sijt

and now Google of all companies wants to lock down the whole internet?

Of all the companies, Google always seemed the most likely, both to want to and to be successful. They’ve tried before, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in larger more obvious ways (AMP, the implementation of content filtering in Chrome etc.).

They’re the world’s largest advertising and data harvesting company. It’s their business. Of course they want to lock the internet down to serve their goals of learning as much about you as possible and using that data to shove ads in your face.

Whenever using any Google/Alphabet product you have to ask yourself, “am I ok with this thing I’m about to use being built by the world’s largest advertising company?”. The answer should be “no” more than it is “yes”, particularly for things that have access to lots of your data, like web browsers, phones, home speakers etc.

I feel like the bit that gets missed in these conversations is how terrible Waze has become in the last few years. The UI has always been awful, but it’s started just straight up not working any more. Each release seems to introduce new bugs.

I can’t remember the last time I had an “oh shit, it saved me 20 minutes” moment with it. More often than not it seems like it’s just using me as an experiment to try out increasingly insane new routes for no benefit (I know it has to send a certain portion of its users on crazy routes to try them out, but it seems like it’s always me).

The only reason is to get reports of speed cameras, but Apple Maps has started doing that now and seems to be a bit less insane when it comes to routing.

Interesting. I do that for my home address (the entrance to the underground carpark is on a different street to the actual address), with a saved “Home Carpark” location and it always navigates me there when I choose to navigate Home in CarPlay.

I don’t think I could predict the actions of a constituency that repeatedly, over several years and multiple elections, voted for Boris Johnson. Uxbridge has to be a toss up.

I think they might mean bricked up, as in the windows have been bricked over?

Or maybe they’re associated with buildings built during a certain period that are now mostly empty due to a boom and bust cycle?

Evans has been impressive. Not the hardest test in the world but he’s looked commanding and composed so far.

That’s what’s great about all these companies. They take credit for, and try to derive value from, things they didn’t actually create. Reddit keeps on talking about “their” data that was created by users, for free, and moderated by other users, also for free. Yet it’s somehow theirs and they can sell it?

Twitter didn’t invent hashtags. They were user created annd eventually incorporated in to the service.

These services add very little value, but they believe they add it all.

Meanwhile Porsche are developing an even tighter integration allowing you to control parts of the car through the CarPlay interface.

I'm not surprised in the slightest, but I've seen lots of posts saying how diverse it is over there, and how vibrant, and that it's more like old Twitter.

And yeah, it's brands posting stale memes and old Twitter personalities fighting for their lives, so I guess it is like old Twitter.

It’s so bad over there. Might be the worst case of quantity over quality. It’s just stuffed full of brands trying to make themselves relevant and influencers posting engagement bait. I’m not even exaggerating, 100% of my feed is that.

There’s nothing of worth there other than sheer volume.

I think there's a more fundamental issue than that. Many many Tory voters are of the opinion that life shouldn't improve. They want to "conserve".

I've spoken to Tory voters about exactly this and their opinion is that they had to work 5 days a week so everyone else should have to. Even if it's overall worse for all involved. The same rule can be applied to anything. If they had to suffer, everyone else should also have to suffer. Tories are selfish, and regressive.

I particularly enjoy the "if you need immediate assistance" note for a telephone line that's open even fewer hours than the website. it's positioned as an alternative to the site, but absolutely isn't. Also, if that message is only displayed when the site is closed, there are no hours when the phone line is open but the site is closed, so who's it helping? You couldwrite it down and call it when it's open, but the site is also going to be open then, several hours earlier in fact, so is less "immediate" than the site that's closed.