Not really. The 2x $1000 or so I spent on targeted ad campaigns have been worth it. If they weren't targeted, it would be far less effective; there's quite a few articles pointing out that targeted ads have a far higher click-through rate, and a higher conversion rate as well. Without targeting, my ad budget might still be $2000 but I wouldn't be spending it.

That's not going to happen. The global advertising market is approaching a $1 trillion dollar value annually, and personalized ads have driven a lot of that growth. Personalized ads make it possible to zoom in on your target demographic more precisely, so you're not paying for impressions going to the wrong target group. It made advertising affordable to people who could not have justified the cost before. Hell I've ran a few global online ad campaigns for an app I wrote as a hobby project.

No, they'll not going to kill the goose that lays those particular golden eggs.

"applying the ban only to the use of personal data to set higher prices without establishing a baseline or standard price".
So you set very high baseline prices, then use personal data to offer varying discounts. That does look like a loophole.

How about "No dynamic prices or discounts based on personal or biometric data are allowed"? Put in an exemption to offer a discount to certain classes (student or vet discounts, discounts for seniors)
In the past dynamic prices (discounts) were used to increase turnover: get new customers in the door with offers, keep them coming back with loyalty programs, and have them buy more with volume discounts. Now, it is used to extract the maximum amount of cash from every customer. It seems that the MBAs who came up with this have fully embraced the first tenet of communism: from each according to their ability.
"How much is this item?"
- "How much do you have?"

I'm not so sure that those who have studied in those fields are much better. These notions sound no worse than some of the ideas being bandied about in places like the WEF. They sound like stoner friends sitting around in a bar, having beers and philosophizing about how they are going to fix the world, except these guys have the riches or/and the political clout to actually try and bring some of that about. Either way, it's people who think they know better, governing over people rather than for them.

That should be: "without revealing your identity to the site requesting your verified age". And hopefully it will also be without revealing the website you're visiting to the age verification provider. Both requirements can be fulfilled, and hopefully this system will employ such a scheme.

If you're going to enforce age restrictions, this is the way to do it, preserving anonymity. It beats 3rd party age verification services like the ones that porn sites used to use. They needed your credit card, name and address, and the age verification provider could see which sites you were visiting.

That seems pretty good. The renovation of the historical Dutch parliament building (Binnenhof) was started in 2021 and was to be finished this year. Now they are projecting 2031. Budgeted at €450 million, we're now looking at €2.7 billion. That's for a renovation, not a new building.

Not quite the same thing. Yes, movies have been selling us on a message or provide social commentary for ages. Sometimes with the message subtly embedded in the movie, sometimes the movie was the message. And they've done the race or gender swap thing before as well: tell a familiar story from a different perspective.

But in most cases, the old writers and directors stuck to their artistic integrity, putting the movie first rather than the message. That has changed. In "woke" productions (for lack of a better word), artistic integrity takes a back seat. Plot, dialogue, casting are affected in order to serve "the message", even when it detracts from the production's quality, as it often does. It's not every production, and there's certainly no reason to start foaming at the mouth whenever they cast a lady for a part originally written for a guy or whatever... but it does happen.

Why didn't they make a movie about that?

IIRC Sony did something like that: they used an LCD panel to produce colors in front of a black&white CRT to provide the backlight. The result was a screen with a very high contrast ratio.

Some of the problems you mention are oft-recurring ones in YA, especially the newer TV adaptations of existing SF and Fantasy franchises. Cheesy dialogue, focusing on teen angst and hookup culture, and in general poor writing with little regard for the source material. What I mean by the latter is that they build the world to suit the story, which rarely works. In contrast, in good SF and Fantasy, the world, the story, the people in it and the events around them all work together.

But the mistake that they seem to make repeatedly is thinking that the YA style has wide appeal with younger people. It doesn't - not when it is applied to existing franchises like this. The reception by (young) fans, and viewership figures, confirm that. Young people don't want everything to be YA, they want to be taken seriously and be served serious entertainment fare as well.

What is the state of Linux enterprise software these days? For most personal desktop activities, there are solid Linux options. But are there good options for ERP, Mail/ Calendar, Learning Management Systems, (video)conferencing, Knowledge Management? These days a lot of that kind of software runs in the browser on the client machine, but the server is still Windows.

When the iPhone came out, it was more or less the first phone with an acceptable virtual keyboard, one that did not require a stylus to operate. And while there were a few peeps who prefer the physical keyboard, the vast majority seemed to prefer a virtual keyboard and more screen real estate. When my place of work introduced BYOD, people couldn't wait to get rid of their corporate Blackberry. I don't think it was a choice forced by the industry; it was industry following the market.

But you're right, it did result in physical keyboards disappearing as an choice. I do think (hope) that non folding phones are here to stay, if the industry follows the market.

Each to their own. You have no choice when it comes to the notch and the ribbon (unless you decide to not use a Mac or MS Office). But while it's clear that there is a market for folding phones, it's also clear that it's not for everyone. Folding phones are not going to replace regular ones anytime soon.

We can only hope.