I can’t wait for the budget framework to come out, 1 because current lineup is expensive (well, more than I’d like to spend on a laptop. I’ll run my shitty 2018 Microsoft Surface Pro 6 into the ground), but 2 because the product will be even more polished by that time.

Can’t wait to have a laptop and then just have it for like 10 years. Especially if it’s Linux out of the box 👍👍

Legal layman here, why is it I keep hearing of American companies suing regulators? I can’t recall that ever being the case in Australia, unless they’re claiming some law/regulation is unconstitutional or something.

Am I just ill informed? Seems weird.

Regulator is empowered by the law, law is made by legislators, unless it’s against the constitution of your country, surely the answer to any of these cases is: tough shit, company? No? How do they sue a regulator for regulating? Seems weird.

How is this not a warrantless search?

I’ve had a dig (I have no idea what I’m doing) but in this ASIC registry, seems to show they filed to try and wind up the company, and that was rejected? Again, not a lawyer. (See the “Documents” section)

https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/RegistrySearch/faces/landing/panelSearch.jspx?searchText=647102672&searchType=OrgAndBusNm

Edit to add: And they still have their trademark registered, so it clearly still exists haha how bizarre.

Someone should start twitter.com.au using this argument

What country are you in? You may be entitled to a refund/replacement since you have the receipts

Luckily/unluckily (because effort), in Australia, consumer guarantees on length of time you can get a refund are vague.

E.g. it doesn’t matter that a fridge’s manufacturer warranty is only 2 years, you expect that to last longer.

With effort, you could probably get a fridge fixed like 5 years after purchase with some badgering / threatening small claims.

Bricking your product would probably fall under that category.

This is wild speculation, not a lawyer.

How long do patents last for anyway? Pokemon being caught in balls must be many, many decades old by this point.

They’ve started serving ads when you skip backwards. Drives me fucking nuts.

I was willing to use the mobile app with ads because the interface is slightly less buggy.

Ad blocking on mobile web it is for me now 👍

Honestly, good on you so much for sharing. The fact you’re not ashamed and willing to share could save someone from the same attack, and as others have pointed out, even the most security minded of us can have lapses in judgement.

I’m really glad you weren’t screwed in the end.

💀 where is this?

… Re-read before I sent. I thought this said country, lol.

Yikes, why even have a bus at that point?

While this is completely true, it’s a bit tone-deaf. Fuck cars, but many people barely have a choice because their public transport consists of a handful of busses that come once an hour and nothing is close by.

As an aside, I spend a whopping total of about $1/day (edit Australian $, so less USD) on maintenance and electricity for my electric cargo bike. I go about 17 km each way to work and the funny thing is it’s only about 10 mins longer than driving, lol

While I get that as a stop gap when your city hasn’t built enough PT, car to the station sounds like a good last mile solution. But my personal preference, and how good public transport is set up, is that in 90% o more of the trips around your city, public transport should never be more than a walk away.

This is not to say that cars should be removed entirely (for disabled people where PT accommodations are difficult, delivery, emergency vehicles etc). Just that you shouldn’t nearly as many cars for the last mile, in a well designed system.

This is how I try to live, mostly. Can’t get there by public transport? Well I’m not going unless I have to then 👍 because cars are expensive and I’ll get a cab or rent one if I have to. But I live in a fairly car-centric city. It’s totally possible to have your entirely city be accessible by foot + PT.

I’m not sure if the driverless car tech would ever be viable, and why not just do driverless BRT conversions, which is possible right now, and not that expensive.

Neat 👍 that sucks

Are there like no consumer guarantees in the US? How is this not a open and shut case where the manufacturer needs to replace or refund the product?

They’re just too expensive. Like, sure, it costs money to run, but 3.49€/month (the discounted 24 month rate) for the mail only plan, 15 GB storage. (41.88€, $45.17 USD, $67.28 AUD per year)

That’s really expensive if you just want mail.

The other stuff, is also really expensive. To the point that makes you think, “there is no way google is making THIS much to make up the difference in advertising to me for a comparable plan”.

The drawbacks are many and the benefits are few.

Watching foreign films would be a pain, where is this in the world again, what does 19:00 mean for them? More exposition, or you just have to guess based on languag and accent.

I need this work done by our team in XYZ country, what are their working hours? (wow, look at that, still using timezones?)

When you arrive somewhere on holiday, now you have to get a sense of the time there. Or continually be thinking “what’s that in my home time?/what’s that in solar time”, which is why solar time just makes more sense.

People aren’t going to stop thinking in solar time, ever. We’re hard-wired to be awake with the sun. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are, you will associate them with the sun. The question then becomes, would we rather all use roughly the same numbers (timezones, what we currently have), or different numbers (everyone using UTC).

Using UTC solves only 1 problem, you can say verbally to someone across the world, let’s make the meeting 15:00 - but this is already easily solved by using a calendar which converts for you…

There’s a reason we have never used a single non-solar time, it’s just worse and I think there’s a reason these posts always end up on programmer focused places on the internet. Yes, I’m sure their job is annoying, and it would be easier to not have to solve time conversion problems, but the time conversion problems wouldn’t even go away if you forced everyone to use UTC. You’d just start having to do conversions to solar time, or looking up waking hours (which is just timezones)

This is a solved problem.

This is interesting. Not a lawyer, but I’d encourage anyone in Australia to demand a free repair under Australian Consumer Law because the company bricked the laptop. I’d guess it would fall under the Acceptable Quality consumer guarantee, since the fault was caused directly by the manufacturer.

Not sure how you’d go about proving that, but you could then just take it to your state tribunal, like VCAt in Victoria and file a small claim.

Not a lawyer, not legal advice, but something to think about if you’re in this situation.

Problems caught early are much easier to fix than problems caught later. This applies to any project (I’m not a programmer, but an engineer in the traditional sense).

Just “doing it” without coordination and review is a great way to waste a bunch of effort down the line with re-work.

Edit: typo

I am dreading the day my company makes me “upgrade” my windows 10 laptop to 11. I really hope they’re paying for legacy support for 10.

I right click, soooooo often when managing files at my job. I’m going to pull out my hair if I can’t change the “see more” behaviour.

Also, I’m a top taskbar user (that’s where programs put their tabs, it just makes sense!)

I don’t know how they could fuck up windows this badly.