My parents were (and still are) opposed to software updates. When I was younger, I could not understand why. I viewed software updates as something good, a necessity, practically an obligation. The recent trends in the software world showed me the wisdom of those older than me.
Apple recently introduced a design “language” called Liquid Glass, or as the opinionated parts of the internet call it, “Liquid Ass”. This is a redesign of the software interface on your apple laptops, computers and apple’s mobile phones. I watched yourube videos of the update and decided that it was not for me. At this age, I want my computer to be an appliance. Your phone, technologically indistinguishable from a general purpose computer, by the way, should also be an appliance. A device that does its job, and does that job well. The ability of an appliance to do its job should not change seemingly at random, based on the machinations of some software engineer.
Each time I use my phone, I do not want to be wowed by the design skill of Apple’s designers in Cupertino. I want the damn thing to be comprehensible and usable. Now, I happen to own several Apple devices and I accidentally updated my tablet computer to iOS 26, the version that introduces Liquid Glass. I now detest the thing and the operating system.
Yes, apps on my iPad now have a menu bar that I can browse, subtle reflections and refractions, and many other changes. See, this is what bothers me. I do not want to re-learn how to use a computer. I want the computer’s operating system to get out of my way. You can read more about the confusing menu icons here, but the part that annoys me are the changes. Why are designers obsessed with this “Scandinavian” minimalism and these bloody flat icons? Why the bloody hell are the menu icons all the same colour? Why are they so tiny? Is apple’s design team a colony of ants?
Microsoft’s windows is exactly the same. My work computer was forced to update to Windows 11 and the start button moved to the middle of the taskbar. Why? The start icon now depicts these four blue squares. What on earth does that mean? It is supposed to depict the panes of a window, but without any hints of reflections or a border, it is just four squares. Flat design, my flat ass.
This “flat” design trend is bonkers. A computer used to be relatively intuitive to use. Shadows told you which parts of the screen were above others. Colours in menu bars told you which window was selected and which were not. Yes, the metaphors of files and folders is not perfect, I myself have never used a filing cabinet but I understand the metaphor well enough. This idea of change for the sake of change is frustrating and I now, finally, see why my parents refuse to update software.
You never know when some poorly informed product manager will force an update on you without the option to restore the familiar. This is such a problem that I now refuse to update the software on my phone and on my laptop. I will run my existing versions of the operating systems until I no longer can. If something works, just leave it be.
Buying a car in Canada in 2025 is a nightmare. The US chicken tax, CAFE regulations and capitalism all combine to mean that small cars no longer exist. Driving a pickup truck the size of a World War II Sherman tank is seen as “essential” and “necessary” because “the boys” will think you’re “gay” if you drive a van. You know, the actually utilitarian vehicle designed to keep your tools locked and out of the elements is somehow a symbol of “unconventional”. Soccer moms “protect” their progeny by buying an “SUV”, that elevates them above the ruddy pedestrians or cyclists, all because the soccer mom’s kids must be safe. If you don’t drive, you are worth less or often, worthless.
What if you do drive and your car is on its last legs? Well, as luck would have it, my 2014 Ford Focus pictured below was in just that situation in 2025. I could hear the clutch rattling every time the computer shifted gears and I was worried that I would soon find myself stuck on the side of a road on a cold night, fumbling with my phone to summon help. This worry was not without reason.
Ford’s 1999 Focus was the European Car of the Year. It was regularly among the best selling cars in Europe, with one caveat – most European models sell with a manual transmission and the Focus was no exception. North Americans are generally less comfortable with a manual transmission and so Ford fitted a shitty rally-style dual-clutch system to the North American models. They took a very well-regarded car and added a fatal flaw to the “automatic” version. This dual-clutch system, in keeping with the car’s general theme, was cheap. Ford cut one too many corners here and used a dry clutch. The exact problem is complicated but manifests as the clutch shuddering i.e. hesitating while accelerating. Despite Ford’s claimed “fixes”, the clutch eventually will break and the car is left undriveable. I had close to 240,000 km on my car (approximately 60% of the average earth-moon distance) and this shudder happened regularly. I learned (pun intended) how to drive around the problem but feared that the end was near.
I needed a new car. What to do?
I looked in all the usual places. Facebook marketplace, car sale websites, dealerships etc. I’m not willing to pay the new car tax but holy gaumata. Prices on new cars are insane. Because of my generally thrifty nature, I decided that an electric vehicle was the appropriate choice. Yes, they are still a hassle in 2025 but the fuel savings are worth it. The cheapest new EV in Canada in 2025 is the Nissan Leaf SV for nearly $ 42,000 [Source – CAA]. New cars were out as I could not afford the prices and I set my budget at $ 25,000, including taxes. This meant that the most I could pay for a car was around $ 21,000. Data from cargurus.ca shows that the average selling price for a used car in Canada increased by approximately 25% between 2020 and 2025. The supply situation is not as dire today as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic but hai ram, cars are expensive.
I shopped around for a used Chevrolet Bolt EV but soon discovered that the prices were low for a good reason – the cars have a reputation for self-combusting. The LG battery packs sometimes encountered a thermal runaway meaning that you just stand there watching the car burn, hoping that no other people are harmed. Chevrolet replaced several battery packs under warranty but the damage was done. The 2023 model was the last until the Americans, dumb as ever, realized that a market for a “compact” (read – realistically sized) car actually exists. The 2023 models were all nearly $28,000 used and were limited to a charging rate of 50 kW. That’s not a problem for daily use but if you ever need to charge the car on the road, you are stuck because charging the battery from 10 % to 80 % takes the better part of an hour. Compare this to more modern EVs such as Hyundai’s Ioniq that can charge at 250 kW so fifteen minutes of fast charging is plenty. Again, the use prices of these cars were outside my budget.
Finding any candidates in this price range was like finding a healthy lion in modern day Europe. Teslas were out because I hate Nazis. Eventually, I did find a Hyundai Kona EV from 2022. The mileage was relatively high for a two year old car but no matter, EV batteries are resilient. I did end up buying that car for around $ 21,000 all included but it did give me pause. My car came from a Ford dealership in Hamilton and my experience was fine. I knew exactly what I wanted, I had a budget and I had the cash on hand. I also knew that an EV has fewer components to fail so crawling under the car answers almost all questions.
A latino couple where ahead of me in the dealership and they just signed off on the loan for a $ 50,000 car. Fifty thousand dollars! How is this normal? Where are the normal sized cars, the cars that can comfortably fit a family of four while being reasonably fuel efficient?
My shitty Ford Focus was very fuel efficient. It had a Japanese-designed engine but the single most important factor was the car’s weight. At just over one tonne, this car was efficient. Surprisingly, a 2025 Hyundai Elantra weighs more than my 2014 Focus but has similar fuel economy. These cars exist but they are expensive. The cheapest Elantra in Canada sells for $ 23,000. My Ford Focus sold for $ 19,000 in 2017. Adjusting for inflation, the prices are almost equal. The lack of options in this range is the problem. Ford no longer sell sedan cars. Neither do Chevrolet. And neither do General Motors. The players in this segment are Japanese, Korean or European. The logic is simple – bigger cars are more profitable. That’s it.
A comparison between my old and new cars. Source – Carsized.com
Never mind the falling safety for pedestrians, never mind the wasted space in the car, never mind the more expensive infrastructure. No, profits matter above all else.
What if you want a small hatchback? You’re often restricted to the used market, where you may find cars like mine, one component failure away from being scrap. Yes, you can buy one of those obnoxious muscle cars and have your neighbours hate you but those are neither cheap nor practical. What if you want an actually large car, like a station wagon? Nope, not for sale on the North American market. The logic then goes that customers don’t buy these models, but how can you buy what does not exist?
My new car is fine. I’m happy it is electric but that comes with a whole learning curve. I dislike the height of the car, I dislike the poor visibility, I dislike that it takes privilege to afford something that enables basic participation in society, something that our entire society is designed around.
I feel for anyone on a budget trying buy a car, any car, in 2025 in Canada.
I cannot comment publicly on whether I am a digital pirate but I can tell you that I condone it. I fully support piracy, especially software piracy.
To quote Gabe Newell, cofounder of Valve, “…piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue”. I hate software subscriptions with a passion. When I want to buy software, what service do I get? Subscriptions. Everything is a subscription.
I hate that the capitalist Americans drove the global software industry to adopt predatory subscriptions but I am certain that investors love their sight on a balance sheet. Microsoft will sell you Microsoft Office, the de facto standard office suite, for 169 Canadian dollarydoos. Alternatively, you can rent MS Office for $ 11.50 per month. Approximately fifteen months into this rental, you have paid the outright cost but own nothing. Cancel your subscription and the Microsoft financial boffins deny you access. Meanwhile, if you bought the software, as I did, you can keep using it as long as you desire. This very blog post was written using the 2016 version of MS Office. I bought this copy for 25 Euros and I see no need to upgrade.
Microsoft at least allow you to buy MS Office. Adobe, the original thieves behind this practice, no longer allow you to buy Photoshop. You must rent something called “Creative Cloud”. Setting aside the fact that clouds on earth are too dispersed to create anything tangible, this renting means you never own your software. I encourage you to pirate Adobe’s software because they are bad people. MBA-types are likely responsible for this situation but I will save my rant about MBA-types for another time.
This is why I encourage piracy. MBA-types deny me the option to purchase and own my software. I do not want to pay rent to American rent seekers. Instead of delivering complete and working software, these clowns have “pivoted” to a model where they sell you broken software and are then perpetually “fixing” it.
I encourage you to pirate music as well. You can buy a CD of Metallica’s album 72 Seasons for approximately $ 25 and own your music. You can also buy the digital version from iTunes for approximately the same price but you are not buying the actual music, you are renting a license from Apple who can take it away at any time. The exact same problem exists with video games which is why I will continue to buy used consoles and used game disks. Gabe Newell’s own company – Valve – also use this exact model of licensing, not ownership. It is very frustrating that I cannot run games with Valve’s launcher software Steam. My own views on Steam are more complex. I buy and own video games where I can but that’s not always possible. My computer has no disk drive and most games are digital only i.e. you cannot buy physical media. Prices on Steam are often close to the price of games on physical media, even including inflation!
I encourage you to watch sports streams via illegal streaming sites. They are almost always free and can deliver any game to you, live, without the nonsense of wondering whether Fubo or Dazn or ESPN own the rights to the Champions League in Canada. Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure. If you love ice hockey and the NHL, you are likely familiar with this problem via certain teams signing exclusive streaming rights for their games. If your NHL stream comes from an different provider, bad luck. Why worry about that? Simply expend your effort in finding an illegal streaming site.
Digital ownership is a complicated issue and it does not help that the lawmakers with the power to fix this situation have only a tenuous grasp on the complexities. Worse, the average age of 52 in the Canadian parliament means that most of these folks are not digital natives. TechBros have us convinced that convenience is a sufficient trade-off for their preferred model of renting everything but I disagree. I spoke yesterday to someone selling software to electricity utilities. Rental software. I do not want my electricity company to rent their software.
There is one more annoying aspect of many modern software – the “cloud”. The cloud just means someone else’s computer. If that entity ceases to exist, the “cloud” ceases to exist. If your software relies on validation via the “cloud”, you’re screwed. If your “smart” thermostat relies on the manufacturer’s servers to work, you are entirely dependent on that manufacturer existing to use your thermostat. Think about how absurd that sounds. That, by the way, is how the Canadian thermostat manufacturer ecboee runs their business. To access your own data, you must obtain it from their servers. Yes, a thermostat in your own home cannot make your own data available locally. Everything must be a subscription.
This infection has also spread to the automotive world. BMW wants you to rent the ability to use heated seats. Yes, the hardware already in your car requires a rental fee. Tesla, whose CEO is a Nazi, tie their cars’ features to owners meaning that if you sell your Tesla, you sell the car but not the software licenses. This is also why so many modern cars require a constant internet connection. The day is not far when your car will refuse to work without an internet connection, obviously for “safety” reasons.
I encourage you to jailbreak your cars where possible and your phones as well. Disconnect your car from the internet. You don’t need random weirdos in the USA viewing the camera output from your car. You need a car, not a two-ton computer on wheels. Don’t trade control and privacy for convenience.
Smash the subscription model. Return TechBros and MBA-types to their rightful place in the dustbin of history.
