I am too old to sail the seas. Either I get it legally and convenient or I just stop watching and read a book instead. Not saying others shouldn’t, I had my fair share of years out there, but it’s not for me anymore.

Me: “I would like to uninstall Edge and use Firefox for everything!”
Netflix: “With Firefox I won’t give you best quality even if you pay for it! Use Edge!”
So Edge stays my video streaming browser for now, but only that.

Increasing water efficiency is likely to result in reduced demand for water, with less water therefore flowing through drains and sewers. Some parties have suggested that this could lead to blockages, drainage problems and homes flooding due to backed up sewerage systems.

In Germany our toilets usually have two buttons, one for the yellow which flushes but with a lower amount of water and the bigger button for the big brown business and maximum water flow.

Depending where you live and depending on drought being a thing in your place of the world, using less water can have unwanted side effects:

• backed sewerage systems
• not enough water can lead to environmental problems if the sewage isn’t watered down enough for your sewage treatment plant to deal with it or if it goes straight to a river it is worse than with more water (that one is always really bad but definitely extremely worse with less water)

In the past I had to upgrade my PC every 4 years (my first PC run on Windows 3.1), but my last one just works and even the GPU only fell out of minimum requirements of the newest and graphical shiny games end of last year (it even managed to run Starfield although it looked bad and lagged in cities terribly), but my backlog is huge, so I don’t care and if I care I can use Geforce Now or Game Pass for PC and stream that one game I can not play on my rig directly anymore.

Our planet is on fire and consuming less is the only actual solution to that. Everything got more expensive. I literally don’t want to spent a lot of money on a PC that I do not need, because the one I have plays the games I want to play just fine (currently Dave the Diver) and on top throw a perfectly fine machine away, add to CO2 production and need to cut back on other needs I have because everything is so expensive.

My machine is an i7-6700K 4GHz with a GTX 970 and 16 GB DDR 4. And the only reason this is not working with Windows 11 is the CPU and upgrading that would need a new board and at that point I need a new PC. Oh and I tested it at the beginning when Windows 11 came out, I can circumvent the restriction and install Windows 11 anyway, it’s just not guaranteed it will stay working and getting upgrades can be a hassle, but at least for the time I tried it I did get automated updates.

I do not hate Windows, I tried to get Windows 11, I just don’t want to accept that a security feature for businesses makes my consumer PC invalid for it. I am a gamer and I would like to stay with Windows, but I am not buying a new PC unless a vital part of my old one breaks. I rather stay with an unpatched system and do anything that needs security on my phone/tablet on android. And no, I am 58 y.o. and I am not learning Linux, maybe if I were interested in the Steam handheld it would make sense, but I am not.

I am handicapped and in early retirement. I had a hard time going on walks, got tired fast, there was always the fear of stumbling/falling again and carrying a bag was painful using a backpack made me getting tired faster.

I bought an expensive walking helper /walker with 4 wheels (not something you sit on and drive, but walk behind), a seat and a big bag for shopping. I feel like superwoman now when I am on a walk, because I can walk longer, buy stuff and just put it on the thing and it is so easy to get even heavy stuff home and whenever I get tired and no matter where I am, I just sit down, relax, power comes back and I can keep going.

The best thing I have ever bought in my whole life.

I was told this is only for very old people and that it looks ridiculous at my age and that I would not need it by everyone, fuck them. It is pure quality of life and increases my power to over 9000! I have been more outside in the last 12 months, than in the 5 years before that because of it.

Thank you for your explanation. Google gave me a lot of insight into a lot of things and none had to do with this problem. :D

so if a feature sucks, they can just remove it

Unfortunately if you liked that feature, it is gone now.

I like the GOG approach to EA:

“Rollback in GOG GALAXY — Keep playing your game if the newest update is not doing it for you, or revisit historical version snapshots.”

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000591705-Early-Access-as-it-is?product=gog

A shutdown and a fresh start also deletes files that aren’t used anymore and the PC does check itself for hardware problems. Starting a PC could take a long time in the past, but my current 7 year old system starts in about 10 seconds, a newer system could start faster. I also turn off all peripherals like monitors and printer etc. with one switch after the computer is off, to make sure there is not a single light still wasting electricity. Standby devices in a common houshold use so much electricity, that it amounts to a lot of money over a year. But I guess we are still in the phase of convinience over climate and people have money to waste too.

From your link:

but the option to choose a new time was greyed out

Which only ever happened for me if I had already pushed back an update multiple times. Which then means they had all the time in the world to make sure they do the update before they start such a critical, multiple days long process. These are people without forced update they would never make updates and they are the reason forced updates have to happen now.

I do not care. I only watch 10 channels and these are in my favorites. I do not use the algorithm and thanks to European law the frontpage is deactivated. I also ever watch only one video per day and then do something else, so they can slow down the website as much as they want since I am not scrolling. I click on a channel and on a video, that’s it. If it gets too bad I rather not use Youtube anymore, it is not the end of the world.

• selling cigarettes to children:
  https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press-releases/2023_12_08-social-media-report

“The findings of this report make it crystal clear: Big Tobacco is going all-in to target youth on social media and it has to stop,” said Yolonda C. Richardson, president and CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “Tobacco companies are among the most sophisticated advertisers in the world – marketing that reaches millions of kids does not happen by accident. Governments need to urgently address tobacco marketing online and ensure that social media companies are held legally accountable for the tobacco and nicotine marketing appearing on these platforms.”

German here. A woman was starting to play loud music on her phone while I was sitting at a bakery having a cup of coffee, trying to relax from a bad morning. I opened Spotify, checked for this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBDtIOxUsI Every Maaaaaamaaaa I was singing loudly along. She lasted half of the song then fled the scene, even left her coffee on the table. My ears were bleeding, but it was worth it.

Fight them with the most terrible old people song you know in your country, be aware that it might hurt you too.

Do Pee!

X-Men, it’s in the name. :D (also: Great reference!)

Germany:

Price indication regulation (Preisangabenverordnung)

All prices stated on the menu must include any applicable surcharges. In other words, the price of the meal is also the final price. The quantity served must also be stated for drinks.

I did and I should not have done that. What a nightmare!

I am from Germany, our crime rate is very, very low. I doubt that many people here would think beating up or even killing a person is “as easy” as doing it to a funny looking delivery robot. Depending where you are from, that might be different though. If you live in a place where people actually see no difference between both and do one as easily as the other, then please stay safe!

… and they can get robbed or kicked, their sensors sprayed shut… and repair costs a fortune. I don’t think delivery without a human makes much sense, maybe except for a drone that delivers to the Australian outback or a small island at the German coast.

They want desperately to cut delivery cost by taking out the human they have to pay for it to do the work. To do so they spent billions they could have used to pay these people a decent wage and hire more of them. It is dumb.

From the article: “The act has been welcomed by child safety advocates.”

Same beeing tried for the EU.

The proposed regulation is excessively “influenced by companies pretending to be NGOs but acting more like tech companies”, said Arda Gerkens, former director of Europe’s oldest hotline for reporting online CSAM.

“Groups like Thorn use everything they can to put this legislation forward, not just because they feel that this is the way forward to combat child sexual abuse, but also because they have a commercial interest in doing so.”

If the regulation undermines encryption, it risks introducing new vulnerabilities, critics argue. “Who will benefit from the legislation?” Gerkens asked. “Not the children.”

“So it’s very clear that whatever their incorporation status is, that they are self-interested in promoting child exploitation as a problem that happens “online,” and then proposing quick (and profitable) technical solutions as a remedy to what is in reality a deep social and cultural problem. (…) I don’t think governments understand just how expensive and fallible these systems are, that we’re not looking at a one-time cost. We’re looking at hundreds of millions of dollars indefinitely due to the scale that this is being proposed at.”

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/

This whole article is worth reading despite its length. This is a mess and the UK is only the start, they are aiming for this being implemented world wide.

That’s where the gun culture comes in. America has none, they just have guns and no protective, strict culture of do’s and don’ts around them. Not everything has to be restricted by law if a society decides that there are still rules. We have a social rule that when we sneeze or cough we put something in front of our mouth. It is not a law, but it is a healthy social rule that is helpful; everyone accepts that they are not free to sneeze in other people’s faces. You need either gun laws or gun culture, Switzerland chose more culture, Germany more law, both work. America chose … more guns and the “freedom” to shoot them in other people’s faces. That’s stupid and dangerous.