darkclarity

Just my observation that adults are regressing into child like behaviour as each generation takes over. Less people taking responsibility for themselves, more people hiding from the world through escapism and a general irreverence for history and tradition. I might be wrong but it keeps bubbling up.

It was a fun suggestion but going with it would have reminded me of the world exemplified by the movie Idiocracy. We are heading in that direction with the likes of adult colouring books, but I think it's a good sign that there is still some form of resistance.

Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses.

The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important.

There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.

> The only thing I can think of is that the developers use the shiny new hardware and it runs okay for them.

I think that was one of the problems with Google+ in the early days. They launched a social network that assumed a huge screen resolution (because that's what they used), so the interface was too big and clunky for a lot of people.

I think the best power supplies are those commissioned by big manufacturers to go with their hardware. The HP Touchpad's power plug being a good example. These brands don't want a poorly designed adapter killing their products.

That's a big reason why private businesses are better than public ones. There's no need to push for unsustainable growth at the behest of busybody investors.

Mozilla lives on money from the ad industry, so in a way they are all part of the same system.

Clementine comes from an place where software is aimed at all levels of user - without sacrificing expert features. If your idea of UI and UX (I don't know) is the modern trend of hiding features to make software into toys then that won't go well with its users.

Exactly. Amarok was one of the few pieces of software I looked at and thought, from a feature perspective... that's perfect. Was so glad Clementine appeared on the scene and rescued the player from its well intentioned fall from grace.

I'm not that bothered by them personally, but I would rather see these international taxi brands gone. They take away income and entrepreneurship from local economies.

The world is slowly becoming a boring homogeneous place run by multinational brands. It's like fast food outlets, coffee shops and so on, most of them are run from another country and look exactly the same - there's no character.

I have gone through a similar phase. Got rid of social media, switched back to a feature phone, am reading real books, listening to music on physical media, using cash where possible and whatever else.

The Internet has gone from a place with a high barrier of entry (and the interesting characters that self selected for that barrier), to an all encompassing entity with a load of moralisers, businesses and governments fighting over the ability to call the shots.

In its current state, I think it's better to take a step back. View the Internet as an occasional tool for getting things done, rather than a place to live within and rely upon. Let the masses have their addictions fulfilled, while technology enthusiasts move on and enjoy real life.

The thing that bemuses me about TfL is a similar public run arrangement was recently encouraged and proposed for another part of England. It was blocked at the last minute. London definitely gets special treatment, even when it goes against the narrative.

Yeah, cycles of moral panic that were fuelled by the media when they had nothing better to do. Nowadays though, it's fuelled by outrage culture on social media, so the result is more schizophrenic.

Our railway system was built by competing railway businesses with lots of inefficiency, it was nationalised, made painfully efficient (Beeching etc) and franchised out to businesses. This is the next stage where demand is catching up with the network and old routes are reopening.

The way I do it is by creating fake deadlines in my head. I know I am not going to achieve them but it's like milestones without the extra baggage of planning and it being boring.

I find Breitbart's comments interesting, it's pretty much an outlet for people who are discouraged from voicing their opinion in standard news outlets. Though I don't go there on purpose... in the same way as I rarely visit The Guardian.

I used to run sites for years and to me, removing the ability to comment or purposely hiding it is a sign of a publication that's failing its readership.

Pretty standard modus operandi for technology start-ups, 'disrupt' the scene (AKA enable illegal/unlawful/unethical things). Then years later, officially notice you've been turning a blind eye and provide tools to discourage it.

Yeah, some religions are more benign than others, to put it mildly. I'm not religious personally, but I find it interesting that a lot of these religious movements practice stoic values and do some sort of meditation. Those two aspect are now mainstream treatments (AKA CBT and Mindfulness) that doctors recommend for mental health problems. That's just scratching the surface though.

Merge stuff together and you get something clunky like Google+.

I experienced a similar (but non-drug related) shock to you several years ago and it changed how I think. I came to the conclusion that religion is just an old fashioned, and highly specialised, way of treating mental health. Without going into details, it gives people an ultimate dose of peace of mind.

The good thing about broccoli is it contains nutrients that the body can use, for example, to enhance its ability to manage sugar levels.

Whereas a cheap soft drink is inert from a nutritional perspective, it probably has a load of flavouring and colouring that's out-of-place too.

The Daily Mail has a bad reputation with the Twitterring classes, but like every other UK newspaper they cater for their own audiences - it just so happens that you probably aren't in that particular group.

If Yahoo are in trouble then they need leadership to find an audience (and adjust their services appropriately). What better way than to rely on the owner of one of the most successful news outlets? Either that, or it slowly disappears.

It just seems unhealthy keeping in contact with that many people who were resigned to the past. Never mind all the game-theory-esk psychological manipulation that social networks push on us.

If people want to keep in contact with their past friends, then get their phone numbers or become pen pals (email or post). There's no dodgy third party trying to manipulate with those methods, just enthusiasm from the participants.

I like being that irresponsible one.

Though it is impressive that Amazon has turned a delivery fee - that most people don't like paying - into an exclusive subscription service. A service that customers fall over themselves to sign up for when it's offered at a discount.

It got to a point where governments had to mandate that certain processed foods (e.g. bread, breakfast cereals) must contain extra vitamins and minerals - just to keep the population from damaging themselves.

The UK had a strong Amiga magazine contingent, probably around a dozen mainstream titles with respectable sales figures. Every newsagent would have at least four or five titles on their shelves.

Those magazines lived on top of a flourishing ecosystem of businesses, everything from Amiga hardware sellers to public domain software distributors.

It was a system just waiting for Commodore (and their replacements) to utter anything useful. It was so disappointing to watch each owner screw up and see different parts of that ecosystem fail one at a time.

Just stick with basic thermostats and controls. Using these over-engineered devices will be a nuisance if you decide to sell your property or temporarily hand over control to someone else. Never mind the problems with cloud based vendor lock-in.

I can't see any online services ever competing with cable and satellite providers over sport. It would require deep pockets to convert paying customers to a new platform, plus the Internet isn't proprietary enough to physically capture the audience.

Spotify's an integral part of the entertainment industry, there's little point treating it as anything other than an oddity.

I think the public will eventually notice that gadgets and appliances that rely on apps and internet access are a risky investment. Even multinational appliance manufacturers give up on the smart features in their TVs after several years.

Forget the high end products with their fancy features and instead stick with reliable basic/mid range products that will last for decades rather than years.