meejle

Yep!

It’s the lady with the distracting gaming laptop!

Not that I’ve seen, no.

It irks me that all you ever hear about is “Ugh, Microsoft trying to force people to use Edge again”

And yet, when I did use Edge, I had to install an extension to remove the huge “We recommend using Chrome” banner on every Google service. 😬

Yeah, that word “hidden” is doing a lot of heavy lifting

Surprised the UK age verification selfies haven’t been used to extort people yet. It’d be so easy (and is such an obvious reason why the law is bullshit).

SecurAge🛡️
“Log in with Google to verify your age.”

“Sorry, we weren’t able to verify you using your Google Account. Please take a selfie for verification.”

“Now give us £1000, or we’ll send your picture and details of the porn you were trying to access to everyone in your contacts.”

Does boneless chicken in the US not have a warning printed on the packaging? Ours does in Britain – I’m not 100% sure if it’s universal, but I’ve definitely noticed it on fast food packaging.

“While every effort has been taken to remove bones, some may remain.”

I think also the fact that AI subscriptions are generally quite expensive, when compared with other online subscriptions.

Copilot Pro: £19.00/month
ChatGPT Plus: £18.99/month
Gemini: £18.99/month
Claude Pro: £15.00/month

Compared to (just off the top of my head):

Microsoft 365 Personal: £8.49/month
Google Play Pass: £4.99/month
Adobe Photography Plan (Photoshop, Lightroom, and 20GB cloud storage): £9.98/month
Apple Arcade: £6.99/month
PlayStation Plus Premium (top tier): £13.49/month
Amazon Prime: £8.99/month

And it has a free offering, so there’s not even a pressing reason to upgrade for most people. 🤔

I’d love it if you did that! Thanks!

I think it’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s happening yet.

The unease is already there (“the internet used to be a place”/“why isn’t the internet fun any more?” sentiments and #OldWeb #SlowWeb hashtags), but I don’t think people are ready to do anything about it.

I’m only one guy, with a small internet following, but I recently had a go at launching a small “Gaymers” webring (well, a simplified version of one). I promoted it on my socials, I laid out why I think it’s a good idea, I paid to “Blaze” it on Tumblr – I even emailed some like-minded creators directly.

I rewrote the webpage multiple times, to try to make it more persuasive and more concise. I added a contact form in case people felt uncomfortable emailing me. I loosened the rules to allow commercial websites, as long as they were still independent. I worked hard on the widget and incorporated feedback (made it respect prefers-reduced-motion and made a static version for sites where animation would feel out of place).

I got some good feedback; lots of people said it was interesting, and a good idea. But literally no one joined or expressed any interest in joining. 🤷‍♂️

I’m going to have one more go at promoting it next time I’ve got money to spare, but I’ll most likely end up quietly deleting it along with any evidence it existed, because a webring of one is fucking embarrassing. 💀

I guess if you build it, they will not necessarily come lmao

They know they already have a Bing logo they could use, right? 🤔

Not that this is out of character for Microsoft. Office became Office 365, which became Microsoft 365… unless you search for it online, because then all three names show up.

Likewise, Bing Chat became Copilot… but then the main Office launcher became Microsoft 365 Copilot, so there are two Copilot apps on people’s PCs and it’s not immediately clear what the difference is. (This joins the two OneNote apps and two Outlook apps.)

And, they finally finished retiring the MSN brand and changed everything over to “Microsoft Start” (not to be confused with the iconic “Start” button 😬)… only to make a new MSN logo and change it all back.

Meanwhile, there’s a Bing app for Android that has an almost identical feature set to Edge, but different branding and a different UI. There’s also an MSN app, which… has almost an identical feature set as the other two apps, but a slightly different UI to the Bing app. 😭

I’ve been thinking a lot about webrings lately. Now that Google is basically cutting off traffic from the indie web.

I feel like everyone’s kinda having the same idea at the same time, which gives me some hope, but… it’s difficult enough to find a ring to join, that I think most people will give up?

I don’t know what I think the solution is. Centralising it and having a big, user-friendly “webring platform” is just inviting more enshittification. But the handful of webring directories I’ve found are really lacking.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Or, does anyone want to team up and make, like, a Gaymers Webring? (That’s pretty much what I’m looking for.)

ETA: I’ve built one. DM me if you’re interested!

This is probably a bit “I’m 14 and this is deep”, but I was thinking the other day about how “pull down to refresh” is weirdly similar to pulling a slot machine handle. 😬

I don’t think that was ever part of its design (didn’t the Tweetie dev invent it?), but still.

Why would anyone opt in 😭

Is this just so they can wait a few months and say, “Not enough people were discovering this Great Feature, so we’re enabling it by default”?

I’ve already been getting the itch to leave Samsung and try something different. I’m keeping my eye on the upcoming Nothing Phone 3, if it’s genuinely a “flagship” for £800 I might jump ship.

To be fair they also said:

Talking on the phone, got an interview
With the Rolling Stone, they’re saying,
“Now you’re rich and now you’re famous
Fake-ass girls all know your name and
‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’
Your first hit, aren’t you ashamed?”
Of the life, of the life, of the life we’re living

So at least they’re self aware 😅

Drink once if they ban face coverings because of this.

Drink twice if they somehow link it to hijabs and burqas in a skewed bid to “win back Reform voters”.

Down your drink if they fuck up and do it around the time of the next pandemic.

I hope teachers come up with crazy workarounds, like Miss Honey’s classroom in Matilda

Busuu is like what Duolingo used to be, but with native audio/video clips, actual grammar lessons, and the chance to write/speak sentences and have them graded by native speakers (other app users).

It’s free with ads, but the paid tier is also cheaper than Duolingo. 👍

Grok wouldn’t fuck up the spelling so badly

The media seems so confused, when it’s so simple. People are being disappeared.

One of the cases – was it Mahmoud Khalil? – where they took issue with someone wearing a hoodie and disappeared them, I saw news sites saying, “This just isn’t how we do things in this country! He deserves due process and a fair trial!”

So… you think putting someone on trial for wearing a hoodie is any less insane? Feels like you’ve sort of missed the point, BUT OKAY 👍