No mod points today, so instead I'll just tell you that you owe me a new keyboard because this one now has coffee all over it :)

Agreed on Strange New Worlds. It's a breath of fresh air for Nu-Trek.

I tried real hard with Discovery. Made it through the first two (?) seasons and just couldn't bring myself to care enough to continue to trudge through the sophomoric writing and characters (or character, since it should be called "The MIchael Burman Show").

Have to disagree with Picard though. The last season was 100% rooted in nostalgia and member-berries. And sure, it was fun to see the old cast and ship... as long as your brain has an off-switch. The story and plot, if you take half a second to think about it, was one giant non-sequitur and nonsensical to the point of insulting. It also completely discarded everything that happened in Picard season 1 and 2 which, even if you didn't completely love those seasons (I didn't) there was still important story elements and character development that was treated as if it never happened. Again, this is insulting to the audience and screams "I have a giant ego" by the producer.

I love NoScript and have been using it for ages, but I do wish there was a "curated" mode with a minimal trusted whitelist you could opt into using, sort of like a reverse ad-blocker. There are times when visiting a new site that the list of blocked domains is monumental, and figuring out the minimal set necessary for the page to function is pretty much impossible without investing way too much time.

Even an option akin to "temporarily allow all" but instead using a whitelist built from contributions (maybe ala SponsorBlock) would be a better middle-ground than what I often end up doing and just temp-allowing everything until I'm done with the site.

You can say the exact same thing about cigarette companies in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

What makes them corrupt is when they lie to the public and regulators about the health impact of their products. TEL companies knew that lead was causing problems, but tried to bury that under a pile of lies, lobbying, and obfuscation. Tobacco companies knew cigarettes were addictive and caused cancer, but tried to hide it and delay as long as possible any kind of public health campaign or laws against public smoking.

That's the line that can't be crossed if you want to pray to the Invisible Hand for guidance.

I agree that entitled is the wrong word, but it can show some antipathy and/or lack of awareness towards the more recent state of income vs the cost of higher education.

In 1980, average income was $39,000. Annual cost of a private school was $20,000 and public $9,000. In 2021 average income was $45,000, annual private school was $56,000 and public $25,000. (All of these are in 2021/22 dollars). There are some assumptions here (such as what student job wages would be relative to the median) but generally, the price of college has more than doubled relative to income.

Don't get me wrong - people who take out a massive loan to go to an expensive school when there are cheaper options available is it's own problem, but to suggest that the cost of education today is on par with what it was when Baby Boomers went is completely wrong.

I used to think breakfast cereal was a lost cause, being either nothing but trash or loaded with sugar (or both), until I discovered shredded wheat. Fiber, protein, unsaturated fat, zero sugar and one ingredient: whole grain wheat. Oh, and no ground up vitamin pills.

I like the Wheat and Bran variety the most, but you can get plain store brands that are just fine and cheaper. Especially paired with a little fruit, it's a good first meal or snack.

Which is exactly what they want you to think. But it's a lie because merchants are charged around 2.5% to process a credit card transaction and they absolutely pass that on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Today's credit card addiction, fueled in part by "free perks", has simply increased the cost of nearly everything by 3%. There's a reason that credit card companies made $126 billion dollars in 2022. And yet Visa _still_ plans to raise their processing fees.

When a convenience becomes an expectation becomes a dependence, it simply invites abuse - especially when there's essentially a monopoly of providers. After all, that's a real nice consumer debt economy you have there; be a real shame if something happened to it.

I've used Firefox Beta on Android as my daily browser for a long time. Most of your points aren't wrong. It does use more battery than any other apps I use (though, that's a very small list), and it does break on a small number of websites (though that's probably more because of shitty mobile versions of sites), but I don't agree that the UI is worse than Chrome's (I dislike Chrome's tab layout).

However for me the value is worth the price of admission. I have better privacy and can use an ad-blocker and other privacy-enhancing addons. And, as narcc said above, having Firefox - including mobile - as an option is simply better for a healthy web.

</marquee>

You dropped this.

And I'll have you know - the marquee and blink tags were the foundation of my HTML childhood and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

I was hoping to see the Hacker's Diet mentioned in the comments, so thank you. Appropriately, I also discovered it from a Slashdot comment long ago.

Reading his book and using his website to track my progress worked wonders for me. I lost 60 pounds (more, if you consider muscle mass gained) over 10 years ago and have kept it off. Changed the way I think about food and exercise and I owe him greatly.

You forgot HFCS and 5G cell towers.

Your Adobe example just shows that you don't understand what Doctorow is saying. The problem isn't digitally-delivered or even subscription-only software (though I'd argue that does have its own set of problems).

Enshittification, according to Doctorow, is when a "platform" operator begins operations by courting users with friendly and open policies. Once they have some level of market share, they switch tacks to courting business partners who they think would be interested in selling or interacting with their new user base (for example, advertisers or consumer product makers). This done to increase their market share and dominance and is often done at the expense of the user. Finally they abuse their power over the market to extract value back into their own pockets, this time at the expense of the user and the business partners.

You can disagree with him, but this exact scenario has played out over and over in the last 20 years. Facebook and Amazon are perfect examples, and two of the early cases that he used to make the point.

Hah! Fair point, though actually, it's not far off. Some places don't even keep the check anymore - they just scan it to capture routing and account numbers and immediately run the transaction electronically. If checks were still prominently used, I could see them incorporate that into the payment consoles that are customer facing.