Just one per minute... PT Barnum was a hell of an optimist.

The US made the critical mistake of assuming that a private organisation would be motivated to take care of infrastructure. They aren't, extract every dollar from customers and run it into the ground before running off to Washington to beg for public money to upgrade it which just gets given to shareholders and execs..

So all the crap that got privatised decades ago hasn't been upgraded since. UK did the same thing, so did some Australian states which is why Perth, Western Australia, one of the most isolated western cities, has cheaper power than the well connected, heavily populated eastern states. W.A. didn't privatise it's power company (it corporatised it, run as an independent company but the government is the only shareholder. Govt can fire the board but the board runs the company. No profit motive either).

At first I thought... "where are you getting a coffee for $3"... Then I realised you were thinking of that burnt dishwater Americans pass off as coffee, not a decent esspresso based drink.

Even in Colombia I'm paying near enough to $3 for it (11,000 pesos). Seriously, if you're ordering one drink and staying an hour, its not the cafe that's the problem.

I am glad this is not a "thing" in the country where I live. Most places don't try to shoo away customers but by the same token, your average Brit is too embarrassed to sit in a fast food restaurant for a few hours to work.

The only restaurant that plays loudish music around my town that isn't a bar or club of some description is a branch of Five Guys and well, the music is part of their "American Diner" shtick.

The smart ones will get out early, the dumb ones will wait until the only way across will be a leaky boat on the great lakes.

The curse of terminal stupidity is to assume everyone else is as dumb as they are.

On that,

Dearest NRA,

Regarding your promises and ostensible raison d'etre, you seem to have forgotten to rise up against an oppressive government that has taken over your country.

Yours Sarcastically
Everyone who saw though your bullshit from the start.

That will certainly be the case as the Trump administration is allergic to responsibility and accountability (except when you have displeased dear leader).

Tech workers need to be held to a higher standard, which is why we get paid more. My standard day starts with getting a coffee, logging onto my non-privileged account with a password that regularly expires, connecting to VPN, using 2FA to access the secure password portal and generating my first password of the day to access my privileged account, which lasts a maximum of 12 hours via RDP to a secure server... If I have to access client servers I need to get a randomly generated password for each customer. Nothing secure is kept on my local machine and that's how it should be. Developers will bitch and moan about doing this... Imagine how much the average end user will complain, think about the kind of person who says "but what can they do with my account" as they start their fifth cyber incident by running a cryptolocker.

It's a bit of a faff and it can get a lot worse but I understand it because I deal with systems and data that can cause millions in headaches if the wrong person gets to them. So my job _is_ about minimising that risk.

Current consumer protections, even in the UK, do not go far enough with cases like this.

If a company can deliberately damage or block a device from operating, especially offline then you should be entitled to a full refund regardless of age. Online services are a different kettle of fish (still abused by Sony/MS/Nintendo, which is why I remain a PC gamer despite how tempting a Switch is) but the physical device should still work as sold.

And if not opposed now, this kind of shenanigan will be coming to a lot of other devices that can be connected to the internet, TVs, fridges, washing machines, et al. Just wait until your washing machine has no physical buttons and has to be operated via an "app". I'd like this kind of thing nipped in the bud so the only time we see such a future is in our imaginations.

Apple has been passe for years now. Long gone are the days where a placid press would wait with baited breath for any nugget of crap from Apple so they could write 12 articles that would get fanboys frothing and creaming themselves.

The articles aren't bringing in the eyeballs and even most of the fanboys have realised it's just a phone.

So now Apple is just another phone company but doesn't want to acknowledge it... Like a 35 yr old diva who was mean to everyone in her 20s because she was hot and could get away with it suddenly realises she has no friends and her looks are gone. That'll be Apple in a few years.

As for this "leak"... for a long time I've said if you want to know what Apple will be doing next year, look at what Android did 2 years ago and discard half of it.

Congratulations, after 20 years you've discovered Apple's secret.

When you are a gamer, you realise it's only around certain types of games, usually heavily monetised ones that seem to attract the most toxic of audiences.

Step back, play a nice strategy, indie or story driven game and relax.

Yep, mobile game company releases same shitty game on PC and finds out the hard way that PC players won't take the same abuse that mobile gamers will... and in the process finds out there is even a limit to the amount of abuse mobile gamers will take.

Shoulda released on console. Activision has been releasing the same COD for 18 years now.

It's a situation that works well for the Swiss because they're Swiss.

There aren't enough fringe lunatics to hold the rest of the population to ransom, most Swiss are generally considerate, rational and moderate.

The best response would be to tell them to put their money where their mouth is. A seriously large per day lien (in excess of what they'd earn per day) that will be returned upon successful appeal but surrendered on an unsuccessful one.

I suspect that a European judge would just tell them to go do one... but I believe this case is in the US.

This is the net result of Trumps tariffs.

Microsoft weren't the first and wont be the last.

Distributors are killing off the budget items because the margins are too low and leaving the more expensive items that have larger margins. What this means for you is higher prices and less choice.

It'll happen to everything as even the stuff made in the US will be using parts made in other countries.