I love the discourse here, it's so nice to see. Not only because I, too, am a Mint user for practical purposes (MATE flavour, even, in spite of running on pretty modern hardware).
By the way, I am obligated to commend you on your username, cap'n. It's not much, but it's enough, right?
It's also fun buying tickets from the Belgian airline, when they tell me that my family name contains illegal characters. Really? Tell me they're invalid or better yet unacceptable, but not that.
There's a neat plugin (for Firefox, the only browser in existence 🤭) that redirects everything to the old URL, so I don't even know if this would be my experience as well...
But yeah today is the first day that I was forced to log in to even browse the site, in spite of using the old version.
To be fair, changing your browser agent is on the technical side of things, in my opinion this goes beyond "refilling washer fluid in your car" but more like swapping out the licence plate light for a different colour - few people realise that's even a thing you can do, and that it has any effect.
Moreover, users should not be blamed when it's clearly the other party who's being willfully obstructionist. But I understand your sentiment. It's tiresome, right?
Companies are even worse. My girlfriend's boyfriend was trying to buy a train ticket from Deutsche Bahn, and there just were none available. It was baffling. He asked me to check (because he was in a hotel room) and I, too, could not find any.
Turns out, they refuse to sell tickets to customers that use Linux!!?! Change the OS in your browser ID string, and magically all sorts of tickets appear!
Like wtf, how purposefully evil do you have to be to run a business like that? What is even the point?
And sad that, even so, Firefox has been a rounding error in global usage data. 😢
I've been using Firefox since it existed, never been disappointed. I just hope that it (or Mozilla) didn't eventually go bankrupt and dies. You can say what you want about the politics and financing of Mozilla but we desperately need them to prevail.
If you find that extracting data from IMDB is a pain, then check out TMDB ("The Movie Database"), they have a proper public API. I used it for a recent little project of mine called Two degrees of separation.
Last time they were in the media, I found their web site. That ugly sweater cost over a hundred Euro (don't remember if it was two or seven, but at that point it no longer matters).
I'm hoping for such patterns to become open source (and less hard on human eyes).
Serious question, does any other phone have a ring/vibrate/silent physical toggle? For me it's THE feature keeping me on OnePlus (although my model 10 is pretty beat up by now and I'm side-eyeing a Nexus to put Graphene on).
My gf has reasons to believe her life expectancy to be in the 70s range. My mother is at 85 still going golfing, skiing, and mountaineering. Neither of these may have any bearing, of course.
I kinda hate that I instantly understood your Cocoon imagery, haha.
I also wonder about the social aspects. I'm likely to retire earlier than her.
Sure, you can not have a cell phone. Then you also can't communicate with your kids' teachers, or receive communication from them. Which will have.... other consequences.
Please don't underestimate how fucked "modern" citizens are. Privacy is no longer an easy choice.
You might see a banking app (including phone-based payments, using the phone as a card or using a payment app) as mere convenience, and to a large degree it is, but aside from that there are also national ID apps that are simply impossible to live without in some EU countries. There are exceptions for seniors and disabled folk, but even they miss out on some critical social access that's just not realistic for eg. parents of school-age children.
Oh man I love Cliff Stoll. His completely over the top hyper TED talk with his notes literally scribbled on his hand. 🤓👌❤️
I love the discourse here, it's so nice to see. Not only because I, too, am a Mint user for practical purposes (MATE flavour, even, in spite of running on pretty modern hardware).
By the way, I am obligated to commend you on your username, cap'n. It's not much, but it's enough, right?
It's also fun buying tickets from the Belgian airline, when they tell me that my family name contains illegal characters. Really? Tell me they're invalid or better yet unacceptable, but not that.
There's a neat plugin (for Firefox, the only browser in existence 🤭) that redirects everything to the old URL, so I don't even know if this would be my experience as well...
But yeah today is the first day that I was forced to log in to even browse the site, in spite of using the old version.
I really like the signalling here: "things might break unless we address it, and we did it to ourselves."
Or maybe "superfluous cost of ownership" to speak to the bean counters, but yours is way better.
Who are we kidding, "tech debt" is what we're stuck with. But have an upvote nonetheless.
Don't know but certainly relate.
To be fair, changing your browser agent is on the technical side of things, in my opinion this goes beyond "refilling washer fluid in your car" but more like swapping out the licence plate light for a different colour - few people realise that's even a thing you can do, and that it has any effect.
Moreover, users should not be blamed when it's clearly the other party who's being willfully obstructionist. But I understand your sentiment. It's tiresome, right?
Companies are even worse. My girlfriend's boyfriend was trying to buy a train ticket from Deutsche Bahn, and there just were none available. It was baffling. He asked me to check (because he was in a hotel room) and I, too, could not find any.
Turns out, they refuse to sell tickets to customers that use Linux!!?! Change the OS in your browser ID string, and magically all sorts of tickets appear!
Like wtf, how purposefully evil do you have to be to run a business like that? What is even the point?
And sad that, even so, Firefox has been a rounding error in global usage data. 😢
I've been using Firefox since it existed, never been disappointed. I just hope that it (or Mozilla) didn't eventually go bankrupt and dies. You can say what you want about the politics and financing of Mozilla but we desperately need them to prevail.
You might want to look up the SS Richard Montgomery.
At the point where it's finally "safe", London might look quite a bit different... 😬
I have one subscription that covers everything!
...it's a vpn. 🤫
I haven't read the article, but oh my am I getting a kick out of the writing style of this and the OG post. Thank you for brightening my day! 💛
If you find that extracting data from IMDB is a pain, then check out TMDB ("The Movie Database"), they have a proper public API. I used it for a recent little project of mine called Two degrees of separation.
Last time they were in the media, I found their web site. That ugly sweater cost over a hundred Euro (don't remember if it was two or seven, but at that point it no longer matters).
I'm hoping for such patterns to become open source (and less hard on human eyes).
Odd, I didn't read that slanted line as smoke at all, but that the artist was being dragged off by... someone ... mid-stroke, as it were.
Serious question, does any other phone have a ring/vibrate/silent physical toggle? For me it's THE feature keeping me on OnePlus (although my model 10 is pretty beat up by now and I'm side-eyeing a Nexus to put Graphene on).
Thank you for the sober and frank presentation.
My gf has reasons to believe her life expectancy to be in the 70s range. My mother is at 85 still going golfing, skiing, and mountaineering. Neither of these may have any bearing, of course.
I kinda hate that I instantly understood your Cocoon imagery, haha.
I also wonder about the social aspects. I'm likely to retire earlier than her.
Sure, you can not have a cell phone. Then you also can't communicate with your kids' teachers, or receive communication from them. Which will have.... other consequences.
Clever use name You have there.
Please don't underestimate how fucked "modern" citizens are. Privacy is no longer an easy choice.
You might see a banking app (including phone-based payments, using the phone as a card or using a payment app) as mere convenience, and to a large degree it is, but aside from that there are also national ID apps that are simply impossible to live without in some EU countries. There are exceptions for seniors and disabled folk, but even they miss out on some critical social access that's just not realistic for eg. parents of school-age children.