Why? Mostly, so I can control it if an episode ends but also for max volume over the shower sounds. When I travel and don’t have a good place for it, I will use a nearby toilet or counter.

<raises hand>

I listen to The Daily podcast or audiobooks. The phone goes into a little 3D printed holder to keep it dry and redirect the sound. I’ve done this for years with multiple phones, never any issues.

Even though modern iPhones are “waterproof” I like to keep it as dry as possible. The touchscreen stops working reliably if it gets wet, and the speakers can get blocked by water droplets and reduces the volume.

It’s also worth noting that living in the PNW requires using the bathroom fan to keep the moisture down. The bathroom never gets that steamy, which I’m sure drastically changes the moisture exposure equation.

What this article doesn’t mention is that California is such a massive market that their state-specific regulations often dictate the behavior of car manufacturers country-wide. Why?

Nobody wants to buy a car in TX that cannot be bought or sold in CA. No car company wants to sell a CA-only model vs. a 49-other-state model of the same car, so they meet the California standard for the entire product. There is a national ripple effect that causes the federal fuel standards to become functionally redundant.

Good luck getting the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to go along with these changes, let alone the 17 other states that have adopted the same CA-leading standards.

Would you think it acceptable for a gun manufacturer to make a gun that looked like a Fisher-Price toy, then market it to children? I’m not saying parents do not have a role here, I’m saying there are behaviors from companies that should be explicitly banned because they target children.

There are legitimate materials science, atmospheric sound propagation physics, and climate science modeling questions that are being answered by these tests. I believe it extremely short sighted to think the application of this technology and enhanced fluid dynamics to be limited to “rich people fuck the planet faster”.

I’m not saying that it is never fair to criticize a scientific endeavor, but enhancing our understanding of quickly transporting things through a dense atmosphere is not a bad thing.

I wish my 6-year-old son’s surgery goes well tomorrow… he should be fine, but still.

Edit: surgery went well, at home recovering.

I’d expect the laptops would work similarly, you can either pay longer and keep it or trade it in earlier.

To be fair, there are millions of Americans who upgrade their phones with their cell carrier every year. Technically this is a 2-year loan that will pay off the device if you do nothing, or give you the option to trade in the device after 1 year of payments in exchange for a new device. This pays off the original loan, assuming the device is in good working order.

The details matter here, but this is also very similar in the end result as a lease. You pay every month for an installment, get to use the latest and greatest hardware, and can trade it in for a new model. This model works very well for phones. Why not apply a similar principle to a laptop, but amortize the upfront cost over 4 or 5 years with the option to trade-in and upgrade after two years?

It’s interesting enough for businesses that it may be a great model. The amount of older e-waste laptops filling closets and IT departments is staggering.

Get 'em while that last:

“In a major industry shift announced in early 2026, Sony is entering a strategic partnership where TCL will take a 51% stake in its home entertainment division, including Bravia TVs, with a new joint venture expected to be fully operational by April 2027”

It’s the end of an era for the Sony Bravia.

I would be shocked if there wasn’t a single fuse just for that antenna.

Pretty sure at least half of Adobe’s users are on macOS.

I mean, yes, that is bad… but the biennium budget for 2011-2013 was around $60 Billion, which means this project represented about half a percent of the overall budget. The current budget deficit is around $60 Million, but the kicker from 2024 was a record $5.6B in unexpected surplus.

The Oracle debacle is a good representation of why government contracting can be a mess, but I don’t think that project caused such a big long-term financial problem. Putting a toll on the I-5 bridge into/from WA is a massive issue, I agree with you there.

They could be manufacturing prototypes or examples for apprentices. It’s also replicas were made for trade to demonstrate the shape to others, or tokens of appreciation, or adapted into toys / primitive dice. <shrug>

You are now blind and deaf like Helen Keller. Good luck, she figured it out, you’ll be fine.

The entire thing feels manufactured by design to get people talking about Cracker Barrel.

I was asleep in bed one night many years ago and heard a loud bang, startling me awake. I thought for sure somebody was trying to break in a window or something. Went out, checked the house, nothing amiss. Went outside, checked around for any signs of something being off, not a thing. I then sat in my living room for 30 minutes trying to decide if it was a dream or if it would happen again. Still, nothing. I went back to sleep.

The next morning I made coffee and sat down at my MacBook Pro. It was an older model but I immediately noticed something was wrong. The entire laptop was elevated off the table slightly. The battery had apparently expanded in the middle of the night and with enough force ripped the bottom aluminum cover through three of the screw holes. Found the source of the noise, and immediately took it for disposal.

I was very lucky it didn’t catch fire, although it would have quickly solved my midnight mystery.

That would be a pretty big security hole in iOS if that was allowed, but it isn’t. Notification and other UI elements are rendered on top of the underlying app, which does not have access to or cannot see the full screen’s canvas. We can see practical implementations of this “snapshot” test feature in code:

https://github.com/uber/ios-snapshot-test-case

To counter the first theory, a contact cannot change the physical biology of the photon detecting cells (rods and cones) in the back of your eye. Nothing can, short of modifying your genetics.

So you can either become part mantis shrimp, or shift the wavelengths into the spectrum your biology already can absorb and interpret.

Something that was said to me long ago by somebody I admired when I was a fuckwit teenager, “if you’re not embarrassed of the person you were last year, you’re not growing enough.” That has stuck with me for decades, I find it still applies and I’m scared of when I could realize it doesn’t.

You seem to be missing the point, the Nintendo Switch is handily the most popular game console in US gaming history. It has officially sold more units than the PS2.

I’m sorry that you don’t appreciate the switch, it’s an amazing general purpose gaming console.