I would say, they’re not necessarily good, just less bad.

Same idea though.

I didn’t say there was.

I just want this specific billionaire to continue to live because, unlike most billionaires, he’s not making my life more difficult.

He’s basically refused to let steam become enshittified. Other billionaires would have long ago succumb to the one that they serve, the almighty dollar, and done whatever they can to extract the most value from their user base. Enshittifying the platform in the process, and actively making my life worse.

So as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to billionaires, gaben is far from the worst.

I have a short list of billionaires that kinda fit into the category of: I don’t mind that they exist.

There’s a much longer list of billionaires that I’d like to see pushing up the daisies.

Not that I can, or would, do anything to make that happen. I just, wouldn’t hate it if it happened.

I think that’s the point.

They’ve had such trouble even selling YouTube premium that now they’re making it even less worthwhile, and expecting people to still buy it…

I don’t know what companies don’t get. Family means so many different things and they’re trying to dictate and control what it means to be a family. They don’t get to decide that. Many people I consider to be family, have zero blood relation to me, but they’ve stood by me like brothers and sisters when shit goes down, often staying to help long after my blood relatives, have abandoned me. The people I share a bloodline with are simply not as much of a family to me as these people I grew up with, and have stuck with me through thick and thin.

If I buy a “family” plan of anything, I expect that the family I’ve chosen can be among the people I can share that plan with. If I’m paying for a personal plan and sharing it with others, I get it, fair game. But if I’m specifically buying it because I can share it with family, then let me share it with family, or fuck the fuck off with that bullshit.

Sorry, bit of a rant, I know everyone here already knows this so I’m preaching to the choir.

Be well.

My understanding is that gaben has already put an action plan in place for when the company moves on from his leadership.

From what I’ve heard of it, the people in line behind Gabe will be upholding the same values.

We should have at least another ~40 years or more of this before sometimes entitled brat inherits the company and sells it off to a foreign interest.

With all that being said: long live gaben.

My entire extended family shares a single household and a single Internet connection. /s

This is the risk of “trusted computing” architectures. Who is governing the “trusted” part of that.

These cryptographic signatures are not as much of a death knell for Android as some would have you believe. The trick is to get a common code signing cert into your device, that is then used to sign any third party APK you want to run. You can avoid the Google tax this way. I assume that’s how most sideloading sites and apps are going to handle this.

The question is, how do you add that certificate? Is it easy and straight forward (with plenty of scary warnings), as a user? Or is it going to be a developer options deal? Or will I need root to add the cert?

I’m not sure what that answer is right now.

I just want to finish this post with a few words about trusted computing models. Plainly: Apple has been doing this for years … That’s why you download basically everything from an app store with Apple. Whether on your Mac OS device, your iPhone, iPad or whatever iDevice… Whether the devs need to sign it, or the app gets signed when it lands on the store, there’s a signature to ensure that the app hasn’t been tampered with and that Apple has given the app it’s security blessings, that it is safe to run. Microsoft and Google have both been climbing towards the same forever. Apple embedded their root of trust in their own proprietary TPM which has been included with every Mac, and iDevice for a long ass time. Google also has a TPM, the Titan security module, I believe that was introduced around pixel 3? Or 4?.. Microsoft made huge waves requiring it for Windows 11, and we all know what that discussion looks like. Apple requires a TPM (which they supply, so nobody noticed), Google has been adding a TPM and TPM functionality to their phones for years, and now Windows is the same. None of this is a bad thing. Trusted computing can eliminate much of the need for antivirus software, among other things. I digress. We’ve been going this way for a long time. Google is just more or less, doing what Apple has already done, and what Microsoft will very likely do very soon, making it a requirement. Battlefield 6 I think, was one of the first to require trusted computing on Windows and it will, for damned sure, not be the last that does. The only real hurdle here is managing what is trusted. So far, each vendor has kept the keys to their own kingdoms, but this is contrary to computing concepts. Like the Internet, it should be able to be done without needing trust from a specific provider. That’s how SSL works, that’s how the Internet works, that’s how trusted computing should work. The only thing that should be secret is the private signing keys. What Google, Apple, and Microsoft should be doing, is issuing intermediary keys that can sign code signing certs. So trusted institutions that create apps, like… Idk, valve as an example, can create a signature key for steam and sign Steam with it, so the trust goes from MS root to intermediary key for valve, to steam code signing key, and suddenly you have an app that’s trusted. Valve can then use their key to sign software on their store that may not have a coffee signing key of it’s own. This is just one example based on Windows. And above all of this, the user should be able to import a trusted code signing cert, or an intermediary cert signing cert, to their service as trusted.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

What about piefediles?

I’m actually not angry at McDonald’s implementation of their online/kiosk/self serve ordering systems. Not a fan of an AI taking my order tho.

If I’m going through the drive through, just let me talk to a fucking person. They’re standing at the window waiting to collect my payment, doing literally nothing else, just let them take the order too. It’s eliminating work and adding to the global fuckary that is “AI” for absolutely no benefit to anyone.

Unless they’re going to eliminate everyone except the person handing me the food, then fuck off with the AI slop.

10/10 times I would rather order from the app and just pick it up, except their app is shit and won’t allow you to use it until you’ve given them all of your data, signed up for an account, filled out their account recovery questionnaire so they know your mother’s maiden name, your dog’s name from grade school, your blood type, and probably what kinks you like… Just to order a fucking big Mac?

My dudes. You have over estimated your worth to me as a part of society. If the app was just, “hey, where are you?” Then “cool, this store is nearby” selects store “tell me WTF you want” orders “pay me please” Google pay/Apple pay… “Thanks, your order number is asdf1234! Go fucking get it… Also, did you want to create an account to collect rewards or some shit?” Selects no “okay, your shit is waiting for you, go pick it up”

Instead it’s… “Give us access to all your phone data and precise location” Ugh “do you have an account, you need an account” argh furiously types “thanks for signing up, did you know that we have x, y, and z deals for you? We know you like y because you searched for it earlier this week” no “GPS position is not precise enough, cannot locate a store to shop at, please enable hyper precision GPS so we know within a cunthair where exactly you are” … Some time later… “GPs location obtained, you have 8 stores ‘near’ you, most of them are pointless to show you because they’re more than twice the distance from you as the closest store, but we’re going to put those at the top to confuse you instead” picks location “what did you want to buy?” Finally orders “pay me” tries to use Google/Apple pay “something went wrong, we accept Visa, and MasterCard” puts in Visa branded debit information "something went wrong, we accept Visa and MasterCard only " finds actual visa/Mc enreta info “what’s your home address? We ‘need’ it to authorize the credit card transaction” Ugh “is your billing address the same as you home address?” Yes “what’s the expiry, and CVV on the card?” Enters info “thanks! Transaction declined because you put ‘st’ in your address and you should have used ‘Street’. Get fucked” closes app, jumps off bridge

My best friend is a developer, and I personally have a lot of respect for the work you all do.

One thing I can definitely say is a positive of working with your kind, is that you people don’t have printer issues.

I hate printers.

This is less awful IT practice and basically just bad development practice.

Working in IT support, you developers are a different breed of users.

Yay webview2!

also /s

At this point, why even have desktop apps at all?

Teams and Outlook are basically busy glorified web browsers that load the online version… Now word is going to send your shit to the cloud whether you like it or not?

Google docs does this, but they don’t have a desktop app to deceive you with. You create the doc, and edit it where it is, on the cloud, using a web interface that’s vaguely “word”-like.

The only people this will “help” is all the inept business people that can’t figure out where to put their data so it’s not lost. There’s lots of those.

The French get shit done. I can certainly say that. They’re a population that really won’t stand for being shit on. It’s why they made such good use of the guillotine, historically.

Taking a page from their book may not be a bad idea… Or you could reference the alleged works of Saint Luigi from America. He also made a profound impact. At least for a while.

They wouldn’t be able to get this shit to fly against the other members of the EU, I don’t think.

Those people are doing the Lord’s work, forcing companies to give control over user data, to the users, making USB C a standard for all devices… I won’t list everything, but shit. The rest of the world has benefited by proxy on so many things, because of the EU.

The UK is acting like a bunch of pearl clutching soccer moms.

To the people of the UK:

What the hell is this authoritarian, pearl clutching shit? You’re fucking shit up for everyone. Can you get your people to please fuck off?

Thanks, from some guy on the Internet.

Back in my day, we called that pseudocode. It’s code-like, but not in any actual programming language that you could compile from.

It’s more of a set of ideas of how to accomplish something, than it is actually coding.

The fun part is, that pseudo code can be adapted to any actual programming language.

Idk why everyone is crazy about vibes all of a sudden… But sure.

You think politics are in my control in any way, shape, or form? They’ve gerrymandered my vote to irrelevance.

I still vote, I look at the platforms and vote for whomever I feel serves my interests the most, not that the party’s platform means jack or shit. They’re all just pandering to whatever they know you want to hear, and once they get into power, they do whatever the hell they want.

My district leans a particular way, and whether I vote with them, or against them, the same party is elected to govern. I’d say my vote is pretty useless in that context.

I was too young to vote, pre-9/11, and had even less interest in politics than I do now. I’ve vaguely followed along since I got registered to vote when I got old enough to do so, but it’s not like learning about what happened before I was registered to vote will help me in any way. I make the best choice based on the information that is available, and in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

I was alive for 9/11 and I don’t know the difference.

I don’t care for politics.

I fucking hate this.

Most days I spend more time accounting for my work than I do actually working.