My partner and I went as Sheriff Truman and Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks.

I also saw a couple going as Judge Trudy and a dancing lobster, which I really appreciated; but I do not have any pictures of them.

Personally, I loved all the deep cut costumes; and I think this was a really good year for them.

That stuck out to me as well. Disney probably made 50k USD in the time it took me to write this comment. This feels more like sending a message than trying to avoid a costly payout.

I’m sure they want to discourage lawsuits, but I’m worried they did this just to try to set a precedent on EULAs being the end-all-be-all.

I just hope they get enough bad publicity from this move to cost them more than the payout would have.

The fact that Disney is asserting that whether a EULA has been read is irrelevant and that a EULA signed five years prior for an unrelated use is still enforceable feels more than insidious.

I hope Disney’s claim gets thrown out because I worry about the precedent this could set for EULAs going forward.

At this point, I’ve lost count of the number of times Elon should have been let go. I recall him recently saying that dosing himself with cat tranquilizers was cool and a good business decision actually.

That’s not even getting into turning Twitter into a Nazi bar (and throwing out its extremely valuable branding) or pushing for the cybertruck that cuts its passengers, looks like a dumpster, and corrodes if you look at it funny.

The fact any board of directors considers this man employable at all is mind boggling to me.

Honestly, that’s my main hope as well; that all the charging team talent will disperse across the market and help other chargers spread as well. The article mentioned Tesla having 60% of the fast charger market, so hopefully we will see other companies fill the gap.

My concern is that if no companies pick up the ball Tesla just dropped (or more accurately angrily chucked over the fence), that this could set the EV charging network back significantly; which would definitely be a problem for mass adoption of EVs.

When this news dropped a little while ago. I saw a lot of speculation that basically Elon got mad that a woman said he was wrong and laid off possibly Tesla’s biggest asset in a tantrum.

Honestly, at this point, the most surprising part of this situation is how unsurprised I am at that being exactly what happened.

Hopefully, this will not set back a widespread EV charging network (Tesla or otherwise) too much; but it definitely sounds like damage has been done.

It was a personal project. I was planning a party, which doesn’t sound like a lot; but I really wanted it to go well, so I was putting in a lot of work on decorations, goody bags, catering, etc. (Plus I’ve never planned a party before)

It’s been pretty nice so far. Last weekend I finished a project I’ve been working on since April last year so I’ve finally been able to relax over the weekend for maybe the first time in ~3 months. In related news: I also finally got to start Spider-Man 2 and that has been a lot of fun too.

Yeah, I agree. You never know when you’ll need the money for an emergency, so I think it makes sense to hold onto the funds for unexpected expenses in the future.

I remember hearing about “Pebble” for the first time about a month ago when it showed up in an article in my “all” feed (https://pawb.social/post/2688668).

Its name before its rebrand was already questionable as I think T2 already has strong associations with the Terminator franchise; and its new name was not any better. “Pebble” is too generic a term to get people to understand the platform’s concept and in the tech space, I think everyone would think of the wearables first.

All this to say I am zero percent surprised they went out of business. I’m only surprised it happened so shortly after their rebrand (though at this point I’m starting to think that must have been some sort of Hail Mary).

Speaking as someone who joined during the “Reddit Exodus,” when I left Reddit I was not anticipating (or actively searching out) a direct Reddit replacement. I was happy to look for forums that worked for me, but wound up stumbling on Lemmy first.

All this to say that I was already ready to face accounts on different sites (or at least browse different sites) and I don’t think not being federated would be a dealbreaker for me.

I would certainly be concerned about the level of discussion without federation, though. To me, as an individual who has not had to deal with the struggles of Lemmy mod tools (or lack thereof), the contributions from other instances definitely help get a conversation going. And with troublemaker instances blacklisted I find more often than not they are adding and not detracting.

Obviously that’s all with the added benefit of me not having to be a mod. I guess at the end of the day, my hope is that PenguinCoder’s developing platform will play nice with ActivityPub, so we can still work with other instances. I suppose if it worked really well, other instances may want to even migrate to it (assuming it was robust enough).

As someone who has always been skeptical of “AI,” I definitely hope corporations dial back their enthusiasm on it; but I think its value has never been commercial, but industrial.

“AI” was not designed so consumers could see what it would look like to have Abraham Lincoln fighting a T-Rex without having to pay artists for their time. “AI” was designed so that could happen on a much larger enterprise scale (though it would probably be stock images of technology or happy people using technology instead).

With this in mind, I think “AI” being a money pit won’t dissuade corporations since they want the technology to be effective for themselves, they just want consumers to offset costs.

Oh, exactly. I’ve hit a point where I could buy nice clothes on occasion if I had a reason too, but with expensive clothes being just as quality errant as low end brands, I find myself having very little reason to upgrade my wardrobe.

If I could find a reliably quality brand, I’d certainly be more inclined to start changing out my closet.

As it stands right now: I can basically throw out any polyester clothes because I never wear them, even if I like the pattern.

I think a lot of people have noticed clothing quality going down for a while, especially if shopping fast fashion brands; but I thought it was especially interesting how the decline in quality permeated through the high end brands as well.

When I saw the Ben Schwartz photo referenced in the article, I had assumed it looked worse since it was probably not as nice a brand as Billy Crystal’s sweater. I was surprised to see it was likely a 400USD sweater that looked like that.

As the article notes at the end, it is still possible to find fully natural clothes, but I wish they were easier to locate.

A couple of key highlights:

The proposal is a gambit by Meta to navigate European Union rules that threaten to restrict its ability to show users personalized ads without first seeking user consent—jeopardizing its main source of revenue.

It would give users the choice between continuing to access Instagram and Facebook free with personalized ads, or paying for versions of the services without any ads, people familiar with the proposal said.

Under the plan, Meta has told regulators it would charge users roughly €10 a month, equivalent to about $10.50, on desktop on a Facebook or Instagram account, and roughly €6 for each additional linked account, the people said. On mobile devices the price would jump to roughly €13 a month because Meta would factor in commissions charged by Apple’s and Google’s app stores on in-app payments.

Privacy-conscious users in the U.S. shouldn’t expect to be offered the option to pay for ad-free Instagram or Facebook soon. Meta’s proposals have been pitched specifically as a way to navigate demands by EU regulators to seek consent before crunching user data to select highly personalized ads.

It isn’t clear if regulators in Ireland or Brussels will deem the new plan compliant with EU laws, or whether they will insist Meta offer cheaper or even free versions with ads that aren’t personalized based on a user’s digital activity.

This feels like Meta is just attempting to play at Malicious Compliance. There’s no way they make that much off each user per month, this feels like they are intentionally making it cost-prohibitive to have the ad-free version just so they can say they are meeting EU regulations. I certainly cannot see many users shelling out ~€17 a month for Instagram and Facebook.

As noted, though, this may not be enough to pass the EU regulations.

The trick is to make sure you’ve checked everything else off on your list before getting to that one

I suspect it’s because they left the tech sector alone for too long and now major damage control is needed.

It seems like laws and politicians are always a little late to the game with regulations on new technology because they don’t fully understand a new technology or its implications until it’s been on the market for a while.

Unfortunately, that means by the time the technology’s implications have been determined, a lot of damage can have already been done.

I think, similarly, politicians were not examining the tech sector closely when it came to acquisitions; but they realize, now, that they let it fester a little too long.

Hopefully the FTC continues to break up any monopoly it can identify (tech or otherwise), but there’s certainly a lot of work to be done.

That’s a fair point. It really feels like nothing is protected in perpetuity. It seems like everything is only protected for the time being. It honestly makes everything feel a little less stable, and I wish some protections could be codified to make them a little more robust.

Fingers crossed that we get Net Neutrality back. If I’m being honest, I’m less than optimistic; but I would certainly be thrilled if this went through.

This move seems absolutely wild, and I think Match knows it; which is why it’s only available to such a small segment of users.

If too many users have this feature (and who knows how many that would be?) it’'s going to scare away all the regular users. What’s the point in swiping no if that user can just veto your decision anyways?

This move reminds me a lot of what I’ve heard about mobile gaming. The 500USD/month users are whales, but the whales need regular people to play with or they’ll get bored and leave.

Right now, keeping the number of whales to a minimum is important to keep the regular users happy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future some cost/benefit analysis shows that they can take the hit on regular users to squeeze out a few more whales.

It also seems like a bonkers move to pay 500 dollars to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you, too. (But that’s a different issue.)