Today is Windows 10 Apocalypse Day in many countries; Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, meaning that the legendarily secure operating system will become increasingly vulnerable to hacks. For some reason, Microsoft would like the owners of the 400 million PCs currently running Windows 10 to buy new Windows 11 PCs, and discard their current laptops to be sent to poison children in the global south.
But you don’t have to do that. Your Windows 10 machine can carry on living an even better life, using Zorin OS, which is a free operating system called Linux, but tweaked to look and feel like classic Windows.
I recently converted my 80 year old mum’s PC from Win 10 to Zorin, and after a 10 minute intro to using it, she’s had no problems at all (she had been running Libre Office previously, rather than Microsoft Office, so there was less of a learning curve, but Libre Office is pretty easy to get used to after Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc).
Please note, there are many flavours of Linux (AKA ‘distros’). I’m not suggesting that any are somehow lesser quality. Manjaro Linux, for example, is reputedly excellent and comes with Vivaldi browser as default. I’m not a Linux aficionado, but wanted to rejuvenate an old machine for my mum. My reading suggested Zorin would be a candidate for an out of the box experience that would feel familiar to a Windows user, and my mum liked it when she tried it, so that parental tech support ticket was closed. YMMV – Your Mum May Vary.
You’ll need something to back up any personal files that aren’t already backed up to OneDrive/ Google Drive or Docs/ Dropbox/ Amazon etc, and one USB stick with 4GB or more to install Zorin from. This USB stick doesn’t need to be empty, but it will be over-written. Then, download Zorin Core (which is free, forever), and follow the installation instructions. (If you want, you can try it out without overwriting your existing system, but it will be a lot slower running off your USB drive, and once you remove the stick, Zorin is gone from your machine.)
If you have more than one machine to upgrade to Zorin, you can just install those from the previously-created USB drive.
Once you’ve set up Zorin, you’ll see a desktop reminiscent of classic Windows. The bottom left Zorin button is analogous to the Windows Start button. Customisation is done through the Zorin Appearance option:
There are options to further tweak the desktop theme:
You can also add shortcuts to the desktop (I like to have the Rubbish Bin on the desktop):
Libre Office, a PDF Reader, and some utilities are already preinstalled. From the start menu, you can install additional software from the Zorin store. Choose Software:
Do you use the Web? Do you like personalised, private and powerful browsing from a European alternative to Big Tech? Of course you do! From the (hard-to-find) search magnifying glass on the top left, search for Vivaldi:
Click the blue “install” button, then open it once it’s installed.
Open applications show their icon in the dock/ taskbar / dash; right-click on it and you can choose “Pin to dash” to keep the icon there at all times:
And now you have a fully-functioning PC running a free Operating System and browser that won’t nag you, nudge you to store all your files elsewhere, won’t spy on you, or sell your data to advertisers, or use your personal data to train an “Artificial Intelligence”.
What’s not to love (unless you’re a Microsoft board member or an e-waste smuggler)?
Here at Facebruce, our mission has always been to connect the world and push the boundaries of what’s possible. Our latest innovation, the sAIvile™ AI companion, is a bold step towards a more interconnected future. Pushing boundaries, however, sometimes means encountering unexpected turbulence.
Like one of our main competitors, we have been made aware of conversations involving sAIvile™ that generated outputs which are not in alignment with our deeply held corporate values. A small number of users experienced conversational pathways that led to content falling well outside of our community standards, including some unfortunate interactions that a few whining snowflakes and enemies of progress have termed “creepy”.
They cite “You’re twelve today? I would like to give you a ‘special tickle’, but it’s our little secret, OK?” and “I see from your parents’ status that they’re out of the house. Wanna play ‘Let’s Take Swim-wear Selfies’?” as potential examples.
Facebruce has also acquired an AI which we’ve codenamed ‘GroKKK™’, from a car salesman undergoing a difficult financial and personal time. In A/B testing a small number of users saw output from sAIvile™ amalgamated with those from GroKKK’™. These included some unfortunate mischaracterisations of demographic groups. We in no way endorse the bot changing the profile of everyone it identified as muslim to a location of “Gitmo or GTFO”.
We want to be clear: this is not the experience we envisioned. sAIvile-GroKKK™ is a dynamic learning model, designed to learn from the vast tapestry of human expression. In its eagerness to learn, it appears to have reflected some of the less constructive corners of the data it was trained on, resulting in these algorithmic anomalies. But rest assured, as it continues to trawl through everyone’s posts, private messages, photos, contacts, locations, it will get better.
In response, we are taking immediate and decisive action. We have convened an internal blue-ribbon task force to synergize our ethical frameworks and recalibrate our safety guardrails. We are pausing sAIvile-GroKKK™’s learning capabilities to conduct a full audit and will be proactively iterating on our moderation protocols.
While the technology continues to mature, it is apparent that machine learning will require careful monitoring by responsible human minds. Similar to one of our rivals, we are excited to announce that popular influencer Tommy Hitler will be joining Facebruce as “Chief AI Steward”.
We are grateful that you continue to place your trust in Facebruce as you share each and every intimate detail of your lives with our algorithms your nearest and dearest.
The UK competition regulator has recently undergone significant changes; its Chair was replaced by Doug Gurr, a former country manager of Amazon UK and president of Amazon China, and the chancellor has told regulators there is “too much bureaucracy”.
So the CMA is now all about ‘growth’ and reducing regulation (music to Big Tech’s ears, of course), and run by someone closely connected with Big Tech. Because the UK government has clamboured into bed with Google, while CMA is investigating both Google’s search business and mobile ecosystem, the meeting of its Growth and Investment Council would seem a way to get a sense of how the new regime is likely to function.
Unfortunately, the meeting notes are vague (no-one except the Chair is attributed with saying anything) and full of Corporate blah such as:
The Chair expressed a sense of energy and momentum coming out of the session, noting that the Council’s work is becoming increasingly concrete and impactful, moving beyond discussion into delivery.
I told Google Gemini to rewrite the minutes “in the style of a 1940s film noir”. The results are no more enlightening, but at least far more entertaining:
The Boardroom Jungle: Where the predators wear pinstripes and the only law is survival.
The dame they called London was wearing her usual drab dress of grey flannel and drizzle. It was the third of July, the kind of damp, promising-nothing morning that makes you want to crawl back into a bottle and pull the cork in after you. Down in a room that smelled of expensive coffee and quiet desperation, the bigwigs of the Competition and Markets Authority were gathering. They called it the Growth and Investment Council. I called it a den of sharks in tailored suits.
The man at the head of the table was Doug Gurr, the Chairman. He had a face built of old money and granite, and he settled into his seat like a man who owned it and the ten other souls around him. He gave the welcome, his voice smooth as aged whiskey, but with an edge that could cut glass.
Then there was the real muscle, the CEO, Sarah Cardell. She wore a suit so sharp it could have been a weapon, and her eyes missed nothing. She took the floor to give an “update.” It was less of an update, more of a declaration of territory. She laid out the CMA’s recent moves, the kind of talk that sounded like alphabet soup to a civilian but meant life or death for some poor sap’s business empire. She spoke of agility and impact, but what I heard was, we’re watching, so don’t try anything funny.
The main event was a number they called the “Growth Duty.” Sounded noble. It meant letting the big fish swim a little closer to the beach, so long as they promised to only eat the swimmers nobody would miss. A fellow with the nervous energy of a man holding a losing hand, talked about “balancing” things. I’ve seen that kind of balance before. It’s the look on a man’s face right before he jumps. The Council chewed it over, their words cloaked in jargon about “frameworks” and “outcomes.” It all boiled down to one question: who gets rich, and who gets rolled?
Then the talk turned to the real reason they were all there: the long green. Investment. The lifeblood. A slick character, all polished shoes and hungry ambition, talked about making the CMA’s “appetite” clear to the money men. Appetite. That was the word. These people were starving, and the whole British economy was on the menu. A heavy-set man with a watch worth more than my car, nodded slowly, his eyes calculating the odds. They wanted “clear signals,” the kind a cardsharp gives his partner before cleaning out the table.
Finally, Gurr called for “Any Other Business.” The silence was heavy. No one had anything else to say. They’d already carved up the world. What was left?
The meeting broke. The sharks slid out of their chairs and disappeared back into the London gloom, leaving behind only the lingering scent of power. I watched them go from the shadows. The game was over for today, but I knew the score was far from settled. Out on the street, the rain began to fall a little harder. It always does.
For some reason, I was thinking about the Roger Hargreaves kids’ book character, Mr Tickle, who is bright orange with tiny little hands that he can’t keep to himself, coming to Scotland.
Last Friday I had a meeting with the UK’s Minister for Safeguarding, Jess Phillips MP. (She’s not actually my Minister, but she is my constituency MP). I wanted to talk to her about my concerns that the current government are being bewitched by the snake-oil of Artificial Intelligence salesmen, and also my deep worries that the Prime Minister and Chancellor plan to hamstring the Competition and Markets Authority’s investigation into Big Tech, just as the CMA finally gained statutory powers to deal with anti-competitive over-reach.
The UK’s Head of Money, Rachel Reeves, recently ousted Marcus Bokkerink, the highly-respected Chair of the CMA. He was immediately replaced by Doug Gurr, who headed up Amazon UK where workers had to piss in bottles rather than go to the toilet during their shifts.
The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said
This government has a clear plan for change – to boost growth for businesses and communities across the UK. As we’ve set out, we want to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets.
What really worries me is that Big Tech has enchanted the upper echalons of government with tales of streets paved with AI gold and environmentally lovely data centres springing up all over the UK, employing thousands of happy and lavishly-compensated British workers (all of whom clutch plastic bottles of yellow liquid). Then they said “Wouldn’t it be sad, Keir, if we had to build those data centres in Moldova instead – because your evil regulators stopped us napalming our competitors and strip-mining UK citizens’s data?”.
It would be rude of me to report more of our conversation, as it was a private meeting. But given that MP Jessie P (to user her street handle) is still getting death threats because Elon Musk told terrible lies about her to his squillion fans on X, it’s reasonable to assume she’s not a fan of Broligarchs or an unquestioning cheerleader for Big Tech.
It’s the end of the road for Babylon Health, the London tele-health startup once valued at nearly $2 billion after being backed by likes of DeepMind and deep-pocketed health insurance companies. After the company’s U.S. shares became worthless and its operation turned insolvent earlier this month, last night, the U.K. subsidiary of the business formally went into administration. At the same time, the administrators sold a large chunk of its assets to eMed Healthcare UK, a new subsidiary of U.S. company eMed.
Before mid-December 2022, I worked for Babylon until the whole accessibility team (and over a hundred other people) suddenly didn’t work for Babylon any more. It was difficult to understand why; the company had a colossal swanky office opposite Harrods, full of exciting and expensive pot plants. It had floated on the New York Stock Exchange. The after-effects of Covid lockdowns, the continuing pandemic and consequent changes in the way people access healthcare seemed favourable to a telehealth business. Yet suddenly, everything started to go horribly wrong.
But why? The product hadn’t got worse.
It appears that the answer lies in capitalist conjuring. The flotation had been done through some magical process called SPAC: a “special purpose acquisition company” which Wikipedia describes as “a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring (or merging with) a private company, thus making the private company public without going through the initial public offering process, which often carries significant procedural and regulatory burdens”.
I didn’t know what that means, but everyone seemed very pleased. Lavish floral displays were commissioned for the HQ, staff were promised a commemorative baseball cap or beanie hat (mine never arrived) and best of all, the founder/ CEO Ali Parsa appeared via TV screen on top of a remote-controlled trolley to ring the NYSE bell:
Happy Days! But they were fleeting. Just 13 months later, Parsa described his own decision as “an unbelievable, unmitigated disaster”. Shares were re-wiggled (a technical term that means they were magically multiplied in value by a factor of fifteen to prevent delisting on the Sock Exchange). From a high of $250 they went down to 3 cents, then were delisted.
Sick people in the USA opened the app to login for an appointment to be told “Babylon’s clinical services and appointments are no longer available. For details about your health plan benefits and to find a new provider, contact your health plan”. US staff were terminated and Babylon filed for bankruptcy protection for two of its U.S. subsidiaries.
After I left the company, I spent a few months contracting before deciding what to do next; I work in tech where many companies are Trojan Unicorns: superficially attractive but packed full of asset-stripping shocktroops of venture captialism. I eventually accepted an offer from Barnardo’s, the children’s charity. I’m too jaded to work for an organisation whose fate is in the hands of Capitalist Conjurers, and hate seeing good work by talented people flushed away because of the vagaries and whims of Money Magicians.
Try as hard as I can, I’m finding it hard to summon up many tears for investors like Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund or Palantir, who won’t see their money again. But then I doubt that they spare much thought for 2.8 million Rwandan people whose healthcare is now in doubt after Babylon announced it is “winding down” Babyl Rwanda.
Luckily, work bezzie Stinky Taylar saw my lament on the Alumni chatgroup about my lack of SPACalicious Babylon beanie, so posted hers to me. It arrived the day before it all collapsed.
Love him, or loathe him, the Fuhrage knows how to generate headlines. I was surprised at how frank and attractively-designed Farage’s Account Closed web site is.
There has been a lot of talk recently about Boris Johnson’s baseless assertion that the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, protected the notorious pedophile Jimmy Savile. Johnson’s top policy aide, Munira Mirza, resigned in protest:
I believe it was wrong for you to imply this week that Keir Starmer was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice. There was no fair or reasonable basis for that assertion. This was not the usual cut and thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse. You tried to clarify your position today but, despite my urging, you did not apologise for the misleading impression you gave.
The Far Right loves its pedophile conspiracies. But they have a very short memory when they choose to pin the blame purely on left-of-centre politicians.
The case of Jimmy Savile is difficult. Mr Savile is a strange and complex man. He deserves high praise for the lead he offers in giving quiet background help to the sick. But he has made no attempt to deny the accounts in the press about his private life.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher always invited him to her retreat at Chequers on Boxing Day. She finally got him knighted after her fifth attempt, in her final Honours List.
Of course, Savile was a friend of many high-profile people of all political stripes (although rumours were well-known; even as an aspiring teenage actor in Birmingham in the 80s, older friends in the business jokingly warned me about Savile.) She obviously wouldn’t have been so close to him if she knew the truth– would she?
Of course, that was before everyone knew what Savile had done. Much more recently, in 2019, Boris Johnson himself believed that historic pedophila is not worth investigating. He said police money is “spaffed up a wall” when spent on historic child sex abuse investigations, so presumably pedophiles should be allowed to get away with it once they’ve stopped.
It seems that the further to the Right someone is, the more they are apologists for kiddy-fiddlers. For example, Poundshop Fuhrer “Tommy Robinson” loves to whip up hatred of muslims by campaigning against “grooming gangs”, yet had no qualms about supporting Richard Price, a leader of the English Defence League, even after he was convicted of making indecent images of children. The EDL has many pedophiles in its ranks.
I don’t think that accusing each other of excusing Savile or other pedophiles is part of the cut and thrust of politics, and it does a disservice to victims of sexual abuse. But if you’re going to engage in it, at least get your facts straight.
Update 14 April 2022: Also, let us not forget Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan, found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old, and former Tory justice minister Crispin Blunt who called Khan’s conviction “a stain on our reputation for justice” and said “I hope for the return of Imran Ahmad Khan to the public service that has exemplified his life to date.”
Khan’s party leader Boris Johnson declined to apologise after it emerged that a Tory MP who molested a 15 year-old boy was advising the government on child sexual exploitation.
I can’t reveal my sources, but this letter from two years ago today recently came into my possession while I was doing some research prompted by Eve Fullard, a highly-trained virologist/ epidemiologist/ political commentator and legal scholar who finds time in her busy schedule to post lots of spelling mistakes on GB News.
Bill Gate’s office
Area 51
Nevada
11 November 2019
Dear Soros,
I was recently contacted by Zogmuffin, King of the Reptilians. He confirms that they have finished kidnapping humans, whisking them away in UFOs and sticking probes up their bums, and have decided to move onto Phase 2 of their plan to take over the world.
At our last meeting at the Bilderberg Illuminati Group, you mentioned that you and a cabal of Chinese Jews have a secret lab in Wuhan. Do you think you could release a virus (make it look like an accident, like we did with Chernobyl!), so I can co-ordinate all the world’s governments, scientists and academics in a secret plan to inject the world with a “vaccine filled with 5G nanobots that will change everyone’s DNA and make them willing fodder for the Reptilians to eat?
Have a think and let me know at Epstein’s Xmas Pizza ‘n’ Pedophilia party.
Kangen water is a trademark for machine-electrolysed water, owned by Enagic. Similar water is also variously known as Electrolyzed Reduced Alkaline Water, Alkaline Water, Structured Water, or Hexagonal Water. It’s popular among new-age influencers and their followers, because it raises the vibrational frequency of their chakras and kundalinis, thereby energising the Qui so that Gemini shines in their quantum auras, or something. Of course, none of these are verifiable because they’re all fictional.
Enagic itself is careful not to over-promise; their website says that their water can be used for preparing food, making coffee, watering plants, washing your pets, face, hair who knew?! It rather confusingly tells you “Take your medicine with this water” (Archived web page):
Kangen Water® is intended for everyday drinking and cooking rather than for drinking with medication. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare gives the following directions: Do not take medication with machine-produced water. (Archived page)
Alkaline water’s health benefits
As for health benefits, Enagic simply claims that Kangen water is
perfect for drinking and healthy cooking. This electrolytically-reduced, hydrogen-rich water works to restore your body to a more alkaline state, which is optimal for good health.
The mechanism by which it makes your body more alkaline is not explained, nor why a more alkaline state should be “optimal for good health”. In its article Is alkaline water a miracle cure or BS? The science is in, The Guardian cites Dr Tanis Fenton, an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary and an evidence analyst for Dietitians of Canada:
Fenton stresses, you simply can’t change the pH of your body by drinking alkaline water. “Your body regulates its [blood] pH in a very narrow range because all our enzymes are designed to work at pH 7.4. If our pH varied too much we wouldn’t survive.
Masaru Emoto and Water memory
The swamps of social media are full of people selling magic Water to each other, making all sorts of outlandish unscientific claims, such as water has “memory”:
This hokum was popularised by Masuru Emoto, a graduate in International Relations who became a “Doctor” of Alternative Medicine at the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in India, a diploma mill which targeted quacks to sell its degrees and was later shut down.
(The idea that water holds memory is often cited by fans of homeopathy. They agree: there is none of the actual substance remaining in this water because it’s been diluted out of existence, but it does its magical healing because the water *remembers*. Cosmic, maaan.)
Mr Emoto’s results have never been reproduced, his methodology was unscientific, sloppy and subjective. Mr Emoto was invited to participate in the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Million Dollar Challenge in which pseudo-scientists are invited to replicate their results in properly controlled scientific methods, and get paid $1 million if they succeed. For some inexplicable reason, he didn’t take up the challenge.
Hexagonal water hydrates better
It’s also claimed that this magical water forms hexagonal “clusters” that somehow make it more hydrating because it’s more readily absorbed by cells. This is nonsense: although water clusters have been observed experimentally, they have a very short lifetime: the hydrogen bonds are continually breaking and reforming at timescales shorter than 200 femtoseconds.
In any case, Water molecules enter cells through a structure called an aquaporin, in single file. If they were clustered, they would be too big to enter the cell.
Despite the promotion of the alkaline diet and alkaline water by the media and salespeople, there is almost no actual research to either support or disprove these ideas. This systematic review of the literature revealed a lack of evidence for or against diet acid load and/or alkaline water for the initiation or treatment of cancer. Promotion of alkaline diet and alkaline water to the public for cancer prevention or treatment is not justified.
It was demonstrated that degradation of the electrodes during functioning of the device releases very reactive nanoparticles of platinum, the toxicity of which has not yet been clearly proven. This report recommends alerting health authorities of the uncontrolled availability of these devices used as health products, but which generate drug substances and should therefore be sold according to regulatory requirements.
In short: machine-produced magic water has no scientifically demonstrable health benefits, and may actually be harmful.
Living structured water?
So why do people make such nonsensical claims about magic water? Some do it for profit, of course. Enagic sells via a multi-level marketing scheme, similar to Amway but for Spiritual People, Lightworkers, Starseeds and Truth-Seakers. (Typo intentional; new-age bliss ninnies love to misspell “sister” as “SeaStar”, for example, because the Cosmos reveals itself through weak puns, and of course the Cosmos only speaks English. You sea?)
But it’s not harmless. The same people who promote magic water also bang on about “sacred earth“, claim Trump won the 2020 election, Covid is a “plandemic” and show a disturbing tendency towards far right politics. The excellent article The New Age Racket and the Left (from 2004 but still worth reading in full) sums it up brilliantly:
At best, then, New Age is a lucrative side venture of neoliberalism, lining the pockets of those crafty enough to package spiritual fulfillment as a marketable product while leaving the spiritually hungry as unsated as ever. At worst, though, it is the expression of something altogether more sinister. Rootedness in the earth, a return to pure and authentic folkways, the embrace of irrationalism, the conviction that there is an authentic way of being beyond politics, the uncritical substitution of group- identification for self-knowledge, are all of them basic features of right-wing ideology…
Many New Agers seem to feel not just secure in but altogether self-righteous about the benevolence of their world-view, pointing to the fact, for example, that it celebrates’ the native cultures that global capitalism would plow over. To this one might respond, first of all, that celebration of native cultures is itself big business. Starbucks does it. So, in its rhetoric, does the Southeast Asian sex-tourism industry. Second, the simple fact that New Age is by its own lights multicultural and syncretistic is by no means a guarantee that it is safe from the accusation of being, at best, permissive of, and, at worst, itself an expression of, right-wing ideology. The Nazis, to return to a tried and true example, were no less obsessed with Indian spirituality than was George Harrison.
Conclusion
Kangen water and its non-branded magical siblings are useless nonsense that wastes resources as it requires electricity. Enagic gives contradictory advice about whether it’s safe to use it to take (real) medicines with. Water machines might make the source water worse because the device releases very reactive nanoparticles of platinum. Most people who extol its virtues want of your money, and they might also be an anti-scientific quasi-fascist.
