They were still making MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes? That seems more of a surprise than the Blu-ray discontinuation.

I’m also using iOS in the UK. I just tried searching for Pixelfed in the App Store and the ad was for some sort of golf tutoring app.

The top search result was the Pixelfed app and the others all other Fediverse apps.

The N-Gage had a bunch of bizarre design decisions.

The game cartridge slot was behind the battery - swapping games required disassembling the phone.

The revised QD version fixed a lot of the mistakes but it was too little too late by then.

Throwing money at AI seems a big gamble for productivity.

I’d rather see the UK invest in its human workers instead, with better education and training. IT skills for example as still lacking in the country. PCs have now existed for 30+ years yet so many still struggle with task like making simple spreadsheets.

If there is going be insistence on platforms being open there shouldn’t be these distinctions.

All of these devices are capable of general purpose computing at a hardware level, phones, tablets, PCs, headsets are now very similar and generalised in that regard. I don’t see why a phone platform should be forced to be open while a games console gets to remain closed, when there is now only a hair’s breadth separating an Xbox from a Windows PC.

Considering the latest changes at Meta, it seems their latest innovation is to transform social media into antisocial media.

USB-C has been a blessing and curse. One port that does everything, except when it doesn’t. Even charging is now complicated by the “guess the cable that supports the right PD type” game.

Not that the old days were much better. I don’t miss faffing around with the myriad of serial and parallel port modes and settings.

Take the AI crap out and give it an open display API and it would be a fun desk toy.

A rotating phone screen in a cylinder creating a hologram-like effect to display notifications/metrics/whatever else.

So the plaintiff’s are claiming Siri was recording them without consent, and that Apple were sharing those recordings with third parties including advertisers.

Apple claims they were sometimes wrongly keeping recordings for internal quality control/analytics but hasn’t admitted to sharing them, and have agreed to the $95m settlement.

The sharing with third parties is the most egregious part here, but it doesn’t seem to be addressed any further.

For TVs now, by buying used. Help yourself and the environment by buying an unwanted “dumb” TV that’s free of this sort of crap.

Or if budget allows, look at industrial displays.

Supply answers demand, is we stop buying junk smart stuff and take our money elsewhere the market will eventually follow.

A while ago a company patented a method using eye tracking to monitor whether TV watchers were paying attention to ads.

It can always get worse.

Zuck bending his own knee in the vain hope he won’t get bent over Trump’s.

Maybe he should have spent a little less attention on Caesar and tried to learn a few other lessons from history.

Cubic hands?

There were some polls asking why people voted for Brexit. Not only where there respondents wanting imperial measurements, there was even a small but significant group that wanted the return of pre-decimal currency, which was abolished in 1971.

For those not familiar with the UK’s old currency, it used to be 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound, and with a variety of coins representing odd combinations of those.

Stone is only real used for body weights now, and mostly be older people. I see metric weights used a lot more in medicine and by younger folk now.

Power costs vary a lot around the world, depending on where OP lives every little saving can help.

I’ve had this debate with myself a few times. In my country air ambulances (helicopters) are often funded by a charity, while normal ambulances are funded by the state. Such essential services shouldn’t be relying on charity to exist.

In work I’ve also been involved in providing services to major national charities, and I’ve often been shocked by the amount of waste and inefficiency going on behind the scenes.

That said I also know plenty of local charity groups that are well runs and make a big difference to the area. I’m not anti charity, but I think it does deserve more accountability.

That’s a gross assumption that people care about any of this.

For any form of federated community to be sustainable, its users have to care about that. Otherwise those communities will eventually be consumed by whichever instance gains the critical mass to close itself off and become another Twitter or Reddit.

To achieve the benefits of federation, users must be educated on principles of federation, not be obfuscated from them. The question is how the Fediverse can do that.

Prague had a large pneumatic post system which operated for 100+ years.

Prague pneumatic post.

I honestly don’t know how they do it. Whenever I get handed someone else’s device without an adblocker I find it almost painful to try and use.