My mail provider isn’t that big. We got blocked by both outlook and gmail, but I duckduckwent a workaround which worked. Something about editing some mail record somewhere. Can’t remember what, I’m afraid.

Wow. I think if I lived in that sort of climate I might not be driving an electric car. But I also think the likelihood of me moving to a climate that hostile is low. Keep safe out there!

True, but I don’t need to charge at -30C, and this thing charges FAST.

Even some commercial less well known mail providers are sometimes blocked by big players like gmail and outlook for anti-spam reasons.

Ah yes good old tens of thousands in debt and property costing ten times what it used to when boomers bought them, cost of living souring, wages not climbing, and of course it’s the cheap tasty chicken keeping the young folk from owning their own home. Yeeeesss. Great financial logic there, (checks notes) Wall Street Journal.

I was going to guess that it was one of Trump’s idiot corrupt collaborators or AI, and here it is, Elon Musk’s idiot collaborators.

No it isn’t!

Yes, but it isn’t just saying “no it isn’t”.

I can’t upvote this enough. You have good comic timing.

No it isn’t. Look, this isn’t an argument, it’s just contradiction.

When you try to watch a video on YouTube, you’re immediately confronted with an advertisement - a mandatory interruption designed to extract value from your attention. These ads are part of a calculated system where Google, YouTube’s parent company, turns every moment of your online experience into a monetizable commodity.

The process is frustratingly simple: an ad starts playing, and you’re given two unsatisfying choices. You can either sit through the entire advertisement or press the skip button after a few seconds, both of which serve Google’s ultimate goal of generating revenue. It’s a digital toll booth where you’re forced to pay with your time and personal data.

YouTube’s tracking algorithms scrutinize your online behavior, collecting vast amounts of personal information to serve ads that are supposedly “tailored” to your interests. In reality, this is just sophisticated surveillance masquerading as convenience. Every click, every viewed video, every moment of your online activity becomes a data point for their massive advertising machine.

When Google purchased YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, they acquired more than just a video platform - they gained a powerful tool for data collection and targeted advertising. Content creators are essentially trapped in a system where they must play by Google’s rules, accepting whatever revenue scraps are thrown their way while the tech giant profits enormously.

The platform presents itself as a free service, but the real cost is your privacy and attention. Millions of users are funneled through an advertising pipeline, their viewing experiences constantly interrupted by corporate messaging. What was once a revolutionary platform for sharing videos has transformed into a highly sophisticated advertising delivery system.

Every ad you’re forced to watch represents a small victory for Google’s relentless monetization strategy. You’re not a viewer - you’re a product being sold to advertisers, your attention carved up and packaged into marketable segments. The “free” video you want to watch comes with strings attached - strings pulled tightly by one of the world’s most powerful tech corporations.

Just press skip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebBq2769J6M

No it isn’t! An argument is a connected sequence of statements designed to draw a conclusion. It isn’t just saying “no it isn’t”!

Ah yes, the CYMKI ink cartridges!

Subtle, yet blatant. I like it.

Oh, actually, during lunch break on the interview day: “I recall that you mentioned enjoying fine art. Who are some of your favourite artists?”
Or
“My sister is into aqua zumba, is that the kind of rhythmic exercise you’re into?”

Er, don’t list it as a hobby in your CV, that’s my advice.

Yes it is!

Ah. I use regex replace every week with matching substrings a good few times a month. It’s not any slower to load than notepad and considerably less annoying.

The only time it’s ever in the least bit slow to load is when it’s on a onedrive folder at work and Microsoft don’t cache it locally so there’s a delay getting the thing in the first place.

Does metapad have regex find and replace? If so, smaller and even faster is appealing.

WordPad writes fairly clean rtf. Word writes incredibly bloated messy rtf. No, I don’t want to use a .docx or .pdf generating library, I just wanna slap some strings together and have it come out ready to print yet editable by non techy users. I use wordpad to write my templates.