"We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten."

And nobody sees this as wrong.

I hate this planet.

If you abuse SMART to pump out bullshit errors, that just makes people ignore SMART.

I remember when SMART was a new thing it was common for hard drives to incorrectly report potential failure messages, and "fancy" new PC BIOSes of the time would bitch and whine about it at each startup. The standard procedure was to test the drive out, make additional backups if needed, and if everything looked fine then just disable the damn thing to shut it up. Those drives never actually failed.

I have a tiny home file server with a couple of old WD 1TB drives. They have an absurd uptime, but spend almost all of their time spun down, and the entire things gets shut off when I know I won't be accessing it for a while.

Drives can last a long time when taken care of. Hell, I still have a Segate ST277R 65MB RLL hard drive that is working fine.

Soylent at least kept the site sane looking. Even worked well in Windows 95 web browsers.

So lets see, threshold drop downs when selected are black text on a black background, comments are all bunched up on the left side, text overflows over the bar at the bottom of the page. Don't even get me started with the social media buttons or advertising. "Follow Slashdot stories on Twatter" How much do you get paid for that?

And almost the entire front page is filled with bullshit stories about "AI".

It is a good thing nerdy tech news no longer even exists, or I'd be really sore about what has happened to this site.

What kind of idiot would want to RENT a word processor? That is just stupid!

Sigh, so many idiots in this world. And they are happy with advertisements too.

Long live Windows 95. I don't need any stinking remote account to log in to my local computer.

Wait, Imgur had nudity? Well shit.

I never get the memo.

Remember when Disney outsourced all of their IT to India and forced their US counterparts to train them before leaving?

So, are any of those outsourced Indian IT getting fired? Probably not.

Just say no to Microsoft accounts. There is no good reason to be logging in to your own personal computer using a remote third party service.

The way they are pushing their OneDrive service should be illegal. Windows 11 will tell you that you need to keep your computer "secure" by backing up all your data to Microsoft OneDrive.

Secure... by handing over all of your data to Microsoft?! You have to be really fucking dumb to believe that. Right, lots of dumb people out there.

Can you use a regular desktop computer with it instead? I'm guessing not.

Is there some reason that this "pod" can't operate independently? Besides turning it on, what else does it need to do? Perhaps set a delay, shut off time, or frequency? Or does it upload the entire experience in real time to Facebook?

But it is somehow OK because everyone loves their precious toy cell phones that much.

I don't own a smart phone, don't need one, and don't want one.

Tabs in applications are an admission that the taskbar's window management is horribly, horribly broken.

It's more of an advertising bar than a TASK bar these days.

Ohh, an inconvenience when "texting"?

Billions of teenage girls will be pissed!

Is there anyone on this planet who does not yet understand NFTs are complete and total bullshit?

When it was all brand new, sure, some people were going to throw money at it. But it has been around for a while now, so there is no excuse.

Apple is going to do VR? That means in another 10 years or so everyone on the planet will be expected to own, use, and love one or more regardless if they want or need one.

Does anybody actually think that any web site asking for a phone/cell phone number won't use this for nefarious purposes?

"Sign up for FREE weather/news alerts now! Just give us your toy mobile phone number! Spam awaaay!"

Wow. Requiring a cell phone to open doors? That's just stupid. Obviously consumertards love it.

So this is what they are teaching at schools these days - how to love toy cell phones?

Yeish.

I lost a vintage computing item in the mail last month. Bizarrely, USPS delivered the flimsy empty box that it was shipped in to me. Clearly at some point the box had gotten ripped open and the contents had fallen out. The shipping box had the shipping label, but the contents did not.

When I talked to the people at the post office, they didn't say anything about any way to try and retrieve the item. They just pointed me to the USPS site where I could request reimbursement.

That really ticks me off now, because it was an obscure early 1980s PC database product, and the chances of another ever showing up are slim to none.

So there may be a software box with 5.25" floppy disks in one of those bins.

A 16-bit ISA riser board I ordered on eBeh in November never made it to me at all too. At least those come up once and a while.

Also, one other item wound up mis-delivered in one of my neighbor's mail boxes. I was lucky to get that one.

I'm beginning to think that going forwards, December will simply be a month when one should refrain from ordering uncommon collectables - December belongs to the big retailers and replaceable items from now on.

Also - eBay sellers... THE POINT OF PACKAGING IS NOT TO MAKE IT LOOK "BROWN!" Use sturdy, well sealed packaging!