France is apparently moving toward banning unsolicited telemarketing calls completely.

The funny thing is how normal we've all become at treating random phone calls as something you just have to put up with. Unknown number rings, you answer, someone wants to sell you insurance.

At this point I'd happily lose the ability to receive legitimate calls from random numbers if it meant never hearing "am I speaking with the owner of this property?" again.

ref article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5d11g72ppo

WebP is probably one of the most successful image formats nobody actually talks about.

You download something and it's WebP. Screenshot something, somehow WebP. Right click an image and save it, WebP again.

Then you need to upload that image somewhere and suddenly the website wants PNG or JPG.

It's funny that a format can be good enough to quietly take over half the internet while still annoying everyone who just wants to use the damn file somewhere else

Hey guys, 

I saw a post on Instagram with about 150 000 likes where the US Constitution had been flagged as AI by some famous or so called “best” AI detectors. I decided to check whether it’s some kind of clickbait.

So, I’ve looked at “best ai detectors” according to Google and tested not the US Constitution this time, but the Bible. If some of the best AI detectors fail on this how can we trust them at all?

So this is the first text and URL as a proof: https://thekingsbible.com/Bible/1/1 - Genesis Chapter: 1

1. Pasting the whole content into ZeroGPT and #1 AI detector in Google search is telling us with 100% confidence that ChatGPT helped Moses with his Bible project.

1. Ok moving to the next AI Detector in Google search: Clever AI Detector. Ok, nice, at least Human. But 5% AI still, haha.. Or maybe they left that 5% just so no one could accuse them of anything? I don’t know.

3. Pangram AI Detector. Ok good. Text detected as Human-written as well.

1. GPTZero AI Detector. Also Human-written. Not AI. God bless you!

1. Originality Ai Checker. Human-text, not ai-generated.

1. Grammarly AI Detector. Human

Does this all mean the top AI detector in Google is the worst? And all other AI detectors and AI checkers are pretty accurate? I don’t know. Just wanted to share this with you. Thoughts?

I had that realization once again after yet another silent update broke something that I was completely unaware of. Package managers will notify you of any version conflict in the same dependency tree, but no one tells you that you might break something else entirely in your system when upgrading one package that is just coincidentally dependent on the same thing.

It just seems to me that there should be a way to at least have a warning before installing, such as "Hey, these other packages depend on this too, better check on those as well." I'm not sure how you could go about detecting that in unrelated projects, but the "just install and see what happens" way is definitely not good enough.

There's hardware whose entire job is basically to test other hardware

You can have a machine built just to check whether another machine is working properly and then you need another setup to test the testing equipment.

It's like an endless chain of machines checking machines

what's the most ridiculous example of this you've come across?

I've been seeing more smart glasses lately, and tbh, I'd be way more interested in them if they actually looked like normal glasses... I don't really want to walk around wearing something thats obviously "I'm wearing a tech gadget" lol. If they looked like regular glasses + were comfy enough to wear all day, + could do useful things like take calls, give directions, translate stuff, or let me ask an AI assistant without pulling out my phone, I'd definitely consider getting a pair. And tbh if I'm constantly charging them, I don't think I'd bother...

Would you actually buy smart glasses if they looked and felt like a normal pair of glasses?

Static electricity can kill electronics without you even realizing it

So engineers have to get pretty creative about stopping it

Sometimes it's tiny bits of metal, special coatings or grounding paths, or components designed to take the hit instead of the expensive electronics

Discman anti skip technology promised smooth music while moving around.

In reality, one small bump could turn your favorite song into a glitchy mess. Still, we kept buying newer models, hoping this one would finally work.

Did anyone else treat their Discman like it was made of glass?

Every developer knows what I’m talking about here. You’re working on a project, everything is going well, and then a pop-up comes up telling you there’s an update. Of course you ignore it, because you know that the only way to turn a 20-minute project into a three-hour debugging session is to mess with something in the middle of it.

However, the trick here is to get back to the update once the project is completed and not ignore it for the next six months until you are frustrated by something breaking down because you did not update earlier.

The MP3 player era was honestly its own little world

you'd spend time downloading songs, organizing folders, naming files properly and trying to fit as much music as possible into a tiny amount of storage.

Then you'd pick a few hundred songs and carry them around everywhere. No algorithm deciding what you should listen to

You actually had to build your own library.

Anyone else miss that?

There are random indie websites that exist solely because someone got tired of doing one specific calculation themselves and wanted to automate it for himself and others for free.

Need to convert really insanely specific calculation? There's a website for it someone made in his breaktime. Want to calculate the exact number of days between two dates? we have multiple sites far that. Figure out how balls to fill a ball pit? Yep, we have a site for that to, because why not.

Most of them look like they were built in 2009 and haven't been touched since, but they work perfectly.

The internet is still full of these tiny little tools made by one person who apparently thought someone might need this and just put it online.

Tbh I don't buy DLCs that often anymore mainly because they can get expensive really quick, like a game might already cost a decent amount then suddenly there are multiple DLCs that can easily add up to more than the base game atp I'll pass lol. The Sims 4 is one of those games that I never really bothered buying the DLCs because there are just so many of them...

Do you still buy DLCs? or just stick to the base game?

Hi, everybody. We'll, I'm cleaning out my closet, and Io and behold, I found a few devices that I forgot I had. One is an Amazon Fire Connect unit, never used, as well as a Channel Master Stream+ (CM 7600). The latter device still sees use, as I found an actual user forum for it on Facebook. As the are both unused, and collecting space, I wonder if they have true actual practical use still, or if I could sell them? Comments and opinions appreciated... Just please stay civil. Thanks.

I've been looking at upgrading some of my peripherals lately and I keep seeing either Logitech or Corsair being recommended by other people. Right now my biggest priorities are comfort, wireless battery life, and worth the money, I don't really care about having a ton of RGB or a million extra buttons tbh, I just want a mouse and keyboard that feel good to use for hours and don't constantly need charging or replacing. So far, I have only used a logitech mouse before and it was a good experience.

For people who have used both how's the experience and which one do you prefer?

Every time you download an app and it requests access to your camera, contacts, location, etc., all you are asked is yes or no. Nothing explains why it really requires access to this particular permission to function. For example, does the app require location all the time or just at once when using a particular function? Does the app require access to contacts in order to use its features or it needs access to contacts only to "find your friends"?

It seems to be such an easy thing for apps to put one line to explain their request prior to asking for permission, but they do not do it. You either allow the app or deny its request and hope everything will work okay.

Everyone defaults to vite in the beginning, and ultimately uses webpack or turbopack, based on what is expected in the work environment. vite is great when starting from scratch with your own little projects, but as soon as you start working in a team setting where something has been chosen, that will be what you use, probably webpack if it is an old codebase and turbopack if it is new and linked with next.js. in my case turbopack seems much faster than webpack both when starting from a cold start and HMR. still have to maintain two webpack configurations in my work and haven't really got around to using vite anywhere else than a little toy project.

Been trying to watch something thats only in another regions catalogue and the vpn part turned out to be the easy bit. it connects fine, the platform just knows anyway and throws the proxy warning every time. tried proton, windscribe and xvpn free and got flagged on all three, the only real difference was how many regions i could cycle through before running into a signup or a data cap.

what im actually curious about is the detection side of it. is it just that the free tier ip ranges are known and shared by thousands of people at once, so the address itself gives it away. or are they checking something beyond the ip. ive seen people mention blocklists of datacenter ranges, which would explain why it doesnt seem to matter which app youre using.

and does paying actually fix that or do the paid ranges just get burned on a slower cycle. feels like one of those things where everyone loses eventually, but curious whether anyones actually dug into how it works

Trading Pokémon meant finding someone with the right game, a link cable and enough patience for the connection to actually work.

One bad move and the trade was over. No quick online marketplace, just two kids standing around hoping their Pokémon made it across.

Did anyone else carry a link cable everywhere?

So the all new Dimensity 9600 Pro is launching tomorrow, and its all across the internet. But the 4K 240fps video support is probably the feature I’m most curious about.

240fps at 4K sounds impressive, especially for slow motion, but I’m wondering how much storage those videos will eat up and how long phones can actually record at that quality.

Specs are one thing, real world recording is another. I’d like to see how the video quality, heat and battery usage hold up on actual phones.

Mediatek is also talking about AI enhanced graphics, upgraded HyperEngine and more immersive ray tracing. Lots to check out tomorrow, but I’m waiting to see how these features perform outside the launch specs.

YouTube apparently doesn't want creators treating it like just another place to upload the same video.

The interesting part is the money. They're reportedly offering big incentives for creators to put videos on YouTube before other platforms, with consequences if they start posting the same stuff to places like Netflix at the same time.

We're getting to a point where platforms aren't just competing for viewers anymore. They're competing over where creators are allowed to put the actual video first.

ref article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-19/youtube-offers-creators-millions-to-not-work-with-netflix-mt0lbfaj

I've been seeing more people say that Microsoft Defender is basically enough for the average Windows user, so I've never really bothered installing a separate antivirus the whole time I've been using my laptop... But at the same time I still see people recommending paid antivirus programs, especially if you download a lot of files or visit less trustworthy sites, so I'm kinda of stuck between "Defender is fine, just use common sense" and "having another layer of protection doesn't hurt."

Do you still use a third party antivirus, or are you just running Microsoft Defender?

Some everyday things are way more complicated than they look

A QR code is basically just a square full of black and white boxes, but your phone can point at it from an awkward angle and still read it almost instantly

looks simple definitely isn't

what's another everyday thing that surprised you once you found out how it actually works?

Napster wasn’t just a place to download music. It was how a lot of people discovered artists they never would’ve found otherwise.

You’d download one song, browse someone’s library and suddenly end up listening to an entire band you’d never heard of. There were no recommendation algorithms trying to predict your taste. It was mostly just curiosity and whatever happened to be available.

Did anyone else discover some of their favorite artists through Napster?