Are we expecting these customers to knowthe difference? I’m over here formulating a business plan, so let me know please.

But how would they know the difference?

I mean, I get nosebleeds some times. Am I throwing away profits?

So… we’re doomed?

There’s a reason.

You don’t understand how a quick death is better than a lifetime of torture and an eventual slow death?

It’s not like there is a pack of gang-raping waterboarding guys waiting outside the cancer wards waiting to waterboard and gang rape all the cancer survivors. If there were, there might be a few who don’t fight cancer as hard.

I’ve met baby chicks. They’re adorable, and about as self-aware as a furby. I’m not saying they don’t suffer, but they don’t suffer terror or panic the way a human would. And considering the life of a factory farm chicken, they definitely suffer less.

Either way, we should end inhumane factory farming practices. If we stop torturing chickens for food, we will also stop shoveling baby chicks into a meat grinder.

No shit.

You’re right, but the reason that hasn’t caught on is that talking to your “smart” house is stupid. You can’t possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don’t need to talk to your room.

You’re right, it is a horrible way to go. It’s just not the worst.

Not peacefully, no. But instantaneous death beats a lot of the other variations of unconscionable suffering visited upon factory farm animals.

A human would be aware of what is happening, and the size difference would mean you would need a much larger machine than that to instantaneously destroy an entire person. But if you had to choose between instantaneous obliteration and a slow, torturous existence, some people might actually choose the instant death.

Considering the chicks don’t know what’s coming, it’s probably not a terrible way to go. It’s gruesome, but it’s over in an instant. Factory farming in general is a horror show, and this is one of the least inhumane ways animals are killed for profit.

Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.

They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.

My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it’s actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn’t trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.

My favorite bit of 80s trivia is that when Run-DMC asked Steven Tyler for the lyrics, he didn’t know them. He had been performing the song live, and would just kind of ramble and mumble through a lot of it, and so he had to go back and listen to the song to try to remember the original lyrics to write them down. Tyler wasn’t 100% sure what he was saying on the recording, and wrote down his best guess.

This was all on his way to the studio to record the song.

Also, when Perry wanted to re-record the bassline for the cover, they realized the studio didn’t have a bass guitar. Tyler and Perry had been brought in to re-record their singing, but the rest of the band was not going to re-record the music. MCA of the Beastie Boys happened to be hanging around the studio, and ran home to get his bass for Perry to use on the recording.

It was not a simple process. I’ve been trying for years to migrate, and gave up because it wasn’t worth the hassle. I have been playing Minecraft since the alpha, and I have bought the game several times over.

To know that my account is now simply gone means that I’m just that much less likely to return. If I have to rebuild, I’ll invest my time in a game that won’t be taken away from me.

I paid for Minecraft more times than any other game. If there’s a free way to play it, I do feel entitled to that.

I see Minetest is available for android. Can you run Mineclonia on a phone?

Always volunteer to go first. You set the tone, and you get to sit in judgement while everyone else wigs out worrying about what they will say.

Right? I already don’t use youtube as much as possible. Piped helps, but if that stops working, I just won’t watch movies on youtube.

I understand why people are upset anytime a company fucks their customers for money, but the solution is always to walk away.

I used to work for a European home automation company. Thing is, their gear is most cost effective in new construction and was very popular in Germany, Austria, Czechia, and Poland, but convincing anyone to wire for low voltage devices in the UK or US was like asking for ketchup on pancakes. There are a lot of reasons to like their tech, but they don’t really do retrofit, so it hasn’tanaged to make a dent in the market.