Before I went to a laptop with somewhat shakey suspend power consumption my desktop PC was going on 18 months uptime. The reason it was only 18 months was that we had a power outage. Unfortunately Debian became a bit boring so now I use Arch BTW. So many of the problems I deal with are caused by the insistence we use Windows “because it just works”. Worst part is 95% of my workflow is browser based. Its only bloody stinking Outlook that means I couldn’t use Linux to do everything.

Oh when I see AI shilling I see them as tools.

Yeah, maybe. Different pathways to the same end I guess still gets you to the same end… In Germany.

That’s the garden variety censorship though, right? Your government deciding no one should be allowed access, not just restricting access behind mandatory state sanctioned identity theft like some of the more “Enlightened” countries have.

I think the normies just find the niche hard to appreciate. People don’t think about things like ownership and DRM until they are forced to.

Luckily GOG isn’t affected at this stage.

Yep I can see them in search but I’m an Australian with no credit card, that’s all I can see.

I always thought the decision was made a lot earlier than that. Wasn’t it largely due to Westinghouse that America settled on 60hz 110v? Where AEG pushed 50hz 220v in Europe? That was late 1800s early 1900s from memory. World war 2 may have resulted in some rebuilding but they rebuilt along lines that were already established, the bump up to 230-240v with time and gained efficiencies is mirrored in the US with the move towards 120v at least that’s what I recall, but I must admit that outside of some Technology Connections videos I haven’t delved too deeply in recent years (and yes I know Alec would say the US technically already sends 240v but that’s not what your general appliances are rated to).

Yeah protecting their customers is definitely Apple’s prime motivation… Wouldn’t be about hoovering up even more of their data than the rat finks already do. There is no world in which any of this is pro consumer, it’s governments and corporations teaming up to gang rape consumers under the thin veneer of public safety and there are enough apologists out there trying to find some way of reinterpreting this as anything other than what it is. It doesn’t make children safe; it gets them accustomed to mass surveillance and data insecurity, it doesn’t force porn to become better; it just forces it and its consumers underground, it doesn’t stop criminal activities; it just forces them to become more sophisticated. Actual authoritarian governments have struggled to make this shit work, what makes you think governments as bumbling and inept as the US, UK or Australia are going to be able to succeed where they failed?

On the flip side if the goal is to set up direct feeds for the bulk of the population to have their real identity and banking details associated with every online interaction so it’s all accessible to the various organisations that want to spy on people, well they are smashing that out of the park.

Anecdotally here in Australia less than 10% of my kids year 8 class lost their social media access, the majority lost it for less than a day… Something like 40-50% of their parents loaded their ID onto various verification sites, which part of our age verification laws do you think were important based on that?

Is there some suggestion that Apple is going to do ID attestation or are they just harvesting ID? Either way the whole thing is slimy. They are a private company choosing to exceed their legal requirements, does anyone think this is for the good of their customers?

Takes a couple of litres of water before we get hot water. I have filled the kettle twice before the water was too hot to hold my hand under before. That’s roughly 3.5 litres of water just to get to the hot stuff. Luckily boiling water was a key consideration in our voltage level (actually that’s something I made up on the spot 😜) but more power equals good so… Its weird that this is a field that the US apparently just decided to let a large portion of the world be more “powerful” almost expect that if there were parts of the world settling on 240v the US would arbitarily decide they needed 500v.

Different country and all, but both are 240v in my neck of the woods, and since I live on tank water with mains water supply as a back up. Coupled with what I believe may be the most circuitous route from hot water cylinder to kitchen tap on earth (3 meters point to point yet seeming out to the local post office and back based on how long it takes to get hot water out of the tap) we use the Dishwasher to heat our water.

Which is all a very verbose way of saying “It depends on your circumstance…”

They wanted so badly to incorporate key parts of the books that they were willing to change things around to get to them you mean?

Just a single example that bugged me: I will be the first to admit that Robert’s gender sensitivity wasn’t something to be shouted from the rooftops, although for the 90s when he started he is far from the worst.

However, he did have the plot point of a male chaneller in a female body with Halima. The show making Nynaeve a potential Dragon reborn candidate opens the door to the idea of peoples access to the One Power being based on their gender identity not their gender presentation.

It turns an unthinkable plot point in the latter part of the story into something Aes Sedai have obviously assumed can happen from the outset, and would surely be something they are alert to.

Almost like they didn’t understand the source material.

They seem to be really leaning in to having a very episodic format with the storylines having something to say about a specific topic and using a particular framing device to explore it. I gotta say that I can feel them aligning with TOS.

There’s 9 episodes left and they have to move a few characters along to smoothly lead in to the TOS remake that will likely happen to gain back an audience after the Ellisons push for Right Wing Conservative Trek and sink the franchise.

Should be amusing to watch all the grifters who have been bleating about Woke Trek proceed to not watch any of it once it’s been specifically made to pander to them.

I have watched the whole lot and honestly would have been better for them to make it a story inspired by some of the key events of the Foundation series. It’s a space opera like star wars, not a serious take on the events of the books.

That being said it is a spectacle. The whole Imperial rule of the Cleons is a really interesting concept when you let go of the way it doesn’t fit the books, and not just because of Lee Pace’s abs.

I rate it a hell of a lot higher than The Wheel is Time, that didn’t weave in an out of the original story line, it actively shat on Robert Jordan’s subtle and detailed world building. Every half arsed lazy strategy they used to write the dumbed down baby’s first fantasy tale version of the books made it more and more impossible to complete the story. The best thing that happened to that show was cancellation before they screwed it up any more.

It all used to be very easy in Australia, you bought the phone at a supermarket and gave bogus info when registering the SIM. Then the “War on Terror™” began and the government started taking things a bit more seriously started mandating the paper registration forms needed to be completed or the retailers could get in trouble. But your average supermarket worker wasn’t going to take the time to do that and it was way too widespread for the government to actually crack down on it.

Took a few years but the Telcos started actually paying attention to the fact that the majority of prepaid phones weren’t getting completed paperwork at point of sale so they just moved to make all sim card activations require online or over the phone ID checks.

Every bit of training I ever did made it clear it was all about catching terrorists, drug dealers and paedophiles, which of course means “We want all that juicy data without citizens asking any annoying questions.”

It is a really good filter for me, any company that wants to harvest the bogus information I will use to access them had better do a good job of convincing me it’s worth the effort.

I have a similar take on online stores wanting me to create a login to get a shipping cost, unless they are offering a truly unique item, or outrageously good price I just don’t buy anything from them.

If we all had a similar standards these bits of UX fuckery would disappear over time, unfortunately most people don’t even think about it.

Does the UK government outsource that sort of service?

Oh please be somewhere you can sue for racial discrimination… Please!!!

There was a time, before Google showed their hand, that I would go out of my way to leave Google reviews. Good, bad or somewhere in between I would document the customer experience.

Since Google made it clear what trajectory they are on I have returned to the old ways. Amazing service gets a letter, great service gets a quiet word to the manager. Bad service gets a word to the manager at the end of the transaction, terrible service and I just never return again and tell anyone who asks why. Everything in between those extremes gets me acting as a polite customer and that’s about it.

Have I over thought this?