AppleTV is the media box to use if you hate ads and value your privacy. Its Home Screen is just a grid of apps. No ads. None. It’s also way faster (CPU speed) compared to the competition.

Replacing a smart TV OS with a device made by Google or Amazon defeats the purpose. You’re still going to get ads plastered all over your Home Screen. And they still lag and stutter unless you pay a premium price for an 5 year old Nvidia shield. Either use an AppleTV or build your own HTPC.

I haven seen my LG OLED’s smart OS for years.

My LG OLED TV can be configured to load directly into a HDMI input. I keep it disconnected from wifi at all times. I never see the smartTV OS. It’s probably the best option because OLED panels are the best current display technology.

I use an AppleTV as an external media box for all my needs. But the same would apply for an Android box or HTPC setup etc.

My theory is that the tea party didn’t have much do with a black president. It was around that time that social media really took off, and we saw the start of what is now a constant and organised firehose of conservative bullshit spread across it. And there’s an audience receptive to that bullshit.

The Republican Party is now under the control of people who have been immersed in that environment. And it’s only going to get worse.

Not born in the USA.

I know Lemmy hates Apple, but if you want a Spotify alternative with good accessibility, then this is pretty cool:

https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2024/05/apple-announces-new-accessibility-features-including-eye-tracking/

Music Haptics is a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music on iPhone. With this accessibility feature turned on, the Taptic Engine in iPhone plays taps, textures and refined vibrations to the audio of the music. Music Haptics works across millions of songs in the Apple Music catalogue, and will be available as an API for developers to make music more accessible in their apps.

🏴‍☠️

Obligatory “just watch Andor” comment.

Seriously. Go and watch Andor. It proves that good Star Wars content can be made. It has a diverse cast. You just need good writing and a vision. That’s what’s missing from the new content.

They are: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-additional-states-join-justice-departments-suit-against-apple-monopolizing-smartphone

I’ve been in similar situations while renting. I ran ethernet cables along skirting boards and around doorframes and hid them inside adhesive cable raceways.

It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t get coverage in half the media in the country. And most people don’t even watch the media, anyway. It’ll be bullshit stories and anti-liberal memes as per usual.

Apple lay out some details here: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

They control the cloud hardware. Information used for cloud requests is deleted as soon as the request is done. Everything end-to-end encrypted. Server builds are publicly available to inspect. And all of this is only used unless the on-device processing can’t handle a request.

If somebody wanted to actually create a private AI system, this is probably how they’d do it.

You can disagree with this or claim somehow that they are actually accessing and selling people’s data, but Apple are going out of their way to show (and cryptographically prove) how they’re not. It would also be incredible fraudulent and illegal for them to make these claims and not follow through.

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I have a 50 terabyte NAS for storing my movies and TV shows. And access it from any of the TVs in my house.

For music…I have a music streaming subscription for convenience, but also have some vinyl records for the small-ish number of albums I want to keep forever.

I wish we had a way to simulate a universe in which the GOP gets every single one of its policies implemented. Then let it run like a Sim City level. Just to see what a dumpster fire it would be.

The Bluray video quality is average because it’s just upscaled SD copy. But it’s still the best anywhere available.

The issue is they fucked up the Bluray audio. The 5.1 surround sound track is really just stereo but coming from all speakers.

Thankfully, there is a fan copy that combines the Bluray video with DVD audio.

My high end PC from 3 years ago won’t run Windows 11 because of TPM bullshit.

The realpolitik answer is that they’re the only country in the region with highly functioning western-style market economy. That is valuable to other functioning western style market economies. Its a system trying to help itself propagate.