I don’t think you even can deny apps network permission on most Android builds anymore. Didn’t Google kill that option years ago for the sake of ads? (I’m on GrapheneOS now, where it certainly is possible, but if I remember right I couldn’t do it on the stock Pixel OS.)

Just wail til they become AI-generated-JavaScript-only shops. They’re gonna be vibing like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

For the immediate future, I’ll be all set with GrapheneOS.

Beyond that, I’ll suffer whatever inconveniences I need to in order to avoid this bullshit. If that means I can’t use my banking apps, I’ll find a better bank, or use the web site, or just say “fuck it all” and stop banking on my phone altogether. I’ve already given up NFC payments. It’s not the end of the world.

This will only become a bigger pain in the ass as time goes on, I’m sure, but I will die on this hill. I suggest that everyone draw their lines in the sand sooner rather than later.

I remember when some company started advertising “BURN-proof” CD-R drives and thinking that was a really dumb phrase, because literally nobody shortened “buffer underrun” to “BURN”, and because, you know, “burning” was the entire point of a CD-R drive.

It worked though. Buffer underruns weren’t a problem on the later generations of drives. I still never burned at max speed on those though. Felt like asking for trouble to burn a disc at 52x or whatever they maxed out at. At that point it was the difference between 1.5 minutes and 4 minutes or something like that. I was never in that big a rush.

I don’t think it’s fair to call all those “not serious” just because they had some cheesy aspects, especially when in some cases it was just in the B plot.

No, not yet. It was announced, I think for season 4.

It’s a real post on Reddit. I don’t know what combination of screenshotting/uploading tools leads to this kind of mangling, but I’ve seen it in screenshots from Android, too. The artifacts seem to run down in straight vertical lines, so maybe slight scaling with a nearest-neighbor algorithm (in 2025?!?) plus a couple levels of JPEG compression? It looks really weird.

I’m curious. If anyone knows, please enlighten me!

Also they put a spotlight on the huge energy costs of running an AI

Plus it’s fully in keeping with canon. They mentioned several times in TNG and beyond that holodecks needed isolated power. (And obviously we know the original Enterprise didn’t have a holodeck in a few years’ time.) It’s a nice way for them to have their cake and eat too.

I hope they have another holodeck episode at some point, maybe on a space station.

It would be like taking your compiled machine code and editing it by hand because your compiler sucks.

Just use the right tool from the start.

I’m not really looking forward to another season of Gorn PTSD. We just did that with La’an. We don’t need to rehash it. It’s boring.

Time will tell if they justify it.

I did love the costumes in this episode, although I also felt like they were a little too present-day. But if they’re playing Wham I guess that’s what they were going for.

Pike also commented on the wedding planner being Andorian. Spock didn’t seem to react to that statement, so I guess he also saw the Trelane as Andorian at that point.

Agreed, seems weird. But I’m optimistic when a series ending is announced well in advance. It means they’ll have time to finish it properly instead of hedging their bets, uncertain if they’ll be renewed.

Or perhaps you do not understand how Discord is commonly used.

People join dozens of servers. Maybe one for every game they play, every TV show they watch, every podcast they listen to. Everything has a Discord.

Even small Discord servers have many channels. Bigger ones will have dozens or hundreds of channels.

Some servers have millions of users. Most of the servers I’m in have thousands.

Many channels are default for all users in the server.

Not sure what the mathematical average is, but this is certainly common at least, and any alternative that can’t handle this is no alternative at all.

If we’re talking about Matrix as a Discord alternative, then that would mean thousands of channels, each with hundreds or thousands of users, many with constant activity.

I’m not sure if anybody actually uses Matrix at the scale of the average Discord user. Sliding sync is supposed to help, but I don’t think the Matrix architecture can realistically scale that high.

I set up their accounts

Setup is the hardest part. Syncing multiple devices and device migration are also hard. I’ll bet you’re going to act as tech support every time they get a new phone. That’s fine for your family, but it’s hardly going to scale.

The performance issues show up when dealing with large groups syncing between instances. You might just not be using it that way, but that’s what needs to work seamlessly for a viable substitute for Discord.

Matrix is notorious for its poor performance with large/numerous groups. They keep claiming to improve it, but it’s still bad.

I mean, it’s great that it works for you, but be honest: isn’t your tolerance for technological friction a bit higher than the average bear’s? People complain that Mastodon is too hard, and Matrix is ten times worse to sign up for and use.

I hate to say it, but Matrix is never going to be mainstream. Its UX is bad and it seems like it’s too bloated to fix. If I tried to get people to move from Discord to Matrix, they’d never take me seriously again. It was hard enough getting people to move from Facebook Messenger to Signal.

SQL is not traditionally pronounced like “sequel”. Sequel was a whole different language.

Official pronunciation for MySQL, SQLite, and PostgreSQL all pronounce each letter.

But “sequel” is probably more common at this point and some of them include it as an alternate pronunciation now.