I use it since I subscribe to Proton for email. It seems fine. I used to use Windscribe – or rather still do since I have a lifetime subscription – but I tend to alternate between the two services these days. Proton seems to have tons more servers though. I’ve torrented on both and have had no issues with either.

The idea is that people will be willing to pay a recurring fee to use Alexa if it can do more advanced things, like perform multiple commands without the user having to say “Alexa” repeatedly, be more conversational, and manage smart homes more intuitively. Amazon is considering charging $5 to $10 per month for generative AI Alexa,

I don’t know if that’s worth $5-10/mo. I use Google Nest products at home, mainly to control lights. And yeah it sometimes annoying to be like, “Hey Google do this…Hey Google, do that…Hey Google, do whatever…” But at that point, I usually just use the Google Home app or a specific IoT app. And that’s free.

I’m sure they do, but I feel like even on r/datahoarders, I only ever see people talk about masses of HDDs, tape drives, or cloud storage.

You could also add toxic glue. It’s edible! Probably only once though.

This is now going to be added to some LLM-generated answer in the probably near future.

I know some airports have similar Amazon convenience stores. But they’re not staffless; there’s still at least one person at the exit. Sometimes even another person at the entrance. Yeah it’s quick for me since I’m not waiting in a line or being rung up (though I rarely see people in them compared to the traditional convenience stores), but is the company really saving money? Not that I really care if they are or not, but seems pointless if they still have to staff the stores.

There will always be new, perhaps younger, users who come through who don’t know what it was like before. And of course, there will always be more veteran users who perhaps don’t care. I care that reddit is going to shit, but I’m still on it (less than pre-APIgate though). On the other hand, my brother who’s been on reddit almost as long as me, doesn’t care. As long as gets his memes or whatever else he uses reddit for, he’ll be there. He barely knew about that protests last summer.

It seems that the only way a social media actually collapses is when the company itself pulls the plug. Twitter has been circling the drain since Elon bought it, but it’s still one of the main nodes of information from companies, governments, journalists, and just regular people. It’s still used by millions of people daily, even if it’s also used by millions of bots, too. Google+ was in a sad state for a bit, but there were still users. It only died when Google finally shut it down. I think Vine was in a similar situation back in the day.

And because of that .tk ccTLD is completely disreputable now. Everyone and their mother had one back in the day, which included all the spammers/phishers and their mothers. Now no one trusts .tk domains. Or at least they shouldn’t!

There are some instances still up, but I think the assumption is that eventually all of them will shutdown with time. I don’t know the exact reason for it (you can read more here), but something was changed on Twitter’s side that will end all of these.

But if it’s not being developed (that’s my assumption as I haven’t touched WordPad in many, many years) and not many people are using it (again, I’m assuming based on my own personal experiences and those in the workplace), what’s wrong with removing a legacy system?

People complain all the time about Microsoft retaining legacy systems, often seemingly detrimentally, so here it is, an opportunity to remove a legacy system, but now it’s bad?

I get that not everyone has Word. But Word isn’t as paywalled as it once was. There’s the web version of Word, that’s free to use with a free Microsoft account. There’s Google Docs, also free with a gmail account. And there’s of course OpenOffice and LibreOffice, obviously free. So users have options for word processing that are better than WordPad.

Well at least they’ll get to use those fancy blue passports Brexiters were so excited about.

Doesn’t COPPA already require this for children under 13? This state bill raises it to under 16.

I guess it comes down to the particulars. Is there something more onerous in the Ohio bill than in COPPA? Because I don’t think I’ve heard of any company seriously getting mad that COPPA is a thing.

I thought the plane is supposed to be missing screws, not the passengers.

I’m almost 37. I remember as a kid being my parents’ "navigator’ on family road trips with the map. My parents still carry an atlas in their cars, but ofc, they’re using GPS on their phones/cars like anyone else.

As far as actual pre-Internet, I was on the Internet at a pretty young age (back then). I think was 8 or 9 when my dad signed us up for AOL. Roughly 1995/1996. And I was all over that (only briefly did he put a filter on my account). So I don’t have a whole lot of experience truly being pre-Internet. I was playing online PC games while my friends were playing on the N64 or whatever.

As a kid playing in the neighborhood, I either called my parents from my friends’ houses (which I rarely did to my mom’s anger) or periodically stopped back home. Or at the very least, be back before the streetlights came on.

I had a cell phone by 9th/10th grade, esp since I was involved in band and other activities. I think I used pay phone maybe once before that? And then never again.

I was driving before GPS was widely available on phones (which existed pre-smartphone), but you just printed out MapQuest directions before leaving. Which obviously relied on the Internet.

So yeah, I don’t have much experience pre-Internet, really.

I think that’s the case. Like they’re not unheard of here in the US. Like I could go out to the store right now and buy one. Wal-Mart or Target or a home goods store still sell htem. A lot of schools and colleges still have them in classrooms. But at home or in the office, I suspect they’re more decorative than anything. Like all clocks in my place are digital. The only analog clock I have would be a watch in some box that I have that I never wear. I think my parents have one, like a small mantlepiece one. Otherwise, everything else is digital.

Analog watches are probably the most common encounter. But with so many, including me, using smartwatches, how common are they actually?

I worked at a small MSP 2020-2021. Some of our customers needed access to government sites for reporting. The fact that some of these pages still had the “Best Viewed in Internet Explorer” badge or language was sad and frightening. Luckily there’s browser compatibility mode in Edge (which as you mentioned is probably just changing the user agent string), but still. My dad works in govt IT and even he’s encountered internal sites that require ActiveX. He has to sometimes figure out workarounds.

I did have one medical client that used some web charting/reporting platform. And it required a specific, long outdated version of Firefox. We had to intentionally turn off updates in Firefox so they could access it. Anything newer than that version and the site wouldn’t load. It was very strange.

Trackball or bust.

Ah I stand corrected on the Android side. I assumed there was some licensing going on. I’ll correct that.

Yeah because I’m sure GM’s shit will be better. Idek why I’m addressing this: we all know GM doesn’t want to pay Apple or Google. That this is really about more renting and never owning. They just want more money.

GM, just say that. We know you’re a gigantic money-hungry corp. You all don’t have to lie and pretend to care about safety. We’re not a bunch of idiots. We get it, even if you all suck for doing this.

I’d say I hope GM crashes and burns again, but then the government will just bail them out again.

People, and especially teens, still use Snapchat? That’s surprising. I remember when that was super popular in the late 00s/early 20teens with my friends (I never really used it). I don’t think anyone that I know my age (mid 30s) uses it anymore. Which I suppose makes it “cool” again.

I’ve only used Evernote sparingly over the last ~12yrs. 67 notes across 5 notebooks. Think it was one of the first apps I downloaded when I bought an iPad and iPhone. Still went ahead and exported everything, even though nothing of any serious importance. Some are just funny memories.

I would like to find something similar, maybe even self-hosted so it’s free. I keep seeing Joplin anytime someone mentions notebook programs; time to look into that.