The Icelandic finance minister was flying to the UK (or was it NY) to have some talks about the crisis, he was so worried about the banks collapsing, he brought cash in case his credit card stopped working while he was travelling...
Maybe someone figured out The Google Algorithm (TM/all hail the algorithm...) is allowing source code on dodgy sites, so they've created and marketed to spammers a script/bot to create these kinds of sites (or all the sites just belong to them) to farm that ad money.
During the Asian economic crash from 1998s, things like PC parts were priced in USD, and to get the local price, the shopkeeper would multiply the day's USD rate with the gadget's price, and show you the price on her calculator... but 2 decades later the currencies of the region have stabilized enough that this is no longer the case.
One time I was in a foreign country but looking for hotels on Google Maps for a future weekend getaway in my home country. Despite being logged in and Google having my home address, and with each account needing a country to comply with differing data protection laws, it was still showing me prices for hotels in my home country in the foreign country's currency. Helpful? Not!
I'm not sure how the structure is, if Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus are separate companies owned by the holding company also named "Facebook".
I'm pretty sure the websites/apps will keep their names, just a design will change, e.g. if you load Instagram, the splash screen says currently "Instagram, from Facebook", and it'll be "... from Meta" soon enough.
It's also so fucking unoriginal... "hmm we need a parent company that owns all the other companies, what should we call it?"
I'm not sure how the structure is, if Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus are separate companies owned by the holding company also named "Facebook".
Obviously the websites/apps will keep their names, just a design will change, e.g. if you load Instagram, the splash screen says currently "Instagram, from Facebook", and it'll be "... from Meta" soon enough.
I remember loading the Mac Spotlight and trying to calculate some decimal numbers, let's say 63.10 * 3.50 . But because the Mac was expecting the German locale with "," as a decimal separator, it just silently gave me 2208500 instead of 220.85 (or 220,85).
Wow.. at least show me I goofed up, you useless piece of software!
That calculator looks like that's part of the Bing results page... so it made an HTTPS connection and parsed some HTML, JS and CSS to show what 8*9 is.
It'd be even better if it said "You need to consent to these 100 cookies for us to show you what 8*9 is".
All those things you write in the 1st paragraph, I wonder if it's 9/11 or the continued spread of Internet access. Previously if you thought the earth was flat, your friends in school or work would laugh at you. Nowadays you can google anything and find a community totally into that idea, and they are indeed communities because they'll quickly indoctrinate that the rest of society/big government/the secret elite cabal are prosecuting them for their beliefs, so they'd have to support each other..
Do you mean like you can later today watch the Euro Soccer finals in HD? Hmm, that footage will be beamed into space by a giant dish, to a stationery (or at least easily trackable) target that weighs several tonnes and large solar panels, and they can beam the stuff down with a lot of power.
Hah... what if I go on a multi-day ride in an area with no cell coverage? Or in a foreign country where I don't want to activate maybe-expensive data roaming on my phone?
Maybe their "Click here to accept" EULA has a clause that you need Internet connectivity at least once a day as well?
If the schmairbag has a fail-active functionality, then the hack would be to install their app on a disconnected phone. "I can't contact my stupid-ass rent-seeking makers right now, so I guess I'll keep the airbag functioning".