I hate the fact that none of the big names support CalDAV natively. DAVx5 is cool and all, but app developers really need to step up their shit and support CalDAV already. Not just Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar but CalDAV as well. It’s not like they need to rebuild their apps from scratch.

At this point you might just be better served using a web app instead of a native mobile app. Maybe K-9 Mail transformation into Thunderbird Mobile might bring some good news, but I’m not holding high hopes.

Maybe we should, under the EU’s DMA, force anyone that bundles a calendar/note app with their phone OS to support CalDAV as well as any proprietary protocol of their choice.

Excellent analysis. Especially this part:

It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.

Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.

I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.

Yeah that’s the thing. Users stick to reddit because they have ties with the individual communities, not so much the platform itself.

People used to use Facebook for similar reasons. “Because all my friends are there”. Not because Facebook was so great.

It can be difficult to leave communities behind that you feel a part of, even if you just lurk most of the time. The fact that reddit was turned into a corporate dystopic shitshow does bother users, but it hasn’t outweighed their needs to still be part of their respective communities.

But seeing as official reddit sources claim that “they’re still in the early stages of user monetization”, it might not be long before we see what’s left of the platform turn into the biggest dumpster fire the internet has ever seen.

Yeah, most western European languages actually.

Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian… Though most of these languages alternate between “taking a decision” and using a form of “to decide”.

German seems to be the exception. They just had to be different. Guess that’s that German precision for ya, they have to “hit their decisions” otherwise they won’t count.

I have no idea why they’re even remotely interested in Windows as a product anymore. Surely they can’t expect that much revenue from integrated AI services when most of the general public’s needs can be covered by web services that will severely outmatch Microsoft’s development speed (y’know because of juggling legacy code and all).

Considering the fact that they gain most of their revenue by far from their Azure cloud services and enterprise customers, it just seems like a stupid business decision to invest this much into all kinds of random features for their desktop OS aimed at consumers.

In proper systems architectecture theory, we generally try to avoid mixing up functionality this much because a modular design allows your system to evolve without too much pain. Why build all this crap into Windows when you can just opt-in by installing an application for it?

I really don’t get it…

Apple’s whole modern “it’s reliable and just works” cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.

Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you’re doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don’t need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.

And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).

The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple’s design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.

It’s strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.

I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn’t WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole “ew, green bubbles” drama just isn’t a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)

Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to “problems that are big enough to care about” is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I’m all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.

Right, like how they design connectors that when shorted will instantly fry your CPU.

Or the part where they design flex cables that are too short for you to bend your screen back all the way.

There is a long list of hardware fuck ups that are outright stupid choices that competent engineers would never make. The only reason these defects exist is because they cause people to buy new devices more frequently.

They know how to do fancy hardware, not how to do reliable and durable hardware.

It crazy how worked up non-customers get over this stuff. It’s not like rabid apple fans are grabbing their pitchforks.

See, here is where we disagree. The amount of revenue Apple generates, makes them an example for other companies, and you see them start making the same dumb choices.

I want this trend of tech enshittification to stop and the brain-dead Apple fans are to blame. Because they allow themselves to get milked for revenue, the whole consumer space has to deal with companies trying hard to nudge the boundaries with every new product. All aimed at extracting just a little more money than they did before.

So no, in addition to not buying their shit devices and services, it actually helps to make others stop buying their shit as well. I am done allowing people to take the easy way out and to stay ignorant about the consequences of their choices. If you praise Apple to me, you’re going to get an earful.

I don’t think anyone here is against this per se. It’s just that this store was probably intended for other purposes than providing an infinite supply of digital waifus that will actually respond.

I’m all for degeneracy, everyone has a right to get naughty, just like everyone has a right to friendship, love and happiness. Which is why it is a good thing these exist. I just don’t think they intended for them to be here, and in such large numbers.

Exactly what I was thinking. The whole AI hype has been cringe so far and this just confirms it. Seems that the ratio between legitimate use cases and fucking around is kinda skewed towards the meme side of things.

Or it might just signify our population has a HUGE lonelyness problem (for a myriad of reasons).

Not just Wayland.

Every experience I’ve had so far with running anything Linux on Nvidia hardware has been unpredictable to say the least. Not just personal experience but those around me as well. Somehow it always comes down to driver compatibility issues, and there is a reason Torvalds used such strong words when describing the developer experience in dealing with Nvidia.

And these problems will likely persist until they decide to fully publish the source for their drivers.

If anything, torrents have a region boost. Provided no one has servers or seedboxes set up, you’re going to benefit hugely from seeders near your location.

Yikes, imagine not using a password manager on that. That’s some next-level numpad skills.

Of course they do, people also prefer being told lies that put a positive spin on things over being told the truth. That’s human nature.

Regular companies have an obligation to deposit their annual accounts with the chamber of commerce, but social enterprises tend to go above and beyond because their focus is not on economic gain, but on socio-economic gain.

There is no legal obligation to do anything special when you call yourself a social enterprise, that I know of. But using the description for bragging rights does put your company under increased scrutiny from the community and from researchers.

All kinds of modeling methods have been invented to make social-economic impact part of the businessmodel. Some of those methods are even similar to Alex Osterwalder’s widely used Business Model Canvas.

Some social enterpreneurs also make use of specific constructions using certain legal forms to prevent shareholders from steering the company away from its original goal. For example: some will opt to make a “stichting” (foundation) the majority shareholder of the main company. The stichting having auditing and course correction as their main purpose.

If you would like to know more about social enterprises, the dutch chamber of commerce has published a great article (in english) on the subject.

Fairphone is a social enterprise, and most Dutch companies presenting themselves as such are actually held to certain standards.

I haven’t confirmed this myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually publish all of their expenses so you can do the math yourself.

They have published a full breakdown for an earlier model: Over here

Exactly, on the one hand this might pull some users away from Google, which deserves to be knocked on their ass for once. But if this is how it’s going to be done, you might just be trading one abusive partner for the next.

I say we let Microsoft pound on Google for a while and then we regluate the both of them into the ground!

You might want to consider setting up a VPN tunnel to your own network. Main benefit is that you can access your home network as if you were connected to it locally. Which makes switching between mobile data and WiFi a non-issue.

This requires some sort of VPN server and usually a single port-forwarding rule for the protocol which your VPN software of choice uses. For the simplest default configuration of OpenVPN this means setting UDP port 1194 to point to your OpenVPN server.

Generally, keeping things simple, there’s two types of VPN you can set up:

• split tunnel VPN, which gives you access to your home network but accesses the internet directly.
• full tunnel VPN, which sends all of your traffic through your home router.

It is a little more complicated than that, and there’s more nuance to it, such as wether to user your own DNS server or not, but all that is best left to some further reading.

I’ve setup an OpenVPN server myself, wich is open source and completely free to mess around with. (Save for maybe some costs for registring your own domain or DDNS serviced. Those are all optional though, and mainly provide convienience and continuity benefits. You can definitely just setup a VPN server and connect with your external IP adress)

There is a reason for it: The manufacturing industry is really conservative when it comes to software. Solidworks has been the industry standard for a long time and that prompts adoption the same way Adobe products have been the standard for the visual creative industry.

Solidworks is whitout a doubt the most powerful suite of CAD tools available if money is of no concern. With licenses for the full suite totaling near $100k. They were also the first to seamlessly integrate injection moulding simulation simulation workflows for designing plastic parts.

All of this is hardly relevant for the hobbyist or maker comunities, but it does explain why so many people in the industry tend to touch Solidworks at some point in time.