ccity88

So just of the top of my head, things that have made mainstream news in the past ~week;

- A Small molecule oral cancer drug kills 100% of solid tumors across 70 evaluated cancer types - LK-99, potentially the first ever room temperature ambient pressure superconductor (unverified as of yet)

Things are looking up

I would love to use Firefox, Brave, even Safari, but I'm quite literally locked into the Google eco-system. My work emails are G-Suite, so having chrome means I can sync data from sheets, slides, docs etc. I stupidly moved everything personal to a Gmail address too back in 2016 when things weren't looking so grim, and cloud only was a hype so I'm kind of locked into using chrome for personal use too as I can't get away from not having Google account sync functionality.

De-googling is incredibly hard. I've used my Gmail address for everything from government voting registration, to companies house, to services I can't even remember signing up for. At this stage, I'm kind of stuck. Bonus: I own an android phone and Google services are essential. Please don't preach to me about grapheneOS or whatever, they suck without the play store.

Iris Alexandra's twitter is especially enthralling. Seems like so much discoveries and innovation happens from computer science to physics, chemistry and biology all from people with anime profile pictures.

I know this is a joke, but can we for a second take a step back to marvel at how we're now watching US Congressional hearings about UAP's, where the word "Aliens" and "Extra-terrestrial life" was mentioned several times? I feel like I'm living through the beginning of a sci-fi movie.

More to the point, why is it always people in the US that have credible or semi credible (or for that matter ANY) evidence of UAP's, UFO's etc? The earth is a big place, why is it always the US they choose to visit? Is Botswana not good enough? Is Europe not technologically advanced enough? Does South America not send the right message?

Signal is great, easily one of the best apps I've ever used. As someone who's privacy conscious, I've been trying forever to get my network of friends, family and colleagues to use signal with literally no success. Here in the UK, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, and to even _think_ of using a different app is, by most laypeople's standards, absolutely weird. Most people I've convinced have downloaded Signal, gave it a go with a few messages, and them promptly went back to WhatsApp because that's where the majority of their communication happens.

I'm convinced that it doesn't matter how good the product is, what matters is the network effect. Nobody cares about privacy, what they care about is whether everyone else is using the same app. Until there's some doomsday scenario of everyones messages getting leaked or something (the closest was the WhatsApp privacy policy changes that triggered worldwide scrutiny and was a general PR nightmare), nobody will be moving en masse to a plucky small app that their network isn't on.

Also doesn't help that Signal are implementing features like crypto transactions that most people don't care about.

Kind of wild that Apple have built up so much of a reputation that you're calling it the 'best VR headset ever made' without it even being released yet. This just proves that good products are like 70% perception, and its why we continuously drink Coke even though there's so many better healthier, tastier drinks

I've been using pop on my 2017 xps for 3 years now, its amazing. Honestly the best linux experience

You don't just develop existential dread about climate change out of nowhere. First comes awareness, in this case the younger generation grew up being educated about climate change. Then you get exacerbation/increased attention - in this case social media and traditional media which have fuelled doomsday rhetoric and alarmism in general. Not to say that it isn't a big issue, it's massive; but doesn't help that we're feeding young minds with constant negative stimuli about how we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about the problem.

Blender is what I point to when people tell me open source is doomed for failure. There isn't anything that comes remotely close in terms of features and ubiquitous support, and its free. Honestly the best example of open source done right.

Its quite sad that ad-blocking is framed as killing this business. Surely it's more akin to a subsidised business failing to move to a more sustainable model? Don't get me wrong I love free no nonsense business models, but as Google and Facebook have shown us, ads are only part of the equation. If we didn't collectively lose trust with the ad industry, and ads weren't so intrusive, I for one (and many others I've spoken to) wouldn't be blocking ads. I go out of my way to disable ad-block on friendly websites and blogs that need the ad revenue; sites that have a responsible and ethical policy surrounding their ad usage. Zippyshare seemed like one of those sites. Unfortunately the rest of the industry had to ruin it for them. Even more sad, this will become the norm and sites will have to move to a paid subscription type model to keep their services alive.

Anecdotally, it's already being used in day to day life. My friends (who work in non stem fields) have been using it to settle arguments. My neighbour has been using it to ask for gardening advice. An acquaintance at the mosque used it to help him create posters in Photoshop (he asked it how to implement masking and such). It's actually incredible how quickly it's being adopted.