Any possible negotiated end to the war at this time would involve territorial concessions by Ukraine. Putin himself won’t agree to withdraw from most of the territory occupied since 2022, and even if he is replaced by a new, much less expansionist ruler willing to withdraw from all that territory, the new ruler still won’t give back Crimea.

I’m spiteful enough that I would have returned my new laptop (despite needing it for a trip in a couple of days) if I hadn’t been able to bypass the account requirement by disabling the wifi.

What still pissed me off is that it would restart itself after downloading updates if it was left idle, and there was no straightforward option to turn that off. (I think I managed to break that “feature” but who knows how long that will work.) Turning my computer off is never acceptable unless I initiate it. It’s about as obviously wrong as walking into my house uninvited or borrowing my stuff without asking me.

I’m not saying it isn’t valuable - only that it isn’t surprising. With that said, leaking a private discussion which just coincidentally shows they’re not bluffing is awfully convenient…

I don’t see any new loathing revealed here, because the participants’ private attitudes appear to be consistent with their public statements. Did the people who are surprised by this think that the public hostility was just an act?

(On the contrary, I think this was a relatively reasonable discussion aside from some gratuitous insults. Isolationism is a normal ideology compared to, say, trying to annex Canada.)

Today, I noticed that a restaurant I manage had its OpenTable booking integration replaced with Google Assistant.

Replaced in what context? My understanding is that OpenTable still works just fine but Google is, on its end, no longer automatically referring its own users to OpenTable. I wouldn’t call that “hijacking” unless the restaurant had a prior agreement with Google.

No Available Reservations

That’s not the error message. Google says that you can’t get a reservation through Google Assistant not that there are no reservations available.