Because it de facto requires everyone using the internet to provide their identity, which is something that gives authoritarian types a huge boner. Once there is no such thing as anonymous discourse, it becomes trivial to target/arrest/harass/brutalize dissenters or indeed anyone the current regime simply doesn’t like.

The word you’re searching for is “fabricate.”

To put the potential $30k settlement into context, Nintendo’s most recent annual report stated that it had made a $40m loss from patent litigation in its last business year.

Hey guys, I think I just figured out why first party Switch 2 games are $80 now.

I move stuff out on the next business day if I’m in town, specifically because this kind of thing infuriates me. If I’m not at work when your order comes through and the post office is still open I’ll send it out right then.

You all have seen that episode of I Love Lucy with the conveyor belt at the candy factory? I don’t need that happening to me. Get that off my plate, thanks.

When Sony was suing George Hotz over his PS3 jailbreak video, they also tried to bully Youtube (or possibly Google, I forget if this was post-Google acquisition) into revealing the IPs and identities of everyone who watched the video so they could attempt to sue them for “piracy” also. Obviously they did not succeed, but the fact that they tried says a lot.

For me it was the music CD rootkit thing, and trying to sue people for watching a particular Youtube video. Sony has already been on my no fly list for a very long time.

Likewise, Nintendo has now joined Sony for me in my Never Another Red Cent category. I’ve got an entire bookcase full of Nintendo games and systems ranging from the NES all the way up to the OG Switch but it ends there. It’s guaranteed that they will never shape up, so I’ll never give them any more money.

Nintendo did that first. Not just with the Super Nintendo, but the original NES vs. the Famicom.

There was kinda-sorta a justifiable reason for that in the sense that different countries at that time had different television standards with frame rates and vertical line counts which the systems of the era were inherently tied to, and sticking an NTSC game in a PAL system or vise-versa even if it fit and would play would not produce an optimal result. (Sometimes it still didn’t — ask people about the Street Fighter games in PAL regions, for instance.)

Now that the world is all on the same digital TV standards, region locking can be done in software.

Maintaining two product lines simply out of spite really is just such a Nintendo thing to do.

Agreed. I have a Hero 10 Black and basically every time I go to use it I wind up wanting to hurl it into the sun by the time I’m done. My wife bought it for me as a birthday present a couple of years ago because I asked for one specifically (I didn’t know any better, apparently) so it would probably be rude to do so, though.

It overheats, it randomly shuts off, it routinely experiences a firmware crash that renders all of its buttons inoperable and requires pulling the battery to cure. Oh, and it also has a battery life best measured in seconds so you need to keep it plugged in to external power all the time which requires an aftermarket accessory. Brilliant.

With any luck mine will get taken out in some spectacular and marketable fashion, preferably while recording at top quality so I can post it and use the video revenue to buy an Insta Ace or something.

Yes. The problem with that is of course that this is tacit FUD which reads, whether intentionally or not, “I don’t want an EV therefore it won’t make sense for anyone else to drive one, either.”

There’s more than enough misinformation floating around about electric cars already. I specifically want to address the “your electric [sic] will go up real high!!!” argument I hear on a seemingly weekly basis these days, which is something that seems to make people particularly antsy.

Obligatory Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NG4hycq8n0

Not just Nebraska but most, possibly all, US states. From what I’ve seen, anyhow. Hence my note about it being a term of art. In the law books it doesn’t mean the same thing normal people think it ought to mean.

(Same thing with “assault,” incidentally.)

Not to worry, Nebraska (and most/all other states) has this definition codified into law:

https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=60-624

You are correct that “freeway” or more likely some variation of “controlled access freeway” will have a separate legal definition that is closer to what normal people probably think of when they hear the word “highway.”

That would be why I included the caveat about someone already shopping for a new car.

You have to understand that the majority of buyers will not countenance buying a salvage titled vehicle and restoring it, let alone doing the work on it themselves. You’re in a rather unique situation there which is not going to be applicable to most people.

You can even buy solar panels at Harbor Freight these days. At the moment, nominal 100 watt panels for $95 each. If you can drive the screws and find somewhere to stick them, there’s no need to sign up for a predatory lease. To level one charge (i.e. 120v at 15 amps, 1800 watts) you’d only need 18 of the things, maybe call it 20 to have some fudge factor built in, that’s $1880 plus probably some bits and bobs for a frame and wiring, inverters, and so on.

That’d only be 151 square feet of panels. Your local code authority will probably have less to say about it if you have a solar carport plugged directly into your car and nothing else versus nailing them to your house’s roof, as well.

No. They use electricity. And my average monthly power bill is already over $400 a month. You think I want that to be even higher? No way.

Fueling costs per mile (using the term “fuel” rather loosely for EVs) are significantly lower for electric vehicles than combustion, even taking into account plugging the thing in at home with an extension cord. It’s going to be a rather long break even period when comparing to a salvage title clunker, but for someone shopping for a new car to begin with it makes sense.

It’s not costing anyone “less” to be paying at the pump. It’s just an easily forgotten regular expense that everyone is used to. Meanwhile, people have been conditioned to have a cow over seeing any increased number on their electricity bill even if it’s only a couple of bucks. Right now with local gasoline prices it costs something like $60 to fill up my Subaru from empty and nearly $150 for my truck (it has a 35 gallon tank!) and the former I could easily do twice a month if I weren’t riding so many motorcycles this time of year instead. In the Scoob, that’s around 784 miles of driving for $120 in fuel. That’s only be $47.04 if I had a reasonably recent EV and charged it at home.

I went through the same rigmarole replacing my house’s oil heat with mini splits. Yes, my electricity bill went up… On average something like $40 a month. Meanwhile I stopped paying $300 to $400 a month to my former oil company for five or six months out of the year. $2000 - $480 = a $1520 or so net yearly savings I proceeded to blow on camera lenses and more motorcycle parts.

Note that “highway” in US state law contexts is generally a legal term of art that more or less boils down to meaning “public road.” They don’t mean highway as in like specifically interstates with on and off ramps.

The intent is that you can bounce around dirt roads on your own farm or private property or possibly on game lands with your gun loaded dangling in your rear window, but not on public roads with other people on them.

It’s the same way they raised the drinking age to 21 despite there being no national drinking age laws nor a theoretically legal/constitutional method for enacting one. The latter was, obviously, successful.

In the immortal words of Daniel Rutter (again): If nothing else, backups are necessary because at some point in your life you will confidently instruct your computer to destroy your data.

Or constructive dismissal.

“We’ll make all those expensive whiners quit, and then they won’t get unemployment benefits. Don’t worry, we’ll replace their positions with AI. It’ll totally work. Honk honk.”