Honestly, this is pretty impressive IMO. Particularly since visa-free travel is not reciprocal. The below is just plain wrong; Australia is even less open than it appears:

Ranked 83rd out of 99, Australia is one of the least open nations. Citizens of just 34 countries can visit Australia without prior visa authorisation

Barring some niche cases (e.g. royal family, military/crew, transiting, Torres Strait Islanders), only one country’s citizens can travel to Australia without prior visa authorisation; New Zealand (and even they can be refused clearance at the border). Every other foreign country needs to apply for and be granted a visa before they are permitted to board the plane. Australia has somehow managed to convince 33 countries that their ETAs and eVisitor visas are not really visas. They just happen to be permission that a person needs to obtain before they are allowed to enter a country… If only we had a word for that.

I’m honestly surprised how well the Australian passport performs considering Australia effectively has a universal visa requirement. That being said, it’s also one of the most expensive passports in the world.

I went from a cheap mp3 player that I could just plug in to my computer and drag in music to an iPod which forced me to download the iTunes bloatware create an account and then took 100x longer to transfer music because of the pointless conversion each file had to undergo. This was my first and last experience with a personal Apple device. Ended up putting some old pop music onto it and giving it to my grandmother after 2 days. Uninstalled iTunes and went back to using my cheap mp3 player until I replaced it with a smartphone.

Coming in as a close second place, an all-in-one Sony Vaoi computer that cost a fortune and had shit performance. Took daily nags to Sony before they took it back and gave me a refund. I find that Sony’s hit and miss though. My favourite smartphone (Xperia Play) was Sony, and I love my Sony Bluetooth earbuds. The Sony Smartwatch was shit.

Also works for customer service. Have a ridiculously minor issue that really doesn’t matter but still irks a small part of you and you’re too much of a wimp to speak up about? Check your sent folder in the morning after a night of drinking.

Protip: support@company.com.

Rather than having my All feed spammed with walled gardens I’d rather mods who don’t want outside participation to be able to stop their communities from showing in All.

Great. More taxpayer money going towards complete and utter stupidity. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the Internet knows how dumb and technologically unfeasible this is, yet this nonsense still continues to gain traction.

I was expecting it to be something like they eat a percentage of their own babies or something.

Well… If you insist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_devil

“Gestation lasts 21 days, and devils give birth to 20–30 young standing up … As there are only four nipples in the pouch, competition is fierce, and few newborns survive.”

One guess as to what happens to the spares.

I agree with you. I wasn’t referring to the actual contents so much as OP’s attitude about the e-mails from the CEO. I think Kagi could benefit from hiring, or at least consulting, with specialists in the field to better define their position. It’s clear that OP has legitimate concerns.

Sure, why not? Though please don’t spread it around, I’m currently under deep cover pretending to be an Australian who frequently comments on Australian news and is registered with an Australian-themed instance.

It’s all part of my evil plan to have the first multinational company with their global headquarters in Antarctica.

You and I have a very different idea of what constitutes harassment.

After reading your comment, my calling the OP an ‘entitled douche’ was not the best response. I remember the fragility of being a teenager, and even being a young adult… While unlikely, if the blog’s author does come across these comments, I would rather they take a moment to consider things from Vlad’s/Kagi’s perspective rather than just take my comment as a personal attack.

TBH, OP sounds like a bit of an entitled douche.

In their blog post they complained about lack of transparency and noted numerous issues with Kagi that caused them to lose faith in the company. The CEO personally responds to explain themselves (i.e. make things more transparent) and OP sticks their fingers in their ears and acts liked they’re a victim because the CEO attempts service recovery.

I’ve made public complaints about companies before. I wish I received such tailored and personalised responses.

there’s this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly.

Wow, mind blown! I had no idea money could be used to buy things directly! /s

Seriously though, buying music from artists you already know is easy for artists that actually provide this as an option, but it doesn’t help when trying to find new artists and songs to listen to. Spotify is brilliant for discovering new content and can’t be replaced by ‘buying shit directly’.

Ahhhh!!!

I literally, just purchased a subscription to Joplin Cloud! I already pay for Proton Unlimited and was tossing up between Joplin and Standard Notes.

What a bummer… I bet Proton adds this as an additional service to Proton Unlimited.

Spotify.

An open source music streaming service where I can financially support artists but where I’m not forced to put up with annoying advertisements (even when paying membership fees!), and which allows me to use whatever app I want to play the music I listen to. It is annoying AF that I need to switch between apps to listen to music because Spotify’s shitty native app is inferior in every possible way with the single exception of offering more content.

I learnt my lesson from Starfield; the most expensive video game I ever purchased… I pre-ordered that tripe and suffered the consequences. Never again.

I am so glad I learnt my lesson and decided to wait for the reviews for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Pretty sad that this is the outcome, but I am glad that I decided to wait and see.

How disappointing… At one time Capcom was my all time favourite video game developer, I grew up playing the Breath of Fire series and it remains one of my all time favourite video games. Such a shame that they turned into such short-sighted idiots.

I was looking forward to this game and I would have 100% purchased this if it lacked micro-transactions and the Denuvo bloatware/malware. In their attempt to make more money, they at least received less money from me.

You argue my statement to be untrue then provide your unrealistic utopian vision of cramming high density urban living as if it has any reflection in our current reality. Developers are not building your utopia, they are doing everything they can to maximise their profit. I’ve lived in enough expensive high density shitty apartments with no air conditioning and no maintenance to take everything an ‘anti-NIMBY’ has to say with a shaker of salt.

Increasing density is not necessary to resolve the housing crisis. Halting and properly managing population increase is the solution. Governments not sabotaging public transport is the solution. Social housing as opposed to housing-for-profit is the solution.

Whenever I hear the word ‘NIMBY’ thrown around I just think about how these people expect current and future generations to be worse off than their parents.

You want a garden? No, fuck you NIMBY. You want a pool? No, fuck you NIMBY. Solar panels? No, fuck you NIMBY. Now, get in your box and stay there. No complaints.

Housing supply is an issue and it’s purely because of poor infrastructure, shitty government, and out-of-control migration.

I’m looking forward to games that really do take advantage of AI effectively. Having almost infinite variations of characters and plots would make each play through a new experience. I reckon some interesting games will be coming out in the next few years.

I swear dumbarses like this live in a bubble. Who in their right mind would give their identity documents or bank cards to a porn site? If the UK government enacts this silly legislation it just means UK residents will use non-UK sites.

Some people really need a reality check.