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philjw

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philjw
·vor 4 Monaten·discuss
Apple technically supports downloading legacy app versions, but the system is broken: it usually requires the app to be in your purchase history, and developers can opt to delete their old binaries entirely.

Maybe something the EU could enforce is requiring Apple to offer the 'last compatible version' prompt for all users, not just previous downloaders, ensuring older hardware isn't artificially artificially rendered useless for basic tasks.
philjw
·vor 6 Monaten·discuss
Gotta hand it to the US-Americans - they managed to speedrun the 500-year Idiocracy timeline in just 20. Talk about efficiency.
philjw
·vor 8 Monaten·discuss
"The Ram ProMaster City was a compact commercial van made by Stellantis, which discontinued the model in 2022."

Also, people in the US started importing Kei-Trucks so there is a demand and a certain level of resistance to the car bloat.
philjw
·vor 8 Monaten·discuss
The lack of vegan options — and Trump flexing his one-day McDonald’s internship — finally pushed me to boycott McDonald’s altogether. Also it became slow with all the delivery drivers queuing up as well. Burger King might be raising prices too, but at least their deals are still decent, and every burger has a vegan option (which is supposedly even cheaper for them to produce).

My actual favorite “fast food” is IKEA — surprisingly good as a coworking spot, and their vegan Köttbullar are great. And honestly, in Germany who needs McDonald’s when there’s a good Döner place around? It’s basically a 5-in-1 burger: real bread, salad, sauces, and your choice of meat/halloumi/seitan.

From what I see here, McDonald’s mostly survives in low-density areas or as car-dependant late-night junk food where alternatives don’t exist. But if people go out less, or can’t afford a car anymore, that model gets shaky fast. There are simply too many better options now.

It reminds me of the same shrinkflation/bloat cycle we see with American pickup trucks: beds get smaller while prices balloon, and then people act surprised that these wank-tanks fail in Europe where efficient vans just work better. “Free market” also means that bad products eventually lose.

Same story with phones: everything keeps getting bigger, heavier, and more bloated with features nobody asked for. Bring back the iPhone Mini — not everything needs to be Super-Size Me.
philjw
·vor 8 Monaten·discuss
Just set-up a linux machine with Pidgin Messenger and XMPP last week like in the old days.

It used to bundle MSN, ICQ, IRC and everything in one messenger - super resource efficient.

Unfortulately I cannot reach many contacts that way these days but it showed me how inefficient applications became by using more abstraction layers.

Same on my Mac - it uses almost 16GB of RAM in idle mode with some Tabs, VSCode and Figma open - How did we get here?

edit: Just saw another comment mentioning there is a WhatsApp plugin for Pidgin. Awesome!
philjw
·vor 9 Monaten·discuss
I noticed this when I studied abroad in the Netherlands — a highly educated, slightly more digitalized country than my own. Politics there splintered into micro-parties, each “hardly exchanging between bubbles,” as the study puts it. First impressions were warm, but dates always ended with splitting the bill. Friend groups felt just as closed off, except for Dutchies who had just as me lived abroad before, learned to bridge cultures and still are my closest friends today.

Digitalization and the pursuit of perfect information seemed to invite more binary thinking — and with it, more opportunities to disagree every single day. Meanwhile, other forces found easy consensus on simpler, more immediate issues: cheap gas, housing, grocery prices, job security, immigration. Complex, long-horizon topics like the climate crisis rarely stood a chance.
philjw
·vor 10 Monaten·discuss
One more year on my 13 Mini then...

Liquid Glass design + This lineup is a middle-finger to ergonomics and accessibility.

I just want a non distractive phone with good battery life. E-Paper screen, compact format, yet still great cameras - maybe LoRa capability for Meshtastic / Meshcore, embedded swiss army knife.