Apps were still kinda new at the time and social media was shit hot. iPhones were still premium products and most people didn’t have one.

I think a lot of people don’t realise that when the iPhone first came out it didn’t have apps. They eventually released an upgrade so that you could pin webpages to the homepage. I remember Apple arguing that web stuff was so good now you didn’t need apps.

From what I recall around that time the Kin never really generated that much interest. It wasn’t being aimed as a product to replace the iPhone and was targeted at the kind of people who nowadays would sit on their phone and scroll TikTok. There was a lot of change in those days; social media was still pretty new, useful internet in your phone was pretty new (it’d been around for years but it wasn’t so expensive to this point nobody had used it, iPhone made constant internet connections a thing) touch screens were still new and sexy, and more I forget about. The idea that your phone was this little mobile computer that you carried around wasn’t really there yet and they were still mostly for communicating.

Reject cookies.

I always get my kid a gift my wife will hate. She’s still genuinely annoyed about the fart gun I got last year.

That and getting drunk.

Are you just looking for file backup? I haven’t used it but most people just seem to be switching to NextCloud.

I sort the reviews by recent on the assumption that when these companies pay for fake reviews they sort of come all at once and the recent reviews will be humans who’re actually reviewing it since then.

Like everyone else has said, put some cameras out to confirm it’s a human (it’s probably not). If it is a human you may recognise them, and if it’s a cat or something there’s probably some kind of deterrent you can buy.

Bear in mind local laws. Where I live filming people on the public street is a grey area legally, using a hidden camera to do it would probably be considered illegal. Not saying don’t do it, just don’t try and submit it to the police. If it’s a person tell the police you saw them doing it from the window or whatever.

Don’t know. No problems for me (UK).

I don’t really understand all the hate for 11. I use it at work and it’s fine. I prefer 10 and 7 but 11 doesn’t rile me up or anything (except the forced online account thing).

I think my kid’s going to have a robot servant and go to a different planet. I’m well jealous.

People have being saying stuff like this for hundreds of years. We’re still in a massive state of transition following the creation of the internet and every culture in the world just crashing into each other online.

There’s so many ways the world is a better place than it used to be. My kid watches a TV show about a little girl who has two Dads, a few decades ago that would’ve been basically illegal. Everyone’s way more understanding of mental health issues rather than just telling people to “man up”. There’s other things but I can’t be bothered making a wall of text.

What a load of bullshit. Maybe I misread it but it says that German companies would be 101% more productive if they bought newer laptops and phones (American ones no doubt). They also claim that businesses are trying to use old hardware for modern workloads. Apparently a six year old laptop can’t handle Outlook and Word.

Exactly. If the right wingers started posting pictures of the families of left wingers we’d be calling them out for it.

I’m all for posting pictures of him but don’t post his family.

UK here, I expect we’re similar to the US except with mince pies and mulled wine, which I understand aren’t really a thing over there. We won’t out our decorations up until December, maybe a week in or so. Shops put them up around mid November once bonfire night is over.

I used to live in Morocco. There wouldn’t be much of it except in the richer areas where they expected Westerners. You might see some stuff up in shops. It was just a normal day to them but it was weird for my first one as we spent Christmas Day in the outdoor swimming pool. One thing I remember that was strange was that they didn’t really understand the timing of it. To me, Christmas Day is like the last day of Christmas, and the rest of Christmas is the build up to it. They saw Christmas Day as the first day of Christmas and I remember a shopping centre advertising all the Christmas events they had starting on Christmas Day, like they thought westerners would be out and about. I guessed it was because they compared it to Aid (Eid in other Arabic countries), when they slaughter a sheep on the first day then spend the rest of the holiday eating it. They also sort of treated a Christmas tree as a New Years tree, and you would see trees and decorations up in March and April still.

I have a Samsung smart TV and apart from suggesting I watch stuff on their own Samsung channel thing I don’t think it shows me any adverts. Maybe it’s because I’m not in the US?

ChatGPT says it’s just a guy who’s full of himself. I’m inclined to believe it’s correct on this.

I don’t get all this work from home shit. I much prefer being in the office.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic but no that’s not ironic.

Sounds kinda like MS could tell the account wasn’t being used anymore and decided to kill it off rather than leave it to get hacked again. Still, it’s scary to think that MA might delete my account and I’d lose all my online backups. My daily photos are backed up on there.

Personally I think AI generated content could be great when it’s used to create content that otherwise wouldn’t be present. Like when you have a game where all the buildings are just static models with all the doors closed and the curtains shut, imagine resolving all that with buildings you could go in. Basically I want Cyberpunk where all the lights and movement actually mean something.