I think the headline is framing this wrong. Apple is not threatening to kill these services.

Apple is refusing to break their services just to accommodate broken, stupid laws written by a broken, stupid parliament.

Ironically, you cannot find out if your car is affected unless you’re willing to share your VIN with the helpful folks at privacy4cars.com

So, since I don’t own a model specifically listed in the story and I value my privacy …

Edit: I was wrong, they would much rather I download their helpful app and use that software they’re implanting on my PHONE to help me re-assert my right to privacy 🤡

I too have played the disappointed and befuddled architecture evangelist. The counter-argument that inevitably ended these conversations was: “This is a business. We make money by getting stuff out the door. Demonstrate how the time it would take to rework this code base would correspond to an increase in profits, then we can talk about how your time and people budget is impossible to justify.”

“Pretty behind the scenes” doesn’t make any difference when you’re focused on getting people to build you a moneymaking machine as fast and cheap as possible.

Update:

Thanks to everyone who reached out, fediDB.org and fediverse.info will remain online going forward.

I'm not going anywhere either, though I think I need a break from the fediverse for a few days.

(https://mastodon.social/@dansup/110572348499857791)

Yay! Another enshittified product to replace with a federated one! @funkwhale here I come …

Congratulations! Quitting drinking was one of the best things I’ve done for my life, too.

I just wanted to mention, for anyone else following this thread: I had help from naltrexone.

It may still be considered an “off-label application” for alcoholics, depending on where you live in the world. But it worked for me, after many previous attempts and relapses.

For anyone who’s interested in learning more, here’s a case study to get you started: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565602/

Hey! They’re talking about me! (and thousands of people who were treated similarly)

I served for three years before I had any trouble. And on paper, there’s no record that I was kicked out for being queer. There’s just an opaque charge of misconduct which was drummed up after a base commander saw me (identified as male at the time) wearing a skirt.

The fact that this base was deep in rural Georgia - almost in Florida, really - feels relevant to this story, for some reason.

Being called “airman Klinger” for the next year while the JAG sat on my paperwork? It seemed pretty damn clear to me what misconduct they meant.

(Context for non-Americans and younger generations: there was once a popular TV show here, called M*A*S*H, which featured a cross dressing soldier named Klinger)

Absolutely resonant with my experience. I see Injustice and it becomes an obsession, a “cannot un-see” problem, which my mind simply can never ignore again.

At this point in life, thoroughly burned out, I feel like one of those wizards who lost their mind while questing for knowledge.

Well, if republican politicians and catholic priests are any guide, this means Kutcher and Moore are almost certainly prolific child abusers.

EDIT: oh FFS, their org is THORN?!? The same group of wine mommies trying to destroy the internet with that awful and mislabeled “kids online safety act”?

Fuck them AND their parent-pandering bullshit. Scientologists are nasty business.

In the United States, at least: There are retail stores - brick and mortar, I know! - where various “beauty supplies” are sold. Find one where they sell hair bleach etc. They will also sell hair shears.

I got the second-cheapest set they sold, for around $25. For our amateur purposes, these student-hairdresser-grade shears are more than adequate.

I cut my own hair probably 6-9 times a year, and those shears are still the sharpest things I own, fifteen years later.

(Shears are actually really specific cutting tools. Mine have only ever cut hair, which I credit for their long life)

Ayup. Or rather, that’s the most recent of it; I don’t have historical background.

(duplicate story in LGBTQ+; comment moved to https://beehaw.org/comment/382649)

Yes. Blockchains will only remain as decentralized as their underlying incentive structure. In the case of Bitcoin, it turns out that form of “proof-of-work” was subject to Capitalism Attack. That is, there was someone with enough capital to commission the design and manufacture of highly specialized silicon, and their resulting competitive advantage led to the network consolidation we see today: specialized machines competing for who can burn the most electricity.

Ethereum fucked up in a different way. They did learn from Bitcoin’s weakness, and switched from an “open” proof-of-work blockchain to a “closed” proof-of-stake system …

… once again facilitating Capital Attack. Because who can buy the biggest stake? Yeah.

Once again, market forces (combined with extremely dubious design choices in their smart contract API) led to the centralized garbage we see today.

But it is possible to redirect the Capital Attack, judo style, and render it impotent. Look into “proof of space and time” if you’re interested in learning more. Carefully aligned incentives and weaponized Scaling Challenges can give the little guy a chance and send the Big Capital Gang back to their dirty-tricks drawing board.

When the vast majority of people get “the news” from outlets that are all ultimately owned by a few specific billionaires … this is a surprise outcome to you?

Naltrexone is not a detox drug. If you’re physically dependent, naltrexone probably can’t help with that - inpatient detox is still a vitally important step for some alcoholics.

In my case, I was already able to choose to take a day off drinking without suffering DT. My problems tended more towards runaway consumption, when I did choose to drink.

I finally found this intervention that worked for me in 2015.

My psychiatrist prescribed me the stuff and said “for the first month, just take the pills each day and drink when you want. Keep notes if you can, about when you drink and how much. We’re establishing a baseline here”

By the end of the first month, my rigorous note-taking revealed I was already choosing drink less often, and that the runaway drinking that I was prone to seemed not to get out of hand quite so regularly.

Naltrexone seemed to tone down some circuit in my brain. The inner voice yelling “MOAR” felt … less imperative. The satisfaction of “a good drunk,” to me at least, became inextricably associated in my mind with the sad hollowness of the next morning’s hangover.

It helped me retrain my reward circuits. And it’s stuck ever since.

Uhh … if I were developing a Reddit reader app, and if their API periodically shit ads into my user’s feed, you KNOW that feature #1 in my third-party app would be simply to ignore those blobs of crap.