Same logic, the bra itself as a whole is a chest covering, so like a shirt it’s not a “pair”

Not that there always has to be logic in these things, etymology sometimes defies that.

A bra does have a “pair of cups”, though!

For some items like glasses it’s very clear why they are pairs; if you can have a reading glass (which is an antiquated way to refer to a handheld magnifying lens, for example) then you can certainly have a pair of reading glasses because it’s the two pieces of glass which are plural.

For trousers there are no certain answers, but I’d suggest it’s very much with with how we conceptualise their function. For 90% of their height trousers are split and cover the legs, of which we have two, only joining right at the top.

For shirts you might think it’s the same (two arms right?) but it’s a completely different story because the primary function of a shirt isn’t to cover the arms but to cover the torso. So it’s singular. And gloves of course are distinct, so it’s back to pairs.

It’s just not fun anymore.

It used to be kinda humorous in an irreverent way back in the 2000s when Google used April Fools to announce things like the Google Romance search engine, or a facility to archive all your Gmails on printed paper. It was tech making fun of itself.

But these days when the mask is fully off, and we recognise that big tech and social media has been one of the greatest problems the world has ever faced, we’re not laughing any longer.

The UK is about to ban disposable vapes, but I fear it may achieve little.

What the legislation does is to define what “reusable” means, and demand that vapes must meet that.

In reality, I suspect that manufacturers will simply adjust their strategies to produce vapes that are “technically” reusable and rechargeable and meet the law in a bare-minimum way, but really are intended to be used exactly once, just like disposable ones were, and that’s exactly how they will continue to be treated by consumers.

Cost will probably go up 20% to cover it, but that’s all, and in the end even more material will be going in landfill.

In my opinion, what the legislation should have done is to set an absolute minimum price on the cost of a vape pen. That would be very heavy-handed, but it would actually create the strong financial motivation required to force consumers to genuinely treat the vape pen as something they will re-use.

“Temporarily closes” may have been a better headline.

I thought it meant they were shutting for good, which would be pretty ridiculous.

Those few days between jobs are moments of pure joy.

You’re finished with all the bullshit of the previous job, and are blissfully unaware of whatever fresh bullshit is waiting for you at the new one.

Oh no!

Anyway…

10 years isn’t the worst run, but it still proves the point that anything which needs an app or connected web service to function will inevitably become e-waste, and maybe sooner than you’d like.

Earlier today, I was looking at reviews of portable Bluetooth speakers. One had a bullet point “No equalizer app, with only basic EQ functions available on the speaker itself.”

The review intended that to be a negative, but I was like “Hell yeah that’s what I want!”

Functionality in pure hardware means it will keep on working as long as the hardware works. It means that I myself get to be the one who decides when I need an upgrade, not when the company forces my hand.

Every single tech purchasing decision I make these days, having freedom from apps, cloud, or any other ticking time bomb is top of my feature list.

This problem has become more prevalent with AI, but deceptive item listings have been part of the online shopping minefield for a long time.

The same rule applies now as it always has - if it seems too good to be true, then it is.

“72% of that group say real-world rewards are ‘important’ when selecting a new mobile game to download” - says report commissioned by company whose business model is putting real world rewards in mobile games and apps.

Piss off.

I play games to escape the real world a bit and forget it exists, not to slave away doing meaningless tasks for pennies.

I may not have realised I was using a British English specific term :)

“High Street” does etymologically derive from the main shopping street(s) in a town where most shops would have premises, as you suggest.

In a contemporary usage it means physical retail (versus online) and also connotes city centre, versus places that have enormous out of town “big box” stores.

So economists might say “The high street saw the best Christmas profits in five years” and they mean all retail in that sector of business.

So when I said CVS were a “high-street pharmacy” what I really meant to imply by that was “they are a brick-and-mortar chain with physical stores on streets in towns and cities all over the place”

CVS is a high street pharmacy chain.

So the “CVS guy” is the cashier on checkout at the store.

Personally, I don’t feel that analogy is a fair comparison.

Begging a dev for new features for free would definitely be entitlement, because it’s demanding more, but what OP is upset about is reduction in the service they already had.

I don’t think any free tier user of any service could have any right to be upset if new features were added only for paying customers, but changing the free tier level is different.

In my opinion, even if you aren’t paying for it, the free tier is a service level like any other. People make decisions about whether or not to use a service based on if the free tier covers their needs or not. Companies will absolutely try to upsell you to a higher tier and that’s cool, that’s business after all, but they shouldn’t mess around with what they already offered you.

When companies offer a really great free tier but then suddenly reduce what is on it, then in my opinion that’s a baiting strategy. They used a compelling offering to intentionally draw in a huge userbase (from which they benefit) and build up the popularity and market share of the service, and then chopped it to force users - who at this point may be embedded and find it difficult to switch - to pay.

So yeah, it doesn’t matter in my opinion that the tier is free. It’s still a change in what you were promised after the fact, and that’s not cool regardless of whether there is money involved or not.

For sure right!

What really changed though wasn’t the size of the computer, but how the computer produced value.

Initially, a lot of what people wanted computers for was to get their “document stuff” done, and that was what took up all the room, because of the printer, and scanner, and paper, and filing drawers, and so-on. And soooo many CDs for software you needed to get that all done.

Back when I was a kid, my babysitter used our Windows 95 machine to write up and print off a cover letter for job applications, and it was 9 year old me who taught her how to do it, lol. And that was the value.

I bet even when your friend set up their shiny new all-in-one, they still had the old computer and all its attached devices hiding away shamefully in the ‘office’ there somewhere…

So it wasn’t really miniaturisation that killed the computer room as much as it was every aspect of life going online. No physical disks anymore because software comes over the Internet. No need to print because 99% of our life and business can be done online. So all the things that filled up the computer room just ceased to be needed, and so did the room that held them.

There was a brief and remarkable period in history from the mid 90s to the late 2000s where homes all across the land had a room that was referred to as “The Computer Room”

Not “The Office” no; for this room was not so pedestrian. It was a room whose entire function was to house the great monolith of The Computer.

A corner desk in veneered pine-effect plywood, atop which sat the great beige tower and CRT. A printer and a scanner straddling the desk like sentinels. Racks of CD holders built right into the fake pine, and a lidded box for floppy disks in a smoky translucent plastic, that for some reason came with lock and key as if the disks were precious jewels.

These days we have no need for such things, and the home office is once again simply an office. But for a while we had The Computer Room, and some part of me misses you.

The one I self-host shares nothing with nobody :)

That, or hanging subtle dong on second hand listings is their kink

Very kind and polite of you

To play the role of the annoying five year old, “And why is that bad?”

Fair :)