They’re also typically low quality screens and much more expensive.

I searched and couldn’t find a modern OLED from a reputable brand that didn’t have “smart” features.

So by “remotely” you mean “from 1m away”?

When I was a kid we handled this “remote silencing” issue with a broom handle.

If it’s like a lot of other devices, it will realize that it can’t get to “The Internet” through that network, and might disconnect. It’s possible it will then look for another option, and might see an open network and use it.

Because if you want a screen of a certain size, there are no other reasonable options.

The same reason you might buy a phone that will spy on you and show you ads. You can’t buy a phone that doesn’t do that.

my wife and kids needed something they can mute remotely

But… why?

SO SAY WE ALL!

Unless you’re buying a commercial screen of some kind, you can’t really buy dumb TVs anymore, at least not from the major brands.

My TVs don’t get connected to the network because TV companies have started showing ads, and that was bad enough. Then came the fact that a lot of TV apps were making your TV into a residential proxy, making your TV into part of a botnet. And now, on top of all that, they’re spying on you.

The ads were bad enough.

In any reasonable world you would have control over devices in your house that contained computers and would be able to remove bad software and install your own stuff. But, these devices are all covered by section 1201 of the DMCA which makes it a crime to bypass any access control software. This is how Apple is able to block alternate app stores. It’s why printer ink is the most expensive liquid on the planet. It’s why John Deere is able to remotely brick a tractor anywhere in the world, and prevent farmers from fixing their own farm equipment.

What’s especially galling about this is that, the US forced the rest of the world to adopt this bullshit as a part of trade treaties, threatening that any country that didn’t do it might lose tariff-free access to the US economy. And now what happened? Trump just ripped up those treaties anyhow and imposed the tariffs anyhow.

I just wish there was a country brave enough to rip up the IP agreements the US forced on them and allow us to actually own our own stuff again.

The bigger threat is that they have no idea how to run a game company. EA was already hated for the various things they were doing to try to squeeze more of a profit out of gamers. Have a private equity company run it and that’s only going to get worse.

Except this digital bouncer can memorize every ID it sees. It can reproduce them perfectly for someone else to see. In fact, there’s no realistic way for this bouncer to ever forget an ID it has seen.

Carding as in credit card theft? Or carding as in a bouncer checking someone’s ID at the door?

Maybe, but that doesn’t matter since automated age verification doesn’t work. Kids always figure out ways to bypass it, and it snares unlucky adults all the time.

Nineteen brazillian? Wow, that’s a lot.

Getting out appropriately would have been reversing to the place where it entered the flex-posted area, not simply smashing through them.

Remove Teslas from that and now what are the stats?

As usual, anything Musk touches turns to shit, including self-driving cars.

If it takes multiple billions of dollars to create a product that is useful for a niche group of pen and paper RPG players, that product is probably not going to succeed.

But, also, if Facebook didn’t have such an unassailable monopoly on social networking, small, focused social networks that targeted a niche group of people might have a chance of surviving.

And Google built a search engine. Everything else they’ve tried to build has failed, other than maybe Gmail which was just a Yahoo Mail / Hotmail clone. Everything else that has been successful has been an acquisition: Maps (Keyhole), YouTube, Android, Google Photos (Picasa), Doubleclick…

We really need robust antitrust. How many of these acquisitions would be thriving companies in their own right, competing with the big tech giants if the tech giants hadn’t been able to absorb them.

Google+ is an example of what happens when companies have to compete instead of acquiring other companies. Google poured billions into it and it flopped completely.

The ergonomics aren’t great compared to a dedicated camera. The camera sensor not being in the middle is annoying unless your subject is far away. Having to hold the phone so that you don’t accidentally touch the screen, accidentally block the camera, etc. is not ideal. The shutter is never in a great position, even if you do something like use the volume button as a shutter.

Even flip phone cameras were more convenient than that. With those the camera was roughly in the middle, and you could hold the phone in a way that felt less awkward.

OTOH, the thing that killed cameras for me was the ergonomics of getting the pictures off the camera and backed up online. You either needed to remove the memory card from the camera, make sure you had a USB to memory card adapter, plug it into a computer, drag the files somewhere, etc. then wait for that to complete, and remember to put the memory card back into the camera.

For a short while, the cameras claimed to have WiFi, but it wasn’t like you could just connect them to your home router and let the camera connect to the Internet and upload the photos. No, the camera created its own WiFi hotspot and you had to connect your laptop or something to that hotspot and transfer the files that way.

To me, the killer feature of phone cameras (aside from always being in my pocket) was that to back up the pictures I’d taken I had to… do nothing. I’d get home, use my phone as normal, and within half an hour, the photos were already online and backed up.

That’s not what that phrase means.