The service I used to use shut down about six months ago and I’m yet to find a good replacement. So if anyone wants to put some words in my mouth (ugh, not sure I should have gone with that phrase) I’ll gladly accept. Seems like most of the “recommended” ones are referrals to scams, or have weird limitations (like not making the M3Us available, so you can’t hook in to Plex, for example).
Homepage is great. I like that you get little snippets from the apps it links through but is more customisable than something like Heimdall which does similar. It’s become my go-to having tried pretty much every other dashboard out there over the years.
That’s what the bowls are for. To catch any drips.
and now Google of all companies wants to lock down the whole internet?
Of all the companies, Google always seemed the most likely, both to want to and to be successful. They’ve tried before, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in larger more obvious ways (AMP, the implementation of content filtering in Chrome etc.).
They’re the world’s largest advertising and data harvesting company. It’s their business. Of course they want to lock the internet down to serve their goals of learning as much about you as possible and using that data to shove ads in your face.
Whenever using any Google/Alphabet product you have to ask yourself, “am I ok with this thing I’m about to use being built by the world’s largest advertising company?”. The answer should be “no” more than it is “yes”, particularly for things that have access to lots of your data, like web browsers, phones, home speakers etc.
I think they might mean bricked up, as in the windows have been bricked over?
Or maybe they’re associated with buildings built during a certain period that are now mostly empty due to a boom and bust cycle?
We (i.e. those of us who work in the industry and care about such things) really need to work on messaging to get through to normal people.
For instance, people are genuinely freaked out at the idea of Facebook listening to them through their phones. It really hits a nerve. Now that isn’t happening, but what is happening is even worse. Facebook are able to predict your behaviour, your thoughts, so well that it gives the illusion that they’re listening to you. They’ve spent decades training their models on your behaviour, your content, both on their website and across the entire web and beyond. And they’ve fucking nailed it.
That’s far far more scary than them listening to you. They know things about you that you don’t even say out loud. It’s terrifying.
It was, yeah. The market crashed pretty much over night too. Really obvious in hindsight, but if you’re making six figures from reselling the things you’re probably too close to really notice the wider picture.