I’m not in software but from what I read the importer sends a request and that request is used by the exporter and importer to encrypt and decrypt, so I think there’s a way to tweak the whole process a little and instead have both the exporter and importer ask Netflix or whoever to provide a key as opposed to using the request. Could be wrong tho

I’ve been getting better at making small but meaningful changes to my life by recognizing that a lot of it is simply habit/routine, making an earnest effort at thinking of ways in which I can modify them, and making an earnest effort at applying them.

Very generally: Think of something I do that I might want to curb, think of why that thing is what I do, think of things I could do that would impede on my ability to do those things, and implement those changes.

Couple specifics:

I’m fond of beer. I don’t binge or anything but if it’s in the fridge I’m probably gonna grab one every couple of hours, and that’s not too healthy and kind of a waste of money, so now, when I buy beer I just toss a couple cans in the fridge and put the rest in the cabinet above the fridge. If I run out I’ll toss a couple in the next day. Now I drink a lot less because I’m not gonna drink warm beer and when I open the fridge I see the scarcity and tend to just shut the fridge and walk away.

I’m an introvert and I love reading about things and events, non-fiction crap, walking around on Wikipedia and stuff. It drives my wife up the wall when I’m doing and I don’t blame her because I’m bad at listening when I’m not giving my full undivided attention, so I removed all my phone chargers except for the one in the bedroom. Now, I just set my alarms and plug in the phone, walk into the other room, get out of that headspace, and engage my wife in conversation.

They behave exactly like black mold. They start coalescing in some adjacent space and suddenly BOOM. Online storefront, starts hosting its own servers, that becomes part of the business. Starts building out warehouses, that becomes part of the business. IoT things that run on their servers, then cameras, gobbles up Blink. They even had a pilot project for restaurant delivery, we’ll probably see that again once they can tie it into their parcel delivery fleet

A couple companies make them like TunerRack but I think the biggest issue is that it’s no longer compatible with the scissor jack. A couple other issues are that the ones that use grub screws to pinch the welds can come off if the grub screws back out from vibration, and the kinds that require drilling sometimes develop obnoxious rattle if they wind up having play.

But the most unintended outcome of all this is usually those things are nice shiny anodized bits, so people tend to still use pads, which kind of defeats the purpose

The shitty thing is that if margins are high enough only a very small minority of owners need to subscribe in order for them to break even and then we get stuck with it for eternity like SiriusXM being implanted into practically everything.

And of course there’s no way to just ‘opt out’ of the hardware via trim levels. Shitty industry in general

Some games would simply not install on a second or third machine without getting permission from the publisher.

I remember binning DDR2 RAM on a test bench back in the day and Windows deactivated itself after about a dozen times lol

That image is of the bus so it probably requires a ‘fleet’ type purchase alongside a maintenance contract

It’s kind of fun like 3D jigsaw puzzles but I’d honestly rather not be fixing things so much. We got this new place, inspection turned out fine, but turns out previous owner didn’t find a single stud and used 1" screws on everything in the drywall. Had to redo all the closet shelves, hang closet doors, you name it lol

I think the half of the dash and the entire center console on a G37 was about the trickiest thing. Center console lid has a little gear-driven mechanism and you need to flip the entire console upside down to fix, but I needed to stop everything and go to the dealership for a little plastic cog.

But we’re in the middle of moving into a new place and our dishwasher was leaking so I pulled the entire ‘tub’ yesterday and inside front panel off to see if fitment was an issue, mostly wasting time while a couch was scheduled to be delivered, so I stopped the dishwasher project to assemble the couch (power reclining thing), then had to put the entire thing back together afterword (one of those Maytag ‘chopper’ models with a built in food disposal thing). But to pull the tub I had to remove the heater blower and chop chop thing and the control board and the water jets and all that… And then I realized a new dishwasher is like 500 bucks lol

I wouldn’t call it a skill but I’m really mechanically decent (3D puzzles and Rube Goldberg aptitude, that kind of thing), and my visual memory is really good, so I have the uncanny ability to tear apart household appliances, do something else for hours or days, then return and slap it all back together about as quickly with no leftover mystery screws. I just look at the shit all strewn about, and can somehow recall the very last thing I was holding and work backwords

It’s pretty wild to think they took this long to prohibit using US-based software for such sensitive information

Sometimes a writer will use what they feel is a more recognizable but ‘technically incorrect’ word as a colloquialism for a less-used term that’s more accurate, and then go into more detail in the article, but it’s good and proper to wrap that colloquialism in apostrophes (‘air quotes’).

But in this specific case, it was ruled that Google has a monopoly on general website searches and that they have utilized a variety of anti-competitive practices to bolster their presence as such.

Not dissimilar to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the late 90s, specifically regarding Internet Explorer. It was a very small chunk of a much larger antitrust suit but they were found to have used Windows in order to stifle competition for web browsers and maintain their standing as the dominant browser (they also leveraged their market share for Windows and IE with OEMs and ISPs respectively but I’m digressing).

Microsoft was ordered to split, or spin off their browser business into a different entity, but they settled with DOJ on appeal (probably what we’ll see come of this - Google will probably make a big long list of things they will change or no longer engage in, and the government will feel as though all those changes will be sufficient remedy)

Pretty much.

AI: You don’t have to use plastic! Silicone, graphite, ceramics, glass, woods, and aluminum can all be used as substitutes and often have more desirable physical properties for specific applications.

CEO: I hear you, I really do, but scientists already recommended this and we’ve already done numerous analyses that have all concluded that it’d be too costly to implement and would leave us with products that aren’t competitive.

CEO: …Could you figure out how to increase our gross margins by suggesting changes to these designs?

AI: Sure! We can start by replacing those braze-on threaded nuts with a plastic clamp. I suppose that lag bolt could be plastic as well.

The problem is a confluence of flaws related to capitalism and psychology that allows guys like these to be as they are, gives them ample opportunity to speak, and compels others to listen.

Eric Schmidt and people like him have so much money and influence that they’re presented the opportunity to sit down with policy makers and use media as a megaphone to the point that his voice alone is louder than tens of millions of dissenters and the collective group is able to speak over the entire scientific community.

We’ve normalized it to the point that he can pitch an idea that is as existentially catastrophic as this, and the article writer spins it as some profound statement worthy of deeper discussion.

The CEO of Starbucks attempted to justify flying across state in a jet in order to commute to work, and a lot of people either accept it as some sort of tenet of capitalism or attempt to play the devil’s advocate as to why something like that would be deemed necessary by a person. And while he’s doing that, he’s not univerally lambasted for it, policy doesn’t change to prohibit that, and we just squabble amongst ourselves about the merits or necessity.

But as long as guys like these continue to receive money, they and their lobbyists will be chanting the same mantra

Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them