Liam Mayfair

A few weeks ago I helped one of my client’s employees set up their brand new laptop, which came with Win11 installed, of course. They just need it for basic work stuff and there’s no chance in hell anything other than Windows is a viable option here.

We work remotely so I would help them get set up to a point where they could at least share their screen to me, or I could take over via remote access myself, to finish the installation process. I just needed to guide them through the steps “blind” for a short while. Easy peasy, right?

So we go through the Windows 11 first time setup together. All seems to go ok until Windows asks them to log into their MS account or create one. No problem, we should be able to do that, right? Only that we can’t. We’re connected to the WiFi, etc., yet they get some generic ass error message like “Sorry, something went wrong” and that’s that.

Ok, so we can’t log in with an online account. Let’s try offline as a fallback! We set the username, password… “Sorry, something went wrong” again. We try to guess maybe it’s the password, it doesn’t match! Or it’s not strong enough! So we try all these different things for ages. Again, we’re getting no feedback whatsoever from Windows. Just “Something went wrong fuck you lol”.

I don’t use Windows myself, I’ve been a Linux user for years now, I don’t have any freaking clue how to remotely diagnose a vague issue that literally prevents them from getting the laptop to a functional state. So I Google the problem and the recommended answer is to run this magic “bypassnro” command. It will cut all the mandatory online account bullshit, move straight to a reliable offline account setup screen, and allow us to, you know, actually do work? And it worked!

If I hadn’t had that command at my disposal, that I was forced to use by Microsoft’s broken ass setup UX, I would’ve probably spent twice or three times longer coaching my non-tech-savvy client through booting into fail safe mode and doing all kinds of arcane sysadmin shit that I don’t even have to ever think about in Linux. All this just to get them into the desktop, on a brand new laptop.

And Microsoft have now decided to take it away. Nice one.

Happens to the best.

Feels good not to care anymore about the unrelenting enshittification of Reddit, Twitter and Google since I switched away from them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with people wanting to learn mandarin but I wonder whether this uptick in engagement with the Chinese world will just be a blip and soon people will get bored of it and look for more “Western” platforms again.

Like, when the enshittification of reddit and Twitter took root, you would also see very big numbers of users flocking to alternative platforms like Lemmy (like yours truly!) or Mastodon but in the end, after the initial novelty wore off, how many of those people actually ended up sticking around or moved on to something else after a short while?

My point is that it is still way too early to judge whether RedNote will become the next TikTok in the US, or whether this could be the start of a mass grassroots movement for American and Chinese people to get closer.

Thanks buddy

A design consultant probably sent Jaguar a six-figure bill for this new logo, you know.

But it’s the first time they’ve made a change as drastic as this. I can recognise any Jaguar car out there even if I know fuck all about their cars because I can see the jaguar design on the car.

Now people will have to squint to make out the word JAGUAR in that shitty font? Bad move.

Yeah, for a whole 2 hours, until everyone moves on to bitch about the next thing and then Jaguar are stuck with the shitty new logo no-one recognises for long after that.

Yes.

The Forbidden Egg.

It’s because you’ve not stared at the blue glow long enough.

Just use Google Docs then. Yes, it’s Google. Yes, it will somewhat tie you into their ecosystem but Google Docs are free, get regular updates and are pretty good overall. I’ve been using Google Docs for many years now. I occasionally use Office365 for work and Google Docs is just as good, if not better.

The article addresses this point.

This change is justified by the fact that a user can simply log out and view another user’s posts anyway. Except that’s not entirely true. Since Elon Musk took over the site, being logged out of X makes it very hard to view a user’s profile, individual posts are viewable but viewing an account triggers a log in pop up.

So technically it is possible for a logged out user to view your tweets but it’s a lot more inconvenient. Anything you can do to make it not worth their while helps.

With this change they won’t even have to put any effort anymore to stalk your content on X.

I know of a better way still to protect yourself from stalkers and trolls on X.

Quit X.

And my bow!

Don’t confuse authoritarian regimes with fascism. China is an authoritarian state running a diluted version of communism, but it’s not fascist. Russia under Putin is leaning more towards fascism these days for sure, but they’re not fascist outright yet.

Maybe what the hexbear folks gravitate around the most is the idea of authoritarianism. The flavour doesn’t matter as much.

Surprised Ireland didn’t even make it to this ranking.

inb4 in 8 years time “Greensky a.k.a. Trust Me Guys This is THE New Twitter Forever” gains a million new users in the last 3 days.

Isn’t this basically Firefox’s version of the third party cookie block that Chrome rolled out a few months ago? Or am I missing something here?

I mean, it’s good news either way but I just want to know if this is somehow different or better.

The problem is that not everyone looks for that human-to-human emotional connection in art. For some, it’s just a part of a much bigger whole.

For example, if you’re an indie game dev with a small budget and no artistic skills, you may not be that scrupulous about getting an AI to generate some sprites or 3D models for you, if the alternative is to commission the art assets with money you don’t have.

Similar idea applies to companies building a website. Why pay for a licence to download some stock images or design assets if you can just get a GenAI to pump out hundreds for you that are very convincing (and probably even better) for a couple bucks?