I always love it when writers invent new units to describe big numbers, and end up being even more obscure. Since I first started paying attention to this, about 14.2 eiffel tower construction phases ago, I must have seen as many of them as the amount of 4x2 lego bricks i could place between Ramsgate and Birchington-on-Sea, but it never gets old.

Update: add lynx to that list.

Hate to disappoint you, but I only see these messages when searching "download chrome" using bing, in every browser I tested, lynx now included. ;)

Doing the same thing using google appears clean on my side, and I don't get the popups shown in the article but that's probably because my windows station is still on 10, not 11.

Just did a quick test myself (on windows 10) and it seems to me that I only get these messages when I search "download chrome" using bing (edge, chrome and firefox). If I google it like any sane person would do I don't see such messages (again: edge, chrome and firefox).

I'm not a fan of the idea of Insta for Kids myself, but keep in mind that not all parenting is done responsibly.

More and more kids these days already have their own Instagram and/or Facebook account, and their parents are well aware of this. They don't want them to fall behind compared to other kids their age, think they'll teach them how to handle social media in a safe manner, or just want them to be quiet when they come home from school. As long as it's possible to create an account on a social media platform without any form of official ID (not saying that's what we need, far from it) this trend will continue. A checkbox that says "I agree to your terms of service" won't stop this from happening.

Now, given Facebook's history, it's obvious they don't do this "for the children", it's just a way to generate more revenue. But that doesn't mean child-friendly platforms are a bad idea, in fact I think they'll become more and more of a necessity. And if big companies aren't fit to create and maintain those platforms, then who is? Non-profits, with limited funding and technical know-how, who are also run by human beings and therefore susceptible to greed and corruption? Governments *cough*? Schools would be the obvious choice, but how do you get those to agree on one nation-wide platform, let alone a global one?

I don't think there's an easy answer to these questions, and I also don't think that preventing Facebook from creating such a platform will protect children in the long run. Parents are responsible for the safety of their children, but lots of them are barely functioning adults themselves. Charging parents with child abuse when they do allow their kids on "adult" platforms seems (unfortunately) to be the only realistic remedy in our current society, at least until we manage to finally become an intelligent species. But to do that you'll need more than 44 attorneys general...

Personally, I've stopped using my smartphone for web browsing because of these.

1. With desktop browsers it's easy enough to install adblockers and other plugins that disable cookie warnings (I live in the EU...), even for the average user. On Android and iOS this is near impossible unless you're willing to void your phone's warranty.
2. The ads I do see using a desktop browser are less annoying because of the additional screen width, not it's height. They appear in my peripheral vision, while mobile browsers just don't have this option.

When I open a website on my phone, I first have to press "yes, I allow all your cookies", "no, I don't want you to send me notifications", a tiny "x" in the top right corner of the ad that's taking up 1/3 of my limited screen real estate, and more often than not I'm taken to the advertiser's website anyway because it's near impossible to accurately hit the "x" with your finger. By that time I've just lost interest...

I'm willing to believe that there's a correlation between the trend described in the article and the fact that more people are working remotely. Smartphones have become powerful (and expensive) enough that they've replaced desktops/laptops entirely for a lot of people, and maybe having their laptop from work at home has made them realize how much better the experience can be compared to the one on their smartphones? Just a guess...

I bought a Moto G7 plus about a year ago (about €200 at the time), and one of the reasons I decided on that model was that it allows me to save my photos as RAW. My full-frame camera (Canon 5D II) obviously produces better results, even though it's pretty old by today's standards, but now I'll take out my phone to make a photo when I don't have my camera with me. I agree that phone sensors are crappy, but I also agree with the pragmatic idea that "the best camera is the one you happen to have with you".

Should be "Teenagers' mental health in decline due to several socio-economic factors"...

My thoughts exactly. Like it or not, what happens on a political level in the USA impacts the entire world, and I don't just mean the countries where US troops are deployed to pacify the place. My first thought when Trump was elected was that having a businessman as president could have a benificial impact on their economy. Unfortunately, as studies have shown, psychopathy is much more common among business leaders than it is among common folk, and boy did America pick the right guy to prove that point... Economics are important, don't get me wrong, but there's more to leading a country than just the bottom line. More intelligent businesspeople might be better equipped to realise that and try to do the balancing act they're supposed to do. I myself live in Belgium. We have about 11.5 million people living in our country, more governments than I care to count, and politics over here range from funny freak shows to total shitfests, so I'm the last one to judge foreign politics. But when we put a clown in charge it mainly affects us and has only a minor impact on the rest of the world. American voters could be more aware of the fact that it's not just their own country going down when they do so...

So basically, "Yet another customer buys Raspberry Pi + recommended components and installs RetroPi"?

Calling this one awesome might be a bit far-fetched, but it sure was a lot of fun.

My friend and I used to visit this pub every day after work. He has a background in electricity, I myself am a software developer. Arduino was new and hot, and ever since we'd both bought one we spent a lot of our evenings at a corner of the bar coming up with new projects and filling every beer coaster within range with schematics.

One night my friend arrived wearing a baseball cap reading "1 beer please", and when he wanted to order he called the bartender and pointed at the text. The bartender smiled, and then commented that the cap was not much of use whenever he wanted to order more than one beer. We all laughed about this at first, but as the night went on he continued to make the same remark, up until the point where it started to annoy us. So we went to our imaginary drawing board and started discussing how hard it would be to "improve" the cap. We ended up betting the bartender a crate of beer that we could add the necessary electronics to be able to order anything between one and nine beers, or a round for the entire bar, using only parts we had available or could salvage from old equipment, and that we would do so within a time frame of two hours.

So a few days later we arrived with the tools and parts we needed. A 7-segment display was duct taped over the "1" on the cap, and soldered to a stripped CAT5 cable. A regular led was inserted at the top of the cap, and soldered to a stripped RJ11 cable. Both cables went through the back of a sweater, and were connected to an arduino which was in the sweater's pocket. We used a basic 12 digit keypad as input, and made it so that pressing [1-9]# would display the number on the display, 0# would cause the top led to start blinking (indicating a round for the entire bar), and pressing * would turn all the led's off.

We finished well within our time frame, had lots of fun showing off the end result, and the sulky look on the bartender's face when he gave us our crate made those the best free beers ever.

I put pen to paper throughout the day (post-its most of the time), but the times I actually "write" a full sentence... Man that's been a while...

Procrastinating instead of studying causes drop in exam results. Facebook is just another excuse for procrastinating, not a cause.

Known as the Dunning-Kruger effect