Sounds like the beginning of the Cory Doctorow novella “Unauthorized Bread.” Cloud service goes down and the main character’s toaster won’t work without them.

Fair point, although the way things are going you might see investment in telecom connections between Africa, Europe, and Asia. Particularly with China pushing Belt and Road.

It would be hilarious if there started to be real competition in cloud services from nations in the global south, especially if they start innovating in a way that makes AWS/Azure/Google Cloud become low performance options.

If nothing else, real competition would make standards for cloud services more universal.

So it posts all of that to the user?

It does specify these are first languages/mother tongues. I think English would also be much larger if it included second languages.

I know little to nothing about android, but it seems like even if we assume CMG code is in (say) all of Facebook’s iOS apps, each one needs permission to use the camera and microphone so if you deny that permission what CMG claims would be impossible. And while Apple certainly has a spotty record in enforcing App Store rules, I feel like they’ve got a lot riding on being absolutely certain that FB and Google and Amazon apps aren’t violating those rules because those are going to be on every researcher’s list of apps to test for privacy compliance.

Depends on a number of factors. A ton of companies have moved to web based tools for a big chunk of their workforce. If those web apps are more or less standards-compliant you could pull it off with minimal retraining.

Or, you know, a school. You know, where there are children? Maybe children who have physical limitations who have been called gimps?

Oh well, who cares about the educational environment and getting kids exposed to FOSS options instead of commercial software?

I read it as a celebration that anyone can distribute podcasts. Distribution is via RSS so as long as you have the feed URL you can use whatever podcast player you want to subscribe to whatever podcasts you want.

Cruises and golf? What a shallow, sad view of retirement. My uncle goes to Florida in the winter and fishes off of various docks and camps, and spends time with his grandkids, and ducks around with gadgets the rest of the year.

Master/slave systems are probably a-ok for them though.

Lots of suicidal ideation. I don’t keep any firearms or overdose drugs at home, so it’s mostly thinking that it’s a good thing I don’t have any firearms or drugs because I’d probably use them on myself if I did.

I take an extra 7 hour partial shift every week to make ends meet and I’m borderline suicidal. I can’t imagine a 36 hour shift or an 80 hour week.

That’s the secret of CEOs claiming 80-hour work weeks. 3 hour lunch with another senior executive where you spend 10 minutes chatting about something work related and the rest of the time talking about sports? That’s all work. Playing 18 holes of golf with a few executives from other companies? That’s a work meeting. Answer an email while you’re on a date with your side piece? That whole evening is work.

I think it would be better stated as “even if it is only valuable to me.”

As easy as it is to believe that all these monsters care about is money, I do think there’s a significant amount of pride tied up in their behavior. I strongly suspect being fired from the company he ran for so long stings a lot, even with a golden parachute to salve the wound.

Got it, I was wondering because I’m pretty comfortable using the CLI but I’ve never gotten into it at a level where the shell made a huge difference in my experience. Maybe if I was a sysadmin I’d feel differently.

This may be the wrong place to ask, but what am I missing about shells? Other than executing commands, what do you do with them?

He needs to see pain in his life.

Cory Doctorow argues that all implanted devices should be open sourced so that if the company making one ends support, patients aren’t left with a non- or malfunctioning piece of hardware inside them.