So glad I never got involved in that shitshow.

That depends. These days, much of the time when people call something a “phobia” they really just mean “mildly dislike”.

Phobias are irrational and excessive fear responses to various things. They are often very extreme and can be life-disrupting for the people that have them, depending on what the phobia is. A phobia for an everyday occurrence can really screw up someone’s life and require extensive help to overcome it so they can improve their quality of life.

I’m sure Chrome users will find another excuse to not switch just like the last few dozen times Google screwed them over.

Apple has their faults but they historically have supported their devices for significantly longer than most Android phone manufacturers. Like I said in my last message, some of the Android phones I had only ever received one OS update and it was usually for an outdated version anyway.

There are multiple reasons I moved from Android to iPhone but this was by far the biggest factor that motivated me to switch. I’ve never had a Samsung device but I’ve had years upon years of numerous other Android phones and the update support for all of them has been atrocious. I got used to receiving 1 single OS update if I was lucky and maybe a few years of security updates and that was it. The few updates they did get were usually at least a year behind the Android update cycle if not more, and then they really fell behind once support stopped.

Since then I’ve had several iPhones that I’ve owned and then sold second hand and they’ve all had constant OS and security updates the entire time. I don’t have strong feelings towards iPhones one way or another, but I can say for certain that it has never felt like my device has been abandoned.

Looks like I’m moving over to something else now.

Slop coding.

Reminds me of Americans obsessing over “Canadian bacon” and showing me pictures of slabs of ultra processed meat that I’ve never seen before in my life. Closest we’ve got is back bacon and that’s leagues above the crap they call “Canadian” bacon.

Rules stop mattering when companies have the wealth of multiple entire nations combined.

AI, for the vast majority of users (and especially in the ways Microslop has pushed it) is completely useless at best and a malicious hindrance at worst. In order for Microslop to even begin to reverse course on their reputation they are going to have to accept the cold hard fact that AI is fetish for shareholders and is not actually what their customers want.

And once they do that then they are basically admitting that AI is overvalued and they overinvested in it and wildly overspent. The fragile house of cards might begin to wobble and the bubble might even pop, so naturally every tech company refuses to acknowledge the pushback against AI outside of rare cases of “We’ll revaluate our approach” like Windows did recently. They’re going to have to sink a lot lower before they’ll even consider budging on major changes to their business strategies.

They’re a private company and thus have resisted many of the enshittification trends that run rampant through the industry.

And also their competitors are absolutely atrocious and are completely tone-deaf to what customers actually want.

I’m glad there are official studies being done to document this, but also it’s vary obvious if you’ve spent any time around people in the past few years. The degradation of critical thinking and research skills is highly tangible and disturbing. Any country that isn’t addressing this significant intelligence gap is going to have an entire generation (or more) of brain-drained, unskilled citizens that can’t meaningfully contribute to the national workforce. For western countries that have already surrendered most of their manufacturing and innovation overseas, this will be even more devastating.

They only care about their shareholders and investors. They haven’t given a shit about their customers in a long long time.

These will be destroyed in microseconds, and rightfully so.

Toilet stalls are one of the most frequently vandalised things.

Check if any of your local cab companies has a trip calculator. A few of the ones near me do and they are quite handy for doing price comparisons with Uber/Lyft.

It is currently only available to users of its luxury Uber Black services, costing the passenger extra.

Leave it to venture capital to try to make profits off people wanting their driver to shut up.

Uber has been rising their prices enough that now they are nearly at price parity with taxi cabs which, at least around where I live, are notorious for price gouging. At this point there is little reason pick Uber or Lyft.

Currently passengers can use the app to rate conversational skills, so a driver wishing to increase his score may deliberately try to make small talk.

That sounds bloody awful.

Whenever something like this happens where women speak out or something is done to benefit their safety, men just love showing up to give opinions that nobody asked for.

You could paste this article link in the most progressive-minded group you can think of and, like clockwork, a significant amount of men will be like “Ok great, but…” and drop some turd of a comment that beautifully highlights just how ignorant they are as to how unsafe women actually feel.

Hannah Gadsby did a fantastic show called Nannette which heavily goes into these topics and her own personal experiences. I can’t remember the exact quote but she said something like “If this is all surprising to you then you’re not talking with the women in your life.”

Only 205? I would’ve thought we’d be in the thousands by now.

The issue I’ve had with the “Just shop somewhere else. Don’t use Amazon” is that it’s very US-specific response. Amazon has absolutely dominated the online shopping space in Canada for years because they are one of the few companies that dealt with the biggest reason why shopping online in Canada has been difficult: Shipping. $20-$40+ domestic shipping fees are normal in Canada for most other retailers which means you could be paying double the cost of your order (or more) just on shipping alone, so as soon as Amazon came in and offered free coast-to-coast shipping they had basically won the market instantly. There were teething issues, of course, and their earlier shipping contractors were horrendous but they did smooth most of that out.

Nowadays they still have very little competition that can beat them on shipping, but there are more and more options popping up. There are some Canadian online stores that offer free shipping or free if over a certain reasonable amount. The COVID pandemic really pushed a lot of local retailers to set up affordable online ordering and delivery systems for local customers, so that has also become an option. Aliexpress has also greatly improved their free shipping process to Canada and considering most of what Amazon sells is just rebranded Aliexpress stuff, it’s a great way of getting the same items for cheaper if you’re ok waiting a few extra days. So most of my online purchases these days have been a mixture of Canadian retailers and Aliexpress.

Sometimes I use my phone so little that I only need to charge it every 2-3 days. Nearly everything that it does my PC can do better and not try to lock me in to a dozen different monthly weekly subscriptions.