Slaves to our devices

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I have a television set where the picture won’t come on unless some component is sufficiently warm. (I know about this kind of problem from having watched Lee Felsentein debug hardware.)

As a result, I periodically find myself hitting the power button on the TV remote, not because I want to watch TV, but simply because if, later in the evening, I want to watch TV, the TV will come on faster if it has been on more recently.

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