Nothing surprises me any more. Government can't afford to provide food to hungry kids... but government can afford millions of dollars to gold-plate some statues of horses. Government can't afford Social Security benefits that seniors have earned from a life of work... but government can afford to start a war to distract from its head being in the Epstein Files over 38,000 times. It goes on and on.

This kind of bullshit from the highest levels of government makes everything else seem trite.

But that's not to say there aren't surprising things out there that are giving the government a run for their money.

Because this is the craziest shit I've seen in a minute...

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE... SHIT GETS CRAZIER!

And, I gotta say, the lies coming out of the corporate offices for "Bricks & Minifigs" isn't garnering any sympathy from people. Though I do feel bad for is the franchise owners who are being lied to by corporate and suffering the brunt of the fucked-up bullshit that corporate has enabled...

The original owners of the store are revealing shit about the corporate offices of "Bricks & Minifigs" that's making things far, far worse for this asshole company. There is no doubt what-so-ever that "Bricks & MiniFigs" is a fucking nightmare, and patronizing these poor franchise locations who are blameless feels like a terrible solution, but since they have to send money to corporate, it's pretty much the only solution until corporate is made to pay for what they've done. What absolute fucking monsters.

From top to bottom, this company has done a horrible job of dealing with this situation. The CEO outright lying on tape certainly didn't help.

Whatever happened to right and wrong? It's all shades of grey now, and society is shittier because of it.

Don't think that life without water pressure will hold me back... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• Take a Look, It's In a Book! When it comes to video games, I'm a creature of habit. I mostly play Minecraft Dungeons, which is such a relaxing way to wind down when I've had a particularly challenging day. I don't generally look for other games to play, but sometimes they find me. The latest of which I can't even play because it's not available for iPad or Mac! It's a weird concept to be sure. A fairy has ripped 3,072 books off the shelves of a magical library. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to put every last one of them back on the shelves where they belong...

The reviews are pretty stellar. People love it so much that even when they earn magical abilities to allow them to complete the game faster, they don't. Instead they put each book back manually. Because it's relaxing. I can't imagine a bigger endorsement than that. I really, really hope it comes to a platform I have available one day soon!

   
• Priorities! Take a look at this nonsense that greets you when you login to Facebook...

Facebook now prioritizes their shitty AI slop bullshit over your friends. Which speaks volumes. The reason they want you to use their product is not to communicate with those who mean something to you... it's to generate stupid AI crap. And I honestly don't get it. What do they gain by de-prioritizing your friends? Running AI nonsense is expensive. Having you engage with your friends is relatively cheap. Which is why it seems insane that you have to skip past TWO AI products before even getting to your friends. I don't fucking understand any of this. Probably too old.

   
• I'm on a Float! This past week I happened upon a discussion about how "stupid" water beds were, yet they were everywhere anyway. They didn't offer much support for sleep, they were impossible to move, they could have serious problems when it came to the water getting slimy, and they required a heating pad under or else the water would be freezing to sleep on. It was totally a messy idea that made no sense. And yet... I liked my water bed! It was comfortable enough (when warm) that I was able to fall asleep easily. Not sure it did much for sleep after I nodded off, but for the five years it was functional, I enjoyed sleeping on it. But then the heater had to be replaced for the second time, which requires you to completely drain the bladder, at which point my parents told me it was time to be rid of it. I kept the bed frame though, because it had a padded edge I liked, and just threw a regular mattress inside. So... stupid? Yes. Very. But not insanely so. Sometimes I miss flopping down on a squishy, sloshy bed at night.

   
• Full Disclosure! I haven't thoroughly enjoyed a Steven Spielberg movie since Minority Report in 2002. Before that there were quite a few. Despite it all, I never stop rooting for him out of pure nostalgia. His latest, Disclosure Day looks like he may break his 24-year dry spell for me...

At least I sure hope so.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter to plead guilty in child sexual abuse case, adding to pattern. "Once is an anomaly, twice is a trend." This is the sixth... SIXTH!... January 6th insurrectionist arrested for being a child predator? And that doesn't even touch the number of sex crimes and other criminal acts from the January 6 mob. All pardoned by the president. The so-called "law and order president." What a fucking joke.

   
• Inhumane! Years ago, a woman tossed a cat looking for affection into a trash bin. The cat was rescued, but the woman was caught on video and (rightfully) became a total pariah of society. People (rightfully) loathed her. She (rightfully) became one of the most infamous people in Britain. Her response made things even worse. If you hadn't heard about the story, here you go...

This morning a news story hit my feed with the headline 'Cat Bin Lady' Mary Bale still lives in Midlands - and doesn't feel forgiven. And I was like. Good. Fuck that piece of shit. This is all I could possibly want for her. Anybody who would cause suffering to an animal which did nothing but show them affection deserves to be an unforgiven outcast. People like this have no place in society.

   
• Talk About Performative! Good Lord am I exhausted over this stupid shit. It burns. IT BURNS!

When you are invited somewhere which has different traditions than you hold, it's merely being polite to be respectful to these traditions. People like this need to get out of the house and fucking travel more. I've been to countless places where I was respectful to my host by doing something I wouldn't usually do. What always, always, gets me is how these same people will totally lose their shit if somebody were to disrespect their traditions. Get a fucking life, asshole.

   
And now back to my regularly-scheduled water outage.

The Easter Bunny may be coming to town, but I'm goofing around on the internet ... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Work Chums! I've seen this several times, but I don't think I've shared it before...

If you've dealt with insurance before, you get it.

   
• Smartest Phone! Kit-Kat drama aside, this was my favorite April Fool's joke I saw...

Makes me want to actually buy a Bluey Phone!

   
• Geography! Washington is weird, y'all...

If you're not from here, you don't know how weird though.

   
• NEWSFLASH: MS. NOEM IS DEVASTATED. THE FAMILY WAS BLINDSIDED BY THIS, AND THEY ASK FOR PRIVACY AND PRAYERS AT THE TIME. And I'm asking you to fuck off with your bullshit. You used your position to utterly destroy lives without any regard to their privacy... and you certainly didn't pray on their behalf. Yet you have the absolute gall to ask for "privacy and prayers?" I do wonder if she was fired for this because the White House had advanced notice. They're already neck-deep in scandal, so it makes sense they would want to get this as far away from them as possible. I'd try to feel sorry for Bryon Noem getting attacked over something that was his own private business... but he knew what he married into and what she was. It's no surprise this is blowing up because of his own doing.

   
• Turn It Off and Back On Again! What's delicious about living in the digital age is that assholes can get internet detectives crawling up their ass with a microscope after they do something shitty. Take for instance this judge, who was a heinous douche to an IT worker helping him out. Many judges think they are gods, and when you show them that they're not, they react badly...

And now the internet has been digging up everything from his bankruptcies to other asshole behaviors and publishing them for the whole word to see. Good. That's what the internet should be used for.

   
• How is The Dow? In honor of the puss-filled piece of shit who used her position to protect sexual predators getting fired, I am re-posting the only good thing that came out of her tenure...

Now you can fuck off and just go away until somebody drags your ass in front of The Hague. And, God-willing, your former boss will be there with you. Speaking of which, here's the only good thing to come out of his tenure...

Any guesses as to who's next on the administration firings distraction BINGO card?

   
And on that note, Happy Easter to all who celebrate.

I'm a vegetarian. I choose to not eat meat. So imagine for a minute that I am a cook at a vegetarian restaurant. One day, the owner decides that we're going to start serving meat. I refuse to cook it because it goes against my vegetarian beliefs. The owner says "Well, that's the job. You either do the job or you can't work here." I not only refuse to cook meat, I also refuse to quit. Then I refuse to leave the restaurant. So the owner calls the police to have me removed. I go to jail for trespassing for five days. The owner says that this entire ordeal has made them decide to fire me, and they tell me to never come back.

And you should know that the entire time I was working for the vegetarian restaurant I was moonlighting as a cook for Burger King, McDonald's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. And I was eating at McDonald's while I was cooking at Burger King.

Seven years later I petition the Supreme Court to ban meat completely.

Because if I don't want to eat it, nobody should have the freedom to eat it!

So there I am petting Jenny, my skittish orange cat, when my phone rings. Because of my job, I can't turn my phone off or set it to only ring for known callers, because I can have people calling from anywhere at any time. And I have to answer.

And so I do.

After Jenny gets scared by the ringing and goes running upstairs.

At which point she hangs up on me.

Outright LYING to people over their finances is about as low as it gets. Fuck you. Making it sound like you're some official calling about a person's credit cards like there's a problem when you're just another fucking scammer asshole credit card consolidation company trying to drum up business by throwing out some random number and hoping it hits.

This scammer piece of shit should consider herself very, very lucky that I don't have the ability to make people's heads explode over the phone.

VERY.

Yesterday I blathered on about asshole movie studios depriving customers of what they paid for... access to movies and shows that were sold to them. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Something I cannot fathom is how studios will sit on shows they own and not release them for people to enjoy. This was something that hit me pretty hard after Stephen Dunham died in 2012. He was the star of Oh Grow Up! (from 1999), a series I loved that can't be watched anywhere. It was never released on DVD, was never offered digitally and, from what I can tell, has never been shown on any network after its original run. I have it recorded on 8mm tape somewhere, but don't know that I have a player capable of playing them even if I could find the tapes. You can tapes to be converted to digital, but companies won't do it because they're copyrighted material.

What a waste. Dunham was a good actor and his work deserves to be seen. The pilot episode is on YouTube, but not much else...

Sometimes you can get lucky. There was a show called The Palace Guard (from 1991) which I loved that was eventually released as a part of a Stephen J. Cannell DVD collection set (and I've seen it on some free-view services from time to time... it's currently playing for free on Plex). It was a fun show about a cat burglar that becomes a security expert for an international chain of hotels. But I don't know how much longer those DVDs will even work, if they haven't crapped out already (see yesterday's post)...

Other times you can get... kinda lucky. A Connie Sellecca and Greg Evigan vehicle I liked called P.S.I. Luv U (also from 1991) was never released for home video in any format... but some kind soul uploaded all episodes to YouTube nine years ago, albeit in atrocious quality, and I have watched through them all a couple times...

No idea how legal it is, but if the studio who owns it isn't going to do anything with the show, somebody has to. It's one of six series I would very much be thrilled to purchase (and there's plenty of others)...

• P.S.I. Luv U (1991)
• Strange Luck (1995)
• Cupid (1998)
• Oh Grow Up! (1999)
• Now and Again (1999)
• The American Embassy (2002)

The frustrating thing about all this is that it costs practically nothing to convert a show to digital format. It's all automated. You put the tapes in the machine and push a button. The software which encodes it and cleans it up doesn't require any technical expertise. Just a person to load/unload.

You'd think with streaming networks desperate to have content for their services which are exceedingly cheap, this would be a no-brainer. But it's not like you could accuse studio executives of having a brain.

I own a bajillion DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs. I love movies and television. I love owning my favorite shows so I can re-watch whenever I want. When digital streaming came along, I made the switch happily because I simply didn't have the space to store all that physical media. But then we all found out a sad truth... shows and movies you bought and paid for can be taken from you with absolutely no recourse. You pay for the right to stream something, and that right can be stripped from you at any time when a studio removes it from Google Play or iTunes or wherever.

So back to buying physical media, right? The studios can't break into your house and take those back!

Except they don't have to. Because physical media isn't made to last, and some studios know that... but don't give a shit. They got your money, and that's all they care about. Something this video talks about in depth, mostly focusing on the abomination that is Warner Bros., who is a fucking shitty company for many reasons, and this is a big one...

It's absolutely bonkers that those of us who do the right thing and pay for the stuff we want to own get punished for it. And yet here we are.

Buy physical media? It rots and no longer works.

Buy digital copies? Studios can strip them from you at any time.

Subscribe to a studio's streaming service directly? Studios can remove those shows even more easily.

The only option left is to buy physical media, then "back it up" by ripping it to your computer. Legally, you do have a right to have a backup so long as you continue to own the original media. Which is to say that you can't buy a DVD, rip it, then sell the DVD. Except... it's illegal to circumnavigate copy protection to actually make the backup. And of course DVDs and Blu-Rays have copy protection.

It's a total load of shit. Personally I am of the belief that once you buy a DVD or Blu-Ray or digital copy of something, you should maintain the right to view it regardless of what happens. If a DVD rots, you should have the right to purchase replacement media at cost or get a digital copy for free. And once something is sold digitally, studios don't get to take it back from you. They must provide a way for you to get what you paid for. Or else they shouldn't be allowed to sell it in the first place.

But powerful studios own our politicians, so that's expecting too much.

THEY doing illegal shit to strip you of what you bought is forgivable. YOU doing illegal shit to have access to what you paid for is not.

Typical.

Another day another way Sonos is screwing their customers. I am so fucking sick and tired of this shit.

First Sonos forces you to upgrade to a new piece of shit controller app that's missing features and is badly unintuitive. But they dumped it on us before it was ready so they could release a new pair of headphones that requires it. And while I can forgive a lot, having to constantly wait for playlists to load is driving me up the fucking wall. This is what I see ALL THE FUCKING TIME NOW...

And it gets worse. Playlists constantly, unrelentingly pause to buffer. If you've got a lot of songs in a list, scrolling is absolute agony...

I'm guessing this is because you can no longer control your speakers locally, and have to go out on the internet through the shitty fucking Sonos servers to access the shitty fucking speaker sitting in the same room with you.

Then today it was revealed that Sonos removed the line from their user agreement saying that they won't sell your data. It's still in the agreements outside of the USA but, because this fucking country cares more about corporations than people, Americans get fucked by Sonos. Again.

So what's next? Sonos starts charging you a subscription fee to use their idiotic fucking app that's required to control the speakers you bought? At this rate, it seems not only possible, but expected.

Sonos should be forced to allow local control of their gear by consumer protections... because that's how it was when we bought it. Now it's just an internet device that puts you at the whim of Sonos's fucking stupidity, and I would have never signed up for that.

Harrison Butker, a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, delivered a commencement speech at Benedictine College this past Saturday. He's a hardcore regressive Catholic. Benedictine College is a Catholic college. So it should shock absolutely nobody that Butker unleashed a grotesque missive that was steeped in everything from misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobic bigotry to COVID misinformation, toxic masculinity, and general hatred of anybody who dares to not share his "values." He also decided to take a jab Taylor Swift (who's regarded as nothing more than "a teammate's girlfriend"), for which I can only hope that her boyfriend kicks him in the fucking dick.

No, people shouldn't have been at all shocked. And yet shock people he did.

Do I think it was crass that this asshole would stand up in front of young women who have worked long and hard to graduate from college only to tell them that until they are wives and mothers their lives don't mean shit and their entire purpose is to be barefoot and pregnant? Of course I do. But what did everybody think that he was going to say? That's Christian female gender roles in a nutshell.

Do I think it was disgusting that he would take jabs at the LGBTQ community with his "deadly sin pride" bullshit and prop up toxic masculinity by telling men to fight against ideas and people he doesn't consider culturally "masculine" enough? Absolutely. Gotta be an alpha-male for Jesus!

And am I even remotely surprised that it's now being brought to light that Butker hooked up with a male cheerleader at Georgia Tech when he went there? Oh fuck no. That's the easiest thing to believe out of any of this. History has shown us again and again that the harder a homophobic bigot attacks the LGBTQ community, the more skeletons they have in their own rainbow-painted closet. They're always compensating for something...

UPDATE: And of course TikTok removes the video. Butker can drone on with his homophobic, misogynistic, antisemitic bullshit no problem... but anybody dare to retort to that and it's REMOVED FOR BULLYING TIME! Well, the internet is forever, so if your browser can support video embeds...

The minute Harrison Butker came for the gays, it was only a matter of time until we found out why. I'm just surprised it took this long. Usually you can clock the tea on an egg timer.

Oh well. Here's hoping that Harrison Butker gets the life he deserves.

Which of course includes Travis Kelce kicking him in the fucking dick.

Just when I think that I couldn't hate Sonos more than I already do... they unleash this new shitty fucking app that's somehow even shittier than their previous shitty fucking app.

Why in the hell can't they hire a UI designer who actually knows how to craft a useable UI? Because I've only been using this heinous blight on all humanity for two hours and I've found so much wrong as to make me wonder what the fuck they're even doing.

• Does the widget at the bottom reflect what's actually being played? Fuck no. It shows the song you first selected, then never updates again. So far as I can tell, there's no way to see what's actually playing. Unless you stop, select a new track, then play that (oh... turns out you can update the widget... all you have to do is FORCE QUIT THE APP AND RELOAD IT! Then the widget will update from what's playing. So handy!).
• Can you arrange your favorites? Fuck no. Pin your favorites? Fuck no. You even have to dump the fuck OUT of your favorites to even get to where your playlists are at (unless it happens to somehow be one of the ten things that can be displayed on your home screen. Can you fucking imagine having to load something you don't want to get to something you need? Who the fuck thought that was the best way to arrange any of this? There's no configuring ANYTHING.
• Are items in your favorites handy to use? Fuck no. I have songs on there that I tap to play... AND NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS! Some songs will play. Some won't. Is there any way of finding out why that is? Of course there fucking isn't.
• But surely the interface for controlling your music is easy to use since that's the whole fucking point of the app? Fuck no. Half the time when you click on a song for info or whatever, it will start playing even though that wasn't your intent. But there's no ellipsis to click on (...) so you assume that you click to interact with it... except that doesn't work, and you've just fucked everything up for nothing.
• But alarms? Fuck no. But sleep timer? Fuck no.
• And did they finally give us a useable search? Fuck no. Search is ungodly slow (EVERYTHING IS UNGODLY SLOW! Wait for your playlist to load. Wait for your songs to display. Wait for the next batch to load as you scroll. And wait to load. And wait to load. And wait to load). Even worse, you can't make the blanket search results default to your service of choice. If you want to only search Apple Music every time? TOUGH FUCKING SHIT! You either have to select the service first, then search... or you get to search EVERYWHERE EVERY TIME... then wait for the app to go non-responsive while it searches for shit on services you DON'T WANT... then you can select Apple Music (or whatever). NOTE TO SONOS: I don't want to listen to Sonos Radio EVER! How do I erase your fucking radio shit off my list?? Can I even do that? I can sure as fuck remove EVERY OTHER SERVICE.... why not yours? Does anybody even use it? Do you think shoving it the fuck down people's throats will make them want to use it?
• But surely it's easy to do simple shit like add a song you find to a playlist? Fuck no. I don't even think it's possible to add a song you searched for to a playlist. At least not that I can find. I have to go to the desktop app to do that (even though Sonos is discontinuing it... who the fuck knows what you do after the desktop app is gone).
• Can you at least inject music into your queue by clicking "play next?" Fuck no. You can't do FUCKING SHIT to your queue. You can't add songs... rearrange songs... remove songs... NOTHING!!
• Using this app begs the question... is there an upper limit to how many fucking layers of sheets you can pile up? Just curious, because absolutely everything you do generates a new sheet, and you have to swipe down on EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM to get back home. Click on the widget to get more info, new sheet... click on the queue, new sheet... click on a track to get info, new sheet... this app has more fucking sheets than a fucking klan rally. And when you want to go back? SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! SWIPE TO CLOSE! Jesus Christ, just give us a fucking home button for God's sake.
• Apple has had Dynamic Island on iPhone for a minute. But does Sonos use it so you have a convenient way to get to your speakers or interact with what's playing? OH FUCK NO! OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DON'T! Haven't you been paying attention? If there's a smart UI decision, Sonos actively avoids it like the fucking plague.

I'm dying to know: Does ANYBODY at Sonos actually listen to fucking music using this piece of shit? Who would want this? Pathetic. Fucking pathetic. After waiting YEARS to get an app update that's worth a shit... then getting this fucking disaster... I'm ready to throw all my Sonos gear in the front yard, douse it with gasoline, and light the fuckers up. I'd rather listen to music on a fucking iPod mini than suffer through this idiot shitshow any longer. It's just fucking inconceivable that this is where Sonos is at. Will they fix all the shit that's broken, unclear, and missing? Maybe. But shouldn't they have beta tested the app before releasing it? Well, it's Sonos. It took them a fucking YEAR to release a fix for the Pop of Death on the Arc soundbar, and I'm still not convinced that it's totally fixed because I am still having problems. So you do the math. Shake that Magic 8-Ball and the answer always seems to be "Not fucking likely."

If you're thinking of buying Sonos gear, you should take a fucking pass. A hard pass. If things keep going like this, they're not going to be around much longer anyway.

UPDATES!

Before I get to some more thoughts about this shit... can I just give a shoutout to all the people saying "Relax, it's version 1 and things will get fixed" and "Relax, it works just fine for me!" Fuck you. There are BASIC FUNCTIONS THAT ARE SERIOUSLY BROKEN OR MISSING! If I had the option of downgrading to the old app, then I'd say "Well that was bad!" and be able to relax. But I can't. And goody for you if it works for you... that doesn't fucking negate the problems that everybody else is having. Take several seats and be happy that your whole system didn't go down and all the basic features other people use are something you don't give a shit about.

But anyway...

On the Sonos site they have a feature list which shows all kinds of options you get when you click on a track...

But what do I get? Save to favorites (which may or may not play when clicked on) and replace the entire fucking queue. That's it...

I can only guess that all those other basic features aren't working, and rather than getting it all fixed before release, Sonos decided to shove out an incomplete fucking app with no way to go back to the old app which, while shitty, allowed all of this.

One of the biggest complaints by others is that they can no longer see music on their local network storage. Support for this has been dropped completely. This is nonsensical in all kinds of ways, but fortunately I get around it by having Plex manage my media, and Plex is actually showing up and working (despite having a red exclamation point in the button with absolutely no explanation). Sonos's response seems to be "Don't you even stream, bro?" which has left a great many users thrilled, as you can imagine.

A minor annoyance... whenever I go to System Settings, I fly into a panic because I think a bunch of my gear has gone missing from the system. My room will show "Stereo Pair" which is normal because there's two speakers joined into a stereo pair there. But my living room will show "Arc" and that's it. It used to be "Arc + Surrounds + Sub" or something like that. I wish that they would go back to that. With so many people losing equipment out of the app, I'd really prefer not to get assaulted with this incomplete info.

When you opened up the Sonos app away from your home network in the past, you'd get a message that said something like "Searching for your Sonos network." Now, this doesn't happen. Assumably because Sonos is all about internet connectivity for some reason. And that would be fine... except it doesn't reflect the current state of your devices back home. According to the widget, Karma by Taylor Swift is playing in my bedroom. The little bouncing equalizer icon is bouncing... and I am given the option to pause what's being played. Except nothing is actually being played. Which is why this whole internet connectivity fiasco is so fucking ridiculous. It appears that EVERYTHING goes out on the internet, even when you're at home. That's why it takes forever for shit to load. And why when you scroll through your queue it has to keep pausing and loading... pausing and loading... pausing and loading. I suppose that Sonos could justify this huge fucking waste of time if they could point to the app and say "SURE IT'S SLOW! BUT YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR SYSTEM FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!" Except you can't. It gives wrong information and none of the controls even work.

To actually control your system remotely, you have to use the internet and login at http://play.sonos.com. This will be the only option available on desktop computers once Sonos kills the desktop apps, so you'd think that the web app would be fucking killer, right? Yeah... you'd think that. Except the web app is just as fucking useless and broken as the phone app. It is equally slow with a lot of waiting around for things to load. Even if you're sitting in the same fucking room as your speaker, since the controls have to go out onto the internet, visit the Sonos servers, then come back to you. No option for local network control. But it gets worse. Remember how I was mentioning that search on the iPhone app if fucking abhorrent? Somehow the web app is even worse. At least in the iPhone app you can select the service you want to search. But if you select a service in the web app, there's no search bar on the service sheet. You are forced to use the universal search bar to search all services (including Sonos fucking Radio that they won't let you fucking delete no matter how badly you want to)...

It's been well-established that I fucking loathe Sonos and don't recommend their bullshit... even if you find their gear on clearance. At least right now. But there's a few things that Sonos can do which would at least make things tolerable...

• Bring back the old app until you can get a workable new app. That should be a fucking given... especially when your initial release is missing a shitload of features and half the stuff is broken... but since it's not a given, you need to give people the option of reinstating the old version ASAP.
• Keep your shitty new UI with its endless sheets and incomprehensible navigation if you must, but have it stay on the local network instead of going out on the internet. There's no benefit to this. Nobody wants to have their bedroom speaker play the Macarena while they're across the country or on the other side of the planet. Not only is it fucking stupid, it slows everything down to an absolute crawl. The app is unbearable to use it's so fucking slow.
• Even better? HIRE A FUCKING TALENTED UI/UX DESIGNER WHO KNOWS HOW TO DESIGN A FUCKING APP! Jesus. This should be app creation 101. And you'd think it would be given how people railed you for the shitty design of your old app! But here's the thing... as bad as it was, I find myself longing for the old app. Sure it was a mess, but it was fast and reliable. And that's more important than how it works. By a longshot.
• Stop sitting on shit endlessly. You took fucking forever to develop a new app (such as it is). You took fucking forever to fix the Pop of Death in the Arc. You took fucking forever to adopt HDMI. You take fucking forever for EVERYTHING! Companies who can't be responsive really don't have much hope long-term. Other companies invade your space while people wait. Better options come while people wait. You can't afford to laze around as you always have. Which is to say... FIX THIS FUCKING APP AND ALL ITS FUCKING BUGS AND ALL ITS FUCKING PROBLEMS NOW!! NOT NEXT MONTH... NOT A YEAR FROM TODAY... FUCKING NOW! And don't blame us because it's become so urgent. Had you not released a buggy pile of shit with no downgrade path, you could have taken all the time you needed. But now? Well... it's all on you.

But given Sonos's history, I am holding out zero hope that anything gets resolved quickly... if at all. They have long since stopped giving a fuck about their products, their reputation, and their customers.