None of the driver licenses shown in the screenshot are UK style.

Microsoft changing Outlook from gold to yet another blue blob. Google changing every single goddamn app to use the same red/yellow/green/blue pallet. And now this bullshit.

A boomer coworker recently said something that made a lot of sense to me: Netflix is for 2020s TV what Motown was for 1960s music. They’ve turned the artform into a production line, constantly optimising to shovel out as much content as possible, hunting the minimum viable product, and occasionally, very rarely, producing something good almost by chance. L

“PCs run Windows. I have a Mac, which is not a PC.” - Average Tech Journalist.

Make sure you don’t put “Al” by mistake though. You’ll only get offers to be part of “bodyguard/long-lost pal” collaborations with people called Betty.

Eight hours of labour, eight hours of recovery, eight hours of preparing for labour/recovery.

Same story here. I cancelled Spotify after the whole Trump thing and switched to Qobuz; the whole thing was pretty seamless. I’ve got to say, the increased quality is actually noticeable and, as you said, the curated selections actually seem to be, well, curated. Also, if you’ve got a load of playlists on Spotify you want to keep, Qobuz actually provides subscribers with free access to a migartion service that did a superb job.

That’d be esteemed British author Georgie Orrell, author of such whimsical classics as “Now the Animals Are Running The Farm!”, “My Big Day Out At Wigan Pier” and, of course, “Winston’s Zany Eighties Adventure”.

It seems crazy that a company that’s only really known for cars, motorbikes, tuning forks, heat pumps, brake pads, pens, tractors, fertilizer, display panels, outboard motors, pneumatic systems, oil tankers, furniture, locomotives, bricks, solar panels, ATVs, generators, hot air balloons, dinghies, hydrogen fuel cells, submarines, crop dusters, jet engines, cultivators, hedge trimmers, lawnmowers, precision optics and robots would suddenly pivot to rockets.

For giggles, I’d like you to explain how the President of the United States launching his old overpriced phone on his own overpriced network with every possible element named, adorned and even priced after himself could be considered anything other than abusing their power?

I can also explain Microsoft’s straglehold on enterprise/government/institutional IT in two words: Group Policy. Nothing - absolutely nothing - from any other OS maker comes close to the granular level of configurability, customisation and flexibility that comes with Group Policy, not even ChromeOS or iOS.

Not that I’ve seen and I’d take what Purism say with a grain of salt: they’ve acted like pretty shitty gatekeepers themselves. Nothing they mentioned in the article seems too egregious in truth and they’re exaggerating the scale of it: Play Store app DRM exists already, and the restrictions on browser-downloaded apps they mention can be bypassed (albeit by having to go into settings) and don’t apply to apps installed through other apps stores (F-Droid, etc).

No. Unfortunately, ActivityPub just isn’t geared up for that kind of thing. It’s why BlueSky uses a different federation protocol called AtProtocol which is a lot more demanding than ActivityPub but is specifically intended for Twitter/TikTok style services.

How dare you bring nuance, experience and moderation into the conversation.

Seriously, though, I am a firm believer that no tech is inherently bad, though the people who wield it might well be. It’s rare to see a good, responsible use of LLMs but I think this is one of them.

Exactly. That’s why it’s so good, and also why the advertisers are trying to confuse people by whining about cookies. This is nothing to do with a specific technology, and entirely about respecting privacy.

As always, it’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s the grifters running the show. Cookies are great for remembering what’s in a shopping basket, language settings, etc before you sign in and if those were the only kinds of things the sites were using they wouldn’t even need the Cookie banner. Remember the Cookie Banner is nothing to do with Cookies, and everything to do with commercialised mass monitoring.

Okay, so I’m going to copy-paste an answer I got from someone I know who works in a legal department:

Basically, Legitimate Interest lets them track you as if you clicked Accept All, then subsequently they can decide if they think you would benefit from the tracking by their own metrics, which includes things like targeted advertisting which, of course, they do. So “Legitimite Interest” really means “Reject, But Actually Accept”.

Not just “as easy” but “at least as easy”. The assumption should be that the user does not consent. And there have also been a few cases where the courts have - quite rightly - rules that “pay for privacy” offers aren’t good enough.

How is this a problem with the legislation? Do you honestly think your privacy was respected before the law demanded that websites tell you about how they violate your privacy?

Web browsers DO have this as a universal setting, Do Not Track, but websites choose to ignore it beacuse it doesn’t benefit them to respect your right to privacy and treat you with the respect due to a functioning adult.

The legislation was a massive win for everyone except the predatory manipulators.

One hundred percent go for USFF. Even the cheapest, most basic processor will smash server roles because it’s not having to power desktop applications, graphics, window managers, etc.