The one I self-host shares nothing with nobody :)

But then, there is one heck of a lot of marine traffic out there.

When you turn up the volumes, eventually even really improbable things can happen.

I’m not making any judgements either way.

That, or hanging subtle dong on second hand listings is their kink

Fair :)

As well as the pure cost saving there was also the notion that it was a futuristic look that would sell, and so boost profits that way, too.

And probably it did sell and market well - for a while.

I feel that consumers had become too trusting of carmakers - after all, cars have been getting better and better in terms of their usability for decades, so when carmakers went touchscreen everything, the first instinct of the average consumer would be to trust it and assume it represented an improvement.“They wouldn’t do it if it was worse, right?”

And so people buy the fancy futuristic car with no buttons, and only after driving it for a month does it sink in how much they truly hate it, and that they got sold a lie.

So there was always going to be that one generation of touchscreen-everything, before the people who got burnt by it are now the ones thinking “I won’t buy anything again that doesn’t have some buttons!”

This may in part be motivated by new guidance from NCAP, which will from next year require that all new cars have physical controls to earn the highest safety ratings.

https://www.evo.co.uk/car-technology/207666/buttons-could-replace-touch-controls-in-cars-thanks-to-new-euro-ncap-tests

Whatever the motivation though, I’m glad for it. Getting rid of buttons was always a dumb idea and I’m happy to see pushback.

My previous phone used to pocket-dial the emergency services annoyingly often, and it’s very not fun getting called back by the police to discuss why you’re dialling and hanging up on emergency services multiple times over.

This automatic emergency call is fine, but they really do need to minimise the number of false positives, which it looks like they’ve taken good steps towards.

Sus timing, though it’s certainly just branding.

The whole “My-” prefix for “My Documents” and “My Computer” and all that is something that was around since the 90s, and really served to emphasise the “Personal” in “Personal Computer” at a time when PCs were coming into the home for the first time.

Nowadays that branding is really unnecessary and feels pretty antiquated too, especially in an era where most stuff for most people is online, and the emphasis is more on connected seamless stuff rather than a cute little folder to put your things in.

Lucky escape! It shows how good these con-artists are at what they do, when you went in fully expecting it would be a huge scam, and still got talked into it!

My strategy these days is to never commit to any significant purchase on the spot. Car, sofa, whatever it is, they will always try to lay on the pressure and make it seem like it’s urgent and if you don’t get it now you’ll miss the limited deal, or someone else will buy it or whatever the trick is, but you have to stay firm.

My go to line is “I’ll take that away and think about it”- which gets me out of loads of trouble.

Slimy sales people have plenty of psychological tricks they weave into conversations to get you invested and ready to buy. They want you yourself even to be saying “Yeah that seems like a good deal!” because once you say that, they’ve basically got you - you can’t back out because you’d be disagreeing with yourself, and it’s human nature and pride almost that we ‘stick’ with our decisions.

That’s why never making a decision on the day is the strongest defence. It means you don’t have to be a skilled conversationalist who can spot all the sweet talk and see through the tricks. You’re totally free to get suckered and say “That sounds great!” but not have that become a commitment.

If it sounds great now it will still sound great after you go home and think about it, after all.

I’m trying to swear less. Or rather, to swear only where a swear is warranted.

My Dad has a habit of interjecting constant cuss words into everything he says, like “I was at the fucking supermarket right and then I’m just trying to find a fucking tin of beans…” and it’s just so unnecessary, to the point where the swears mean nothing because they are just peppered everywhere. I have to keep reminding him, “Dad, please tone it down a little”

And that’s an easy habit to get into but its exactly what I don’t want to be doing - swearing just as punctuation.

If a situation calls for a swear then I will swear quite happily, “Ouch, my fucking toe!!” and I’ll use the proper word. There’s no need to find childish swear-alternatives.

But I don’t want to sound like I can’t even stop it.

Being straight? Not a red flag.

Being a woman? Not a red flag.

Being Christian? Not a red flag either, unless you’re the sort of Christian who wants to force your views upon others who do not share them.

The only real red flag is that you said you “don’t understand” being queer. What is there to understand about it? Person A loves person B and that’s all there is to know. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then that perhaps may be the root of the issue, because it positions queer people as something alien.

Edit: Genuine advice - the key to being a good ally is internalised acceptance. You can’t be an ally if you see queer people as a different species, because even if you are “kind” and say “nice” things, there’s still a huge wall. You need to believe, truly, that queer people are exactly the same as you, and treat them exactly as anyone else - which ironically means no special treatment at all. Special treatment, even if it is seemingly ‘positive’ and well meant, is still strange and alienating.

The wheels still scream “I’m an EV!” though, with that design that incorporates loads of flat area, but I’m glad the body design is moving away.

I can see why manufacturers wanted “EV style” - EVs were the new hotness and so the makers want to strongly telegraph the electric nature of the car in the design language. And I’m sure certain consumers also liked driving around in something that looks like an alien spaceship.

But that design gets old real quick. Personally I don’t want crazy, I want classic shapes and a car that just looks like an ordinary car.

I’m doing it slowly. Anything new I register with the new email, obviously. I moved over the most important things, and then everything else I switch at the point I come to use that site or service again.

I keep my gmail available in my browser on the laptop for this purpose, but have signed out from it on phone and removed the app from phone, so the friction encourages me to keep switching things over.

Ironic how the typo directly inverted the meaning.

will not adopt = will not use the new Firefox terms

will not adapt = will use the new Firefox terms exactly, without any rewording

Read/write/execute file permissions.

Having them set incorrectly can cause problems, such as creating a file as root then leaving you unable to modify it as user, being unable to execute a script because execute is not set, or being unable to use your SSH keyfile because you left the permissions too open.

It’s more actually like “Why is it, when something doesn’t happen, is it always you three”

I can’t make any recommendations, as having a desktop or alternative email client isn’t what concerns me - I just want a non-Google provider. I’m currently using Proton.

Well to be fair it does say this in the FAQ section on their product page:

Q: Which email provider(s) will Notion Mail be compatible with?

A: Notion Mail will integrate seamlessly with Google and Gmail accounts at initial launch.

I assume this is because they are using Google’s APIs to access your email and just add some extra bells and whistles on top of that.

Makes it utterly worthless to me, though. I’m trying to slowly REMOVE Google and Gmail from my life, not get locked in on using it.

Exactly. The way to make money pre-Internet was “generate repeat business” and the way to do that was to create a product and service the customer was happy with.

The way to make money now is to get the customer trapped, then pump them as hard as possible.

Companies were never our friends, but it used to be the case that companies sold products. They sold a product and you got to use it and that was the end of it.

Now instead, thanks largely to the Internet, companies barely care about ‘product’ at all and instead are all trying to get in on that gravy train of monetised data slurping, subscription models, DRM on every consumable, firmware updates that change the terms on you after the fact, and so on. Every electronic thing in your home is now super hostile to you.

TVs, printers, fridges. These products used to be just products, but now they are trojan horses.

What has your choice of browser(s) been throughout the past decade?