No argument there. But apparently there’s a market for it.

Is it really too much to ask that apps/devices are made secure from the ground up?

In a way, yes. They can and should definitely be made with security in mind from the ground up. But they will never be totally secure, and a necessary part of what constitutes a “secure product” is to continuously and quickly patch security issues as they become known.

Surely that’s just a secure end-to-end encrypted connection?

I would bet it’s still a bit more than that. But even if it’s just a secure end-to-end encrypted connection, here is the list of vulnerabilities fixed in OpenSSL (which is probably what they use for secure encrypted connections). It’s five so far in 2024. Then there’s some OS kernel below that which can have security issues as well. The Thermomix probably also has user authorization components and payment methods, plus various personal information that has to be protected under GDPR.

I agree that the current system is broken. So let’s say that instead of paying $300 for a pair of headphones that last three years, you pay $8.33 / month for renting the headphones. Now, if the headphones break after three years the manufacturer has to produce new ones for you. That’s an undesirable cost for them.

It is now in their best interest to make headphones that will last a long time and that they can repair if something breaks. But also, since you can easily cancel the subscription at any time, it is in their interest to offer you something that is competitive. They might even upgrade to better technology over time or add new features to the bundled app to keep you as a customer. Or alternatively, lower the subscription cost over time to reflect the relative value of the headphones.

For you, there’s also the benefit that there’s no high upfront cost that you can’t reverse. You’re paying for what you can afford in your current situation. If you lose your job you can stop paying for the headphones at a moment’s notice. I imagine that this would leave fewer people in credit card debt.

Depends what kind of ownership you’re thinking about. When it comes to electronics, “ownership” is just subscription with a longer period between payments. Your existing phone, tablet, TV, dishwasher or what have you will last a finite time and then you have to buy a new one.

If there’s something that will last a lifetime, that’s a different discussion. But those are rare. Almost every purchase you make is a commitment to a recurring cost.

Something like myfitnesspal or a thermomix shouldn’t be a subscription, there is no major updates to how someone tracks their exercise uses a hot blender that justifies it beyond users being locked in.

I won’t dispute that both of these likely abuse the subscription model for their benefit. But they definitely have a social responsibility (and in many cases a legal responsibility) to keep updating the software in these products and the network infrastructure that go with them. The internet of things is one of the most vulnerable attack vectors we have. It has been exploited many times not just to attack individuals, but to create massive bot nets that can target corporations or even countries. The onus is on the manufacturer to continuously keep that at bay. You know what they say - the “S” in “IOT” stands for security.

I know I’m in the minority but I am also a software developer, and I think subscriptions are a much healthier payment model for everyone. The issue IMO is not recurring payments but the total cost of ownership.

“Digitial goods” is very rarely just a thing that you produce once and then it’s done. The OS is regularly updated which causes incompatibilities, app stores introduce new demands, and there’s a constant stream of security vulnerabilities in your dependencies that need to be patched. Failing to adress any of these things breaks the social contract and causes rage among your users (“I PAID FOR THIS, WHY ISN’T IT WORKING/WHY AREN’T YOU FIXING BUGS/etc”). Even movies and music need to be maintained because new media formats are introduced, streaming services have to be kept responsive and up to date etc.

A subscription models the cost distribution over time much better, and it does benefit the users because it means the company can keep updating their shit even if new sales drop, instead of going bankrupt.

I don’t think this stops with just digital goods. Manufactured products (and the environment) would also benefit from a subscription model because it means there’s no incentive for planned obsolescence. It’s an incentive for keeping the stuff we already built working for a long time, instead of constantly producing new crap and throwing the old in a landfill.

But, the caveat is that this shift must not result in higher total cost of ownership for the end users over time. In fact, it should reduce the cost because repairing and updating is cheaper than building new stuff. The way many companies are pricing subscriptions today, they are being too greedy.

I mean he could say “Hey, I’m going to take you out of your life for a minimum of 8 years, I can’t tell you what or why, but as compensation I’m paying you enough to make you set for life.”

Why wouldn’t they send the best and brightest? Weyland is infinitely rich and has a personal stake in the success of the mission.

Sure, but that’s far from a universal experience.

Not only shitty, it’s dumb. Even Adobe knows to give students hefty discounts. It’s how they get new users on the hook.

IntelliJ is an all-out full IDE in the tradition of the old Visual Studio or Borland IDE:s, so it makes sense there. Zed is ostensibly a text editor in the same niche as VS Code, vim and Sublime, where I expect to be able to just open a single file and edit it without any bigger investment.

I typically have both an IDE and a text editor installed, for different use cases. But Zed can never replace IntelliJ and because of this design choice it can’t replace VS Code/vim/Notepad++ either.

It drives me nuts that there’s no way to close a folder once you opened it. There’s no way to just edit a file without making it a “project”. In my mind that’s a weird design decision (which is probably rooted in weird fundamental ideas) and gives me no warm & fuzzy feeling about what direction it will take in the future.

Är det inte dåligt att medelklassens ekonomi är beroende på skyhöga bopriser? Det är försättning av 1980 talets tänke som ledde till finanskrisen. Hur kan vi klara bostadskriset om vi är för rädd att ens sänka bopriser?

Jo, jag tycker att det är ett sjukt och dysfunktionellt system när det inte går att betala av ett hus innan pensionen. Men situationen är som den är. Jag bemötte bara ditt påstående att inga vanliga människor har nytta av det. Min flickvän är i exakt den här situationen, vi vill flytta ihop men hon kan inte sälja sin bostad utan att bli kvar med en skuld. Så för min egen del är jag tacksam för räntesänkningen just nu, trots att vi är “vanliga människor”.

Att höja inflationen är exakt det som Riksbanken försöker åstadkomma. Kontroll av inflationen är i princip den enda orsaken till att Riksbanken ändrar räntan.

Ett sätt som det kan hjälpa vanliga folk är att många troligen sitter med fastigheter som de köpte när räntan var lägre och om de skulle sälja nu så måste de ta blanco-lån för att täcka förlusten. De sitter fast i boende som dessutom kan vara dyrare än de egentligen klarar pga ränteläget. Sänkt ränta hjälper dem ur den rävsaxen.

Why does it need to reach 1 million names exactly? This is a petition, right?

Their latest iteration of Teams runs on https://teams.cloud.microsoft.

How is this even possible? Why does Office have access to NTLM hashes?

Better that than screaming as you poop.

This seems like such a poor choice if you want a cross platform browser.

Will people in Russia even be aware that they lost?