical location

While the first statement really is true, it still doesn’t justify the other things.

SuperDisk gang ride up!

Isn’t being an unregistered foreign agent a huge crime?

Yes.

600 upvotes and only 10 downvotes on literal fake news. I wish readers were less lazy, it’s very frustrating.

Edit: made my statement a bit less toxic. I was mad.

Ok, let’s grant that as true (by that I mean we will ignore arbitration as a whole thing). Suddenly Tesla stock drops, again, and they push an update that puts remote unlock and navigation and heated seats behind a subscription requirement to boost revenue. Your car will lose those functions immediately with no input from you. Then you file a lawsuit. You will not be granted an emergency summary judgment. Which means your car will immediately lack those capabilities. Absolute best case scenario in 5-7 years your car will get the features back after it has turned into a pile of rust. The expected outcome is you will get a class action settlement (which again, you actually signed away your rights to) that cuts you a check for a few hundred dollars. That will only happen well after the expected service life of the vehicle you “own”.

If you read this and think I’m just a cynical jerk, please provide me just one example where the individual consumer won a lawsuit in the US against a large vendor when features were removed after a software update and was made whole in a timely manner. Just one is all I ask for.

Welcome back from the coma, I’m glad you made it through. We have Thunderbolt and USB-C now.

These headlines always show up a month before every election. It’s the same shit as the “this time we’re definitely gonna legalize weed for sure bro just one more vote bruh.” It’s a non-specific promise that doesn’t have to be acted on, and should be treated as such.