I remember having to change things I got from… places… from epub to mobi using calibre for my old school kindle to recognise it years ago. I don’t even have that device anymore.

Glad they’re accepting what appears to be the standard format tbh.

I’m guessing the 2 uses you already know are ‘joke’ and ‘to retch/nearly vomit’?

Another meaning of ‘gag’ is to physically tie something around their mouth to stop them from speaking (like in films when people get material or tape in their mouths to muffle their cries for help in a kidnap scene? That material would be the ‘gag’)

Obviously in this instance it’s not a literal gag, although I’m sure there’s plenty of people who wish it could be. A ‘gagging order’ is a metaphor for not being able to speak about things

This is about misinformation on social media plays a part in war and journalism

See I got the impression when watching it was kind of like she was told to ‘just play it like you’re a female 10th doctor, yeah, that’ll do’. Which was really a shame because she could have owned her own character you know?

I actually thought her best episode was the one with the Daleks and the time loop in the warehouse (Eve of the Daleks I think). Her run got overshadowed by the whole timeless child thing which was more fanwank than anyone needed or asked for. Not that Moffat or Davies had individual episodes which were just as bad for continuity stuff but it felt like a lot of the 13th Doctor stories were arc obsessed. Maybe Flux didn’t help.

8/20 here. Proud of getting some right. Really shocked about the answers to some!

A tricky test indeed

Funnily enough gay sex was fine in ancient Rome (as long as you were the dominant one) but having sex in the light (whether natural or candle light) was seen as a massive taboo.

(Amongst the upper and middle classes anyway, I doubt the majority of people cared)

Obviously - I guess I’m more surprised at The Register in that case. They’re a very savvy industry magazine. Presumably they get a hefty wad.

Thanks for this - this is something that has passed me by. So essentially plagarising another website’s content for traffic plus the usual Google shenanigans? Nice

Thanks for the info - was not aware of this before. Yet more wonderful business practices from the world of big tech…

Sorry for that, but I don’t actually understand what you mean…

EDIT OK I’ve googled it and it seems to be a page that is sponsored by Google but I use Firefox and it worked fine with that - so is the problem that it doesn’t work with certain browsers?

I’ve only slipped over in my current pair once in 4 years or so - but I’m in the UK so winter boots for me are more about warmth and rain resistance than snow!

I’ve always had Doc Martens boots for casual wear in the winter. They’re really comfortable as long as you break them in by wearing them around the house for half an hour a day for a week or two before going outdoors with them.

Getting cushioned insoles might help?

Someone I’m in a Discord group with wanted an invite to bluesky because it was more familiar to him than Mastodon.

He pretty much wanted a like-for-like replacement for Twitter, though to his credit he had already tried Mastodon before dismissing it out of hand.

It’s not that he disliked it exactly, but he wasn’t that interested by what he saw so didn’t stick with it - to each their own

No, I just think he’s very bad at reining in an extremely impulsive and volatile personality which leads to him making rash decisions. Also he is always wanting to make sweeping changes rather than gradual ones which may have worked with Tesla and Space but doesn’t suit Twitter.

And lastly, I don’t think he really cares that much either way - as others have said, he had to be forced to buy Twitter remember. He’s got this albatross around his neck which is losing him money every day. He probably resents it a bit, has probably nearly hit the truth that the only way you could make a social media company profitable is to make everyone pay - except for the fact that almost everyone then leaves.

I think he’s too much of a wild card for anyone to involve in their cunning plan. I mean regardless of politics would you recruit him for your masterplan?

I mean this isn’t miles away from what the writer’s strike is about. Certainly I think the technology is great but after the last round of tech companies turning out to be fuckwits (Facebook, Google etc) it’s only natural that people are going to want to make sure this stuff is properly regulated and run fairly (not at the expense of human creatives).

I just started using it for Android the last month or so when Chrome dropped the flag feature that let you toggle dark mode for websites with system dark mode.

I have a VPN with an adblocker so that aspect of Chrome never bothered me so much. Chrome felt like it worked slightly smoother but at the end of the day a browser is a browser and Firefox does the job. (Samsung’s browser is actually surpringly good for those with a Samsung device looking for a Chrome alternative)

Firefox does seem more trustworthy overall, although I’ve learned by now that trusting tech companies is not a sensible thing to do.

I’ve been using a VPN, blockers, all sorts in the UK to disguise some of my online activity from Google and other companies so if I’m just doing the same thing to avoid the government there’s not much difference.

The fact that I still use Google products is a lapse and due to laziness on my part…

Of course it could be a vote winner for Starmer at the next election to say he’ll repeal it on free speech grounds of he played it right. But then the opposition could spin it as him not wanting to protect children online so he probably won’t have the guts to risk it.

WhatsApp certainly won’t, they own the UK chat app market and it’s not like they genuinely give a shit about privacy.

The others - remains to be seen.

VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let’s see, Wikipedia…

I’m interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she’s much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.

The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it’s very rare you’ll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it’s so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.

Still use Google search, but switched out Chrome for Firefox recently and it’s working out well. I do still use their calendar, docs apps but I’ve never been a big one for YouTube. I do have some Google speakers though and use Maps all the time - so I guess out of big tech Google is the one I’m suckered into the most…

Stopped using Facebook around 2016 and deleted my Twitter account a few years before that, basically when the novelty had long gone and it all seemed to be more toxic.

In the UK around that time it was just everyone going on about Brexit on Facebook but even before then people weren’t sharing stuff about themselves (with good reason) so it was just low effort memes). Use Facebook once in a blue moon to get in touch with really old friends

Didn’t miss either, although I recently signed up to Mastodon more just to see how the fediverse worked over there.

Then Reddit - probably the social media I was most invested in just because it was so granular in it’s There’s A Sub For That ability to cater for virtually all interests. But the utter disdain they held for their own volunteers and the contempt they seem to hold virtually everyone in was a bit of a wake up call. I do go back and check on it but I’m finding that I check on it less. Fedi has less content so I am reading all those eBooks I should have been reading instead!

My son is 7, I’m interested in how things are looking in 5 year’s time when he’s an early teen. He’s already got bored of watching YouTube videos, tiktok isn’t really a thing with us or anyone we know yet… time will tell I suppose. The main thing will be constant reminders that porn isn’t real and cyber security lectures