I beg to differ that Samsung makes good stuff. We had a Samsung front-loading washer. The drum and the crank that holds the drum were made of two different materials, and in the presence of the water and detergent, a galvanic reaction occurred, dissolving the drum arm. Replacing the arm was $400 in parts and over 8 hours in repair time. (There's lots of YT videos of this exact repair.)
What kind of monkey designs something like that. It's obsolescence by design.
Ours died with a “cannot communicate with board A” error. The wiring harness (yes, an irreplaceable harness) between A and B looked fine. We replaced boards A and B, which were half the price of the machine and not returnable. Same error code. We threw it out and got a Speed Queen.
Our Samsung fridge’s manual says it’ll automatically and silently mesh network with any Samsung TVs in range, use AI and hidden cameras to recognize what’s in the fridge and when we use it, then have the TV inject targeted ads into programming based on its findings.
I’m glad to have avoided it - when I moved from sharing with room-mates into my own place and had to buy new appliances, there had just been a spate of Samsung appliances literally randomly catching fire in the news. Those models have all been recalled but it put me right off.
Otherwise I might have considered them but steered well clear, and am very happy with the decision a decade later. Went Bosch for the washer and Electrolux for the fridge, had zero issues.
Also, I'm wondering if any other manufacturer would make the crank and the drum from the same material. Wouldn't it be like $100 extra to make a stainless steel spider?
I can't recall, but I think it was about 7 years. Some will say that's an acceptable lifetime, but I think I did the math once, and estimated it was only a little less than laundromat pricing (less opportunity cost).
I went to the local state school, and had an apartment off campus. At the end of the school year, we'd go dumpster diving, and get all the stuff thrown out. We would take orders from people before going – generally things like TVs, VCRs, tapes, books for classes, etc.
In the first dumpster, you should get a couple of backpacks, rucksacks, and a broom handle (to aid in digging). We'd find all kinds of things. Books we'd resell, lots of porn, lots of perfectly good clothing. It was great.
The best thing we ever found was a giant projection TV (it was the 90s) outside a frat. We took it home, and it turned out the TV had been rained on, and a few discrete components needed to be fixed in the low-voltage section. A couple trips to Radio Shack, and we had a massive frat TV (it was a pain to move it). We went back to the frat a couple of days after we had fixed it, and asked them for the remote. They chased us off.
Dumpster diving in college towns is definitely something the townies do.
Well, it's clear this was leaked so they can throw Waltz to the wolves. "He was a rogue employee, and he is the only one who did this."
I am not conspiratorially minded, but I bet this was because Waltz had Jeffrey Goldberg's number. I bet Waltz leaked things to Goldberg in the past, and this is the Trump administration cutting ties with him in the most "sleep with the fishes" way possible.
That theory really doesn’t work. It’s not a situation where one person went rouge and did something. The thing about a group chat is that it’s literally by definition a group activity and that particular group now includes:
1. The head of the CIA
2. The secretary of defence
3. The vice president
4. The director of national intelligence
5. The White House chief of staff
6. Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Treasury
7. Acting Chief of Staff for the Director of National Intelligence, and nominee for National Counterterrorism Center Director.
8. The Secretary of State
Plus a bunch of others including random trump political allies like Steven miller and witkoff, a journalist and an as yet unidentified person known only as “Jacob”.
But they collectively got together, and decided repeatedly to do this over 30 different occasions in just this story alone.
But don’t let anyone try to convince you this was some single persons problem, this was the absolute textbook definition of a conspiracy at the highest levels of government to knowingly and repeatedly violate the law with regards to both handling classified information and around government record keeping laws.
And this line they are trying to spin about signal was somehow approved for use is here in black and white proven to be wrong with the NSA making it clear there was a known vulnerability in the platform and it wasn’t even approved for unclassified but official use communications as recently as February 2025: https://www.scribd.com/document/843124910/NSA-full
A good friend of mine was friends with Dan Brown when they were both kids. Dan broke his back (or something else just as serious), and was in a cast for a year+. My friend used to say that he was normal when he got hurt, but turned into a real menace after the accident.
My friend passed away a couple of years ago, or I'd have him fill in the details.
It is much the same thing, yes. The reality that I have experienced is that most Trump voters are decent people who simply disagree with me on the best way to solve the issues facing our country. Not at all a pack of hate-filled Nazis. But humans love to pick on their outgroup, so people simply round "Trump supporter" off to "Nazi bigot" and never bother to reflect that they are simply giving into tribalism.
I am not defending any of this fuckwits, but I don't know that it's much different than any organized religion. All of them are stories that get retold over and over until people accept them on faith. I can envision a world where our stories (movies, books) where history is lost of their creation, become facts. "Of course there was Jedi, we've just forgotten…"
Now, they're all fuckwits, but it's not outside the realm of thought.
This assumes that they are the only party with standing to sue, which is not likely the case. (Previous rulings on the lack of the authority of the executive to withhold appropriated funds have come in suits by intended recipients.) Both private parties (nonprofits and businesses) [1] and a group of 23 states [2] have already filed suit over the order.
Supreme court is in Trump's pocket. You can bet it will be appealed, all the way up, with some new legal theory invented to say that Trump can do whatever he wants.
It would be, but they are a rubber stamp for Trump now. Now only judges can stop the madness. Hopefully SCOTUS will actually do their job and make sure that Trump sticks to the law, which does not allow him to just defund programs set up by Congressional vote. Otherwise we wouldn't need a Congress. He's pushing at the walls to see how much he can tear down.
Anyone who's supposed to receive that money has standing and a federal judge can quickly rule that the status quo must remain while the case proceeds. The Trump administration can appeal that ruling but I think it would make it's way through the available steps relatively quickly.
The next steps are probably to cut funding anyway. I have a gut feeling that this is part of a larger power play that demonstrates that (this specific) President has no limitations on his power.
What kind of monkey designs something like that. It's obsolescence by design.
I will never buy another Samsung product.