Right in line with the “Life Until Birth” mantra of the GQP assholes.

LG pulls some of this BS too. When I tried it a few years ago, the LG app required always-on precise location permission to function at all. The smart features on my washer and refrigerator also require them to always be connected to the Internet but those features were more limited that what Jeff describes. I was willing to allow the appliances Internet access from an isolated subnet, but there is no way I’m going to allow LG access to all of my phone’s location data just so I can run their crappy, barely functional app.

In Mexico Bosch is even more customer hostile. My Bosch water heater had to be replaced because Bosch discontinued the repair parts needed to fix it. It’s only 3 years old.

Same here. I got to a point I wanted to use the OS rather than play with and fix it. Went back to Mint and stayed there.

I am currently using an recent version of Ubuntu live USB for backups and a “serious” error window pops up every time I boot it. Same experience with Ubuntu installations. For me at least, Ubuntu isn’t anything close to stable.

Have had espresso machines for years and can confirm it can be very difficult to find shops that do repairs and have replacement parts. Good luck with the startup.

Is anyone else just done with CAPTCHAS? I refuse to deal with them at all anymore unless I absolutely need to get to the content they’re blocking.

Maybe the ultimate test for a human is when the page is abandoned when a CAPTCHA pops up.

Icons cannot be removed from the launcher screen, they can only be combined into folder. The folders cannot be hidden or removed. Preinstalled programs cannot be uninstalled or disabled. Nothing works until the tablet is registered with Amazon. There is no app drawer. It’s possible to install another launcher, but it’s not possible to use it because Amazon has hardwired the home button to their launcher. (There used to be ways around that but Amazon has systematically disabled each of them.) Their Silk browser is terrible. Most every Amazon app provided is terrible.

I get that it’s cheap and there will be significant compromises, but at least some of Amazon’s apps should be somewhat comparable to non-Amazon apps.

I’ve gotten around some of this by loading the Play store and F-Droid, and blocking Amazon’s servers but it’s clear that Amazon’s tablets are not only cheap but they’re really low effort products built for Amazon rather than the purchaser.

I understood the reference, but my grandmother (and others I’ve known who’ve said it) didn’t give a crap about either the bible or ancient Rome.

I’d bet those benefits also come with a little hit of serotonin making hand washing slightly addictive.

Perhaps at some point, but my grandmother used to say it when she was fed up with something and I can guarantee she wasn’t referencing anything to do with ancient Rome.

We need some studies about the benefits of hand washing while wearing rubber gloves. As easy as it is to fool ourselves I’d bet that those benefits still exist to some degree.

I think it’s exactly the opposite and there’s lots of information and multple interviews that strongly suggest that. IMO Musk is full-on Nazi scum and lives in a nearly impermeable bubble, so much so that he thinks he has toned it down to what will pass in society. It seems he read the room wrong either way.

“I’m going to wash my hands of it.” is something we’ve all probably heard at some point. I wondered if there was anything behind the saying. Turns out there is.

I installed Plex a couple years ago and when I found I actually had to sign into their servers to access my own content it was immediately uninstalled. It was only a matter of time before they pulled this kind of shit.

In maga’s eyes, Trump has made just about all their own criminal and amoral activity acceptable. They think it is now perfectly fine to be a felon, rapist and pedophile, to steal from charities and small businesses, and to use taxpayer’s money to line their own pockets. Trump has become their gold standard.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, but just like everything with the GOP it’s projection. Holding an evil, vile human being such as Trump up as something to aspire to, and expecting others to treat him and others like him as decent, honorable human beings is indeed deranged.

Anyone arguing that Musk didn’t know exactly what he was doing is just another Nazi pissing in the wind and they all deserve every bit of blow back they get, pun intended.

The only thing Musk didn’t understand is that he was branding himself and everything he touches as nothing more than Nazi scum for the rest of his miserable life.

I recently bought a cheap refurbished 10" Amazon Fire specifically for web browsing. The author is spot on when he says it’s “obnoxious to the point of hostility.”

Amazon places a huge “Register now” nag across the launcher that can’t be removed without registering, and even the calculator won’t work until you do. Wigets aren’t supported by Amazon’s launcher and it is impossible to load an alternative. There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.

It was only $35, but it’s not worth even that much. Amazon has truly made enshittification an art form.

Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.

Right now it’s possible to block Roku’s static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it’s only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I’m already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.

It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.

After trying out dozens of distros for years I didn’t want to deal with stability issues and troubleshoot odd problems anymore. I reinstalled Mint years almost 10 ago. Mint has gotten significantly better and more stable with each release since.

Now I only use 3 distros on a regular basis. Mint as a desktop OS, Raspberry Pi OS, and Debian (with Cinnamon) for a server running software that requires Debian for support. Debian was far more difficult to configure than Mint even on the new Dell laptop being used as a server.

I still try out other distros occasionally in VMs and using Live USBs, but still haven’t found anything that works as well on my hardware and for my needs as Mint.

Coming up: It would be better if ‘Everybody got Polio’.

Next week Trump will be at the White House promoting the new Telsa Iron Lung.