In my experience, the same fake albums show up on Deezer as Spotify. Frankly, I think the best way is Bandcamp. For for an album, download it forever. Stop paying to listen to the same music over and over and get DRM free tracks you can listen to your way while giving the money to the artists selling their albums directly.

Its supposed to be illegal for banks to be in “sales” but my wife was working for BMO and they were forcing her to prioritize outbound cold calls ans upselling products the customer didnt need and would clearly be bad for their financials as a Personal Banking Assistant. The conflict of interest was so great it stressed her right the fuck out and she had to take leave and start therapy. Her MS also spiked likely due to the stress levels. She was there to help people, and she made the bank earn loyal customers and they willing got more products from the bank because she helped them. She was the top performer at the bank if she just let her do the job she was there to do, but instead her boss started ragging on her daily about her cold calling numbers and forcing her to cancel necessary appointments and focus time to deal with customer requests and instead prioritize sales.

In the end her numbers dropped, her customer satisfaction dropped, and her MS got worse from the stress and she’s now on long term leave, uncertain if she’ll recover her focus and able to go back to work. Her neurologist has said she cannot go back for now.

Not sure how that bullshit helped the bank, but I can sure see how I didn’t, and I may be wrong but I think there are laws against it.

Also worth noting that this change in tactics happened right at the same time BMO took all their “we’re here to help” signage down. Brings so many memories of Google dropping the “don’t be evil”. Everything that came after in both cases was shit.

EDIT: Oh looks like CBC did an article on this now because it is so prolific. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/banks-upselling-go-public-1.4023575

Thanks!

Now you’ve got me wondering about this for Canada. Would be a pita to move mortgage and investments, but there must be a better way than the big banks.

The problem for me is that most Canadian Banks give you the choice of SMS or their shitty adware filled bank app that relies on Google Play Services and wont implement TOTP so I can use a true MFA app. And Im done with being forced to accept user policies I don’t agree with to do shit, and most of all done with Google Play Services on my device 😑

The social players all moved over to FFXIV

I have a gloriously reduced monthly subscription footprint and application footprint because of all the motherfuckers that tied ChatGPT or other AI into their garbage and updated their terms to say they were going to scan my private data with AI.

And, even if they pull it, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. No more cloud drives, no more ‘apps’. Webpages and local files on a file share I own and host.

Same, zero cats.

Lol, Niantic coding anything that actually works well is hilarious.

I’d also argue that Ingress players likely gave them way more useful data than PoGo

Still not ready to trust AMD/ATI again. I used them exclusively right up until they bought ATI and then decided fuck open source and the drivers for Linux tanked.

I hear all the issues folks have had with Intel/NVIDIA but I have yet to experience any of them. From where I’m sitting they are still working great. And their open source has not been perfect but its consistent. Instead of going from being golden to fuck you Linux folks overnight.

I’d go back to the Yukon Gold Rush and make sure Fred Trump never made it out of Canada.

Edit: Doh! No consequences… huh. I’m not really sure it would be worth the trip then.

Time to build a new one and this time, dont tell investors.

Absolutely, especially with ADHD in the mix. When demand aversion kicks in, your brain literally tries to undermine any attempt to focus unless you can force it to cooperate. Music usually helps me with this.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

We don’t have a natural ability to infer emotions from body language, for a start. We have to learn to actively pay attention to it. Replacing natural instinct that a neurotypical person has with an active thought process is tiring, for a start.

Add to that most ASD people have trouble with emotional control, need to actively think about their own facial expressions, and often have social quirks that are unacceptable like nail biting which must be actively repressed… and being around others for hours on end is exhausting.

On top of this, most ASD people also have ADHD, and in the modern open office environment between the social aspect and never ending barrage of distraction, and the workplace is hostile, actively hostile to folks with ASD.

This combination of factors leads to having no where to unmask and relax until they get home. When they do, they are so exhausted from being something they are not for 10 hours (commute has to be included as its all public space) that when they get home they just shut down. They don’t call family or friends usually, they don’t get things around the house done. They have to turn off and try to re-energize themselves for doing it all again tomorrow.

I know all this as I am ASD and ADHD

Being able to work from home has brought actual balance to our lives as we can unmask the moment the camera goes off, we have rooms at home where we can close the door and remove distractions (well except mandatory work chats, but its a matter of muting that for focus) and at the end of the day we still have energy for our actual lives. In other words, this is the true work-life balance that I had always heard of but never truly felt I had.

DuckDuckGo is still the main one but the Bing results annoy me (MSN news proxied articles from other news sites)

Up and comers that are promising:

Ecosia: https://www.ecosia.org/

Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/

Stumbled on this today, worth a look: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

Users are testing the impact of not using Google.

Spoiler: non-LLM enshittified search engines return reliable results and usually are not censored.

With Martok

Designers need to wake up and realize their job is to understand what the user wants not what they saw in a wet dream.

Most importantly always break well before a turn in snow. Never break in a turn.

Now I need to see a photo shop of a Post brand cereal named Nut Clarity, with picture of fuzzy almonds floating in milk.