The closing sentence of the article....

"as Apple customers, we shouldn’t stand for it"

Apple customers....

"Here's my $200"

We'll never know, the article is behind a paywall

I'd be happy to keep the ones that say:

"we notice you are in europe and we can't use our cookies to track you so you can't come to our website"

It's good to know sites with policies like that to ensure I never visit them.

SD cards, SSD, USB drives, any form of computer memory really and replacement batteries too eg for cameras. I suck up the cost and buy directly from a reputable manufacturer.

For me the internet is still just about bearable but only because of the following....

Firefox + unlock origin for web browsing.

RedReader for Reddit when I occasionally need to go there.

Lemmy for the best Reddit alternative.

Revanced and NewPipe for YouTube.

Recently moved from Google podcasts to Podcast Republic after Google moved podcasts to you tube music.

Never had Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram.

Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.

It feels like I'm swimming against a strong tide just to maintain a good experience, in no other industry do the major players want to cripple your goods and services if you don't bend over and accept their increasingly poor goods and services 🤷🏻‍♂️

There's 7 spaces in the baking tray, there's 8 brownies! What is the 8th brownie op!

Many years ago, my 2 kids an me playing multiplayer COD 2, I had 3 networked PCs we went in the map and worked together, I was in the first floor laying down with my sniper rifle, the kids were covering the stairs behind me, we owned that map, working together it was an amazing and thrilling experience for all of us, we talked about it for ages afterwards and was the started of many great COD multiplayer sessions for us.

My satellite TV (Sky TV ... UK) subscription ended recently and they would not give me any sort of deal to sign a new contract, Come black Friday they a spamming me by email and every type of advert for great deals for NEW Customers only!

I called SKY to cancel and they offered me a better deal but we're going to charge me an admin fee to sign a new contract, they wanted me to pay them to sign a contract with them!

I told them that it was not acceptable and cancel my service, having been put through to "my manager" they eventually waived the admin fee...

How has it come to this, I'm an easy customer, I am happy with the product, I'll sign a contract if it's a good deal, but they went out of their way to lose me

Google recently announced that it's podcast service is shutting down and moving to YouTube music, I don't want or need YouTube music so I've already moved to Podcast Republic, it has a few ads but they can be removed with a small one off payment. Google just wants to shove all it's users into YouTube and YouTube music for maximum ads and data harvesting.

Bone conducting ear phones, I have tiny narrow ear canals and can't get any type of ear bud to go in my ears, the bone conductors are a revelation for listening to audio books, radio and music when I'm out and about

We had all this back in the 1970s with "Robots and Computers will take all our jobs" scaremongering.

As factories & production lines started to use robots and CNC machines, CAD and digital imaging appeared, accounting software etc etc we were all going to lose our jobs and live a life of unemployed leisure.

Never happened.

I'm sure AI will play an important role in the future but like so many new fads it will settle into its niche and we will all be okay.

Child hood trauma resurfacing....

Little me using all my text adventure skills....

/West

/South

/West

/West

"You enter the vegetable isle"

/Look

"You see carrots potatoes and cabbage"

/Search onions

"Sorry I don't know [onions]"

😰

"You hear a loud voice shouting"

Windows saves me prescious time to do other things. I went through the Dos, Win 3.1, Windows XP era thoroughly enjoying my time spending hours and hours learning about how to get my new sound card, network card , printer, game , software, mouse, newfangled USB device or whatever working, then my priorities evolved and the time pressures of family and career mean I just want my PC to work and for my use case it does. I'm heading for retirement soon so maybe I'll have more time to give Linux a go

When I started my career as a telecoms data engineer back in thr '80s the we used QBF to test modems on dial up data connections...the tester had a QBF button that would sent the text to a tester at the other end or it could even test round a loop back to itself.

You could inject errors with a button and these errors would count up on a basic 8 segment red led display to prove everything was working okay...happy days

Bone conducting earphones, my stupid tiny ear canals mean I can't get any ear buds, to stay in my ears, the bone conducters have changed my life....

• my custom made silicon ear plugs are a close second, sweet sleep when I'm on night shifts

During Covid (I'm a key worker so had to keep going to work) I started to take a small flask of coffee to work each morning and supplies to make more. I'll make a further couple during the day...the coffee is to my taste and saves time and money during the day ☕

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee

The design was unusual because the main weapon – a larger caliber, medium-velocity 75 mm gun – was in an offset sponson mounted in the hull with limited traverse. The sponson mount was necessary because, at the time, American tank plants did not have the design experience necessary to make a gun turret capable of holding a 75 mm weapon.

My dog once found a biscuit* in a bush near our home, from that day onwards he always checked the bush for a biscuit, there never was another one, the bush became known as "The Biscuit Bush"

• Cookie if your American 🍪

All sorts of things are still useful with email, for instance my work sends my duty rosters to my personal email address (my preference so I don't have to log into work when I'm off duty) I get a reminder for my car service, confirmation that my online grocery shopping has been picked and when to expect delivery, confirmation of orders I've made and delivery dates times, where I live we have a management company and they communicate to residents by email, some 2FA checks come by email, I still find these things useful & prefer an email rather than endless push notifications on my mobile if that's an alternative, I don't allow email to notify my mobile either, I just check the inbox a couple of times a day.

An open world game but the world is just a few city blocks, every single room in every building must be detailed & explorable, there would be a hospital, apartment, houses, businesses, shops, tunnels, parkland, garages etc etc.

The game would be a group of survivors, their needs for food, water, medication , clothes, fuel would be satisfied by exploring the environment and buildings, you need insulin? Search the hospital or medicine cabinets in the homes, you need food? Search the shops and kitchens? Water? Collect rainwater ... Each game day would present a list of priorities for the survivors to manage.

Risk and jeopardy would come from the environment it's self, other survivors who you could trade with or fight. Packs of wild dogs, maybe a few zombies but certainly not hoards, perhaps a Lion, escaped from the zoo. There are no long guns in this apocalypse but perhaps a pistol with limited ammo.

Importantly this must be a 1st/3rd person open world, the look and feel of the Last of Us 2.

🤞🏻