P_Devil

Not as embarrassing as Rush Limbaugh, Tiger Woods, or Jim Jordan.

Bingo. Some people voted for the lesser evil. Or rather, someone dull vs a wannabe tyrant.

Real issues brought on by a conservative takeover. Yep, I fully agree.

Doesn’t that mean he should be loved by conservatives then? He’s using smalltown playbooks and conservatives love not having an overreaching government. Or is just that they like not having an overreaching government so long as the governing body aligns with their viewpoints?

People will never stop putting him on a pedestal, at least until a couple of generations from now when people who born after his death are adults. He did influence people, both positively and negatively. The reality distortion field influenced employees, reviewers, and consumers.

I do think it’s ironic that the Medal of Freedom was awarded to someone that performed insider trading and stock back dating (which were common practices but still not ethical), moved manufacturing to factories that had to install nets because people would rather commit suicide than work there (not to mention ties to Chinese government forced labor), was able to use police (in both the U.S. and China) when dealing with the leaked iPhone 4 (eventually causing someone in China to commit suicide), and was an all-around difficult person to work with.

Nobody is perfect and people earning these awards aren’t going to be any different. Jobs had a large global impact with customers, the media, and other companies. His fostering of design and closed systems paved the way for other companies, including Samsung and Microsoft, to follow. I’m not sure if someone else would have been a better choice. Either way, Jobs’s influence was far reaching and continues to push more than a decade after his death.

It does matter. The first time I saw a Rivian, living in the Midwest, was two months ago. A $70k+ mid-size truck isn’t in the same market as a $39-$69k full-size truck. Rivian is also only pushing out about 400 vehicles a month and has about 3500 currently out. That’s not a lot and they continue to face backlash over the quality of their trucks, loss of revenue, and taking of government subsidies. Ford already pushed out 201 Lightning trucks by the beginning of June. They have a better setup for mass production (the company did invent the assembly line) due to being able to slightly modifying their current F-150 lines for the Lightning, they’re at better price points, and they will sell more due to offering "fleet" configurations. Give it another 5-7 years and you’ll see businesses switch from standard F-150s to the Lightning.

Consumers wanting a Lightning will wait, at least Ford is rolling them out unlike Tesla. They will still get them faster, and at a less expensive price, than the Hummer EV.

The Hummer EV starts at $108k, that isn’t a good starting price. It’s targeted towards the wealthy and not an everyday consumer car or truck. Even Rivian’s pricing is less expensive and they’re squarely in the luxury price range. I’m sure there’s plenty of wealthy people on the waitlist for a Hummer EV, but it’s pricing is too high to be anything other than a luxury vehicle.

It is. They support whatever social movement is happening in a country (Pride, Black History Month, etc.) and will bemoan it in others that don’t support those movements. Companies pander to their audiences for profit. They don’t care about any of the social movements, in one way or the other, they just want to increase their profits. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Tesla/SpaceX/Elon… They all do it. That’s the capitalist world we live in. Companies make claims about human rights and supporting groups while relying on factories with ties to forced labor camps to make their products. Companies advertise supporting Pride and equal rights in one country and turn their backs on it in another.

The Momentum 4 are just around the corner, and they will rely on a different design than the Momentum 3, more akin to these and the Sony XM5 headphones. You may want to hold off until those are released. People were worried that Sennheiser’s consumer headphones would be terrible after they sold off the division to a hearing aid company (the Sennheiser employees migrated over). The Momentum True Wireless 3 earbuds are an improvement over the 2 earbuds and the current crop of true wireless earbuds from Sennheiser all have positive reviews. The Momentum 4 will likely continue that trend.

Eh, this is all fine and dandy for the 0.00001% of the audio consuming population that can differentiate between lossy and lossless in volume-matched ABX tests. But that crowd won’t be purchasing these earbuds and will instead opt for a wired solution with a DAC and amp.

AAC and aptX are fine for Bluetooth earbuds and headphones. Sure, there is a single lossy-to-lossy conversion. That’s usually fine with those codecs. The listening environments, use of ANC, and various other factors negate the need for lossless Bluetooth earbuds. Sony has done a lot to push LDAC, it still doesn’t benefit most people, and neither will this. Progress is fine for the sake of progress, most of these pitches (including the ones from Sony) come off like selling snake oil. And yes, I will say the same thing when Apple pushes out AirPods Pro/Max 2 with lossless support.

That’s kind of par for the course with PC monitors. Most will advertise "HDR" only to find out they have a 350-400 nit peak brightness and will only "work" with HDR10. Samsung does make real HDR monitors. I have their 32" Odyssey G7 monitor that goes up to 600 nits brightness. It’s not 4K (1440p), but it does support 240Hz and G-Sync while coming in at $800 (I bought mine for $462 after my government discount). For the price I paid, I could buy 4 of the Odyssey G7 monitors (they come with height adjustable and tilting stands, the same price as the $1900 studio display) and still save some money. The M8 comes down to $660 for non-white colors, $630 for white with a government discount. That’s not even approaching the cost of the Studio Display especially considering the M8’s stand is height adjustable and tilting.

I’d take the fake HDR if it meant spending almost $1300 less on the display. I’d even recommend the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 4K display for $1250. Samsung’s QD-OLED tech, with local backlighting, is up there with the more expensive Pro Display while costing fractions less ($1250 vs $5500).

A webcam in a 4K display, costing $700 (often on sale for $600), that’s worse than one in a $2000 notebook, color me shocked.

I remember this, and even preordered one. I had constant audio output issues from it to my HDTV via the mini HDMI output, same with the optical audio output. I ended up having to directly wire my front left and right speakers to it, which wasn’t optimal with my 5.1 setup. I switched to a 5.1 soundbar shortly after that and it didn’t have problems with the Nexus Q’s HDMI audio out.

That being said, I stopped using it whenever I purchased an iPhone and quickly switched to Apple’s small Apple TV for my media streaming needs. I still have mine in a box somewhere with other tech and cables I no longer use, right next to my old Sony point-and-shoot cameras, external DVD burner, and other things I’ve forgotten about.

Even if it is untethered, it will require an iPhone in some way. I wouldn’t be surprised if it works like the Apple Watch: requiring an iPhone for setup and mobile use while relying on Wi-Fi when available.

Then again, that’s if this thing ever sees the light of day. Kuo has been giving us the same song and dance for years now and their track record hasn’t been great. The AR headset was definitely going to be shown off at WWDC, then just the OS. Nothing happened. The Apple Watch was going to be a complete, flat redesign. That didn’t happen. Kuo has been terrible with their "predictions."

I have my hopes up, I wanted Google Glass when it first came out but never purchased one because of its buggy use. We will see, but I’m not holding my breath.

Not necessarily, but there are national laws that better protect citizens than state laws. I used fracking as an example because there are federal laws protecting drinking water, there are state laws too but some of those states allow private companies to destroy the environment and pollute potable water all in the name of profit. Those state laws aren’t working, the federal EPA has stepped in, and they are continuing to battle energy companies.

Same with Flint. Their state government made a mistake and now the federal government has stepped in to slowly fix things.

We have red and blue states because they’re setup to ensure that the political party leading a state continues to do so. Conservatives changed voting layouts and laws in states to ensure that they remain in power, regardless of what the overall state popular vote is. It’s fine if a state is conservative or liberal, people are allowed to be different. It is the job of the federal government to ensure that all people, regardless of where they live within the country, have the same rights. Every person deserves the same rights and they should be upheld by the federal government. State governments can differ until rights are taken away, then they should default to the federal level.

Lastly, the "big, evil, central, inefficient government" you’re rallying against is run by people from states. Nobody is willing to compromise so now we’re stuck with this mess where laws can drastically change state-to-state without contingencies for emergencies, women facing potential criminal investigation for having a later term miscarriage, and various other aspects that some states are outright ignoring. The big argument conservatives are making, aside from the fake "we care about lives" (because they really don’t), is that abortion isn’t guaranteed in the constitution. Well, neither was the freedom of women, black people, or non-landowners. The constitution was written 235 years ago. Times have changed, people have changed, the laws governing people (along with the rights they’re guaranteed) should also change and progress forward, not backwards.

Cases of rape are not a middle ground for every state. Additionally, most women don’t know they’re pregnant until the 4-7 week mark with a large number going past 8 weeks when it would be illegal, in some states, to have an abortion. Women in some states can face criminal investigation if they have a miscarriage after the 8-week mark. States banning abortions aren’t introducing new family and children focused measures to ensure that families have access to medical care, children are safer in schools, increased funding for orphanages and adoption companies, or anything like that. It’s the conservative trope of them not caring about people after they’re born.

The variations between state laws will cause headaches and people will relocate to states allowing a procedure that they need. Companies are already letting their employees move to states allowing abortions. The fact is that nobody knows the situation for everyone and letting states decide laws for their citizens, which has worked out so well in the past, isn’t always the best option. States have messed things up before and politicians aren’t looking out for the best interests of people. This is a step back. It’s easy to sit there, behind a keyboard, saying "WhY dOnT tHeY jUsT uSe A cOnDoM?" but you don’t know the situation people are in, you don’t know that they’re going through, and some states do not have contingencies for rape.

That’s all fine and dandy on paper, but it never works out in practice. States don’t represent their citizens, the politicians in the US don’t represent their constituents. The results of elections aren’t reflective of their citizens and politicians don’t look out for the people they’re supposed to represent. States making decisions don’t work, look at the states allowing mass amounts of hydrofracking. Their citizens cannot drink tap water yet, states’ rights!

This is not the way.

I never feel represented in my state. I have the turtle and some d-bad senator, but they never stand up for anything that doesn’t represent what they want. The damn turtle is a reason why we need term limits. The system doesn’t work and politicians that were willing to compromise were voted out in favor of squealing idiots that only focus on what they want, and what benefits them personally (not even their constituents).

The constitution originally left the rights of women, black people, slaves, and non-landowners up to the states. Look how well that turned out and where we are now. What’s next, marriage rights are left to the states so that same-sex marriages can be outlawed? Leaving large decisions to states doesn’t work out, especially when most states are run by incompetent a-holes that would rather stay in a burning building than give 15 seconds of time to someone across the aisle.

Yeah, the good ol’ days… At least this ruling should work its way back up through the ladder and reach the Supreme Court, again, where they will need to make another decision. It still sucks and is 1000 steps backwards.

We don’t get to vote on it, the states do via officials that are elected. It’s dumb that it isn’t protected by a ruling or amendment. There are a bunch of things not in the constitution: voting rights for women, voting rights for non-landowners, rights for people aren’t white men… The list goes on. Something doesn’t have to be in the constitution to be enforced or allowed.

What are the chances that something along those lines would be passed in the Senate? Democrats can do all they want, and it will go through the House without issues, it’s the Senate that will shoot things down.

What we really need is a multi-party system (not just two) with people that will work together, not push for things that just support their agendas. There used to be systems of compromises, politicians that worked with others were voted out in favor of squawking idiots that would rather shove their heads in the sand than listen to someone else and gain a different perspective. We also need to have term limits for members of the House, Senate, and the Supreme Court. Times change and politicians need to keep up with. None of that will ever happen though, the nation is too divided with people staunchly supporting one side or another.

Exactly, the unborn have a voice. Just like mothers have a voice when they face a miscarriage at 8 weeks, they shouldn’t face potential criminal charges because something their body (or "God" for people that don’t want to understand biology) did without control. Oh wait, those mothers don’t have voices anymore. Neither do rape victims, children after they’re born (the trop that Republicans don’t care what happens to kids after their born is evident here), and too many other groups to count.

But no, go on, keep preaching about the unborn. Did any of these states banning abortions add family funding bills, measures to ensure that kids graduate from high school and have better lives, grants for adoption groups or orphanages, better protection for children in schools, or anything that would help children after they are born? No, not a single one. BuT tHe UnBoRn, that’s you.

Useless touch bar << display notch

I’d rather use a display that has a notch, which blends in with a menu bar, than rely on a touch bar and keyboard that doesn’t even have an escape key. No thanks.

Apple’s MagSafe Duo is expensive, and doesn’t come with an AC adapter, but it is the most travel friendly multi-charger I have used. It’s not the best nightstand charger, since its footprint is large. It has been my favorite travel charger due to the small size it folds to and being able to charge my iPhone, Apple Watch, and Sennheiser earbuds. I just wish it used USB-C so I could use the same brick and cable to charge my iPad when I’m not charging my phone and watch.

I was looking at going back and playing Mass Effect, haven’t played it since my Xbox 360. Looks like I’ll wait and get it for free.

And at least one Mac because "macOS isn’t touch."