4d ago

Aotearoa Weekly Kōrero 9/5/2025

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

Something interesting that happened to you
Something humourous that happened to you
Something frustrating that happened to you
A quick question
A request for recommendations
Pictures of your pet
A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

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28 comments

The lawn is fine 😆, green and lush, would probably appreciate some simulated grazing!
Windows 10 has ads too. They started with paid suggestions of apps from the Windows Store popping up in the start menu, and expanded from there. Generally you could opt out in settings.
The ad I mentioned seeing was in this news widget thing that pops up if your mouse passes over the icon in the task bar. I disabled the open on hover but I don't think you can disable ads there, though I'm not 100% on that.
I'm really not a fan of Windows these days.
- You need sheep. Or guinea pigs...
  I don't understand how ads are now showing up in things people have paid for, like software or cars.
  I can't say I've been a fan exactly since vista, but this just seems egregious. Was installing fonts today only to get a notice that the legacy font panel is going to be retired. It's like if libraries suddenly made you read everything in Bog Pront - weird and slow. I know it's on me for not leaving though.
  
  You need sheep. Or guinea pigs…
  I would but I don't have anyone to look after them when we're away 😀. I am also not sure we actually have enough grass for even one sheep to get by over the summer or winter when the grass stops growing. We could section off a piece, then grow it long and make hay to get through the summer/winter, but at that point I feel like it might be less work to just mow the lawn 😅
  I don’t understand how ads are now showing up in things people have paid for, like software or cars.
  I would be interested to jump forward in time 100 years and see where software laws ended up. We are in a period of uncertainty at the moment, with software being so new. Even until say 20 years ago, you would buy software, and it would keep working until you changed something (e.g. installed a new version of Windows). In this way it was similar to say a new toaster, that would work until it didn't. If your toaster died in 6 months then you'd expect a replacement for free so that you could continue making toast. Neither Quake 3 Arena nor your toaster would suddenly change what it did, it was the same from the day you bought it to the day it stopped working, and if this period of time was extensive then you were happy.
  Now we have a subscription model, with endless updates so long as you keep paying. You are paying for the software specifically for (say) one month and then it's not yours anymore, next month you will have a new licence for that month where the software might be the same or different.
  Then Windows has become the next step. You didn't buy Windows, you bought a laptop that has Windows pre-installed. The licence is therefore between the laptop company and Microsoft. Your personal rights are unclear, because you bought the laptop specifically with Windows installed on it, but you (presumably) signed away all rights to continue to keep the same user experience by continuing to use the product (since someone else installed Windows, presumably you didn't get prompted to accept a licence). You are under this subscription model with changes forced on you but you aren't paying with money.
  So now we have a situation where your rights are unclear. Is it enough to say that you agree to whatever they decide to change just because you are using it? At what point can you say the product is not substantively the same as what you purchased? How long are you entitled to keep the product substantively the same, since you are not paying for a subscription but it's a subscription style model. If it were a toaster we would expect it to work the same for an amount of time based in part on how much you paid for it.
  It also raises the question of what happens when you buy a toaster that is wifi connected and they change the functions with a software update (or even just shut down the server used for the wifi connectivity, breaking that function even though the toaster otherwise works fine).
  Ultimately I think these are things companies get away with now because of their power and because they are testing to see what they can get away with. I don't think this will be settled by new laws, I think the grey areas will be largely be settled by case law as companies are taken to court over these practices. I expect it will get worse and worse until a straw breaks the camel's back and a string of court cases will decide where the dust settles.
  
  Yeah I think you are right, it still has a fair way to enshit before it shakes out.
  I think my last computer was the last "toaster" I will get to own until I change platform. Updates were optional and manual, and I owned everything on it outright. I managed to jump through hoops just now to buy a copy of office that isn't subscription-based or infested with AI, but I feel like a dinosaur watching the asteroids falling.
  I think we will see sharper bifurcation between the European market and the US/world market, as well.
  There are some really crazy overreaches. I notice Adobe is setting its AI to rummage through subscribers' image folders (which is a legal and privacy nightmare for the companies concerned) and sysadmins are complaining about how they have to contact Adobe and go through a lengthy process to make it turn that off.
  
  I think my last computer was the last “toaster” I will get to own until I change platform. Updates were optional and manual, and I owned everything on it outright. I managed to jump through hoops just now to buy a copy of office that isn’t subscription-based or infested with AI, but I feel like a dinosaur watching the asteroids falling.
  A few years back I switched to using Linux. I have played with it on and off for 20 years or more, but it has leapt forward in strides recently. For technical people, it's hugely configurable. For non-technical people, I would say we are at the point that it can be used as a daily driver so long as it came pre-installed on your laptop or you know someone who knows how to install an OS. It's the same difficulty as installing Windows, but computers tend to come with Windows installed which puts Linux out of reach of most people.
  The only caveat is software - if you specifically need MS Office and the web version won't do, or if you need the Adobe suite etc, then you'll struggle. There are alternatives, but not without their own learning curve. There are also issues if you want to play some online games with certain anticheat software.
  But given the average non-technical person uses a laptop only for browsing the internet (in my experience), then I think it's time for technical people to start installing Linux on all their friends' computers 😆
  I think we will see sharper bifurcation between the European market and the US/world market, as well.
  I think this is a good thing for us. As a small market it can be hard to have much sway, but if Europe starts putting their foot down then companies may start to have these two tier things like they do today where TVs in the US record what you say and take screenshots of what you're watching and send what they learn to advertisers, but the same TV sold in Europe doesn't have this (and I assume not in NZ either). By Europe forcing the companies to provide the more private versions, we can make laws that force them to give us the privacy protecting version. If it was us against the world we might have got told to shove it, but they can't ignore the whole EU.
  There are some really crazy overreaches. I notice Adobe is setting its AI to rummage through subscribers’ image folders (which is a legal and privacy nightmare for the companies concerned) and sysadmins are complaining about how they have to contact Adobe and go through a lengthy process to make it turn that off.
  Ever since I got a free trial of Photoshop that then charged me $100US to cancel, I have never wanted to touch their stuff (don't worry, I escalated myself through support tiers until they reversed the charge). I got good at GIMP instead 😅
  "good" is subjective

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