I’ve hanged dog waste bags onto such signs a couple times when angry (filled).

I think it would mean the same in German too.

I thought it’s “wiener implants”, from Vienna sausages.

Those apps have gotten hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in India and China who are doing e-commerce and opening small businesses from their phones. That’s food on the table for the working class. They can earn money while looking after their children because they’re not chained to a desktop computer for internet access.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen it or it’s a picture similar to what OLPC founder would describe to investors.

People in remote areas can know instantly about natural disasters and the news, educating them and making them active citizens in a democracy.

Now we learn that Apple invented radio.

People across the world can chat with each other for nearly free using messaging and social media apps, and won’t have to send letters or pay extra fees for long-distance calls. The iPhone got more people onto what formerly only Blackberry-owning business executive had.

Apple also did not invent the Internet, or instant messaging, or social media, or ability to use them on a portable device. And I wonder how old you are, ignoring all PDAs other than Apple and Blackberry in that time.

It’s such a first world thing to belittle the impact of smartphone (an industry which the iPhone shaped tremendously), when it has so much tangible impact, especially to working people.

This really reads like, I repeat, what OLPC founder would tell to investors. A first world thing.

So not just they pirated them, which may or may not be a crime and where I may or may not be impartial, but they are also leeches who would be banned on any decent torrent tracker of the olden days.

It doesn’t even make sense. One can have a voice bot with an LLM, if it’s so bad. One can ask if the customer wants to get an SMS with an URL to support page. Asking them if they want to be sent to operators after that.

But just 15 minutes basic wait so that less people would reach operators - why the hell, I don’t get it, how is it better than just waiting in queue when all operators are busy and not waiting when, well, not. If the operators are overloaded and perform worse - then allow bigger ACW times, more breaks, maybe hire more operators.

Especially for a computer hardware company one can script most support calls pretty unambiguously. They are not going to be helping out a grandma via phone when “Internet isn’t working”.