I just checked and Reddit did the same with my account. I spent hours editing and ultimately deleting my posts and comments, and the Spez Gestapo just undeleted years worth of content. I’m going to go through them again and this time I’ll leave the gibberish.

Makes not the least bit of difference: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/20/the-microsoftcrowdstrike-outage-shows-the-danger-of-monopolization

Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the Microsoft BSODs that resulted from this fuck up. Millions of people have had their lives disrupted. The vast majority of those will blame Microsoft. Executive boards and IT groups may know better but it won’t matter all that much - they will be aggressively looking to reduce their exposure to Microsoft’s near monopoly anyway.

I worked in sales for a Fortune 500 tech equipment and software manufacturer. When a customer had a serious outage with a single piece of our equipment it would cause them to stop and reevaluate their purchasing plans and dependence on my company.

IMO every government and business out there is going to be looking at this at every level and IT departments will be tasked to significantly reduce their reliance on Microsoft products. It will take years to actually happen, but I think Microsoft sales are going to take a serious, long term, and well-deserved hit.

80% of the items I considered had either jacked up the price prior to prime days, or advertised a large discount when the actual discount was tiny - a few percent. I ended up buying nothing. Amazon sucks.

Paypal locked my account after years of use for absolutely no reason. I never had a invalid charge, dispute, or any other kind of problem with it, just one day they decided to shut it down. They flatly refused to explain what was going on. With all the decent alternatives out there now there is no longer a reason to use their crappy service.

Love that they believe they’re the only game in town and can demand your bank statement.

It’s beyond belief, but insurance companies do the same thing to amputees.

We have all become unwilling, unpaid employees of every company in their pursuit of higher profits. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Corporations have discovered that there is no real downside (for them) when they don’t function. Customer satisfaction no longer has much of an impact on their profits because the few companies left in each sector are doing the exact same thing.

IMO this is yet another side effect of unchecked corporate power. It’s the same reason prices have risen so rapidly and corporate profits have reached 70 year highs. We are dealing with near monopolies and the billionaire class who created them. Until our government addresses the problem it’s not going to get any better.

In other words it’s not going to get better in our lifetimes.

These are the same people who want to know why Obama wasn’t in the Oval Office on 9/11.

I know that Boeing’s on everyone’s shit list these days, but the company doesn’t even make aviation tires. Unless a failure in one of Boeing’s systems caused tire damage this is probably due to poor maintenance by the airline, or a defective tire manufactured by Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone or Dunlop.

The one useful feature I’ve missed is a high temperature warning for my refrigerator, so since they fixed the app it may be time for another try. Thanks for checking that out.

Lol - that’s possible. I spend time in Mexico and Canada so I keep the exchange rates on my dashboard. Easier than looking them up every time.

I could set my the thermostat higher on cloudy days in the winter or more usefully, increase the setting when our cell phones are in the house and decrease it when we’re away. One guy put a vibration sensor on his nightstand and tapping on the stand turns on his bedroom light. There are way too many possibilities, useful and not.

My Home Assistant software and smart devices all are controlled locally and cloud access isn’t used but there are other, much more important reasons to avoid running it.

You should avoid it because Home Assistant is an addictive monster. It starts as a hobby and then the next thing you know you’re putting temperature sensors in your refrigerator and setting different brightness levels for your bathroom lights depending on the time of day.

Seriously though, the software gives an amazingly useful single dashboard for things you might use everyday including lighting, HVAC, alarm systems, weather, currency exchange rates, and entertainment systems. I use it every day.

Thinking back, I seem to remember that in order to receive notifications the app had to be running in the background while phone location was turned on, giving LG precise location tracking all the time. Is that no longer the case?

I deleted the app and disconnected my LG appliances from wifi over a year ago. Maybe they fixed the issue.

The 1% pay their taxes.

Really?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/irs-has-already-collected-more-than-500-million-in-back-taxes-from-delinquent-millionaires/ar-AA1mRSsD

If you’re thinking about buying, be aware they removed the audio jack.

LG’s app is an absolute privacy nightmare too. That app must be used if you want access to any smart appliance features and it requires precise location permissions 100% of the time. Even then, the app features are mediocre, it doesn’t work very well and often doesn’t notify of a finished wash load until long after it’s completed.

Why anyone would want to allow their washing machine manufacturer to continuously track their exact location in exchange for some crappy, poorly implemented features is beyond me.

True. We must all make sacrifices so Amazon’s profits can grow. Maybe their marketing department should call the increase a “Mandatory Donation for the Good of the World” to help us keep things in perspective.

This is a 26% price hike. Amazon’s marketing BS shouldn’t fool anyone.

Wow, you not only think you’re a mind reader, you lecture like a 1st grade English teacher. You must be really fun at parties.