The buyer of chrome could make bing the default search engine and re-enable whatever broke Ublock origin (the ad blocker)

They could also cripple gapps and gmail a bit. It would also be harder for google to unilaterally develop new web standards.

That would no doubt consternate a few at Google and knee cap them forcing web shit down our throats that only improves their ad business.

Me too but here’s one useful function:

Perhaps you are aware there is an ongoing event, say for example a football game, or an election, or an outage of your email service provider. You go to one of these “scream into the void” social sites, search on the topic, and learn what people are saying about it. Maybe someone knows what’s really going on, maybe some of those people have some interesting insights and you engage with them, not unlike you and I are engaging right now. Others can observe, perhaps contribute, and after the event has concluded, everyone goes their own way. Hopefully in the end the interactions are beneficial for all.

Global trade drove the cost of supplies and goods down to the lowest available prices, so while setting tariffs may encourage local production because it makes overseas less attractive, the price of goods still goes up on both scenarios.

If moved locally, there will be more local labor required for production but it’s not clear if that is a net benefit.

Hypothetically under globalism more developed countries shed their “dirty manufacturing labor jobs” and move more people upmarket. Of course this is matter of nonstop debate among economists because as we all know the whole population of a country can’t move upmarket together and a lot of people were/are screwed because of lack of education and opportunity to develop themselves.

In an ideal implemention of this, more people would be moving to the arts, self expression, and technology, while fewer are involved in survival activities like shelter and food.

I think the unsolved problem now is that average people believe way too much of that wealth went to the top while the middle class is working harder than ever and getting less.

And if you work for a company that supports causes you don’t agree with… Move on.

I could lend out my old computer with old games installed to somebody else to use, right?

What if instead i lend my hard drive, is it still the same thing? Or what if I lend out my remote access screen sharing password to my old PC. Still the same?

Maybe the legal workaround is to game the system here a bit - forget downloading executables which feels a lot like pirating and just lend access to a system that is legally running the original license.

You are correct. Later drives sometimes had a cable select dip switch/pin or different ports on the motherboard.

Naturally

Before shrugging and moving on - ask yourself if you support any smaller private media companies in any way at all - enabling them to bring you news with less bias, less agenda, and more fact checking.

It could be by viewing their ads with your ad blocker off, paying a subscription, or donating.

If you are unwilling to support any such media company in any way, I don’t think a complaint that media is all consolidated and doesn’t have your interests at heart is particularly compelling.

I sure hope there is some mechanism to compensate content creators because without traffic, there will be no new articles.

Meh, your phone probably is. Also likely whatever else you use for connecting to the internet in the west too.a that irony isn’t lost on the local but we’ll educated in china, they just use a VPN. Those who aren’t educated, well, they just don’t know what’s out there.

There is a Russian captcha solver bot called xevil that costs under $100 (I think, last time I looked) that has been able to solve nearly all captchas for years. You just have to supply it with relatively expensive proxy IP addresses because Google rate limits solve attempts.

So the title of this article has been true for a long long time. Capatchas are absolutely useless except against poor or uninformed script kiddies.

Really? I think a pretty healthy portion of the land above the 30th parallel until the Arctic circle looks something like this

Huh, you’re right. I didn’t know about that. From Wikipedia:

The Chinese startup claims to have the miniature device in the pilot testing stage. Unveiled in January 2024, it is allegedly generating 100 microwatts of power and a voltage of 3V and has a lifetime of 50 years without any need for charging or maintenance.

Wonder if it microwaves your balls when it’s in your pocket too.

Either way we can dream of a future where we never have to plug in to charge again.

Soon as we can figure out micro nuclear reactors it may actually work that way!

I for one would be fine going back to the ini files of win 3.1

Yeah, if they are healthy companies they could snag some market share from one of Google’s products.

Easier to kill them early.

Whack-a-mole. Once banned, a scammer will just sign up with someone else’s ID.

I mean, that’s kinda what they are pros at already, right?

This poster asked some questions in good faith, I don’t understand the downvotes when there’s a legitimate contribution to the conversation because that stifles other contributions.

There was that moment it time when he was the underdog doing cool stuff. It seemed like he couldn’t screw up, because his companies were hitting the ball out of the park one after the other.

Then the pedo guy debacle taught us who he really is.

An exceptionally well trained AI customer service has the potential to be amazing.

I only call or try to chat/email with customer service if something has gone way wrong - like outside the typical customer service capability of assistance.

If an AI can realize that my problem is human worthy and escalate it faster, that would save me time in the chat queue talking with someone who barely knows my native language.

Alas, AIs will be poorly trained, so the bad-english CS reps will still be right behind the AI interface waiting for me.