I dislike the fact even more then the idea.

Called a bank recently.

They: "please say in a word the subject your call is about so we can immediately connect you to the right department "

Me: “LOAN”

They: you said “limits on your cards”, 1 for yes 2 for no

I tried 3 times, gave up. They won, I guess.

Been using searx a bit recently and it often is the 1 thing I’m looking for as the top result.

After some decades they just become so incredibly gross no one without a hazmat suit would try cleaning it again, so they’re replaced.

That’s already the case. Facebook etc have been walled gardens (or prisons if you prefer) for decade and a half now.

So… just making sure I am understanding this properly: centralized service monopoly by one government backed provider…? Doesn’t that got quite a communist ring to it?

I don’t think you’re very sincere, but I’ll try to explain how this is not communism and how this works in many countries.

People still have to pay for using the service. Depending on how often they ride, how far they go, etc. A fair, yet subsidised price. What the government does is create a “scenario”, a map if you like, with dots and lines and wishes and logical connections on which likely many people travel often. They identify which cities, which services, etc they want connected, and basically write out a TENDER to which many PRIVATE COMPANIES can participate. Sometimes, it’s a 1 take it or leave it big package deal. Sometimes, it’s split into a “main network” which will be run by a state controlled company, and local and regional networks, for which tenders are created and for which different companies can participate. They usually “win” a tender for quite many years at once, because it costs a lot of effort and money to get services started. It is quite far away from communism. But is does force a private company to not only exploit the few very most profitable connections, and ignoring all the others. Which is exactly what Uber is aiming for: only the profitable lines, 0 others. In a point of view from a society as a whole standpoint: it is still valuable to have more people use the bus instead of their own car, for many reasons, even on lines that are not profitable but require subsidies, for example also because it is still a lot more economical. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper for 20% of people using the bus, than to build yet even more highways and lanes and force people to buy their own vehicles. On top of that, it is the governments’ job to deliver basic services to all people. That is what we pay taxes for. What good is a hospital, a library, a school, if the people who very much need it, for example people too impaired to drive a vehicle and too poor to pay uber, can’t reach these services? Busses make sense, subsidised busses often make sense (not always, some places overdo it running empty busses too often), Uber is for sure not in it for providing a service to society, they are in it for destroying the service system for all and only taking the profit from some and fuck other people.

Uber will only cherry pick profitable routes for profitable customers, stealing them from public transport which will become more expensive as a result. Public transport is a public service available to everyone for a fair price. Uber is not public transport. Uber starting busservice somehow signals they want to move into that space, but they will never be servicing the poorest towns. Parts of PT being privatised by uber probably is bad news for bus passengers on less popular routes.

rustbelting makes voters transition from democrat to republican. you could argue that they actually benefit from declining industry, so of course they’re going for it

You don’t have a tax for owning “abandoned” housing (inhabited by noone)? There should be.

google controls the portals through which many people search. Defaults will always be google when people are using android and or chrome. Yahoo, infoseek or altavista never had anywhere near a grip on people like google does today. It takes effort to change now, while in the olden days you just had to change your 1 start page on the browser, things are a lot more embedded and thus customers locked in. Thinking it will switch over to a better alternative like it did back then, purely because it is a lot better, is a bit naive I think, unfortunately.

chatGPT and in apps integrated AI search is stealing it.

I have to work with power automate often (doing that gives me money, don’t judge). They recently did a make-over of the interface where you can make and adjust the flows. They made it even shittier. Didn’t fix any of the obvious super annoying issues with connections and references and them randomly being broken and stuff. Added copilot tho. Why? Now you can type “i’ld like it to send an e-mail!” instead of selecting the “send an e-mail” action, while taking up a fifth of the screen. Jesus fucking christ wrong priorities.

it could all begin with a dualboot…

Jesus christ no. They’re bombarding adds on sidewalks AND putting some extra PFAS shit in the environment? Is this even legal?

Maybe try jamming something in too so it stays forever pressed and muted

Imagine a world where talented engineers would put their minds to work for solving big problems instead of … I’m not sure wtf this is.

The only thing in my 6 year old washing machine that has been broken was the circuit board. Part mainly needed to cycle trough the menu because they put that instead of analog buttons. Meanwhile, I know people with certain German brand machines that are 30 years old and running perfectly for the entire 30 years, and if something would break it would 9 out of 10 be super obvious and mechanically easy to fix.

Sometimes smarter is definitely not better.

And the less “smart” function off just automatically popping open the door when done prevents it too…

It would be neat if it would then hang it to dry and when dry fold it and put it in the closet. It doesn’t so it isn’t. Its is just an old school jingle alert with extra (datatracking, most likely) steps.

It’s a big fat fucking truck or luxury suv with a battery. A normal sized electric car is a thing too, you know. Electrics will always need to be heavier than ice of same size and model, but that doesn’t mean it needs to weigh 3000kg. Car are growing heavier and bigger not just because of electrification, but because of growing fragile egos and growing fears in a vehicle arms race.

That it’s a arms race doesn’t make it better for society as a whole. It sucks.