Other forms of commerce add at least some value to society. Have you tried to buy a car ever? You cannot just give them a cashier’s check and walk away. You are forced to get a hard sales pitch for warranties and not the decent ones that come from the manufacturer, they want to sell you a garbage one they make more…

Whenever the media reports, “The price of x is going up”, every company that sells x decides to raise prices. Then the media reports, “The price of x is not easing up any time soon”. Then more price gouging, repeat forever. Remember when “supply chain disruptions” made prices go up and never come back down, even…

You’re describing basically all car dealerships.

A guy where I grew up was well known for converting cars to running on vegetable oil. You can’t just suck up a bunch of dirty grease from a restaurant and run it, it needs to be processed. So he built a little refinery in his garage, which eventually caused a massive fire and burned up all his fry cars.

I don’t think they caved to pressure from Trump fans, supporting fashy republicans is what tech bro CEOs have wanted to do from the beginning. The only thing restraining them has been worrying about recruiting and retaining employees some of whom they believed would find it distasteful.

Just like other anti-piracy tools, dongles can be bypassed. It’s basically the same process as bypassing software based tools, crackers reverse engineer the software to remove the parts that communicate with the anti-piracy solution. If it offers no better protection, it’s a negative value for the company since…

The firmware I used let me keep my stock firmware intact, I can choose which partition to boot from.

Testing costs are cheaper at Tesla, they just use their customers cars to beta test it.

How does flash tuning void your warranty?

How can they deny warranty claims based on this? Don’t they have to prove that the modification was the cause of the failure?  Seeing as the mod does basically the same thing as an option they sell, I can't see how they can make that kind of claim.

I switched from Plex to Emby because I liked the look of the interface. Switched back after Emby server kept needing to be restarted. With Plex I go months without touching my streaming box.

This is an old-timey, unsophisticated way to run a botnet’s C&C domain communication. It’s basically the same as when botnets use Tor for C&C. It’ll be easily detectable by consumer-level security software, because dogecoin and Tor are complex pieces of software that you can’t just obfuscate away, they’ll be detected…

5000 BTU for $599 is a bonkers price, especially for a preorder of a new design.

Cooper’s sharp American is amazing!

I'll bet you a signed dollar this Moore fellow is a pedo.  /s

Gamestop is hanging on by a thread. They will be insolvent long before any lawsuit is resolved.

Google “Hyundai oil failure”. There have been numerous recalls due to oil issues. Disappearance of oil, oil not getting where it’s supposed to be, etc.

I could see this being better for consumers, if implemented right, which almost certainly won’t happen. If they stop jamming the options packages that have the features that people really want with other crap they don’t want, it would be great.

Apple doesn’t allow you to restrict permissions the permissions of iMessage, does it? I haven’t used iOS 13, so this may have changed, but stock iOS apps have had elevated privileges in the past. That’s why the iMessage reboot bug could crash your phone. Apple phones send tons of telemetry data, even when the screen…

I read the federal laws regarding regarding removing and altering VIN tags, and they are more nuanced than I expected, but the general thrust is that it is a Federal felony to remove or alter a VIN plate, with a few exceptions(necessary for repairs or restoration, scrap metal salvage). One element of the crime that…