“At the same time, I think we really need to understand the fact that we are living in a different era and animals are making use of what is available to them.”

They just adapt. If the supply of snail shells is declining - probably because of the pollution of their enviroment - those shells become scarce. When there are plastic garbage shells availiable, the hermit crabs will utilize them instead, since it probably is easier to obtain them. They serve the same purpose to them.

Since the lifespan of a wild hermit crab can reach up to 30 years, it probably will effect their health. When plastic disintegrates and becomes micro- or nanoplastic, those particles will cumulate in their bodies. These plastic particles are suspected of being silmilar to hormones, which can have effects on the ability to reproduce, among others.

It should be rather concerning than cute.

Despite not answering your question correctly, I have something where Windows is superior to macOS:

When you start a Windows program and want the program window to fill your screen completely, you just have to drag the window towards the upper edge of the screen and the window fills the whole size of the screen.

On macOS there is not such an option. You have to drag the program window manually to the full size of the screen. Although there is a full-screen mode (green button in the upper left of the window), when activated, the window is in full screen, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is hidden. However, at least macOS remembers the last size of the program window, so you don’t have to drag it to full screen size again.

I think programming can be a pretty dull task, where you spend hours over hours copy-pasting fragments of code from former projects and/or from other sources, adjust it to your needs, run it, remove the bug, run it again and find the new ten bugs over and over again.

But you get to wear a black hoodie and a mask.

A cheap phone last about as long and does 90% the same stuff

This is true. You can get an almost equal performance out of a cheap phone. But I learned that more expensive or high-end phones recieve more software updates than cheaper entry-tier phones.

For instance, I own an LG K8 (Model LG-M200E) from 2017. The battery still holds enough charge (although it is designed to be replaced), the camera works, the touch display still responds properly - but it only recieved one update (Android 7 --> Android 8) in 2018. I wouldn’t consider it secure and I certainly don’t have my online banking on the phone. Meanwhile it gets very hot and slow when I use Google Maps. Unfortunately, there is no way to replace its operating system with an alterntive OS, linke Grephene OS or Lineage. None of the many alternative operating systems offer suppert for this specific model.

My next phone will propably be mid-price ranged.

Edit: typos

I have a simailar strategy: I bought a mouse, considered it good enough to work with, bought the same mouse again to put it away for when the first-bought mouse is failing.

I do the same with shoes since I wear the same brand and model for years, so that an internet purchase is without any risk for me.

Here is a well-written summary of why it is important to keep things about you hidden to other entities.

No, you have something to hide

The text ist written is in Dutch. You can translate the website via Firefox to English.

Regarding your edit: This might be the reason, why people tend to vote against their interests. To weed out competition. For instance, people would happily vote against free school lunch - even if the option of free school lunch would benefit them - just because some different ethnical and/or political group would not receive that benefit either.

I see a very similar behavior in German politics right now: The right-wing party (AfD) is gaining popularity and the conservative party (CDU) is going to lose voters towards them. In order to appeal to voters they want to (very oversimplified) alter social welfare benefits to the worse and keep minimum wage from rising, all while claiming that immigration (among other things) is the issue. But those who are voting for the right wing party and the conservative party as well are the ones who clearly would benefit from better social welfare an a higher minimum wage. These people would rather decline any improvements regarding social welfare and minimum wage, so that others (immigrants for example) would not benefit from them either.

Edit: typos

No matter where an election is coming up - people tend to vote against their interests. This meme popped up in my head when I read this thread:

“I’m sorry that you…”

… feel offended by my point of view.

That one was indeed disturbing.

Of course many comments in this threas are exaggerated; there won’t be played any ads into your brain.

But there are some implications for the usage of Neuralink that are worth thinking about it - especially when it comes to privacy:

Given that it “just” runs with firmware, so that the implant can function in a way most stable and reliably, and also given that there will be no subscription model involved into all of that, will the user (patient) be able to control the functionality of the implant (e.g. controlling the intensity of the eletric signal sent out from the implant to counteract the intensity of a tremor)?

And how will that happen? One thing I could think of is to control the implant with a smartphone app. How good will that smartphone app be? Will it be programmed sloppily like these apps we know from Internet-Of-Things-Apps and have a ton of bugs? Are those (medicinal!) apps secure in terms of privacy? What is with the product support? Will the implant be discontinued after a few years (and also the app)? What if your smartphone fails (no power or hardware failure, or after an update it doesn’t work)?

A friend of mine has an app to monitor her blood sugar. She is not qute satified with the app. Luckily the provider of those diabetes sensors provided a separate device, so that the app is just an addition for measuring when you are travelling, for example. But in their last iteration they tried to omit the separate device, probably in order to save costs. My friend had to explicitly ask for it.

With that in mind I’m not keen on having control on such medicinal devices with a smartphone only. If the smartphone fails, there would be no backup. Will such similar things be the case regarding Neuralink?

I’m sure these implants will give much needed ease to patients who suffer frem tremors like parkinson and other neurological diseases. But the things I’m mostly concerned about are:

• Will health insurance pay for the implant in a one-time-payment? Will it be a subscription model? What happens when you can’t pay your subscription? Will it be shut off?
• Will the implant be operated through firmware (like a pacemaker) or software, which reqires frequent updates? If so, will there be - like computer software - “new features” implemented (“With version 2.0 you will be able to share your Neuralink experience with other Neuralink users. Your data may not be leaked, pinky promise.”
• What if a certain mentally unstable CEO throws a tantrum that will affect the performance of the Neuralink implant negatively? Will there be any legal protection from such thing?

what are yall doing with your time?

We use our time more efficiently. Since you can stream everything from the internet, you don't need to work your schedule according to the time, a show on TV starts. You don't need to be at home at 7 because a new episode ist airing. With streaming you can decide on when you want to watch something.

Another benefit of not having (classic) TV is, that you barely see any commercials or ads (given you use an adblocker). When I have the chance to watch TV (when staying in hotels or visiting friends wo have TV) I'm astonished how many ads (even in the TV menu) and commercials get thrown down our throats. It's like a stream of ads interrupted with shows.