So does mine but I actually like it. Not for the reason it was put on there, god no, but I can use it in my Home Assistant automations. Now whenever I brush my teeth my bathroom speaker starts playing the daily news highlights.

You could use it for other things too, like a reminder if you forgot to brush, could be good for kids. But the default functionality is complete garbage. Why they thought you'd want an app to time brushing your teeth when the vibrate function does the same thing is beyond me. I just got them because they were a good deal at Costco and I didnt pay extra for the bluetooth.

Yup. I did this with my Vizio TV and it worked great for a while. Then the TV started rebooting mutiple times a day. If i disconnect it from the WiFi or let it have full internet access the problem stops. It seems that their "Smartcast" app will crash and force a reboot if it can't phone home when it wants.

I paid good money for this TV back when Vizio wss considered a good brand and I hate to retire it just for this, so I've given up my nice Home Assistant integrations and it's just a disconnected dumb TV now. You can't downgeade the firmware either so they've essentially killed the smart features for me. Should be illegal.

Or more likely it'll just use DoH or DoT. DNS blocking is still effective but it's becoming less so as these companies wise up.

Yup, this can get used for very scary stuff. As you said it's low bandwidth, but since edge devices are more powerful that's less of a limitation than you might think. A TV could easily do speech to text, rough ACR, and device fingerprinting all locally without any internet connection, then summarize and compress that data for a daily or weekly upload. No need to send the large data itself, just a a small report that's a few KB in size.

Read up on Amazon Sidewalk. I'm not saying your TV is using it, but with 5G and mesh networking companies are finding ways to get data back to them without relying on you.

What? Even if you're right that CSAM was included in training data (and that's highly debated), it would absolutely have been inadvertent and due to the Internet dragnet style of training. I don't know where you get the idea that AI companies would ask for more CSAM and drive up demand to "improve" their model.

What do you find bad about the 9? I bought a used 8 to try GrapheneOS on, but the HW isn't as good as my S23. I was thinking of maybe going to a 9 or 10 if I could make GOS my daily, not just for the better cameras and ultrasonic FP reader, but the desktop mode on the 8 is god awful. The output is so heavily compressed and only does 1080p, DeX just crushes it.

I do agree with you on this, to an extent. I was very annoyed when D Smith flew down to Florida to usurp our bargaining power. However I do think the political environment has changed since then, and this isn't anywhere near as bad.

It's more like "Maybe I shouldn't put a bunch of work into this sign, and reconsider attending the parade since the forcast is rain".

Same. My small town high school wasn't even in a farming community, but no one said anything to the leatherman wave I had on my belt.

I'm sure if In was showing it off or brandishing it around I would have gotten told to leave it at home, but I was responsible so it was never an issue. Got bullied, never once considered reaching for it as a weapon.

We have a societal failing right now where people for some reason think violence is OK. A knife, a gun, a car, or a hammer can do incredible damage and people should treat them all with the respect they deserve. If citizens start thinking about "arming themselves", even when they have easy access to such tools, we've already fucked up.

So you recognise that the US is unlikely to honor a deal, yet in the same breath ask not complicate negotiating the deal?

If the deal is a sham, why put any stock in it? Standing up for ourselves will only put us in a stronger postion down the road if the US ever becomes rational again. We'll be just sitting there on the next administrations doorstep, with easy economic opportunity a signature away (and a list of demands).

Making a deal now is a fools errand. All Carney has to do is stem the bleeding to keep us afloat until then.

You're bang on that religion encompasses more than just faith. They've been around so long that those institutions carry within it culture, community, art, etc.

Since you're on the fediverse I'll use the analogy of Reddit. It had incredible communities, talented people, and wealth of knowledge, but it wasn't on the right course so we left. Now we have to build all that up again. None of those things were intrinsic to Reddit, they were just collected under it's roof.

So back to religion, recognise that generations of people of all talents lived under it's roof and I think it's perfectly reasonable to enjoy it's art and philosophical teachings (when applicable). We live in a go-go-go world right now that doesn't give people the time for reflection and introspective thinking, and religions often did. What you shouldn't do, however, is assume that gods have any relevance today. They are nothing but superstitions used to explain a confusing world, and then harnessed to control populations. Religion itself deserves no respect.