Maybe not, but also maybe you would no longer need skilled apple picking specialists.

I dont think this is a sign of the times or the future. I think its just your own personal browsing habits.

Proving you worked for a spy agency is far easier than proving you did spying in actuality. Assuming you didn't get caught in the act.

The fact you worked for an intelligence agency doesn’t mean you were an intelligence officer. You could’ve been a cleaner, or an executive assistant, or maybe you were working as a software developer on the payroll system.

> Generally speaking people don't use a service/library for the author's ability to write excellent proses.

I think this is incredibly wrong. I'd even go as far to say that a well presented README/website is the second most important factor, only behind network effect.

It can be a symptom of that... but it's also what basically every single person does to some degree. Not doing it at all is also a sign of mental issues. Just different varieties.

Up front, yeah. But people with hobbies on the more expensive end can definitely put out 4k a year. Im thinking like people who have a workshop and like to buy new tools and start projects.

Sure, except this is the first time in my life I've seen the term "pulse" used for a vegetable. And, honestly, only in the last 10 years have I been hearing the term legume in common conversation. Grain is definitely the more common term.

Not who you are replying to, but I think mass surveillance is bad and evil, period. So, any person or company contributing toward mass surveillance is bad.

Most bad things have some good part you can point to. Mass surveillance and all of the other police and government aiding technologies usually point to improved conviction rates or something similar. But making police more efficient at convicting people isn't the only goal of society. That's only one part of what makes up a country and it's society. And, as the saying goes: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

If they don't have customers, they aren't competition.

You might think they are competition though.

Or they might have a single customer - which because they treat well and charge a fair price you won't be able to get away from them.

I'm not exactly a windows lover, but what are you people doing to your windows installs to get so many notifications? I get nothing at boot and the only notifications I get are from when windows defender blocks something and I need to add an exclusion.

What edition are you using? The home edition straight-up has pop-up ads[1] for random Xbox games, even on a clean install with all notification settings turned off.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1j77ro8/window...

Maybe that's a home edition thing. I've always used professional editions.

Notifications? I wish.

Mine keeps shoving full screen backup reminders in my face.

Skip for now. Maybe later. Not right now.

It’s a work machine, but not on a domain, and I don’t use an MS account.

One time I had the misfortune of installing the free version of Driver Booster. After that I think I spent the following 15 minutes closing ads and uninstalling all the bloated apps it installed alongside it.

I actually thought it was a virus until I discovered people actually pay money for it.

That was really common back in the day. AdAware and SpyBot Seek and Destroy came around just to remove the junk that was bundled with other software we forgot to uncheck. You didn’t always want 32 browser toolbars you never asked for.

It was never part of the OS until these last few years.