TrenchcoatFullOfBats

The internet certainly forgets…but a Usenet service with good retention will remember for about a decade

Do you want Prador? Because this is how you get Prador.

Note: You do not want Prador.

Proton purchased SimpleLogin in 2022 and the creator/dev has been working there ever since. Also, you can easily create random email aliases in Vaultwarden/Bitwarden via the SimpleLogin API.

Another vote for Runbox. Been using them for almost 5 years now with no issues. They are also an employee owned co-op if that is of interest.

You should not trust Amazon. Multiple Ring privacy failures, including giving video footage to police without consent, Amazon employees watching Ring video footage without consent, then there’s stuff like Sidewalk that uses your home network as part of a mesh network, collection of biometric days via palm readers at Whole Foods for checkout, which they then use for their Amazon One service that they sell to businesses to verify age and identity, the whole “AI powered” Just Walk Out tech in physical Amazon stores that turned out to be not AI at all but a bunch of Indian subcontractors watching video cameras, etc, etc, etc…

The thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in

You’re more likely to solve the problem by yelling into a pillow

You mean the Casper Original Pillow I’m buying with Klarna for 4 easy payments of $39.95 at 29.99% interest?

I hear they’re partnering with Amazon on a new version that has a tiny Alexa speaker in it that will whisper ads in your ear while you’re sleeping unless you pay them $15 to turn it off. It’s called the Casper Pillow Talk with Special Offers.

Yelling: ALEXA! HOW CAN I GET CONSUMER PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES?

Casper Pillow Talk with Special Offers: I’m sorry, I don’t understand. By the way, did you know that Amazon Pharmacy is now selling antidepressants at a discounted price? To order, just say “Add Xanax to my next drone delivery”. To receive the discount, say “I waive my right to sue Amazon via the justice system and agree to private corporate arbitration until the end of time!”

My Cherry Blues: I’M DOING MY PART

Αυτό είναι το αστείο

This is the joke

I find that I think about the Byzantine Empire more often than the Roman Empire

Norway

I think Socrates would say “Why are you asking the question in the first place?”

My dad told me that walnuts were owl eggs.

He got in trouble when I stole all the walnuts in the house and wrapped them in nose tissues to keep them warm so they would hatch and I would have baby owls.

Are you reading a translation, perhaps? In my English version of the book, he does not scratch “KASPAR” on the coach, he scratches “MR PUNCH”.

This is a dual-layered reference. First, Mr Punch refers to Punch and Judy, a puppet show that originated in Italy in the late 1600s but was also popular in the Victorian era.

The basic premise of Punch and Judy is that Punch punches his wife Judy a lot, along with everyone else he encounters. It is considered to be “low” or “slapstick” humour, and it’s “funny” because it’s puppet violence in the style of the Three Stooges.

Dodger would definitely have known about Punch and Judy. Charles Dickens had this to say about Mr. Punch:

In my opinion the street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive. I regard it as quite harmless in its influence, and as an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct. It is possible, I think, that one secret source of pleasure very generally derived from this performance… is the satisfaction the spectator feels in the circumstance that likenesses of men and women can be so knocked about, without any pain or suffering.

The other layer to this is that Pratchett’s friend Neil Gaiman wrote a graphic novel in 1994 called Mr. Punch, about a homicidal puppet.

Edit: I just realized there is another, more literal layer to this reference. A diplomat could be called a puppet, whose strings are pulled by their home government, and a puppet who hurts people would definitely be like Mr. Punch.

Scratching it on the diplomat’s coach, which would go out in public, would be like scratching it on a car with a key - a public humiliation, along with property damage.

When you buy a new iPhone, is the location tracking “Find My” feature enabled by default, or do you need to turn it off if you don’t want your phone to upload other people’s location data to Apple while draining your battery?

Just wait until you hear about how AirTags work:

Apple AirTags emit a Bluetooth signal that anonymously connects to any nearby device active within Apple’s Find My network (any iPhone after iPhone 11 with “Find My” enabled). The AirTag’s location is triangulated based on the strength of the Bluetooth signal sent to those third-party devices.

Your AirTag’s location information is uploaded to the cloud and pinned on a map for easy reference.

According to Exodus, it has 4 trackers and requires 68 permissions.

It can also be configured to report the location of the phone it’s installed on to another Microsoft account holder, as well as what apps the person is using and how long they’re using them.

if I go out in the public, I wear a cricket box.

They said protect your privacy, not your privates.

Yeah, those people and icons from the fifties were all totally fine. Here’s a list of some people who died from throat or esophageal cancer or heart attacks caused by smoking (which causes blood clots) or emphysema:

• Humphrey Bogart
• Spencer Tracy
• Sammy Davis Jr
• Gary Cooper
• Walt Disney
• Groucho Marx
• George Harrison
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
• Clark Gable
• Lucille Ball
• Desi Arnaz
• Lana Turner
• Robert Mitchum
• Babe Ruth
• Joe DiMaggio
• Dean Martin
• Betty Grable
• Yul Brynner
• Buster Keaton
• Ed Sullivan
• All 4 actors who portrayed the Marlboro Man
• Nat King Cole
• Tallulah Bankhead
• Johnny Carson
• Duke Ellington
• King Edward VIII
• King George VI
• Michael Landon
• Lemmy Kilmister
• Andy Kaufman
• Vincent Price
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Rod Serling

It’s a “more private/hardened” version of Firefox. Add-ons are possible as with Firefox Nightly.