I am enjoying saying “Log back in to continue your Oral B brushing experience” in my best “customer-service/salesperson ad lady” voice. Like the kind of tone that’s so soullessly saccharine that it gives AI vibes

Iconic.

That would be a metal as fuck cell phone stand

I think the science comes in showing that it does actually work. Like, this is so simple of an idea that I would be skeptical of if it would work if I had had the idea by myself. I’m glad that I live in a world where, if I had thought of this and wondered “is this a good idea, or am I just being dumb for thinking something so simple could work?”, I am able to go online and find information and guides on this and other diy filters

They may not have been the ones who first thought of it, but the first people to publish research that shows that taping 4 air filters together with a fan works decently compared to other, non-DIY filters (where “worked decently” means does a good enough job that it’s worth doing if you want a filter but can’t/won’t buy or build a more complex filtering system, even if it isn’t as good as “proper” filtering systems)

(Tangent: I’m reminded of the “Cox-Zucker machine”, a random maths thing that Cox and Zucker made together because when Cox and Zucker met at university, they realised that their names, when combined in the traditional, alphabetical order, sounded “delightfully obscene”. )

"The fact that Google has that locked down surely violates some EU laws. But I’m sure they wave away the laws because of “financial security” or some other bullshit. "

I don’t know as much as I’d like to about the regulatory side of this, but I know that Google and other big tech have done a masterful job of proactively building themselves into systems such that taking action against them is difficult.

I think that’s part of why the US antitrust case against Microsoft a few decades ago fizzled out into nothing — even though Microsoft was deemed to have been a monopolist, the big question was how do we remedy that in a way that isn’t going to be harmful? The consensus on this amongst people who I respect is that the results of the Microsoft case was woefully insufficient and something that helped to lay the foundations of the big tech dominance that we see today.

When I first got into Android (I miss my Nexus 6 T.T ), it felt like I could do so much more with my phone than I can now. I had so much cool automation shit that leveraged stuff like Google assistant voice commands, but now it’s shit on so many levels. It goes beyond the user facing side of things; I used to use the app Tasker for a lot of the automation stuff, and over the years, it seems like the dev has been climbing an uphill battle against Google gating off functionality, and generally making things opaque and difficult for developers.

I wonder how useful this kind of approach would be.

I’m reminded of a podcast recently where someone described that some of their colleagues in their day job (a very union heavy job) got pissed off at some cops at a petrol station, basically saying “ay, why are you protecting the Tesla dealerships, you’re union too — you’re meant to be on our side”. The podcast guy said that although he really wanted to say to his colleagues something like “just because they’re union doesn’t mean they’re on our side. Cops only exist to protect the interests of capital”, he felt it was more productive to stoke the existing anger of his working class colleagues by leaning into their concerns

It seems like the relevant section in the Ubisoft EULA says

“Upon termination for any reason, You must immediately uninstall the Product and destroy all copies of the Product in Your possession.”

I read this wording of this to be stricter than the BG3 example you shared, because the BG3 one seems to be saying “if you don’t agree to this EULA (or if you agree, but later terminate that agreement), then you must uninstall the game”. Whereas the Ubisoft one seems to include Ubisoft terminating the agreement, rather than just the user. That’s just my interpretation of these snippets though, as someone who is not a lawyer. It’s possible that the BG3 EULA also includes other parts that would mean similar to what people are unhappy about on the Ubisoft EULA

“A torrent is never dead, it’s just waiting for seeders”

You have reminded me that StreetComplete exists. I used to use it a while back, but for the last few years, I lived in an area that was already pretty thoroughly mapped. However, I would wager that where I live now is more sparsely documented; I’ve only recently moved here, and StreetComplete could be a nice way to become more settled.

I think maps can be used for other stuff than just navigating. You’re quite right that this would be useless for actually navigating (which is probably the main purpose of using a map or other navigation software), but it could be a fun concept for looking back on things.

I don’t use Google stuff as much nowadays, so they might have gotten rid of it (knowing Google, I wouldn’t be surprised), but I remember that one of the sections within the Google maps app was a “Timeline” section. I used that section a few times to check whether I actually went to a particular appointment that was scheduled a month or so prior, or to check which restaurant I ate at when I was last in [city]. I also found it fun to look at the overview of things, like being able to see the pins corresponding to the silly road trip I took with friends a few years ago. It’s nice to look back every now and then.

Location data is one of the things that you can export through Google takeout , I believe — though I’m not sure what format that would come in.

I don’t imagine it would be too hard for a dedicated nerd who is procrastinating other work to write a thing to parse that data and view it in a map based on something more open, like Openstreetmaps.

This comment section is surprisingly spicy

“at home (Sheffield)”.

There’s a small section of my brain that seems to be permanently reserved for mentally cheering whenever I stumble across someone from near where I hail from, even if I haven’t lived there for many years now

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Especially as one could just as easily spin this in a more empathetic light: in acknowledging one’s own desire to be seen, we can realise that it’s likely that many other people feel similarly.

He looks like he’s the kind of dog who, upon finding another good branch, would attempt to carry even more sticks, even though his attempts to do so are silly are best.

A friend of a friend is the daughter of a Russian oligarch. It was a messy situation in which she was at risk of being drawn into the politics, even though her dad was an asshole who she would’ve been glad to see defenestrated. I only know the surface level info, but it sounds like a fucked up situation in many ways

What’s really stupid about this cycle is that some of these fail-upward executives genuinely believe the crap they’re spewing. Weirdly, I think I respect the grifting executives more

Edit: by grifting executives, I mean the ones who participate in that cycle you describe, and are aware of the harms they cause in their wake, but don’t care because they’ve gotten good at knowing when to skip out

I don’t typically experience imposter syndrome.

However, it is my understanding that the majority of people I know seem to experience imposter syndrome (likely influenced by the fact that my social circle is mostly academics)

Thus I seem to be the odd one out in this respect, paradoxically causing me to feel like an imposter for not experiencing imposter syndrome.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯