Can’t they invest in standardized SIP solutions? Linphone is already French.

You mean you don’t just trust the AI summaries?

18% or 21% sounds like a lot of people. Not an easy problem. :-(

I check on this. So first thing I found, literacy rates and average reading age are different things. Literacy rate, able to read at all, is clearly tracked and both countries are like 99%. Reading age seams really mushy. If you can get some numbers, please share!

Also, it won’t always be them. It will be a repair shop. If things were built to be repaired, it would be quicker and cheaper to repair them.

https://craphound.com/news/2026/01/01/the-post-american-internet-39c3-hamburg-dec-28/

So we hear. But the world is not America and this is a British newspaper.

I’d rather see it finally fixed to be a fully functioning democracy. The party duopoly was always risky. A PR system with many parties is far more stable. Make it so new parties can come and go. So there is always real choice. It helps keep the nutters from getting absolute power. The UK could fall to nutters next election because of our insane FPTP system.

101 : Don’t create data you don’t want in the wrong hands.

TVs, cars, smart fridges, in fact “Smart” anything.

Waze is now also Google. Apple can and does extract/extort lots rent/ransom from Google. OSM doesn’t have the pockets. They, like lots of FOSS, undermine the whole scheme.

After that, Apple would ban OSM apps from their store.

No they work. It’s not like LineageOS. Both Bank apps I now need, work on GrapheneOS but did not on LineageOS. It is my compromise without being compromised.

Yeah, I broadly agree. I think a lot of the issue is inequality that has been only getting worse since 2008.

The source? Well I’ve always suspected some of that is Russia. MAGA too, but they get a load Russian support too. I think it’s online bot farms as much as just out right corruption/donations/lobbying. When Ukraine defeats Russia, I wonder what knockons it will have.

Same problems though. If you run something odd ball like Ubuntu, the banking apps won’t work and you may struggle to have a satnav with traffic info. If you run stock Android, you will soon only be able to install, sorry, “side load”, apps Google approves.

Me too, but the lords of Technofeudalism, backed by government, won’t allow that forever. Maybe on PCs, but not phones. No “side loading” what they don’t approve. Banks and co, only allowing their apps on approved OSs. No satnav traffic data unless you use an approved satnav, rendering them useless.

The problem isn’t technological, it’s political. We need decent government protecting citizens and enforcing competition laws. The problem is the population don’t understand what is being done to them, so don’t vote against it.

None of it is new. Liberty vs security, monopoly, etc, aren’t new, but wrapping it in technology blinds most people to it.

Good podcast about this bubble bursting : https://craphound.com/news/2025/10/06/the-real-economic-ai-apocalypse-is-nigh/

There are groups to support:

• https://www.eff.org/issues/eff-europe
• https://fsfe.org/
• https://edri.org/

And in the UK:

• https://www.openrightsgroup.org/

Some political groups are better than others, but most politicians are clueless.

The key is to get muggles to understand we are living in Technofeudalism and why being digital serfs is bad. The problem is ineffective competition law and that monopolies are bad. That monopolies and standards are not the same thing. I have no idea how. Most people are just naturally compliant and unquestioning of something seemingly so abstract.

Then again, people around him tell him what he wants to hear. Like Ukrainians will welcome his troops in…

The goold old analog hole.