Pfft. I'm in my 40s with an established engineering career and a small home that I've owned for 18 years now.
I am also not paying for any streaming services I can avoid, not buying many games, sailing the high seas, and our cars are like 13/14 years old.
Because shit is crazy, especially being in the US. I am keeping my world small and focusing on my family and my community.
Alarming, but not surprising.
The setup that works for me is LibreWolf as primary browser and Firefox ESR if a site doesn't work.
I don't do web development or anything, but I haven't run into anything that hasn't worked recently. Librewolf works for almost everything, but if some stupid login page doesn't like some privacy thing that librewolf is doing, I'll try one more time with some more loose permissions, then it's over to normal firefox.
Oh it was a long time ago, but not so long ago that it's suspicious.
I'm imagining Microsoft taking it all the way and when you buy a Win13 license key, it basically installs a custom theme in KDE Plasma or maybe Cinnamon.
It might be worse for their profits long term than sticking with their locked down bullshit, but it's kind of funny to think that they would first make billions of dollars of sales on their linux distro.
AI will replace workers. AI will replace people who make art and music, and write things.
This part made me think how I've commented recently that AI does the thing it was designed to do, but that the thing it was designed to do is generate something you could believe somebody wrote on the internet.
That doesn't mean the answer is correct, of course. It's often confidently wrong, just like real people online!
But when it comes to artistic expression, there is no clear right or wrong. Music, art, and the written word are some of the most human things we have, but you are absolutely right that they will be replaced. If a marketing director can pay Google a few dollars to generate a hundred concept drawings so they can do "I'll know it when I see it" design, that's a human artist job they won't budget for.
Yep. My disdain for the combination of fascist government where everything is surveillance, and sociopathic corporations and billionaires where everything is a cynical cash grab, overcame me excitement for tech "products" a long time ago. I'm in the US so it's especially bad.
I still have a smart phone that's 4-5 years old, and I do of course use it every day, but I consciously avoid using it every hour. I love when I misplace it in my own house, to then not look for it for hours. The only person who is going to message me anything urgent is my wife and she knows where to find me.
Constant phone addiction is one of those situations where when you remove yourself from it you can more easily see it in others. It's like there's a new form of body language where when you see that slight forward tilt of the head you know they are in the Phone Zone without even seeing the rest of their body.
That's the neat part when you blur the lines between the government and the private sector. So-called leaders who are interested in power, control, and "winning" more than upholding their oaths of office can just use the private sector to do the things the government is restricted from doing. Then when their businesses can't compete on their own, they can lean on the legal + force options the government has.
I'm starting to think this habit we have of electing selfish sociopathic bad-faith actors to powerful positions of service is less than optimal.
One hand yeah. I fortunately run Linux at work and most of Microsoft's fuckups are just fun Lemmy threads for me.
But the company is a Dell + M365 corporation like the last few places I've worked, so I DO get the privilege of using Teams and Outlook in a browser. Good lord has it been slow lately, but good on them at least for the functionality being there.
It seems like a pretty common thing for people to expect that the luxuries of modern technology include not having to do anything you don't want to, including being present for your own life.
People make self-destructive choices every day. (insert "always have been" 🌏🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀)
Now there's a term I have to find a way to use at work tomorrow!
Why don't presidents fight the war?
Better use the self-checkout while you still can!
https://www.gs1us.org/industries-and-insights/by-topic/sunrise-2027