GCam and photospheres! I’m so mad they dropped photospheres on the Pixel 8 line, it’s so good for travel landscapes.

Samsung smart monitors 🤧

I don’t know how this would apply to decompression models in actuality, but in general, deep learning is VRAM intensive only during the training process, that’s because they train multiple batches of data at once for generalization, and all those batches of data need to be stored in ram.
But once the model is trained, the end user is only going to input data one by one, so VRAM usually is not an issue. There are also light weight models that are designed to be run on lower end hardware.

Can’t speak for other people, but I myself have multiple IEMs, and would use it on my phone and PC. The dongle would not be fixed at all times in my example.

Don’t mind the downvotes. Fair trade and eco-friendliness are both important, but sometimes you can’t get both. Gray area exists, and I don’t judge anyone who places one before another. Provided they understand both of course.

Why not no adapters in the first place? They are still an extra thing to carry, not to mention how easy it is to lose or break them.

Wow that sucks.
I’m assuming that you’ve gone through all the troubleshooting steps already, so I won’t bother you with that.

Edit: sending it back to repair is probably hard too, since Sony’s market share is so low compared to Apple/Samsung, I imagine it would be harder to find a place that fixes them.

fingerprint sensor is prone to break

How so? Are you noticing problems with it?

unused plug that can potentially break

They don’t break if you don’t use it… They are probably more resilient than USB-C ports.

It would seem so, but it’s also arguable that by removing the port, you are forcing customers to buy wireless headphones that are much more harmful to the environment, something that goes against their motto of eco-friendliness.

I’m guessing you never lived through the iPod/MP3 player era? You do not need a professional audio device to enjoy music. Most people would happily live by with a crappy $20 earbud.

You have to remember that not that long ago, every phone used to have a headphone jack built in. It wasn’t until Apple created the problem of removing the headphone jack, and created the solution in the Airpods (which generated massive amounts of profit), that other manufacturers followed suit. It never was organic.

IMO, once phone manufacturers decide to remove headphone jacks from their devices, the discussion of wired vs wireless is inevitable since you are forcing customers to make a choice/sacrifice. Headphones very much still use 3.5mm jacks, especially in high end headphones where there are also other types of plugs for balanced audio. Wireless tech is not going to replace it anytime soon, and headphones that end with a USB port are few and far between. Although there are solutions out there like dongles and Hi-Fi Bluetooth receivers, to some they are still an extra thing to manage, while with a built in headphone jack all of the hassle would be gone.

I know phone calls are always mono. The reason I mentioned laptop use is because I could also play other stuff in the background along with the phone call, and forcing the headphones into Bluetooth phone call mode makes the overall audio quality crappy. That’s why I use laptop integrated mics to keep the headphones in stereo mode.

One thing people don’t/forget to mention, is that the microphones in even earpods tier wired earphones will sound infinitely better than most mics in Bluetooth headphones, even in the multiple hundred dollar tier range.

Also, you won’t be forced to go into crappy mono sound mode when on call using Bluetooth headphones. When I use BT headphones with my laptop, I almost always use the integrated mic on the laptop instead of the built in ones in the headphone due to this.

Han Chinese 漢人/漢族 is the name of the ethnic group which originated from mainland China, and are the most dominant in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
OP here is probably trying to differentiate between Chinese (nationality) and Han Chinese (ethnicity) because although people in Taiwan are of Han Chinese ethnicity, they generally don’t like to be called Chinese (nationality) and prefer to be called Taiwanese (nationality, though the official name of the country is Republic of China, but that’s another story).

I can’t believe some people actually prefer using the official app…

I live in a Asia where service fees of 10% are normal with no tipping culture.
I can see why people may think 18% is too much, but honestly tipping culture should just be gone entirely. Waiters shouldn’t have to rely on customer tips, which can vary for different reasons even ones that may be outside their control, to earn a living wage.

Okay.

First off, afaik, they never advertised “lifetime” warranty nor software support on their website.

Secondly, as I told you in the previous comment already, you can still use the product as is! This is no different from phone manufacturers dropping software support after 2 or 5+ years. Not to mention this probably only affects hardware that are older than 2009. That’s over 10 years of software support already. Granted they could have reuploaded a version without the AAC codec, but still.

Third, looking at Via’s AAC FAQ, license fees are due on “per unit” sale, and the term of the license is five years, with additional five years renewal. There never was a lifetime license for it. The same goes for every single hardware/software sold that has AAC encoder/decoder built in. So if your actual issue is with that, take it up on Via and the patent holders, and start using foss audio codecs like OGG Vorbis or FLAC.

But couldn’t drivers just, you know, moved back out a little if they realized they overshot it? Doesn’t take them that long to get down to check, and get back in to move the car a bit.

Well if you’re aware of it, why continue misinforming people with a video he retracted? You’re still using the device as is. They aren’t retroactively deleting functionality off of your device after support ends. The license issue just means that they cannot legally distribute legacy software from their website anymore. AFAIK, Synology emailed their customers informing them ahead of time to download the image before they had to take it down, I think they did what they could have done already.

The original licensing problem in question was about the AAC codec, which as you probably know, is practically in every device we use and are in use daily. So until another open codec becomes the norm, or until all the patents expire in 2031, there probably will still be cases like this popping up from time to time.