Not the authorities perhaps, but it is already happening in some degree: Windows Defender sending “samples” or unknown binaries to the cloud to analyze them. I am extremely bothered by this and try to disable this “feature” as much as possible. As always with Windows, you have to aggressively tweak system settings to permanently disable the constant reminders “Oops we have detected suboptimal settings, please turn on every privacy invading feature for your convenience”. We can only hope MS doesn’t abuse the samples for other purposes, but given their and other big techs track record, we can assume there are additional parties interested in the submissions.

If you are tired of fighting with your own computer, consider switching to Linux. It's been working flawlessly for years for me.

I am certainly considering it every now and then. Already use it for main desktop usage. And I hear good things about Proton, but I really like ease of usage of Windows for everything gaming related. It somehow reminds me too much of my working job, when trying to figure out how a certain game needs to be started in Linux.

Not all games work but many on Steam do and most run well out of the box. It will only improve as Steam is committed on making Linux the new PC OS for gaming.

Why does this country still have the best alternative to big tech mail providers (Fastmail)? Maybe it doesn’t matter that much since email is open to the world anyway. I would like to vote with my wallet, but in the end I also want my mail to arrive without to much hassle. That means avoiding self-hosting and obscure providers..

Makes me wonder why they have to pay 15b in the first place. If it’s indeed a no-brainer for apple, the deal could be made with far less money?

I'd imagine with $15B Apple could bootstrap its own search engine.

There are getting 15B to NOT boostrap their search engine. If they bootstrap their own engine, they loose 15B on top of having to pay to build this own engine.

Not worth it. It's not cheap maintaining a search engine. Apple could throw resources at it but what is the benefit? This is different than the Maps issue where Google refuse to provide new features for iPhone Maps. Apple used OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and created their own. By using OSM, it gave that project more visibility and others an alternative solution to Google Maps. A few years later Google suddenly makes it "not so free" for businesses displaying a map, they better put up a credit card.

“I believe not a lot of users know about this button, especially because Chrome doesn’t want to show it by default.”

Damn right. You can bet you ass Google doesn’t want to actively push users away from bloated pages filled with ads.

For a very long time in the Netherlands you could download movies and music from unauthorized sources, as you were indirectly paying content creators because of “copy taxes” on data drives, burnable discs etc. It was sort of a loophole but it was completely legal. Those were the days.

Then suddenly the highest court disallowed it. Guess what, we still pay the copy tax.

Clarification: The copy tax was meant to compensate copyright owners for consumers making copies (for private use) of purchased media. It was widely interpreted as to allow downloading from the internet as well (even from pirated sources).

Ah sorry yes - my comment was made from an American/Canadian perspective - I know that other parts of the world have been significantly more progressive in the past.