Microsoft continues to take a big fat shit all over Windows, this time placing ads within the Windows 11 Start Menu. You'd think this precious, flagship space on your computer would be sacrosanct, but no, some fuckwit at Microsoft can't help themselves and decided "this would be an awesome place to sell ads for other apps!", presumably while snorting a line of coke off a pig's arse during a Wednesday morning blue sky session in Redmond. The ads can be disabled (for now) and it won't apply to commercial devices (aka devices managed by organisations) but the absolute disdain Microsoft has for its users never ceases to surprise me. Nobody wants this, nobody asked for this, it doesn't make the product better in any way whatsoever. Have some fucking respect for you and your customers!!
California is following in Australia and Canada's footsteps with the "California Journalism Preservation Act" that continues the dumb idea of forcing tech companies like Google and Facebook to pay for the privilege of linking to news content on the internet. Google has had enough of this bullshit, threatening in a blog post that "if passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers". This link tax movement is such a sweet scam for the media companies. It's an issue where if normal people even notice it's happening, they hate both groups (media & big tech) anyways, so all media companies have to do is vaguely threaten the government to make this law and the government will give in as to not piss off those who can influence an election.
The Register reports on a study by the University of Pennsylvania that claims 96% of US hospital websites are transmitting user data to third parties. The main recipients are the usual suspects in Google and Meta, plus Adobe. They collect IP addresses, browser type and the website you visited prior to the hospitals, which when combined with the pages you visit on the site, provide these companies with insights (e.g: you spent a lot of time looking at abortion info the last week) that are combined with other data they have on you. Of course, hardly any hospitals actually disclose this in their privacy policy. I bet the hospitals don't even have the faintest idea this is going on, they just slap this shit on the website because, well, that's what web developers do, right?
Artywah shared this opinion piece on Mumbrella in The Sizzle's Slack channel this morning that raised an interesting hypothetical - how much would you pay for all the world's music? It's in response to people whinging about Spotify's recent price rise and argues that even at the $23.99/m they want for the family plan now, that's still amazing value. I 100% agree and would pay basically whatever Spotify/Apple/Tidal ask, but the wider population don't see it that way. The value of recorded music for those except music aficionados is basically zero. While Spotify keeps mass music piracy at bay while paying artists peanuts for now, the more they increase the price so artists (well, labels) get more money, the fewer people will pay for it and resort to piracy. The consumer is a fickle beast.
And... a VDT. Bob Clutterbuck, 1984. (National Gallery of Australia)
📻 The Hardest Cut - Spoon
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