I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).

I’d say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.

Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like YouTube, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.

if you’re american, manufactured 18 July 2023?

There are plenty of options for personal computers; you have to make the choice to go private and personal.

I built my own desktop, which remains very common and is relatively easy to do. I have Linux and Windows on it, and use Linux nearly 100% as I agree I don’t like ads etc. I use a Firefox with ad blockers and don’t get ads; I use lots of open source software even to access services like Youtube (Free tube).

There are also even linux laptops, and the Frame.Work laptop which is fully modular and bring your own OS.

There are open source OS for phones.

You’re right about the corporatisation of the internet and services, but it remains up to users to vote with their feet and chose to take back their privacy and person computing.

Linux is at 4% of desktop users in recent months - that is many millions of people actively choosing to exist in a space where they control their personal computers. People don’t need to remove computers, just chose to set them up to be what they want them to be.

As others have said, gaming is thriving - AAA and bloated incumbants are not doing well but the indie sector is thriving.

VR is not on the verge of collapse, but it is growing slowly as we still have not reached the right price point for a mobile high powered headset. Apple made a big play for the future of VR with its Apple Vision Pro but that was not a short term play; that was laying the ground works for trying to control or shape a market that is still probably at least 5 if not 10 years away from something that will provide high quality VR, untethefed from a. PC.

AI meanwhile is a bubble. We are not in an age of AI, we are in an age of algorithms - they will and are useful but will not meet the hype or hyperbole being banded about. Expect that market to pop and probably with spectacular damage to some companies.

Other computing hardware is not really stagnating - we are going through a generational transition period. AMD is pushing Zen 5 and Intel it’s 14th gen, and all the chip makers are desperately trying to get on the AI band wagon. People are not upgrading because they don’t see the need - there aren’t compelling software reasons to upgrade yet (AI is certainly not compelling consumers to buy new systems). They will emerge eventually.

The lack of any landmark PC AAA games is likely holding back demand for consumer graphics cards, and we’re seeing similar issues with consoles. The games industry has certainly been here many times before. There is no Cyberpunk 2077 coming up - instead we’ve had flops like Star Wars Outlaws, or underperformers like Starfield. But look at the biggest game of last year - Baldurs Gate 3 came from a small studio and was a megahit.

I don’t see doom and gloom, just the usual ups and downs of the tech industry. We happen to be in a transition period, and also being distracted by the AI bubble and people realising it is a crock of shit. But technology continues to progress.

As someone who drives to and around Wales multiple times a year, it’s a poorly thought out and implemented policy.

Many people speed and break the limit, particularly on main roads, and it’s lack of popular support is an issue in itself.

The policy could work if the speed limits was reverted to 30mph on bigger roads but local councils and the Welsh assembly blame each other for the issues.

There is also little enforcment at present - that is changing and once people start getting fined for breaking the 20mph limit it’s likely to become much more unpopular.

It could have probably been implemented successfully and with popular support with more careful designation of 30mph roads. It’s a failure of politicians rather than the idea itself.

Why “dr*g”? That’s a wierd bit of censorship - making a joke about drugs and sex workers and feeling the need to censor the word drug? I don’t get it?

I don’t think hyperbole like damage lasting for millenia is worth much. People don’t think in such terms and the only people who will listen to that are those who are already on the side of climate action.

The articles call to arms is right, but this is not the way to beat trump. Instead of damage for millenia, the focus needs to be on convincing people that his short termist policies will damage then financially and personally.

Instead of cheap renewable electricity he wants to use voters tax money to subsidies and promote fossil fuels. Instead of clean cars in cities and towns, he wants to choke you and your children with petrol fumes.

An image of trump in a jacket covered in fossil fuel company sponsorship logos, and trying to force an exhaust pipe down a child’s throat is the kind of thing that summarises his position. We’re not trying to convince die hard republicans, just the moderate centre / undecideds that trump will harm them and their children directly with his policies, let alone millenia of damage.

950,000 Capri Suns

(200ml per Capri sun, 5 Capri sun per litre, 190,000 litres water)

But it would take a long time to open each packet and spray it on the fire.

After being forced to standardise to usb c and be responsible for some of the e-waste it produces, apple has finally relented.

They fought tooth and nail against the EU regulations to force charging standards. I don’t care if they up sell cables to some people; most people will reuse what they have and thats the whole point of the regulations.

Regulation works.

Probably a pixelation joke too for nudity that the kids won’t get but the adults will.

Just another example of how broken the premium end of the gaming industry is. Ubisoft is an old fashioned publisher, trying to churn out big hit AAA games based on big IP but producing poor quality buggy games, which don’t turn a profit.

We keep hearing how the games industry is “in trouble” but its actually thriving with loads of smaller devs and publishers doing well. The problem is the behemoth publishers like Ubisoft who release games based on financials timelines rather than the games being finished or high quality.

Its not like Ubisoft are short of good IP. What they’re lacking is good quality control and an environment to foster high quality creativity. When you treat gaming like its just a production line to generate money this is what you get. Making AAA games is expensive for sure, but its pointless if you don’t get the quality and the creativity right too - they’re just making expensice games.

We’re seeing the same in the movie industry - big studios producing franchise movies on a financially driven schedule with poor quality and lack of creativity.

England doesn’t really have a national flower. The Tudor Rose is a heraldic creation to symbolise the fusion of the House of York and House of Lancaster after the wars of the roses, and the formation of the House of Tudor.

The two houses used white and red roses as symbols, and the Tudor rose was created as a mixed red and white rose which does not exist.

A real rose for England is otherwise a loose thing, not an official symbol.

The other problem with the “good guy with a gun” is how many people does an attacker need to kill before you are the good guy killing the bad guy? One? And what if you didn’t witness it? The “good guy” with the gun attacking another guy with a gun without knowing what’s going on, are they still the “good guy” in that scenario? It’s a mess.

The whole thing stems from fallacious logic. Arming everyone doesn’t stop bad guys murdering people, at best it might curtail the length of some attacks and at worst it causes innocents to die as so-called “good guys” try to save the day and make it worse.

Prevention is the way forward, as then 0 people die. And the best way to do that is no one has guns (not even most police; just a small subset of specialist police). That is an anathema or sacrilegious to Americans, but it’s the approach taken in many democratic and free countries in the world.

If the chart is trying to make a point, it’s making the wrong one anyway.

I think Discovery had the worst. It isn’t the technobabbke it self that was the problem, it was how it was delivered.

Everyone seemed to be needed to be the most intelligent person in the room. So one person would start with some sudden realisation and solution, and then another would interrupt them and pick up the idea and then either back to the first person, or yet another person would interrupt. Between then all they’d build a tower of technobabble and deus ex machina, and self congratulatory nonsense. It was just so silly.

Person 1 “wait if we reveresed the polarity of the neutron projector…”

Person 2 “yes! It’d cause a build of tachyons and we’d be able to resonate the electron confabulaotr! Oh but there wouldn’t be enough plasma.”

Person 3: “no wait, that might work! We’d have to recomboulate the manifolds and…”

Person 1: "…that would allow us to recrystallise the warp matrix! Of course!’

Whose a genius? Everyone in the room is a genius! Let’s all give ourselves a round of applause.

That and all the space kung fu.

Disc and disk are varient spellings of the same word that pre-exist computing. Disc is more common in British English, Disk more common in American English. But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc). I wouldn’t be surprised if this only happened because of how the CD was marketed and branded as a “compact disc” as a trademark while hard disks and floppy disks etc were more generic terms.

Maybe he broke terms of service with the streaming companies but they should be pursuing him in civil courts. This feels like abuse of the criminal justice system to retrieve money for companies that were negligent in how they were running their streaming businesses.

This guy produced music and he alsp streamed the music even if it was bots at industrial scale. He seemingly met the criteria needed to get money from the streamers. I’m not a lawyer at all but on cursory look at the definition and elements of wire fraud, I guessing this will hinge on whether this was a “material deception” - but he produced actual music and he streamed it, so is it?

Also i wonder whether it can be proven that the intent was to “defraud” rather than take advantage / game a system.

It feels like the tax payer is bearing the cost of prosecuting someone for a dispute between a person and the multi billion dollar music industry.

Also the music industry trying to paint this as theft of money from other artists is a bullshit - the streaming fees are supposedly divided out proportionately from overall streaming. He caused more streaming so the pot was bigger, and he took a proportionate share of that bigger pot. And any disproportionate sharing reflects the shitty practice’s of the streamers and the big music rights holders who are essentially monopolies squeezing out the smaller competitors from the system.

Might be even simpler - the elderly can decline very quickly mentally and also physically, and that may he what we’re seeing with here.

Fossify Phone is better. Simple Mobile Tools was sold to ZipoApps which has a history of bloating apps with advertising, telemetry, and charges etc. Fortunately Simple tools were open source and Fossify is the free and open source fork of all the apps in the suite, some even maintained by original makers from Simple Mobile Tools.

This is a fluff piece written by someone in a rich bubble.

The 2 year old and 4 year old have no concept of money, the 4 year old did not “do most of the work” in a lemonade stand, and they do not have “their own money” to spend. Picking up after yourself and putting dishes in the sink are not chores, and kids this age aren’t taking out the trash - of course they enjoy it when mummy does it and makes a big deal of how grown up the kids are for helping, and probably rewards then for it.

None of the ideas are innovative or relevant to most parents, and particularly not with a kids that age. This is just one rich bored parent with young kids sharing their “experiences”. Pretty out of touch with reality.

Yeah the why is laziness I guess? Why walk when you can drive a smaller electric buggy for small distances and a big car for big distances?

Golf carts make sense in retirement communities - presumably the companies behind them are “growing the market” by targeting families as an alternative to push chairs and walking? Also I’m guessing these are American neighbourhoods which still are designed around cars than true walkability?