This is more bark than bite, imo. They’re just threatening to withhold products at this point, but as the article points out:

• Europe’s a big market and profit focused companies aren’t going to give that up just to make a point
• Those that do will just encourage European competition to step up and fill whatever gaps might appear, which is just fine by the EU.

So… go right ahead. Let’s see how this really plays out.

Most people don’t know how to switch between inputs on their TVs or have gotten rid of their DVD or BluRay players at this point.

They’re using the built in streaming apps or they’ve plugged a Roku in where the cable box used to go.

The RIAA vs the AI industry… Can they both lose?

As far as it is, it’s still just under one day at light speed.

I don’t think LLMs are useless, but I do think little SoC boxes running a single application that will vaguely improve your life with loosely defined AI features are useless.

Plenty of free apps get monetized just fine. They just have to offer something people want to use that they can slather ads all over. The AI doo-dads haven’t shown they’re useful. I’m guessing the dedicated hardware strategy got them more upfront funding from stupid venture capital than an app would have, but they still haven’t answered why anybody should buy these. Just postponing the inevitable.

Reviewer opinions on both Humane and Fisker are pretty consistently negative so this isn’t some mean YouTuber with an axe to grind situation.

The products are bad and people shouldn’t waste their hard earned money and time on them. Venture Capital firms may lose money, but that comes with the territory. Not every venture is a win.

It’s a shame this isn’t working out, I was really hoping it would turn out to be a better way of doing self-checkouts.

The little convenience store on my way to work is nice, but I guess it falls apart in a larger store situation.

I’m converting from Firesticks once the new Apple TVs come out. I’m sick of the constant upselling and Amazon’s been putting much more effort into blocking me from using a custom launcher than basic stability and usability.

I did, when I bought the device. And if the manufacturer does a good job, I’ll recommend them to friends and family and likely buy more of their products.

The FOSS community does most of the heavy lifting with security updates anyway. Most of these things are running Linux, so they’ve already helped themselves to that community’s work.

I don’t have a problem with a streaming service doing that. Hardware, no. If I bought it, I own it and the manufacturer can fuck right off.

I have nothing against advertising in general, but I won’t tolerate OS-level advertising and I don’t want ad-subsidized hardware.

It’s really hard for me to feel sorry for any of the parties involved so the ethics feel weird.

I guess the law firm saved the shareholders from being fleeced and they want their cut. It’s obscene, but still a small fraction of what Elon would’ve walked off with.

They’re not, but a little cumbersome to carry around and find power on a heist.

There are loads of little pocket sized battery powered jammers available now.

Yes. Because it still works and hasn’t all been replaced yet.

The burden is on the telcos to prove otherwise and justify all the subsidies they got to wire unprofitable areas.

Most people shouldn’t buy a home printer at all anymore. Unless you’re a crafter or work in a field that still uses lots of paper (i.e. law) they’re not worth it.

It’s a rapidly shrinking market and HP knows there’s no saving it so I guess they’re following the cable company playbook.

Squeeze your remaining customers as hard as possible before the music stops

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You’re not wrong, but it’s not just the UI on the kiosk, it’s the whole checkout process. A trained cashier on a real checkout line is much faster because the machine isn’t nerfed and trying to hold their hand while preventing them from stealing. The real problem is the stores are trying to shift the labor onto the customer but the customer isn’t getting much benefit for the effort nor has any motivation to be particularly honest in light of having this chore thrown in their lap.

I don’t think they can redesign the UI to overcome that. It’s not really a UI problem, it’s a conflict of interests problem and they’re not going to solve that unless they completely redesign the checkout process. The little Amazon convenience stores that know what you have as you shop seem like a better approach, but I’m guessing they’re not all they’re cracked up to be since they haven’t seemed to catch on that much.

Really, which ones?

You basically have to break the installer to get it to work, which supports my point that the limit is an arbitrary way to exclude PCs made before a certain date from the next version. There is no technical reason MS can’t allow old hardware to work and no marginal cost to Microsoft to chose to do so. Like I said, while I don’t expect them to support everything forever, Microsoft also made their bed with their illegal business practices that got us here and hordes of malware infested EOL’ed computers are everybody’s problem now. They shouldn’t be adding to that problem for arbitrary marketing reasons.

I’m not against to fixed support periods, but they really ought to be minimums and not halted based on arbitrary dates, especially in the consumer space where these machines will run whether they get patched or not.

Slippery slope fallacy much?

This already happened during the last big Windows-on-ARM push w/ Win8. UEFI secure boot was required enabled on all new hardware but no requirement for user-added keys. It didn’t overtly restrict Linux (on MS’s part) but several manufacturers did lock down their devices. I don’t see any reason why that won’t happen again. It’s the norm in the cell phone and tablet ecosystem (which is a damn shame, but there may be hope on the regulatory front w/ right to repair laws gaining steam.)