Has anyone here read the book? I enjoyed the film and wondered how they compared.

FireStick is somewhat hackable. You can sideload Android apps onto it. For example, I got Apple Music running on it https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/yes-you-can-run-apple-music-natively-on-your-android-firestick/

You don’t have to subscribe to Amazon Prime to use the other TV services. You can also install Kodi if you want to play back local media.

The FireStick will use USB power - so you can use your TV’s USB ports rather than a separate plug. It also has an Ethernet adapter - I think only the more expensive Apple devices use Ethernet.

The drive itself will work with any processor. If all you have is data on there, it will work.

Or do you mean you want to swap the drive which has the operating system on it?

What news? Give us a link.

If you’re thirsty, drink water.

Not that I know of. And I don’t think a Lemmy user can block (for example) a Mastodon user.

What?! That boggles my mind - and would probably break my brain.

Oooof! Yeah, I don’t think I could cope with that.

I used mine to inspect the solar panels on our roof - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/03/inspecting-solar-panels-using-a-drone/

I wanted to see if they were covered in bird shit. They weren’t.

Note when I did this, it was legal to fly a drone that close to private property. I don’t think it still is.

That stupid Goose game. Pissed me off how simple and repetitive it was. Completed it in a few hours and felt like a total rip off. I still get angry when I see the memes.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/01/the-value-of-videogames-or-why-i-think-untitled-goose-game-was-a-rip-off/

Just to expand on the other (excellent) answers.

Why can’t you buy a bottle of ketchup directly from Heinz? Well, Heinz only sell wholesale to other businesses, like supermarkets. That’s a simple model for them - not having to sell to end users. They don’t want to be in a retail business because it’s cheaper selling to other businesses.

Additionally, most people don’t want to go to the Heinz shop for their ketchup and the Hellmans Shop for their mayonnaise. Most customers want one place where they can buy all their condiments together.

Registrars buy domains wholesale from registries. So you can go to a registrar and buy a .com or .co.uk and email hosting and a blogging platform.

I don’t think there are any Registries which sell direct to end customers. They don’t want your £10 - they want a Registrar’s £10,000.

I think that’s a lovely idea - which doesn’t work in reality. At some point someone will need to be cast out. That can’t be done by peer pressure, because scammers, spammers, and griefers don’t care about that.

Individual blocks also don’t work because they leave unaware users open to being abused.

Sure, you could have a town council vote on a block, or have software which blocks a user for all if they have been blocked >=N times, but that’s still moderation.

One underrated thing that keeps the village going is the police. Or, in our case, the mods.

I know, I know! Everyone hates the mods - with their over-inflated egos and unaccountable practices and their capricious banning of innocuous subjects.

But life without the mods means a village where rioters run rampant.

Not everyone has the same level of mobility that you do.

Incidentally, do you get off your arse to change the volume on your TV?

The question is always going to be “who are you defending against?”

If the CIA/FBI/MI5/KGB etc want in to your data, they’ll probably find a way. If it is just stolen, then the phone’s built in protection is going to stop anyone from brute forcing it.

But your biggest weakness is yourself. Do you really want to type in a 8 digit pin every time? No. So you’ll leave it unlocked for longer - which gives a theif more time to fiddle with it.

The Pi is great - but try to stick to doing one thing at a time with it. Multiple tabs, background music, and live streaming simultaneously is going to make it feel very slow.

Pi OS is probably the simplest - unless you want to spend those two weeks configuring everything 😀

I loved teaching Scratch. And I’ve written about DRAKON - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/why-arent-there-more-visual-programming-languages-an-ode-to-drakon/

I think they’re useful for building algorithms. But the tools themselves aren’t powerful enough for anything too complicated. I hope that changes though!