Eventually I moved to a full split, positioned quite some distance apart (~25cm) and found that even more comfortable.

Always hard to know with stuff like this if you are just imagining it, but for various reasons, I'm pretty convinced it was an improvement for me.

That's a hard disagree from me - I'm not a heavy reader but I'll still easily get through a couple of fiction books every month. TV/Movies are far less information dense (ie interesting) that even a light fiction book.

I'll happily watch a show or movie on TV with the family - there's a lot to be said for shared entertainment, but there's a reason for the trope "the book was better than the movie".

Of all the things I wouldn't trust AI to hallucinate facts on, mushrooms would have to be right up near the top of the list

Also, space vampires.

Possibly/probably with another years experience with LLMs I'm just more attuned to noticing when they have lost the plot and are making shit up

Subscription based software - it's what I do for a day job but I'm not interested in any more monthly money drains than the bare minimum - ie mortgage, rates and utilities.

I'm old enough to remember when one of great things about the web was the low barrier to entry.

Not every site has a large company with deep pockets behind it. Some of the websites I've run, I've run at a loss because I was interested in the subject and thought it provided real value for other people. Probably the income from these sites was in the hundreds of dollars a year range, the cost in time and effort waaay beyond that.

I don't know the actual compliance costs here - I know the cost of a UK lawyer just to review obligations and liabilities is probably going to be a few hundred quid, if not substantially more. I don't know of many non-professional, or FOSS sites that could afford that.

Your curt dismissal of this huge chunk of the internet saying they shouldn't be operating at all is mind boggling

I'm surprised they got anyone signing up at all - though I suppose back then having just about everything directly connect to the internet was much more of the norm

Curious what other professions you'd pursue?

Voice-to-text is already as good as it needs to be now, and most people barely use it because unless you are driving, a keyboard is better. I don't want others to hear what I'm searching for - or for the device to be always on, listening. A keyboard of some sort seems unavoidable.

As soon as you put a keyboard on it, then it needs a screen. As soon as you have those two things you pretty much have a phone - and why would anyone want a second device that's basically just another phone that could have just as easily been an app on their existing phone.

It'll need to android based if they want any one to use it as otherwise they'll trying to start from scratch, and why would anyone use something that doesn't have access to the 27 million existing app on the android app store. (see windows mobile)

I have had an old PC running my TV for many years now - it's fast, so doesn't get bogged down rendering applications, I can play any content that I have using full resolution, and as it's just a PC, ublock origin takes care of any ads.

Depressingly I found it quite hard to replace my truly dumb, 55" Veon a few years back, so I've had to buy a TV with some smarts (a HiSense) - however, it's still just being used as a dumb tv (ie, an HDMI input).

I do have mild concerns about updates introducing some unwanted behavior despite this, so it's either not connected to the net, or, if I'm playing around with trying to manage it via HA, it's blocked from leaving the LAN at the router.

I used it extensively in the late 90's early 00's and really liked it. As a newb sysadmin at the time, the built-in versioning on the fs saved me from more than one self-inflicted fsck up.

I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments.

It works well - but have them in long enough, particularly when physically working and the earbuds will loosen and shift. The seal on the earbuds with your ear canal is important, especially with ANC buds. Removing face shields and ear muffs to re-adjust earbuds is frustrating.