My mate Gary who puts them on his enormous Plex server. He’s a good lad.

Non-American here.

I don’t dislike America. I was a teenager in the ‘90s, when the culture was peaking in influence here in the UK, so I have great nostalgia for American things (which really helps when playing the daily NYT games). I’ve visited a few times, and always enjoyed my time there.

But I am real fucking tired of the American influence on the internet, on politics, and on attitudes around the world.

I’m tired of the American view being the default on social media, because the majority of social media sites are American, populated by Americans.

I’m tired of saying something that would completely uncontroversial outside the US that attracts a rash of people bitching at you because it’s not normal over there. Like letting our cats outside. I once said something on Reddit about my cat getting killed by a car, and got a bunch of replies from people telling me how irresponsible I am for letting her go outside.

I don’t use TikTok, but my wife does, and part of her kinda wants the US ban to go ahead, so that her feed is a bit more balanced towards Europe. And I get that.

:edit: I accept that this isn’t the fault of individual Americans, and hold no ill-will towards them. It’s down to the vast majority of global tech wealth being held in the US, giving the illusion that the whole internet is an American thing.

I also accept that this is rank hypocrisy coming from a Brit. If we’d had the internet 250 years ago, the whole world would be speaking English now, as opposed to most of it.

The easiest way to find coppers is to get naked on the high street.

Folks ITT

This here. The One True GIF.

If Brent Rambo approves, we do.

Oh aye, I wasn’t suggesting that they have to know ALL of the tech to be able to post on a tech forum, I’m just surprised that they’re completely unaware of it, given it’s ubiquity on the tech forum over the past month or so.

Yes, obviously, but that thing has been everywhere over the past month or so. I’m just surprised that they were completely unaware.

I mean, today’s 10,000 and all that, but you’re on a technology forum and haven’t heard of the Rabbit R1?

Not everything. By default the contents of your desktop and documents folder, both of which are easy to switch off if you want.

They are not, but they do sell products over here, so are subject to British law.

I’m in the UK, where the law may be less mental over things like this.

IANAL and could be wrong, but it is not the case that the T’s&C’s we all have to agree to aren’t necessarily legally binding, because people can’t be expected to read and understand them all.

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter what the user agrees to if they have no practical alternative available to them.

When I bought my first MacBook in ‘07 I asked the guy in the store about upgrading the RAM. He told me that what Apple charged was outrageous and pointed me to a website where I’d get what I needed for much less.

I feel that if Apple could have soldered the RAM back then, they would have.

I’m not gonna stand up and declare that 8gb is absolutely fine, because in very short order it won’t be. But yeah, currently for an average use case, it is.

My work Mac mini has 8gb. It’s a 2014 so can’t be upgraded, but for the tasks I ask of it it’s ok. Sure, it gets sluggish if I’m using the Win11 VM I sometimes need, but generally I don’t really have any issues doing regular office tasks.

That said, I sometimes gets a bee in my bonnet about it, so open Activity Monitor to see what’s it’s doing, and am shocked by how much RAM some websites consume in open tabs in Safari.

8gb is generally ok on low end gear, but devs are working very hard to ensure that it’s not.

Until last week it was running Sonoma. Then I put Mint on it, which somehow buggered up the macOS partition.

Long story short, it’s not run High Sierra for a couple of years now, not since I discovered OCLP.

Speaking personally, I don’t think they’re dumbed down. They’re pretty straightforward to use, sure, but they do what I need them to.

In terms of the hardware; I have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home that’s still just about as solid as the day I bought it. The battery’s dead, but that’s to be expected for its age. I’m typing this on a 2014 Mac mini that’s running the latest macOS perfectly through OCLP. My main computer is a 15" M2 MacBook Air that is a genuinely impressive machine. If anything, Apple have kinda shot themselves in the foot, making devices that last far longer than their software support allows.

I quite believe this.

Was looking on /r/Apple last week and was shocked by the number of people who are apparently full on free market champions or Apple shareholders or both. That place has always had it’s fair share of them, but they seem to have been ramped up to the max now.

I’ve been a user of Apple devices since I got my first MacBook in 2007. I now have an iPhone, iPad, a selection of Macs of various ages, and a couple of Apple TVs. As much as I’d like to switch to Linux, I don’t really see it happening because I like Apple’s hardware too much.

With all that in mind, I think the EU are doing sterling work. Shame my country voted to leave it…

Landlords are vermin, AI is peddled by vermin, and spambots are vermin.

As a Mac user who enjoys trying to get games working, I’ve played Talos Principle II recently, and am able to play Fallout 4 (to some degree) when I get a chance.

On the one hand there are graphical glitches and things aren’t perfect. But on the other, I’m playing games that have had literally no optimisation for macOS, on a fanless M2 Air.

If nothing else, it’s a useful example of the direction things could take if devs had the impetus to do so.