I feel like BMW charging a monthly subscription for the heated seats in the car should’ve been enough to stop anyone from buying their new cars, but they continue to sell!

I had a G4 that I liked pretty well, until after about 18 months it inevitably stopped working well, like all my early Android handsets. My Pixel 2 was my first phone to make it to 3 years (although Google did have to do a warranty replacement 20 months in) and it was still good but stopped getting security updates. The Pixel 2 being good ironically lead me to iPhones. I looked at my stepdaughter using a 6-year-old phone that still got updates, still could easily get parts for repairs locally, and started to wonder why I was spending hundreds of dollars buying a new phone every couple years.

IIRC it was Verizon; Motorola and eventually a couple other manufacturers would sell the same phones under different names in other countries.

I know Verizon has to pay Lucasfilm to use the term “Droid” for their Android phones, back when iPhones were AT&T exclusives and they were using the slogan Droid Does, but I think Lucasfilm had also specifically trademarked/copyrighted/whatever the term. I remember projects like Trillian and Babelfish took their names from the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide properties but I don’t think they did any licensing.

What began in 2022 as broad optimism about the power of generative AI to make peoples’ lives easier has instead shifted toward a sense of deep cynicism that the technology being heralded as a game changer is, in fact, only changing the game for the richest technologists in Silicon Valley who are benefiting from what appears to be an almost endless supply of money to build their various AI projects — many of which don’t appear to solve any actual problems.

It depends on if you’re going back to school for career reasons or personal enrichment. For the latter it really is never too late. For your career, though, too late will depend on when you’re hoping to retire, when you’ll complete the extra schooling, how much the school will cost, and how much more money you’ll expect to make with your new degree.

Without any info, assuming you want to retire around 65, I would think it would be normal to want to use your new degree for at least ten years, so whatever schooling you’d want to do you would want to be finishing by the time you’re 55. But those other variables come into play. If you’re borrowing $100,000 to pay for med school, your cutoff date will probably be earlier because it will take a longer time to pay off the student loans. On the flip side, if you’re paying $5-10,000 for a 6-month programming boot camp that will boost your income by $10-20,000/year then you might even consider doing that at age 60, especially if you’re already bringing a computer science background where your experience and new skills will keep you in high demand.

There’s not really a one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

I don’t have advice to give you beyond looking at [email protected] and [email protected]

It’s weird seeing people sharing the shortcuts they’ve built for iOS and macOS when that’s been a native feature since iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma

Maybe not a blacklist, but I know a house I lived at previously (back in the era when landline telephone was fading out but still common) one phone company didn’t offer residential service at my address but did for neighbors’ addresses and kept telling me I could only get business service. I assume a previous resident had used business service and the address was then in their system as the location of a business. Perhaps something similar is happening to you.

I really need to set myself up on LinkWarden or linkding; it would solve at least 95% of this problem and my massive tab problem as well

Wikipedia says Nicolas’s dad is August Coppola, brother of Francis Ford and Sophia; I’m assuming that’s accurate

I’m assuming this is entirely related to him financing the film himself by taking out loans against his properties, which are coming due and he’s now having to sell things off and take new loans. He’s convinced it will still become a cult classic!

He’s sure it will become a cult classic at some point

It was him; he financed it himself by taking out loans against properties he owned. He’s selling things off now to pay the loans back.

Nicolas Cage is his nephew!

Content warning: contains an image of dead whales being prepared for butchering

I realized a few years ago that most Americans will earn at least $1 million during their working lives. Even if they’re “only” making $30k/year that will get them to $1 million in a little over 33 years. They’ll probably never have much in their bank account, but they’ll have earned that much at some point by the time they retire.

The neighborhood I was in 8 or 9 years ago got fiber and the contractor cut the gas line at least twice on my street, to say nothing of the rest of the streets where they also cut the gas line. It was like they never bothered calling 811 before digging.

I don’t know if this is something available where you live, but Replacements, Ltd. may be able to help you. That’s basically why they exist.

So he took out loans to make Megalopolis and now he’s selling things and borrowing more because the movie flopped so he can’t pay back the loans with the movie’s earnings?