As a retro enthusiast, I’ve fixed my share of electronics that only needed an hour and a $2 capacitor. But there was also $7 shipping for the cap, and 30-60min of labor, and my knowhow in troubleshooting and experience. If the company had to send someone out, they’d likely spend well over $200 for time, gas, labor, parts, etc. not including a vehicle for the tech and the facility nearby and all that good stuff. This is exactly it. I used to work for a manufacturer that made devices they would often need to repair. They would bill non-warranty labor at $100/hour, plus the cost of parts. Their products were primarily used by professionals, so that was fine when it was being done to repair something that cost between $700-$4,000 new, especially for people who were making money using the product. When they launched a product at a $500 MSRP, though, it started to get harder, and even more so when competition forced them to lower the price to $400. When I left they were about to launch a product targeted at amateurs, originally aiming for a $200 price. It was actually being built by a Chinese competitor, with our software guys contributing to the system and putting our logo on it. Spending $100 labor to repair a $200 device was going to be a tough sell, and when I left the plan for warranty “repairs” was to just give the customer a replacement unit and scrap the defective one. And I’m sure the repair labor rate was going up; they had a hard time hiring qualified technicians at the rate they wanted to pay, and most of the department had quit/moved to new roles when I left, so they were surely having to increase pay and the rate they billed. When something’s being built on an assembly line mostly by machine and/or low-cost Asian labor, it’s harder for a company to justify paying a skilled technician’s labor in a western country when that makes the cost of repair close to the cost of a new unit.

The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts. Which Megatron are we referring to? This [image: c747568b-0dd5-431e-bd19-2fbfdf5d372c.webp] Or This [image: 735a9693-ec67-489c-92f6-addb803291a4.webp]

For this comment, I want to be absolutely clear that I do not give a shit about AI, and that it in no way factored into my decision to buy this iPhone 16 Pro Max. With that disclaimer out of the way: I very much look forward to a class action lawsuit. Apple advertised specific features as coming ‘very soon’ and gave short timeframes when asked directly. And they basically did not deliver on those advertising promises. Basically, I think there’s a good case to be made here that Apple knowingly engaged in false advertising in order to sell a phone that otherwise would not have sold as well. Those promised AI features WERE a deciding factor for a lot of people to upgrade to an iPhone 16. So, I’ll be looking forward to some form of compensation. It’s the principle of it.

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Copyright law is messy. Thank you for the elaboration.

I hate that both trademarks exist, but I'd say using a name form a Tolkien work to develop weapons is especially wrong. Like, abject.

Why? Because you can’t sell them?