No, but it’s the only reason for HDMI (along with AV receivers) because it’s all the manufacturers support, so all of us home theater nerds that do care about this stuff have no real* choice but to keep up with the HDMI world. Yes, you can set up a media server that streams 4K video, but you’re not going to find a DisplayPort 4K UHD player, or a 7.2 AVR that plugs into your 77” OLED and supports all of your game consoles. HDMI is just the unfortunate reality there.

That said, the tech that actually takes advantage of the new cable specs tends to lag behind significantly, and new gaming consoles that support HDMI 2.2 likely will in a limited (ultimately disappointing) capacity for years, just like previous versions.

(Also the top comment in this thread doesn’t really seem to reflect modern reality for most people I know. Most people are using their TV to stream at 1080p - 4K, not watching broadcast TV - in which case, yeah, get a $60 720p LCD or whatever, HDMI specs won’t matter to that kind of viewer. Still, subscription streaming quality definitely doesn’t take full advantage of your expensive shiny new TV the way physical media - or a media server - might, but that’s another conversation).

4K discs are so niche that this just isn’t really true, since they simply don’t bother to add that stuff anymore with the money all going to streaming. Almost every 4K disc I have just loads right into a bland generic menu with only a skippable logo for universal or whatever at the beginning. On top of that, they’re all region free. Odd that when the consumer base for physical media is smaller than it used to be, the consumer experience is better.

Now most of these 4K discs also come with a regular (often older) Blu-ray which contains the features from previous releases or whatever, and THAT’S where the bullshit you’re talking about is - lots of trailers (with it being a crapshoot whether you can skip straight to the menu, need to skip one at a time, or have to actually fast forward them), and, worst of all, defunct BD-Live stuff that in some cases you have no way to skip loading at all, even if you completely disable network connectivity in the player. None of this junk is in any of my 4Ks. Sometimes the features are even on the 4K too, if you’re really lucky.

But yeah, modern 4K discs are mostly great and still absolutely way better video and audio quality than any streaming service I’ve used - the worst thing you usually get is maybe one dumb copyright notice. (LG’s 4K players were terrible anyway though making the experience bad for consumers for a different reason, but that’s for another comment).

Yeah, I fully support protest votes against dysfunctional two-party systems in deep $COLOR states - that’s where a lot of people don’t vote because they think they “don’t make a difference” but that’s how little trends start to form over time. Just gotta do what we can with what we have.

Totally circumstantial (and admittedly not clear in my above post), but what I’ve seen is not originally from posts, but all targeted spam emails to a government institution (which I can’t share unfortunately, but I fully realize “trust me bro” is not useful on the internet - though if Lemmy was bigger, other people with similar jobs have definitely seen the same). I definitely have no evidence of someone specifically reading these emails (the vast majority of which were caught and filtered by the spam blocker) and reposting them to social media, just pointing out that I saw a lot of the same things. I have seen some of your links but not others and read every one of these, and it’s all encouraging to know that, hopefully, the foreign influencers are doing a really shitty job. The Dems run some really bad candidates, but we all collectively (myself included) need to work harder to fix this shit on years 1-3 and not just year 4. Personally, I’m voting for the best option we have at the moment, but like… I really do totally get it if you don’t.

I’m a pretty far left progressive and I get downvoted for saying this, but unfortunately I’ve seen firsthand the Russian propaganda (your vote doesn’t matter; both sides are terrible; protest vote to a third party; don’t vote for genocide) being basically indistinguishable from a lot of actual progressive social media posts. Of course, all these things are arguably or definitely true, depending on your circumstance, many things need to change ASAP, it feels like shit voting for someone who supports some horrible things, and yet following any of this advice (particularly in a swing state) supports Russian and conservative interests. It’s frustrating seeing a lot of friends posting things I technically agree with if we were discussing them privately, but post them in public social media posts which essentially make them mouthpieces for neocons who spread the exact same rhetoric to younger voters by appealing to their altruism. Most of them ARE still voting for Harris and understand the “lesser of two evils” thing, but who knows how many people they have convinced to not vote, or throw it away, by contributing to the “everything sucks” echo chamber.

Look, the train is heading full speed toward the edge of a cliff, but we can at least try to slow it down with what we have. We have the option of actually using the next four years to attempt to gradually unfuck things, or we can just give up and wait until things are even more fucked four years from now before getting angry again that the next person on whatever “the left” means then represents our interests even less than the previous candidate. Realistically, this is how it’s always going to be, because the majority of Americans don’t really care about this stuff until a few months before an election, but at the bare minimum it’s so important to make people realize we need to make the most out of even a small modicum of what we have that we can work with.

Some people can’t hear the dog whistles until they become bullhorns.

Yeah if the point of the statue wasn’t clear, the blatant sarcasm of the writing on the plaque on it gives it away.

Kinda says a lot about this country when someone can make a statue of a turd on a desk and people aren’t sure if it supports the desk poopers. Honestly if that plaque wasn’t on the side of it I would bet a lot of January 6’ers would share it thinking it was made by their team. Hell a lot of them probably still will on account of not being able to read.

I still have two stuffed monkeys I “won” from that site, from when I was young and stupid and didn’t realize I was probably paying for them with my personal data.