The age of the cable news provider is waning. Within 24 hours of the Joe Rogan podcast with former US president Donald Trump, it had over 30 million views on YouTube alone. This is far more than any mainstream news or media outlet gets for any of its shows or presentations.
There are many others, like Tim Pool, who get large audience viewership exceeding the so-called mainstream. That term itself is now largely out of date. Interestingly, depending on your location, that particular Joe Rogan Experience podcast is difficult to find with a Google search. This highlights just how much the search engines control what they allow and want you to see. Some consider this overt censorship, and that it is nothing new for Google. If you live in or can VPN into the United States you can test this. I suspect that in five years or less, the current mainstream news services will have vanished, replaced by the likes of Rogan and others. In an unrelated story from World of Statistics on X, Google is the biggest donor to the Harris/Walz campaign in the US.
- I was walking past a school at lunchtime recently, and instead of seeing students kicking a ball or some other activity, all of those in view were seated, in groups facing outwards from each other, all with their faces buried in laptops. This was outside on a nice day, perfect for actual physical activities. This represents a worrying trend and reinforces the assertion that our current generation is less fit than the previous one. Perhaps the students I saw were all studying. While I wasn't close enough to see anything on the screens, I'd be very surprised if indeed that was the case. For parents who may be completely unaware of this, physical activity is just as important as screen time.
- I hate Windows updates with a passion. Every time, and I mean every time I install one, I lose network connectivity. Microsoft messes with my network settings and I lose access to the internet. Sometimes a second reboot fixes the problem, but other times I need to run network diagnostics. Either way there should be no need for this and Microsoft should not be messing with my connection settings. A conspiracy theorist might be wondering if they are doing this to get info from my computer more easily. As I type this, a week after the update, I still have no access to google.com, which is very strange.
- On the subject of Microsoft, do you get confused by the terminology or the correct spelling of their products? The site letmecorrectthatforyou.com may be able to help with this. Is it on-premise or on-premises? This site will clear that up for you. It's a fairly simple site and I'm not a big fan of the way they laid it out, but it will indicate where you may have gone wrong when describing or spelling a Microsoft feature.
- It must either be deliberate or Amazon seems to never learn. Their new Kindle range still doesn't support the epub format. I was a Kindle user but my last two devices have been from Kobo because they support both Mobi and epub, along with a host of other formats. This also means it's been a long time since I bought anything for the Kindle from the Amazon store, which is annoying because there are sometimes items I'd like to buy, but technically I wouldn't be able to read them on my Kobo device. It's a strange thing when you buy something that cannot be used, as Apple iTunes users are well aware of. Epub is an open-source format making Amazon's decision all the more confounding. For those who need to swap between book formats, I still highly recommend the free Calibre software.
- BitDefender might be the stupidest malware software I've ever used. If it detects what it defines as a "potentially unwanted program", one with no detected virus component, there is a minute or so pause and then you're given the option to "restore it". If you then copy this file to another location, the process is repeated, ad-nauseum. You cannot accept the file and have it remember your decision. If for some reason you do anything while waiting for BitDefender to give you the restore option, you lose the option to restore and you can't get that choice back unless you delete your files and restart whatever process you were doing. This is Big Brother control to the max and I for one find it unacceptable.
- In the ever-devolving Rumble story, their ads breaks are always in the middle of a phrase someone is saying. As much as I dislike it, YouTube at least has their ads in between stories or at the end of a sentence. Rumble Premium, no ads, is US$99 (3,340 baht) per year. YouTube is $119.88 per year but provides background and offline playback.
James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
