I’m with you on the high seas ever since Star Trek bounced around from place to place. When you’re thinking “uhhh which do I watch this particular spinoff on, is it Netflix or Amazon Prime or…” it’s already too much like hard work. Then they decided to make the latest exclusive to Paramount, yet another subscription. Eh, nah, at that point it’s time to make like Tascha and Yarr it.

However in part I think the comparison to cable (or would’ve been Sky here) is psychological. With those big services you’re still effectively paying to watch a few shows a bunch of different “streaming services” (channels/networks in that case) but as it’s all bundled up into, say, £60/month, you don’t think about it. Or, the average person doesn’t - personally I’ve never justified that much to watch TV. Now that it’s split out into different payments, £10 here for service A, £10 there for service B, the waste of paying so much to so many different services just to watch a few shows becomes more apparent.

Not really equivalent. Smoking permanently leaves all kind of nasty shit in your lungs and causes cancer. Also very addictive, making moderation physically difficult (alcohol can also be addictive but not to the same extremes). Alcohol in moderation isn’t really an issue. Pushing it more can give your liver a bad time, but as long as you give it a break before the point of disease it can bounce right back.

There is a societal problem especially in the UK in that it’s seen as a sort of matter of pride to throw moderation out of the window and get as wasted as possible, but I have my doubts that graphic health warnings will do much about that. Either way it’s more an effect of society ignoring and sometimes even shaming moderation (how many times have you been shamed for going home before you fall over on a work’s night out) than the alcohol itself.

I keep trying to be charitable and think of it in an “incompetence rather than malice” way, but Linus lying, twisting and tripling down isn’t making it easy.

There’s a lot of [citation needed] here, as for touchscreen I can see Apple’s point also, I’ve never had any desire at all to sit there with my arm outstretched poking a PC display (and covering it in fingerprints too). I’ve played with touchscreen laptops and it feels just as arm-tiring and unnatural as they said.

I can see an eventual future when the cores, RAM and storage are all on one IC or something which would also be great for performance (I just bought a desktop processor that does some clever stacking of extra L3 cache on top of the cores). As others said though we’re not quite there yet.

Ever since Steve Jobs (I think perhaps as a way of coping with illness making him thinner himself) Apple has done this thing of telling consumers that they want thinner, thinner, thinner at all costs (and other manufacturers following Apple because of course they do) but I’ve seen no real evidence of consumers actually wanting this. I for one (and I know I’m far from the only one) don’t actually mind a bit more thickness if it means a bigger battery, using an M.2 slot (oh no a few mm difference) etc.

Agreed, a lot of people get into sustainability and rush out to buy sustainable stuff. Even with something like a plastic bag, it’s better to use it for as long as you reasonably can than to throw it away and rush out to buy an organic cotton one.

I don’t any more because of this kind of thing but I can understand. A few points at the top of my head

• Great desktop OS (note how Windows and Linux still to this day have inconsistencies on high DPI displays, to name just one example!

• Integration between them is good

• Security and privacy practices are great

• The phones are very consistent with camera quality and battery life

It’s so annoying. I want to love Apple, heck I’ve been there and HAD Apple everything. They have a great *nix OS, well polished ecosystem, very good security and privacy practices… but hostility towards repair, along with planned obsolescence, ended up turning me off. One aspect is sustainability. Repair is more sustainable than recycle. They have good recycling credentials but that should be last resort.

Knew before clicking it’d be crypto crap

My point about still being able to charge stands. I’ve seen OSS do it - if you want it quick and convenient you pay e.g. through Google Play store or official website. Yes cheapskates will compile it themselves or fork it or grab a free version from F-droid etc but they were probably going to pirate it if it was closed software anyway.

You do know that it’s possible to charge for, pay for and financially support open source software, right? There are even things like Patreon as well.

Let’s be honest though, when everyone is shifting to the fediverse to avoid corporate shit, they’re more likely to gravitate to other things that are free and open and be less interested in something closed and for-profit

Connect seems good enough to me

Wow it’s ALMOST got a slice of the operating system pi!

This (within reason and legality obviously)

It’s a case by case thing. Admittedly I’m defending myself here as I’m 41 dating 25 and I will never assume to be a good person or doing the right thing but am at least trying. Basically minding and respecting the gap but allowing the fact we fell in love to go ahead and happen.

• Both guys (idk, I heard age gaps are more common with gays anyway?)
• He was the one to approach me and ask me out, I’d thought about it but was reluctant to, turned out he got there first
• I check regularly that he’s happy and remind him of where the difference will be in 9 years for example
• It’s an open relationship, largely for his benefit and freedom (of course I get some fun too) and heck we’re not actually all that sexual between ourselves
• I’m not in any rush to pin him down, and often say he’s free to do what he wants, enjoy the 20s fully and decide for himself if he wants a future with me or not. If one day he finds someone closer in terms of age or distance and wants to let me go, of course I’ll be heartbroken but love and want the best for him so would respect the decision - hopefully ultimately remaining friends and lives made richer than when we started.
• To be honest, whilst I know it’s not a good thing, I’m a late bloomer, so in various ways kind of like the same age but sadly in an older body

I’m not gonna be like “oh I’m a good person so it’s fine”, I don’t know that. I might be an asshole. I can only try, based on things like the above, hopefully without being labelled something nasty.

(Who am I defending against anyway? Probably my own conscience.)

41 dating 25, we’re both happy but guess I should hand myself in somewhere ;~;

But yeah definitely looking younger than 36 based on these standards 😅

I literally saw it everywhere on Mastodon, like, I honestly never saw anyone say it directly, just “birdsite” or a censored version. So I adapted to be polite. And sometimes forget which form of fediverse I’m posting on.

I may be misremembering but seem to recall them being early to Tw*tter too. Good sign

Yes and bearing in mind that at this point justice is probably considered a “woke” concept and he’ll get cheered on.

Yeah that’s the worry I was alluding to in my second paragraph and I don’t know what the answer is. Probably that it’s a fundamental problem with capitalism.