I tried to help a friend set up a Social Security Administration login a few days ago because of the reported (but now cancelled) plans to force anyone who didn’t have an online account to come into a SS office to continue to receiving their earned benefits. He didn’t remember if he had an web account or not.

The SS website stopped responding after the 1st attempt and a 2nd attempt responded with, “Your account is now locked. You must come into an office or call us to unlock your account.”

DOGE’s purpose is disaster capitalism - disruption, breaking things beyond repair, and manufacturing conditions where oligarchs can profit off of the resulting chaos. “Efficiency” has nothing to do with it.

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Musk wants the content he personally finds objectionable to be moderated. Racist Nazi shit and hateful GQP posts are perfectly fine, just like on X Twitter.

Have had espresso machines for years and can confirm it can be very difficult to find shops that do repairs and have replacement parts. Good luck with the startup.

Is anyone else just done with CAPTCHAS? I refuse to deal with them at all anymore unless I absolutely need to get to the content they’re blocking.

Maybe the ultimate test for a human is when the page is abandoned when a CAPTCHA pops up.

Icons cannot be removed from the launcher screen, they can only be combined into folder. The folders cannot be hidden or removed. Preinstalled programs cannot be uninstalled or disabled. Nothing works until the tablet is registered with Amazon. There is no app drawer. It’s possible to install another launcher, but it’s not possible to use it because Amazon has hardwired the home button to their launcher. (There used to be ways around that but Amazon has systematically disabled each of them.) Their Silk browser is terrible. Most every Amazon app provided is terrible.

I get that it’s cheap and there will be significant compromises, but at least some of Amazon’s apps should be somewhat comparable to non-Amazon apps.

I’ve gotten around some of this by loading the Play store and F-Droid, and blocking Amazon’s servers but it’s clear that Amazon’s tablets are not only cheap but they’re really low effort products built for Amazon rather than the purchaser.

I think it’s exactly the opposite and there’s lots of information and multple interviews that strongly suggest that. IMO Musk is full-on Nazi scum and lives in a nearly impermeable bubble, so much so that he thinks he has toned it down to what will pass in society. It seems he read the room wrong either way.

I installed Plex a couple years ago and when I found I actually had to sign into their servers to access my own content it was immediately uninstalled. It was only a matter of time before they pulled this kind of shit.

Anyone arguing that Musk didn’t know exactly what he was doing is just another Nazi pissing in the wind and they all deserve every bit of blow back they get, pun intended.

The only thing Musk didn’t understand is that he was branding himself and everything he touches as nothing more than Nazi scum for the rest of his miserable life.

I recently bought a cheap refurbished 10" Amazon Fire specifically for web browsing. The author is spot on when he says it’s “obnoxious to the point of hostility.”

Amazon places a huge “Register now” nag across the launcher that can’t be removed without registering, and even the calculator won’t work until you do. Wigets aren’t supported by Amazon’s launcher and it is impossible to load an alternative. There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.

It was only $35, but it’s not worth even that much. Amazon has truly made enshittification an art form.

Not a surprise for Roku. The company has been getting progressively worse in the last few years and their enshittification is accelerating. Their recent forced download of an update that requires users to agree to arbitration to even use our TVs was intended to ultimately take control of those TVs completely away from the people who own them.

Right now it’s possible to block Roku’s static ads and presumably the autoplaying ones using a local DNS server like Adblock Home or Pihole, but it’s only a matter of time before Roku blocks everything unless we watch the ads they are trying force down our throats. I’m already in the process of obsoleting all 5 of our Roku devices.

It has taken Roku years to build up enough market share to allow this kind of behavior and it will take years for the market to abandon them. Their executives will claim ignorance as to why users are walking away when it finally hits their bottom line.

I want to know how to switch groups.

How about a bot that types slowly, so it can have time to consider what it’s going to say? Or perhaps a web page with an “Analyzing issue” status bar that takes several minutes to complete, because computers just do better if they’re given time to work on a problem?

Another example of Republican principles. Corporations are protected by laws but not bound by them, while the average citizen is bound by laws but not protected by them.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience.”

LOL!

The librarians I’ve talked to simply don’t know how any of this works. I’ve been told 3 times (the 3rd one today) that epub version of books are not available. Today it was a “trained computer aid that offers technology assistance” saying the epub format I download just last week is not available from the library.

Overdrive’s being phased out and being replaced by Libby according to the 2 libraries I frequent. I wonder if it will still be supported on Kobo OS once the website and apps are shut down?

It’s not just Amazon. Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use Kindle.

The really amazing thing is that spez’s planet-sized ego created the whole user exodus. People were willing to pay a monthly fee to continue to use the site ad-free via our mobile apps. Hundreds of other companies remove ads when people pay fees, but all of that revenue is just gone along with a big chunk of contributors because spez had a tantrum.

“NaziAI” has a real ring to it.