There’s nothing truly like a Framework, because they’re a whole unique category of one. But if you just want something that is user serviceable there are other options.

I’m a big fan of my Star Labs laptop. It came with complete disassembly and reassembly instructions, and pretty much every part is available to buy individually as a replacement. It’s not magically “plug and go” like a Framework, but if you’re comfortable with a screwdriver you should have no trouble.

They’re a Linux specialist small independent producer, too. And being based in the UK, imports to Switzerland should be more straightforward than imports from the States.

The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

Also, it’d be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?

What with Trump recently declaring (in his usual completely coherent and not at all deranged manner) that Google Are Bad, the Supreme Court might not necessarily be feeling so keen to help out on this one.

All licence applications cost the same in the UK, regardless of what you apply for (or to be more exact: the cost scales with the size of the venue according to fixed bands related to “business rates” valuations).

Licensing conditions are actually entirely fluid and negotiable between the applicant and the local council, who act as the licensing body. Not only with regards to opening hours, but also to all sorts of weird and wonderful additional terms. In practice when it comes to opening hours, a lot of pubs and bars apply for (and are granted) licenses quite a lot later than their actual intended closing time, as it gives them leeway to open late for special occasions without the need to apply for a temporary extension, and gives flexibility for “lock ins” (i.e. continuing to serve customers after they’d normally have shut up shop).

Yes, “24 hour licensing” means that bars can apply for any licence they want, but they don’t need to apply for a full 24 hours if they don’t want to; they can apply for any licence terms they like.

They also don’t need to open for the full terms of their licence. Just because they’ve been granted a 4am licence, it doesn’t mean they can’t still shut up shop at 10:30pm if they like. It’s permission to open during those hours, not an obligation.

The UK already has 24 hour drinks licensing in theory, and lots of bars have a late licence. But in practice, very few bars actually open through the night; it turns out that the economics of keeping a bar staffed and open when most of the customers are in bed just doesn’t work out.

It’s pretty much just nightclubs that make any use of it.

The UK isn’t quite that far, but it’s absolutely the dominant text messaging and calling app in the UK. Nobody uses the built in Android or Apple tools anymore, and I’m as likely to receive a WhatsApp voice call as an actual phone call these days.

I have Signal on my phone, but I’ve literally never had a cause to use it; I’ve simply got no contacts on there.

See, now I’m fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.

That’s a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they’ve shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.

This feels like something you should go tell Google about rather than the rest of us. They’re the ones who have embedded LLM-generated answers to random search queries.

Realistically, they could just move their servers abroad to a country with less problematic copyright rules and wind up their US operations. It would make no difference to the end user, unless ISPs are also ordered to block access. And even then it’d only be a VPN away.

The risk of total data loss is not zero, but it’s also not the likely outcome.

Oh yeah, I’ll just tell my wife that we’re never having sex again because we’ve now got enough kids. I’m sure this will be a healthy and emotionally viable way of strengthening our relationship over the next 30 years or so until the menopause.

A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.

It’s a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.

Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It’s a staple of “look at my system” brag posts.

But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don’t know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it’s a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.

I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

Looks like a standard GTK4 app to me. Whether or not that is to someone’s tastes is obviously subjective, but it uses the same design language as every other GTK app under the sun.

GTK apps always look out of place on Windows though. Looks far more sensible in its native environment (i.e. *nix running GNOME).

Yes, it’s always going to be unfeasible to cross the Atlantic or Pacific by train.

But the vast, vast majority of air journeys taken every day aren’t trans-oceanic ones. Most journeys are between destinations within the Americas or within Eurasia and Africa. There are an awful lot of journeys by plane that could be moved to trains if the infrastructure was right.

That seems to be a rather unfair assertion to make. Boeing seems to be unique amongst the big airlines in having these problems; and they’re relatively new problems for them too, in the grand scheme of things.

I’ve never once heard of systemic issues of this sort at Airbus, and it seems lazy to do a “they’re all the same!” when this really does seem to be a Boeing problem first and foremost.

Realistically Google Search and Google Maps don’t provide anything unique that isn’t provided by competitors, although a) they may provide a superior experience, and b) the competitors are not necessarily much more palatable (that is, Bing Search and Bing Maps are hardly a great ethical improvement).

YouTube is probably the only Google service where this is a genuine monopoly of sorts. That is, content that is on YouTube is not generally available on other platforms, and if you want to watch that content you have to watch it on YouTube. We might all live for the day when all content creators are dual-hosting in PeerTube or the like too, but we’re a long long way from that right now.

Although I write that as someone who only very rarely actually uses YouTube, because largely the content isn’t to my interest. Other than my local football club’s channel, I can’t think of anything on there that I actually seek out.

Once you’ve got your eye in, scotch and bourbon are quite different. Many (although not all) scotch whiskies have peat in their flavour profile (a kind of smoky, salty, earthy flavour which is very distinctive), while bourbons never do. Bourbon is almost always quite a lot sweeter than scotch.

They’re also made quite differently. Bourbon is mostly corn, and often has lots of rye and wheat in the mix, whereas scotch is mostly made of barley. Bourbon is always aged in new oak barrels, whereas scotch is mostly aged in second-fill barrels (which might previously have been used for bourbon, wine, sherry, port, cider etc.).

If a machine is going to have multiple users (all my computers have multiple profiles for family members) all those users have to be called something, and I’ve not got the energy or the creativity to come up with fun and funky usernames for every system when my actual name is more than good enough.

Sure. But it’s a normal word, and censoring a few letters makes it look ruder than it is. Like writing “cockerel” as “c***erel”. Just draws attention to the offensive bit.