NoRodent

NoRodent , 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

The biggest Czech website (Seznam.cz) recently changed their policy and now force you to choose between: free tier with personalised ads or paid tier with anonymous ads. Yes, you're reading it right, even if you pay, it doesn't get rid of ads, they just stop tracking you. I have no idea whether it's legal but the EU should definitely take a look.

Edit: Ok, I think they only offer you this choice when you're using an account. I tried it in a private tab and it seems I can decline personalized ads there. Does that make it legal? If yes, then they're some sneaky bastards.

NoRodent , 2 days ago

But I mean, it's the same thing as this FB/IG case, no? Only worse because even if you pay, you still have ads.

NoRodent , 11 days ago

Or Polish trains.

NoRodent , 26 days ago (edited 26 days ago)

Not to mention that even if you personally managed to switch to something else, if you're not doing some completely solo work, you will still receive files from others (or may be expected to send files to others) in Adobe format. So even if you wouldn't be using it, you'd still have to pay for it to stay competitive. At which point you may as well use it because of what you said, that most of the alternatives are missing those expert features. So in professional setting, there's unfortunately no escaping Adobe. Someone would have to come up with an alternative feature full package of apps covering all bases (because Adobe isn't just Photoshop and not just graphic design but an entire interwoven ecosystem used in various related fields) and then work really, really hard to push the industry toward it. And it would still probably take a decade or two. So realistically, it would have to be or become some big corporation that would likely turn evil too as the time goes. Or some open source miracle like Blender that would have to attract enough big sponsors.

Not defending Adobe, just saying how it is. I have enough grievances about their software (how they managed to fuck up something as simple as Acrobat is beyond me) but you just have to deal with it or look for a job in another field. (I'm lucky enough that Adobe is only secondary software for me but even then I still can't escape it.)

NoRodent , 1 month ago

who find Firefox difficult to use

WTF? HOW? How is it difficult to use? It works like any other web browser?!

NoRodent , 1 month ago

To be fair, let's be glad that 80% of people don't use an ad block. If it were the opposite and 80% did use ad block, web services would be much more aggressive in combating ad blockers and many more of them would end up pay-walled (although it seems we're heading there anyway).

On one hand, I feel kinda bad that my ad-free experience is only supported thanks to those who do undergo the torture of ads, on the other hand, the companies have only themselves to blame. If web ads were decent, only limited to sides and headers or even between paragraphs of web pages and didn't cover the content you're trying to view, didn't try to trick you into thinking it's part of the content, didn't lead to malicious websites, didn't autoplay videos with sound or didn't put unskippable ads before and inside videos, I would have never felt the need to install an ad block.

NoRodent , 1 month ago

I honestly don't understand why anyone would refuse to switch from away Chrome. It's not like the other browsers lack functionality or are slow. The only problem they might encounter is some rare incompatibility which is the result of Firefox (and its forks) small market share and web devs not caring enough.

I've never used Chrome as my primary browser and I don't think I missed anything. I started using Opera years before Chrome was even a thing (back when everyone was using IE) and then when the old Opera died, I didn't think even for a second about switching to Chrome and went straight to Firefox. Which could at least be highly customized to bring some Opera exclusive features (eg. mouse gestures, tab grouping) back.

NoRodent , 2 months ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e8cbbef3-b285-4be9-aef5-3768d441cb10.jpeg

NoRodent , 2 months ago

Isn't this how it always goes with any kind of censorship? It doesn't even matter if there were good intentions behind it or not, the result is the same.

NoRodent , 2 months ago

Does LibreOffice finally have ribbon or does it still look like MS Office 2003? You can hate on Microsoft all your want (and I'd gladly join you in most cases) and I get the privacy concerns but the Office suite is, after all those decades, still unmatched (well maybe except Outlook).

NoRodent , 2 months ago

Ribbon is one of the best inventions Microsoft ever came up with and I will die on this hill. I'm old enough to remember very well the suffering when I was trying to find something in the classic menus or among the billion equal sized icons scattered across multiple toolbars in old MS Office versions. When Office 2007 came out, everything was suddenly so much easier to find, often with less clicks. I don't see any reason why I'd need the old style menu in addition to ribbon.

NoRodent , 2 months ago

You can't possibly have every feature on a keyboard shortcut, even just all those various formatting features in Word for example where you often have to choose something from a list of options. And even if you somehow did manage to have a shortcut for everything, you'd still only remember those you use frequently enough.

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure most of those shortcuts from 2003 still work today.

NoRodent , 2 months ago

The crazy part is that your brain is doing similar processing all the time too. Ever heard of the blindspot? Your brain has literally zero data there but uses "content-aware fill" to hide it from you. Or the fact, that your eyes are constantly scanning across objects and your brain is merging them into a panorama on the fly because only a small part of your field of vision has high enough fidelity. It will also create fake "frames" (look up stopped-clock illusion) for the time your eyes are moving where you should see a blur instead. There's more stuff like this, a lot of it manifests itself in various optical illusions. So not even our own eyes capture the "truth". And then of course the (in)accuracy of memory when trying to recall what we've seen, that's an entirely different can of worms.

NoRodent , 3 months ago

What does that mean?

NoRodent , 3 months ago

Ah, thanks for the explanation.

Over here, when you're applying for a loan, you're the one who has to bring the proof of your credit worthiness - typically your employment contract, bank statement etc. - they can't have it automatically without your consent. Also you have to prove your identity with your ID (either the physical card which is mandatory to have, or I guess nowadays a secured electronic identification if you were to do it remotely somehow). So I was genuinely lost in this comment thread, not knowing what the exact process was in America.

NoRodent , 3 months ago

After skimming through the article and at the abstract and introduction of the article in Nature, it seems that unlike those technique you mentioned, this is really a single-shot real time imaging.

NoRodent , 3 months ago

It's a trap!

NoRodent , 3 months ago

*Laughs in Firefox*

NoRodent , 3 months ago

I know they make shoes.

NoRodent , 3 months ago

They also should not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

NoRodent , 3 months ago

Type without rhythm and it won't attract the worm.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

monitors are usually a different aspect ratio to a TV

What? Aren't like 90% of monitors and 99% of TVs 16:9? There are a few monitors that are 16:10, some extremely rare 5:4 and 4:3 and then there are the ultrawide monitors which are obviously a different aspect ratio but saying that monitors are "usually" a different aspect ratio is factually incorrect. If you're deciding between a 4K TV and 4K monitor, then there's no danger of accidentally buying something of different format.

NoRodent , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Nah there are more

5:4, 8:5, 21:9, 64:27. And more

I already mentioned 5:4 and 8:5 equals 16:10.
21:9 and 64:27 are just ultrawide formats which I also mentioned and you can't really mistake those for 16:9, can you? Same goes for 5:4 and 4:3 which are rather square-ish (4:3 was typical for old CRT monitors and TVs).

And these aren’t exact. There’s fault tolerance, so to speak.

I don't think "fault tolerance" means what you think it means.

You can have slightly different sizes rectangles between several different 16:9 monitors.

Are you telling me that there are monitors that don't have square pixels? Or that the number of (square) pixels doesn't give an exact 16:9 ratio?

Anyway, yes, there are more aspect ratios out there but the important thing is how common they are. I just looked at the biggest local e-shop and if I try to filter parameters by resolution, I get this:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/45682d28-eebe-43ce-b6b4-91118cb1113a.png

The number in the parenthesis next to the resolution is the number of products. (Note that this is only showing 1609 out of the total 1629 items - if I scroll down, there are 20 other options which all have 1 product each so I took the liberty to ignore those as those are ultra rare items (and some of them aren't even regular monitors but just some specialized displays. Even here, for example the 2200×1024px is an e-ink touch screen)).

I simplified each ratio to the simplest form, so those are exact ratios (but for some added a ratio with X:9 or X:10 in the denominator in parenthesis for easier comparison to those more standard formats). Turns out that 1379 out of 1609 monitors are exactly 16:9, so that's 85.7%. The biggest variety are among the ultrawides which I colored in purple but again, those are pretty much unmistakable. Just like the 5:4 and 4:3 in blue.
So realistically you have to watch out for the red ratios where 1379 out of 1426 are 16:9, that's 96.7%.
So I really wonder how you came to the conclusion that "monitors are usually a different aspect ratio to a TV".
Now of course one e-shop isn't a completely representative sample but I hope we can agree that the numbers will be in the right ballpark. Feel free to make your own statistics from a different source.

fault tolerance

NoRodent , 3 months ago

Dude, what the hell you're onto?

1280 x 800 is 16:10

That's exact.

1280 x 720 is 16:9

Also exact.

1280 x 768 is also 16:10.

In the link you provided, it literally says it's 5:3. It even has its own line in the infographics. And while the article is titled "List of common resolutions", it looks more like an exhaustive list of almost any resolution that has been ever used in any kind of consumer device. It's definitely not limited just to standard computer monitors so that table isn't really that relevant to the topic of the discussion.

Also show me a monitor with the 1280 x 768 resolution that's currently available on sale.

You're picking up some extremely rare cases to make an argument that your initial statement about "usually different aspect ratio" was correct but that's not how it works. That's just moving goalposts.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

I mean, there's /r/SubSimulatorGPT2 that's been running for years... Although that one was at least hilarious to read because at that stage the AI was in the sweet spot of being simultaneously coherent while making total lapses in logic.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

I'm just glad Copilot isn't available in Europe.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

Then I guess it's only in some countries. I've seen articles saying it wasn't available in Europe as a whole but maybe that's old news.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

I mean yeah, but on the other hand with hydrogen you have much more control over when and where you use the electricity as you can choose to manufacture most of it during off-peak periods and when renewables create excess energy. Then you can transport it by pipes or by trucks/ships without overwhelming the electric grid.

NoRodent , 4 months ago

Goodbye Bluesky

NoRodent , 4 months ago

Which is great when you already have established bands and albums you want to listen to. Not so great for discovering new music and genres which is where Spotify really shines for me.

NoRodent , 5 months ago

Well that really sucks because it was often the only way to actually find the content on the page that the Google results "promised". For numerous reasons - sometimes the content simply changes, gets deleted or is made inaccessible because of geo-fencing or the site is straight up broken and so on.

Yes, there's archive.org but believe it or not, not everything is there.

NoRodent , 5 months ago

Were so many people using it to avoid ads?

I doubt that as well. There are much better ways to deal with ads. I always only used it when the content on the page didn't exist anymore or couldn't be accessed for whatever reason.

But I suspected this was coming, they've been hiding this feature deeper and deeper in the last few years.

NoRodent , 5 months ago

By they way, I just found out that they removed the button, but typing cache:www.example.com into Google still redirects you to the cached version (if it exists). But who knows for how long. And there's the question whether they'll continue to cache new pages.

NoRodent , 5 months ago

Carefully organized sand.^[1]^

NoRodent , 5 months ago

I like my websites RAW, they're not going to spy on me with those cascading styles and I do not want anything to interpret HTML for me, I will interpret it according to myself and not according to how some corporation wants. Wake up sheeple! /s

NoRodent , 5 months ago

That doesn't work even as a hyperbole. I literally just opened an Excel spreadsheet with 51192 rows (I had Outlook already open) and those two programs still only take 417 MB of RAM combined. Meanwhile Firefox is at 2.5 GB.
Yes, my total RAM currently used is 13.8 GB but I have 64 GB of RAM installed and you should know that generally the more RAM you have, the more of it gets utilized by the system (this is true for all modern OS, not just Windows) which is a good thing, because it means better performance, since you can cache more things in RAM that would otherwise needed to be read from disk. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. So even if one computer uses 16 GB of RAM for some relatively simple tasks, it doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't run or grind to a halt on a system with less RAM.