Geocities. That’s how I lerned HTML. Used their WYSIWYG editor and then tinkered with the code. Built several pages close to my interest, and even scored some free stuff from marketing early online retailers like CDNow.
Also spent a lot of time browsing other Geocities pages and contacting people with shared interest.
I don’t mind discussing politics or religion, even though I don’t repeat myself in the same discussion and don’t engage with trolls. However, I absolutely never discuss my family, my personal matters and my racist views.
I’ve had exactly the same experience. Let me addd one more: when OneDrive decides to back up open files, they ate regularly deleted both from local and cloud. Those are the files I tend to use the most, and I grew so frustrated that I ended recreating my Documents folder steucture in my Downloads folder, which doesn’t get synced. (IT is useless; when I complained abou that, they told me that One Drive was a third-party application, and they didn’t support those. )
I can’t complain about them. I just rip them off. There may be a law (EU regulation) for bottle manufacturers to tether the caps, but there’s no law againt ripping the caps off.
I used to use Ubuntu up to 12.04. By the time the support ended, the new versions had the Unity desktop, I didn’t like it, so for a while I switched to Crunchbang (may it rest in peace), and now I’m using Mint Cinnamon. Some of my developers are using Ubuntu with Unity. Everyone is free to pick what suits them; I’m not one to judge them.
I paint and draw, purely as a hobby. You wouldn’t believe the amount of crap some people have. Brushes they use only once in a lifetime, for one specific element. Special colours they also get to use only once. Pencils they don’t even open. Get a basic set, familiarise yourself with it, stretch it to the full extent of its capabilities (that’s mastery), and then upgrade to a higher quality version of what you have. No single-use novelty tools and materials.
There may be dozens of us who still remember Captain Future. I used to get in trouble in school for doodling his space ship in my workbooks.
This is rsa.ie. The main site works fine, but you have to wait to access the driving test registration portal. Mind you, this is even before you see the login or registration screen. And given Ireland’s small size, there are only about 4000 driving tests per week. That number of users is negligible for a normal scheduling page; it must have taken some serious skill and effort to make it non-performant at this scale.
I’m still on Reddit, and once in a while I manually overwrite all my comments that are older than a month. 95% of my comments don’t have a real value, and whatever I find interesting or insightful ends on my personal Web site. It’s my information, and if I think I brainfart something that would be helpful for someone, I add it to space that I control. This was true even before the whole API fiasco.
Have they? In what way?
This is speculation by Ars Technica. Essentially, a recent firmware upgrade seems to have drastically lowered the battery life of some models. In addition, they are removing all third-party apps in the EU in response to the DMA.
What TVs? Vizio, Hisense, the Chinese junk budget brands?
Most recently Roku. But I used a TV only as an example. A year ago, an OTA upgrade bricked microwave ovens. Google’s history of bricking its smart home products goes back to at least 2016, companies like Wink threaten to brick your devices unless you suddenly start paying a monthly fee on top of your purchase price “for life”, there were reports of smart bulbs or thermostats ceasing working as well.
The following is pure speculation on my part: I think we’re at the beginning of a huge wave of planned obsolescence. Everyone and their mother are now training AI’s, and they want their customers to replace older products, which don’t support AI integration, with new ones. They’ll soon stop supporting the older devices or outright bricking them, to force people to buy the new ones.
Samsung Galaxy S2. With a replaceable battery and good external cover, that thing can last for a long time. I did contribute to e-waste by replacing the battery three times so far, but that’s all.
Just another byproduct of enshittification. Novadays, a top-end Garmin watch lasts about as long as a Chinese watch of a brand with random characters you buy off Amazon. Google is introducing planned obsolesence in Fitbit. Banking apps are beginning to require phones that are no more than 4 years old. TVs get bricked with firmware upgrades. So, consumers are trained to buy cheapest, least reliable electronics, because over time they’ll provide more value than top-end items which used to last much longer. (This was written on a 13 years old phone. I may not have access to my banking app anymore, but otherwise it works for everything I need, and I haven’t contributed to e-waste in this regard. Not that the pollution angle was my reason to keep the phone, but it’s a nice extra bonus.)
I saw it for the first time last summer. Did a little reading, and according to the news articles, it was a EU directive, but it had been heavily lobbied for by Coca Cola. If I remember right, all EU countries should have implemented the necessary legislature by June this year.
I personally just tear the caps off. Can’t get used to them.
I wouldn’t change anything, but I would be far less stressed that everything would work out just fine.