One of the main reasons I used to like Macs instead of Windows machines was because Apple did not do this kind of bullshit lol. Although showing ads on the app store above your searches at all is terrible behavior that both iOS and Android are guilty. They already get a cut of all the sales.

Why Bluetooth is detecting peripherals but won't connect to them on the new PC I built. Getting an antenna today but only 50% sure this will fix the issue.

lol I misread this as "What will you find out or explore today?" cuz it was pretty early in the morning. But it was the antenna.

Sure why not?

Site for half-finished projects or ramblings: https://www.middleendian.com/

Site for half-finished games: https://www.miscbeef.com/

I would say that normalizing giving random websites photos of yourself is harmful to children.

I'm more interested in a business that reliably provides fraudulent IDs to services that unnecessarily want IDs that I cannot avoid for some reason.

I would not let my (hypothetical) 12 year old on Instagram. I also don't want to give Instagram (or any other site, since I don't use Instagram) my ID to view content on it.

I have a Surface Laptop Studio. And while Windows 11 overall kinda sucks, the ability to turn it into a little easel and the responsiveness of the pen are both great. I also like precise scrolling with the touchscreen sometimes.

The part of the hardware I really don't like is that the `Fn` key toggles fn-lock with a tap and then alt + F4 and such don't work. There's enough space to have another row of keys or something, I never want fn-lock off (I use four finger scroll for volume controls), it's infuriating. But pretty much all laptops (and shockingly some desktop keyboards) have similarly dumb behavior.

If I search for "Salesforce alternative" and something that isn't Salesforce shows up, great! That's what I want!

If I search for Salesforce and something that isn't Salesforce shows up above Salesforce, the tool I'm using is wrong and I will assume that the promoted product is a scam.

This happened to me yesterday when installing the mobile version of Brotato. Some other game appeared above Brotato in the Google Play store. I already hate Android but this only makes me hate it more. Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm paying for the game, yet on top of that they serve me the wrong result at the top.

>Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm paying for the game

Brotato is free to distribute their game outside the Play Store as well, Android isn't locked down. If the cut was unjustified why would they give money away to Google for free? The reasons are actually extremely similar to the reasons ads benefit society.

They kinda created this fake locked down market that people expect to be able to be used, same as Apple, compared to say, just downloading apps normally like on a computer.

Also "sideloaded" apps cannot be automatically updated, although personally I think it would be better if nothing could automatically update lol

I'm also not the biggest fan of Steam. But at least on Steam if I search for Brotato it's the top result, Steam is not tied to the OS so if gamers and game makers decided they hate Steam they could jump to some other market (as opposed to, say, the built-in Microsoft store in Windows that thankfully seems to be failing), and Steam has helped drag Linux into the 21st century in a good way.

And if I am not searching for Salesforce or alternatives, and an ad for Salesforce or an alternative gets pushed into my face, the ad is wrong and the advertiser is wrong.

It's infuriating, the other day I had to download an app to pay for parking. What the fuck do I need the top choice to be a competing parking app? That won't do me any good when the place I'm parking need the one I searched for and who the hell goes "oh, an exciting new parking app? I'm gonna drive around until I can find a place that uses it so I can park there!"

I like Firefox and don't think it's about to collapse like many users here, but I have already unchecked "Recommend features as you browse" and "Recommend extensions as you browse" along with setting the welcome page for updates to about:blank.

Ideally the user interface for any tool I use should never change unless I actively prompt it to change, and the only notifications I should get would be from my friends and family contacting me or calendars/alarms that I set myself.

Ideally it would just be like the Do Not Track flag, with one flag for each category of opt-out tracking, but actually enforced (even if on by default) so no popups would be needed at all.