That is across all versions...

Even if some Fords have is as an option since 2007 (at least) it can very well be the case that they don't have it in these much fancier somehow-self-driving systems. Cost saving, of course.

Teslas don't have it anymore in the cheaper models. No ultrasonic parking sensors too. They're doing everything with cameras, not that many too! Sure, there are blind spots but they say they can compensate by just keeping track of everything as the car moves. Bad luck for anything that doesn't keep a fixed position like dogs and kids.

This is how Tor works and it has its users and uses.

Not sure if you meant it ironically but you can buy Office by itself. Not sure what the bundling is, I mean sure if you subscribe (starting for free?) to the online version (if you need for example the web version) there would be some space for you, like there is for Google Docs, but a web based document editing thing doesn't really make sense without some cloud storage. I guess one could always want to use Microsoft's online Word or Google's Docs to edit directly documents from Dropbox or Mega, but I doubt this can be much enforced by anything except the market.

Speaking of Microsoft what was apparent after the last bricking bug https://arstechnica.com/gadget... for Android was how bad we have it with these "walled gardens", and in this case it was with the "open" Android. Specifically:
- you can't backup your device because you are denied access to mostly everything, from OS data to app data (note that it isn't even "to sell cloud storage" because the online backup is equally bad, as in not storing app data)
- you can't boot something else, all the discussions we ever had about Secure Boot and Windows starting since at least Windows 8 are nothing, you can still boot anything on any PC, and you can even do it in a "Secure Boot" fashion if you prepare well
- even if you could boot something else you can't get the keys to your own encrypted storage

We're talking about access, Secure Boot authentication and data encryption available to you, as the owner, authenticated in any way possible, before anything bad happens, of course, not that a thief can't get the encryption keys or the evil maid can't boot something, that of course is by design. All points were particularly relevant as the mentioned bug was probably something simple, like a permission or symlink, which could be easily fixed by just booting from something else and running something trivial.

And the point I'm trying to make is that basically all are available for all PCs. You can make backups as you like both for files and images of whole drives, you can manage your Secure Boot and boot anything (including wildly different OSes) and you can have your Bitlocker recovery keys. When you manage to have your "open" OS worse than Windows things are dire.

Microsoft got fined for bundling a media player and/or a browser with the OS. Samsung (we are talking about the top Android manufacturer?) gives you (depending on the phone and region) a Facebook app you can't install (because of course, the admin and owner of the device doesn't have permissions to uninstall apps!) and it's all fine.

Bitcoin is generally wasteful, but miners can be turned on/off at will, so it provides a way to 'burn off' excess energy from renewable sources during low demand, while keeping it available for peak demand times.

I don't think there is generally that much "excess energy" as there is energy PRICED OUTSIDE THE RANGE PEOPLE WOULD USE IT. Get that energy to people or even industry to use it for 1/10 or 1/100 or whatever (there's no lower limit if it really is "excess" that nobody would use it except to compete in a pointless contest for cryptocurrencies) and I'm sure both private persons and the industry would find some use for it.

It's like the nonsense with that crypto using hard drive space, people would just use free space (which is something usually much less dynamic than spot electricity consumption), in 100GB increments on their hard drives, even boot SSDs. That was the theory, just use free space. Suuure, next step you get "regular people" showing pictures with 500 TBs of hard drives, while waiting to have delivered 500TB more. That is for small apartment operations, as there are multiple bigger ones even today, years after the hype mostly died out hogging hundreds of PBs that spin for nothing and pat themselves on the back about how green their shitty coin is.

You need to show your passport in Germany for SIM cards since before 9/11 (2001). Of course there are enough places where you can buy one (especially if you buy a phone too) without much fuss, especially around train stations.
Greece introduced this much later, after some criminal escaped from the prison TWICE by just having a helicopter show up and picking him up. Yes, they caught the dude and then he escaped again with a helicopter. I think the second time a guard shot himself in the foot. You can't make this shit up. Of course the fault was not with unbelievably corrupt and incompetent people but with anonymous SIMs.

In short: yes, we're beyond that point, and this thing is out of control. Jake is "they" until otherwise explicitly specified. I've just received an email from Greg who needs to put in a different color in his signature that he's "he/him". But by default he would be "they". What to do when you want to use the "real"/multiple "they"? There's no more "they helped me" when multiple, you either enumerate the persons you mean or you say "Team X helped" or similar!

Obligatory Larry David: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

... and there you don't even have an alternative!

The whole Windows 10 hoopla is a nothingburger. Never mind that being PCs you have tons and tons of alternatives they aren't really needed, never mind that there are Windows 10 editions supported into the 2030s, Microsoft has officially documented under support.microsoft.com the registry setting literally containing: "AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU".

We're talking about a software company that's known for their self-hosted server software, not for whatever generic ad supported TV streams you could get otherwise in 5 other places for free if you have nothing better to do.

"will prove critical as the ad market continues to be unpredictable" - who cares about the streaming, I mean sure if they make an extra buck from it (as it was surely the plan), whatever, if not just axe it and that's it, most customers weren't thrilled about it anyway. It's paid software (either a relatively expensive lifetime subscription or a monthly one), most importantly there is no "piracy" to speak of (as in people "pirating" Plex itself) as it calls the mothership (and on the other hand the resources for authentication and metadata aren't breaking the bank for sure). If they let the software development on life support (as it is anyway except for the new ads, renting, and whatever else they want to put on top) I'm sure they can do just the regular support for next to nothing. It'll take a "special" kind of management to flop this, there's a solid base of customers and they're for better or worse by far number one in what they do.

They're allowed to treat the stop sign like a yield sign, not as if it doesn't exist.

How is that working in this particular case where it's a "four-way stop" which is kind of everybody/nobody yields?

Just fixed today some Outlook that started out of the blue to open the links in Edge, guess what the options were Default (which of course wasn't Edge) and specifically Edge and it went to Edge by default...

That's WAY too inefficient, and not only for the charging itself but also for the needed infrastructure and maintenance.

Your phone number is now required for logging in.

You know what's the nastiest part, it isn't even "your" phone number, as in some number associated with the account, it is a phone number. How is a random phone number going to help more than the actual credentials to the account?! If there's a fraud-prevention limit to the number of accounts you can log into with the same number I couldn't get to it, that is after countless throwaway accounts and using the same phone number for support for all friends and family. The phone doesn't even have to be from the same region, and I'm sure if one is seriously up to no good with this (although I can hardly see how) they can get for next to nothing confirmation codes from thousands or hundreds of thousands of real phone numbers from these SIM-farms.

They just want "your" phone number to have it ...

... is this year too, as it's been for a fair while. Maybe we can combine them both, as they'd be a fairly good match.

Yes, the central bank had an interest that was stupidily low. Like 0.1% 0.0%,

Worse, it was STRICTLY NEGATIVE between 2014 and 2022. Started at -0.1% and went to -0.5%. That was true for the whole Eurozone.