For some reason that has never been clear to me Dave Barry Does Japan, written on a two-week publisher-paid holiday to Japan with his family, sums up what Japan feels like better than any other book about the Land of the Rising Sun. He captures the weirdness, the earnestness, and the similar-but-differentness in a way that I never could when talking to friends and family about the place I lived, worked, and raised a family for seven years.

Can we do something collectively to keep said website of historical and cultural significance going a bit longer? or will it be relegated to Internet Archive...

Aside, deep appreciation for Tom's contributions and as a decent fellow human. My thoughts from a young age tended that my older relatives were quite a bit strange humming along and singing with "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" on vinyl record. Perhaps our values are more aligned (maligned? ha ha) as I age as well...

...
Come to Zom-Zom's, a place to eat
Like it was built in one day
You can watch the humans trying to run
Oh look, there's a rape machine
I'd go outside if it'd look the other way
You wouldn't believe the things they do ...

(Down in the Park / Gary Numan)

In Quebec, it is actually illegal for a couple to have the same surname (unless they already had the same name, I presume) when they get married, without a special exemption.

Why was Brother afraid of six critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures?

Because six-ate-nine. ...anyone?

Yes, Stanley

So, interestingly, the biggest thing driving planned obsolescence right now as far as I can tell is MS pushing windows 10 out, and so many devices unable to meet the hardware requirements for Win 11

The article didn't mention if these machines would be set up with older Windows or with Linux, though I'm going to guess it will be the former.

I do developer support for an SDK, and thus I have a lot of customers in India, so I have some sense of one part of this: an incredibly strong "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude. I regularly have customers using a 10 or even 15 year outdated version of our SDK they're trying to work with - it worked well enough that they didn't need to update and so they didn't. Many of these folks are also using really outdated Windows. I'll admit it's been a while since I've seen someone actively using XP still, but I still often see win 7. We don't officially tell them "no we won't support you" but we will tell them "if your issue is fixed in a newer version, you need to upgrade, we can't backport fixes to ancient versions.", and over time, those ancient windows systems have been mostly replaced... I'd guess though that just like other OS versions, a huge number of folks will continue to use outdated / unsupported versions long past end of life...

Granted, this isn't just India - but I do think they have extra large motivation and that repair culture there (as mentioned in TFA) to keep older hardware limping along, and probably using out of support Windows.. I kind of shudder at the security implications... but I also kind of really admire the ingenuity and resourcefulness.

The whole windows 10 end of life due to hardware requirements is indeed going to drive a lot of waste of perfectly serviceable hardware - honestly, I kind of hope it finds its way to the bodgers / makers / hackers rather than landfills.. but I do kind of wish there was more Linux uptake to lessen the number of unpatched/unpatchable vulnerable machines out there.

And writing by Ian Flemming, not Ian Fleming?

It's written this way in the article, 11 times!

IF (and that if statement is doing some really heavy lifting here) I could trust Meta, I'd gladly pay for an official "no ads, not tracking" experience.. however, that if has an and to it...

The and being "AND they provide a default 'no algorithm, just show me my friends feed' experience"

Yes I know you can use
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F%3Ffilt...

To kind of get that but like ... make it work.

The issues with FB are not just about the ads but about their constant need to "get you to engage" it leads to the algorithm pushing the most outrage it can to build engagement.

I use Facebook because I have a lot of meat-space people I want to keep in contact with - a bunch of friends who I might not be intimately involved in their day to day lives but with whom I share a connection and like to kind of "keep an ear out" when they have something important in their life..

I never felt connected to a community on twitter (before it was Xhitter) and or on BlueSky etc.. that is great as a "digital town square" where you go to interact with a more public sphere..

But the way I like to use Facebook is to have a nice private bubble of people I actually want to interact with.

Social bubbles CAN be bad but so long as it's an 'objective reality/truth permeable membrane' (as in so long as your bubble is insulating you from horrible people but not from objective reality/truth) then I think social bubbles can be good and even necessary - to keep one from constantly "drinking from the fire-hose"

So yeah, IF I could trust Meta, IF they'd honor the actual do not track and no ads, not boosted or sponsored content, and IF I could get an experience that isn't algorithmically directed toward outrage and "engagement" I'd gladly pay for it.

If it wasn't such a PITA, I'd probably look into using a VPN to come in via a European country and get a paid account under those rules - cuz you know they're not gonna offer it here in the US where we have absolute shite data protection laws

I think the solarpunk and cheap web folks are onto something

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpotato.cheap%2F

The "new administration" #47 has made it clear they will make protest illegal, so there you go.

I guess if you are tuned into the outrage then you haven't actually used your critical thinking skills in some time. It's all written plainly in the documents that are being introduced by our recently-installed dictatorship. People pretending any different have had their brains swapped for potatoes, or are in the streets protesting as a somewhat academic exercise (good for those people, to remember in future what freedom was like).

"""We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology"""

I'm thinking that this is not the flex they think it is, and that the EU dodged a bullet on this one

I downloaded the trial version, and it is indeed gorgeous. We have a funny (to us) video of our cat utterly engrossed in the fish swimming around the dual monitors.

But yes, my screens go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, so a screen saver is essentially worthless.

The screens, which displayed product information and ads, frequently crashed, showed incorrect inventory, and occasionally caught fire, Bloomberg reports.

... and occasionally caught fire

Hey this thing that is supposed to be cold.. why is it burning??

So, I've watched Linux get better and better over the years - it's been my preferred server OS for ages... but desktop distros never were anything more than an occasional "let me try this one out on this older box I have lying around"

I'm not in love with win 11 but if you use OpenShell and maybe StartAllBack or one of the other shell fixes - it can be tamed into usability... and for stuff I have to do on windows, it's fine..

but I have a couple of VERY serviceable but not able upgrade to 11 pcs that I'm going to have to either risk not getting updates or say screw it and install Linux...

I know that Chrome refuses to run on end of life OSes (pushing folks to FireFox) and if MS office refuses, Libre Office is really very good as an option (with Thunderbird for email) so yeah... I really wonder if they're banking on folks being that willing to just replace perfectly viable PCs

Its going to lead to so much unnecessary E-waste..

I wonder if there won't be a glut of decent spec slightly older machines suddenly showing up in thrift stores and other places

MS is really tripling down here..