Not sure about the removal thing but first every commercial software is going to get enshittified with forced AI additions that are only semi-useful and introduce lots of errors and tons of privacy issues (on top of already existing privacy issues of course). It will still wow some people who assume intelligence and assume accuracy. As long as it still wows some people, the bubble is still growing. Unfortunately this tech industry has become so similar to the fashion industry, it’s so sad. If you don’t have AI these days you’re SO out of fashion. But what does it get you? Inaccurate / low quality output which a subject matter expert needs to review anyway, so it can’t replace the experts. At best, it speeds up prototyping and generating examples for those experts. Oh, and in doing all that it accelerates the problem of resource wastefulness and climate disaster. And if the AI isn’t self-hosted and under your own control, then it also massively breaches all of your data protection efforts because employees will use it for probably everything, including sharing all sorts of documents and data with it. And every AI-enabled commercial software will also spy on the content of everything you’re doing, because its (probably) cloud-based AI needs to receive all the data to be “helpful”.

At this point, being on this planet is a losing cause.

I strongly disagree that unpopular things are automatically a losing cause though. I use and do some unpopular things because it’s more ethical or more beneficial overall, but I’m not at all troubled with it. I just try to be a somewhat decent citizen where many others would just be like “lol I don’t care about any consequences, just give me the cheapest or most convenient option”. I’m not like that. And I think more people shouldn’t be. But, again, at this point… it’s definitely a losing battle. But I still do it because then I can tell myself that I at least tried to do the somewhat right thing. It’s kind of just to have a clean conscience, whereas some others are completely fine burning the world for their own short-term gain. That’s basically the difference.

The current tech/IT sector is heavily relying on and riding hype trains. It’s a bit like the fashion industry that way. But this AI hype so far has only been somewhat useful.

Current general LLMs are decent for prototyping or example output to jump-start you into the general direction of your destination, but their output always needs supervision and most often it needs fixing. If you apply unreliable and constantly changing AI to everything, and completely throw out humans, just because it’s cheaper, then you’ll get vastly inferior results. You probably get faster results, but the results will have tons of errors which introduces tons of extra problems you never had before. I can see AI fully replacing some jobs in some specific areas where errors don’t matter much. But that’s about it. For all other jobs or purposes, AI will be an extra tool, nothing more, nothing less.

AI has its uses within specific domains, when trained only on domain-specific and truthful data. You know, things like AlphaZero or AlphaGo. Or AIs revealing new methods not known before to reach the same goal. But these general AIs like ChatGPT which are trained on basically the whole web with all the crap in it… it’s never going to be truly great. And it’s also becoming worse over time, i.e. not improving much at all, because the web will be even fuller with AI-generated crap in the future. So the AIs slurp up all that crap too. The training data gets muddier over time. The promise of AIs getting even more powerful as time goes on is just a marketing lie. There’s most likely a saturation curve, and we’re most likely very close to the saturation already, where it won’t really get any better. You could already see this by comparing the jump from GPT-3 to GPT-4 (big) and then GPT-4 to GPT-5 (much smaller). Or take a look at FSD cars. Also not really happening, unless you like crashes. Of course, the companies want to keep the illusion rolling so they’ll always claim the next big revolution is just around the corner. Because they profit from investments and monthly paying customers, and as long as they can keep that illusion up and profit from that, they don’t even need to fulfill any more promises.

Two words which every internet-using person should know about because they tend to be forgotten: proportionality and sophistication.

Just because there is some element of crime within a specific group within a society, doesn’t mean that the solution is to completely exterminate the whole society.

This is what the word “extremism” means - if you’re an extremist you find extreme measures at least OK because you’ve stopped differentiating and thinking about proportions. And when doing extreme measures to a specific group of people (usually a minority group, or even a whole weaker country), then you’re right-wing extremist.

You wouldn’t want those things to be done to yourself when you’re part of a subgroup that’s under attack. You wouldn’t want to be a victim of extreme measures. That’s one reason why these extreme measures shouldn’t exist in the first place.

It’s just a tendency, not a hard rule.

My view on the versions of Windows:

• 95 to 98: decent experiences because of a lack of competition back then, but bad at security and stability, but no one really bothered that much back then about such things
• ME: basically 98, just a low-effort cash grab
• 2000: promising new platform based on the superior NT kernel, but not mature yet for widespread consumer use
• XP: probably the first widely usable consumer OS, decent, but it took until SP2 to fix security and stability problems
• Vista: beta version of 7, sold as non-beta
• 7: the last decent Windows version. Windows dominance starts slowly dying after this one
• 8, 8.1: basically still 7 but with an UI experiment gone horribly wrong, plus the first beginnings of unwanted cloud integrations
• 10 (First Windows version with Nadella as CEO): okay so we just need to not do weird UI experiments and then we’re probably fine. Oh, by the way you can actually put spyware into everything with some opt-out options and not really get into trouble for it, and this will give us extra profit? Let’s fucking go!
• 11: okay so this spyware and cloud integration stuff went great overall, so let’s push even more! Also let’s add AI stuff which is also even more spyware and cloud integration stuff
• <next version>: will feature even more AI and cloud integrations and thus even more spyware that will be even harder to circumvent. It’s likely that at this point or the very next version afterwards, that your Windows will likely turn your once “Personal” Computer into a fully Microsoft-owned and operated one.

In 3 to 6 months, <AICompany> CEO says that in 3 to 6 months, AI will be writing 90% of the code software developers were in charge of. It’s always right around the corner. Just like Tesla’s flawless full self driving. In the meantime, please buy our stuff or invest in us, pretty please? It’s a very future-proof investment! Just wait a small eternity while spending money on our semi-useful products.

German here. These are some cultural and day-to-day differences compared to the US:

• Sundays are officially a day of rest and so most shops and businesses are closed that day, with several exceptions like high priority stuff, restaurants, tourism/event-related stuff and so on. But you can’t go to a regular supermarket or expect a package delivery on a Sunday. Although some sundays are also different, it’s like an “event” where regular shops open sometimes. But that’s rare.
• Cash is still very widely used (and you also should generally use it even if it’s less convenient because it’s probably the most privacy-preserving payment option), but other payment options are also available almost everywhere
• There are tiny fees of around 1 € you probably need to pay when e.g. going to a public toilet or using a shopping cart (but for the cart, you get it back when returning the cart). You also need to pay extra for bags, or bring your own.
• Tip culture is very different, Germans usually pay very small tips compared to the US and no one expects you to, but in restaurants it’s common to tip something like 2 € for a bill of 25 € for example. Or you simply round up the number to avoid the hassle of small coins.
• Prices always include taxes already
• Water isn’t free and usually you can’t order tap water, although tap water is drinkable generally
• You can drink alcohol with fully visible labels/bottles in public
• For bottles and cans, there’s a “Pfand” which is like an extra deposit. So a bottle of water usually costs slightly more, but when it’s empty you can return it to get the extra deposit value back. It’s to encourage recycling.
• Germans are more reserved in public and might do less small talk, and are usually more direct, but that doesn’t mean they’re unfriendly. This also applies to customer service! Personally I like this more than obviously fake and exaggerated politeness.
• You should be more quiet in or near residential areas between like 10pm and 7am
• Punctuality is highly valued, this is actually not exaggerated or a myth. Public transport might not wait for you if you’re 1-2min late. People will assume that something’s wrong when you’re a couple of minutes late to an appointment. Although there is one well-known exception: trains aren’t always punctual or reliable. But other public transport usually is.
• Highways have no speed limits in parts but you still probably shouldn’t drive much faster than 130 km/h. Pass other cars only on the left lanes, never on the right lanes. Also don’t drive on bike lanes.
• Basically all streets or public spaces are safe to walk around. Also children don’t need supervision.
• Most Germans have very good English skills, except maybe very old generations

“No one is above the law” and other jokes you can tell yourself to feel better.

If two terrible persons fight each other, that’s a positive, no?

They can’t think that far ahead. Their plan is just to aid the economy make rich people richer short-term. Nothing else is of concern to them.

I had this situation once as a teenager and it was extremely awkward because the other guy asked me an actual question and I didn’t understand anything and also not that it was a question and I just smiled. He looked at me like I was insane or something and I was so embarrassed I didn’t even say anything about it. Thankfully it wasn’t important or so but it kind of burned me for life so much that I now always rather ask 2-3 times if I didn’t understand anything before answering. I think this helped, overall. It’s really important to understand something before answering or emoting. ;) Asking to repeat something is not a problem at all.

Why this is happening: right-wing extremist propaganda on popular proprietary social media, and random people believing it and radicalizing themselves. Of course it’s going to spawn more radicalized right-wing extremists, everywhere the propaganda machine turns its head towards (they managed to ruin USA, now they’re trying to ruin Europe). Normal people will become more radicalized in the process. It’s like a global cult and its propaganda distribution mechanism is the internet. Not everyone will have enough education or media literacy to resist this. China and Russia are the big benefactors of a divided and in-fighting West.

Collapse will definitely come. Our way of living on this planet is not sustainable, especially now where everyone who would have the power/influence to change things does literally and openly the opposite (e.g. USA turning their back on climate friendly research/technologies for example). So I think it’s kind of over, I’m kind of an optimist but time is simply running out, we had the Paris agreement and all that jazz like 10 years ago and almost nothing really changed (the only time something changed for the positive was during 2020/2021 but that was involuntarily!), in fact it’s now probably worse than it was back then, so it’s kind of over. Sure you can and should individually continue fighting for it because every small improvement will at least delay the collapse a bit which is useful, but I’m not going to naively believe that we will be able to counteract this anymore. It’s too little, too late. And that’s not even taking into account the possibility of a WW3. And rich/powerful people probably know this as well that the environmental and political situations become increasingly unstable which is why they are building luxury bunkers. I would build one too, if I had the spare change.

1 (2012)

How to Wagon your Dragon

Soldier (Platoon)

Something quiet on the Western Contested Spot

Raindrop Man

Shaun of One Body

D.T. - The Default Terrestrial (E.T.)

Star War: Appearance of a Jed

Indiana Jones or the Only Crusader

One ring to rule one person.

“Hey guys, we want to use this to 100% obviously create completely fake right-wing populist propaganda, which quite a few people are going to believe anyway. Cool with y’all?” - “Sure, go ahead”.

1 Ronin

Plan 1 From Outer Space

Buena Vista Solitary Spot

Clover

One-dimensional Point 1: One-dimensional Point

District 1

Eye Narrowly Shut

Edward Scissorhand

Gremlin 1: The New Item

The Langolier

The One Grassleaf Mower Man

The Ending Chapter

Monty Python Or The Holy Grail

Planet of one ape

Policeman Student

A Tale of One Sole Sister

South Park: Small, Short & Cut

Joined

The Limbguard

By the way, ignoring as much of this big tech corpo crap as you can also makes you live an easier life.

Whenever I see a story of “some guy who relies on <big tech account> working loses access to it and suddenly can’t do anything anymore” I think “this can never happen to me”. Which means there’s a whole category of problems you’re suddenly never going to see. It also means you’re less naive. So just don’t vendor-lock yourself in. Don’t put a log-in for an account which you don’t control in front of important things you need to do. Simple as that.

On top of that, you’ll also leak less private data about yourself and probably others as well. So you even make yourself less of a target when it comes to data protection laws or something. I know, these get routinely ignored. I’m just saying, if you don’t even use the problematic stuff (or almost never), you’ll also have potentially less legal troubles at hand. And you never know, legel troubles might not appear for a while but they could lurk far in the future. For example, many Nazis got into legal trouble for their participation in Nazi Germany, even decades later.

I know, the guy from the story probably only needed that account to ensure he can compare some stuff with how MS Office is behaving compared to LibreOffice, or things like that. So it’s probably not a big deal. But generally speaking, you really shouldn’t vendor-lock yourself in.