OpenStars

OpenStars , 4 months ago

That's... not the point of the meme though:-).

If you want simple, and have an entire IT staff backing you, get Windows.

If you want simple and want elegant, get Mac OSX.

Linux is not that simple (unless everything just happens to work), but it is nice for people to have choices:-).

Pro-Tip: don't do what others tell you - find what works best for you and enjoy it:-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

1979 was Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. Reagan did not start until 1980, and while he is famous for breaking the backs of unions, thus crippling their ability to fight back against this trend, he did not actually start it.

Before Carter was Ford and Nixon, both Republicans. Ford pardoned Nixon's crimes, supposedly to help "heal the nation".

According to Robert Reich's "Inequality for All" (free link) - he was the Secretary of Labor under Clinton and previously served under both the Carter and Ford administration so he was very much attuned to what was going on - this trend started due to the rise of corporations, which have super-rights that humans do not have. e.g., taxes on stock dividends were capped at like 13% while payroll taxes can go up to >35%, and while if a human commits a crime they would go to jail, but not so with a corporation. It's a great racket scheme for the rich to cover themselves in a legal fiction so as to avoid pretty much any responsibility for their actions. Hence why we see so many corporations acting so very boldly to destroy the planet - after all, why not? What's the worst that could happen to them in return?

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Oh, I never knew that - he was before my time, thanks for sharing that :-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I bought a Samsung as well. We should both learn from our mistakes, and never do that again - this is simply the cost of doing business with them. Maybe Fairphone would be good?

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Sadly I know very little there. I know I HATE my current Samsung (mostly due to the company practices like you mentioned), and I also felt incredibly betrayed by my OnePlus 7T before that (the device itself was amazing, until an update broke it and now it literally hurts my hand, like I wonder if it's giving me cancer by radiating something through the shielding that it burned through), and before that I absolutely adored my Nexus 5 (but Pixels are a whole other thing entirely - far too much camera and too little actual phone for my tastes). The entire smartphone world is incredibly predatory. I mostly figure that the next one I get will be a cheap phone, maybe even a dumb flip... but on the other hand I do live in an area where Google (or whatever) Maps could really help out so... I don't know what I'll do when my current one craps out:-(. Probably I will research a Fairphone, but if you live in an area where that would be difficult to repair, then yeah that may not be an option for you:-(. At least you live within the EU though where such is being forced to change, so you have that going for you.:-)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

"Ooops".

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I mean... maybe don't get 2.5 inches away from her face while rubbing your chest up against her shoulder?

Probably best not to club her on the head and drag her back to your cave either - at least, not without prior consent :-P.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Sigh... yeah.:-(

OpenStars , 4 months ago

They know. They simply do not care.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

You mean create jobs - what kind of nutball idea is that? I won't stand for it - that's not how I want my our tax money to be spent! I will burn this place to the ground before I let that happen.

- Republicans, all across the entire nation

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Yeah bc I am not watching that first-hand:-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

^ This - they will reference that it exists, therefore blah blah whatever they want to say after that as if somehow the former had even the slightest relation.

Example: Jesus says "love people, especially those you disagree with". Translation: Civil War time muddafuckers!

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Isn't it for people who have ridiculously too much money to dump some of it? :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Boy: daddy, is this loss?

Dad: yes son, it absolutely is.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Pro-Tip: try not to die.

(but make sure to be on your time for your shift, or your (sic) fired!)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

When up is down, and left is right, and black is white, and in is out, and rich is - well we don't talk about that - it's no wonder that people feel all twisted inside. It's like everyone in a position of authority is trying to lie to them!? (probably b/c everyone in a position of authority is trying to lie to them)

Which causes people to turn towards religion. Which causes them to vote for Donald Trump. Which causes the downturn of society, which causes... dayum, can this ever end in anything but death?

Sadly, I think not. The golden era of 50s & 60s are gone, and they are NEVER coming back. Plan to have a roommate, I guess, for the rest of your life...

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Yup, I recommend Office Space.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I finally looked up the origin of that phrase, "shiny happy people". I guess it was an R.E.M. song.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Absolutely, and I think it gets skewed even further by e.g. many TV shows and movies not even showing the presence of minorities at all. It's a collective blanket that gets pulled over people's heads.

But also, certain parts were legit better too (even as other parts were much worse), like there was an extremely brief period where the USA was not in one of the variety of forever wars, and supposedly a minimum wage really was a living wage somehow, at some point? (I'm not sure how many people got paid the *minimum" though, certainly fruit pickers would not be).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

As I listen to people like the comedian George Carlin, who was talking about it before it happened and yet managed to lay it all out for us in advance, I realize that things were always going to head in this direction, and it was never going to be any different.

Therefore, for the sake of our own sanity, I think we need to let that go: it's never going to happen. The USA might not even survive the decade (imagine Trump winning, but even if he doesn't, is there any doubt that a GQP member will take the one after that? historically speaking, Dems never win successive elections), and if it does then the Dems will just cite how Congress blocked them at every turn, blaming the other side for why even with a majority they won't pass any laws related to e.g. school shootings.

Whatever happened in the past, it's over.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

That's kind of a scary thought, that I think humanity is about to try out next. As in, who needs the humans anymore, when robots will do the same tasks with far less effort?:-|

OpenStars , 4 months ago

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Try Soilent Green (TM) as your new fave cupcake flavor!

OpenStars , 4 months ago

OpenStars , 4 months ago

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I definitely do not miss Reddit (especially what it became, but notably its descent took many years, only culminating in rather than beginning with the protests), but I would miss Lemmy if it disappeared.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Yeah, I mean, it's food, and at these prices we can't afford to waste any!:-D

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Better than spitting it out, then eat it again in a moment:-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

You have such potential to bring such great joy though, my Edible Friend at Lemmy dot World:-).

OpenStars , 4 months ago

I had a couple friends over the years who would even ask for food served "Thai hot", saying that they would sign a waiver if they would hesitate to do so for an American. :-P

Meanwhile I went to a Buddhist temple one time (I like to learn about all religions!), but I was too far back to hear the warning delivered to my other friends. *I* cannot handle anywhere close to that level! :-D Nor do I feel like killing all of my taste buds to get to that point either.

I do find it fascinating to learn though, how the Western world historically (prior to refrigeration I mean) used salt to preserve food, while the extreme Northern world just flat-out did use refrigeration (hehe, I mean snow or near-freezing water), whereas the East mostly used spices, to greatly slow down the rate at which food would rot. And then all of them have used fermentation in some way or anther as well - hehe yes hint hint, but also food too:-D.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Let us also not forget that AI does not work. They made internal promises to themselves about how it was going to radically transform everything, within the next couple of quarters it seems, and when those "promises" did not materialize... the workers are the ones holding the bag (not "blamed", yet jobless all the same). So much irony at every single level. Like AI really will transform everything, but dayum give it a second will you?

In short: everything is performing fully normally, more's the pity:-(.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Counterpoint: it's often better than failing captchas? :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Viva la oppression! :-P

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Or locked behind 100 pages of unnecessarily paginated content. Seriously, one of the best features that a webpage has over a physical printed page is the ability to search it for what you were looking for... smh:-(.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

It is only baffling if you still think that Google's aim is to help people. At one point they were trying to gain market share and so that was true. It is not anymore.

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Billionaire crabs, nice. Oh no wait, these allow the lesser crabs to have their leftovers, so even the crab world uses socialism:-P. (/s btw, I'm only going for the funny here not saying crabs actually use that, or don't, I simply do not know:-P)

OpenStars , 4 months ago

Yup. Or they simply don't care what happens after they abandon it:-D.

But how many people would buy a bigger house and donate their older, unused one to someone else, especially someone who outgrew their older one (to the point they could literally die without that sun protection).

It must be so freeing to both have stuff but not worry that everyone is trying to steal it, bc others have enough.

Humans meanwhile are playing games - the abstract number in a bank account somewhere doesn't even matter, since it seems more about feelings of power and control:-|.

We are dumber than crabs. 😂 😁

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Of course it does.:-D

OpenStars , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

TLDR: not worth reading the article, it's just a long list of third party apps that are no longer free anymore, totally ignoring matters such as their usage stats and more importantly the content itself that is now flat-out missing from Reddit. Go to any old thread and you'll see the "this content has been removed by" (whichever of the automated software to remove posts was used in that case) messages.

Honestly it reads like a shill to promote Reddit as in "hey, all that fuss was for nothing - you should totally come back now". It got fairly obvious even at the start when it said that the protests lasts (edit: lasted) for "weeks" - not the more truthful "months", not "permanent changes", but the minimum amount they could halfway reasonably get away with stating.

I am biased, and this article is far more so, and less forgivably so bc mine is a personal opinion while this is touted as "news".

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Valid, but from a truth-in-reporting standpoint, those protests went on for MONTHS and MONTHS. Which I suppose could technically be reported as "weeks", but they could also be reported as "femtoseconds" and yet... seems to lose accuracy that way? :-P

And like, I understand that the title of the article means that it is focusing narrowly on third-party apps not the state of Reddit as a whole, but (1) the scope still includes anything that it does choose to say, e.g. how long those protests lasted, and (2) it does not mention anywhere how e.g. third-party apps compare to the official Reddit app, or what their market share is with respect to one another, which seems the two most relevant questions of all?!

Continuing on, a third question could be: do people like those apps? From the comments even in the article, it seems not... but without usage stats, even an app used by a single person counts the same as e.g. the former Apollo.

i.e., How DOES the third-party app market look nowadays, after the protests? After reading this article, I still have no idea whatsoever... All I know is that there is a list of apps, which sounds like a singular detail devoid of any context that Reddit would very much like us to know, rather than anything that I would actually care about knowing in order to get a better picture of the situation as a whole.

But that's just my two cents.:-)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Some subs did not protest at all. Some users even went into subs dedicated to discussing the topic like Reddit Alternatives and anti-protested, and still others went so far as to brigade many small, entirely unrelated niche subs, taking over polls asking the actual MEMBERS of those subs what they wanted to do, making any discussion of the situation held hostage by a toxic barrage of venomous filth, often by accounts that seemed to have been created for just that purpose in mind due to their highly suspicious age. In my own sub, we had to record comments by hand b/c we felt that we could not trust automated polling as a result.:-(

Some subs shut down for merely a day or two (as mine did). A few more shut down for a little longer - measured in days to weeks.

But several subs, including some of the top ones on the entire site, shut down for MONTHS. And some even shut down permanently, only to have their decisions overturned by Reddit who sent in scabs to open them back up, months later.

So... it was a spectrum ofc, and perhaps the subs you were interested in were primarily affected for a couple weeks. But on the whole, the long tail of the protests lasted much longer than a mere few days, or even weeks, and the likes of John Olivier pic spam lasted for months.:-)

OpenStars , 5 months ago

It is possible that both are true.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Very rarely there may be something that you need. Even so, it is becoming increasingly rare to find that knowledge. Spez decided that he owns it now, though some of us here happen to disagree:-).

Nor do you need a mobile app to use Reddit in any case:-). Anyway I think I am with you - we almost hear more about how Reddit is doing here in the Fediverse than we did back when we were on Reddit:-).

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I mean, only like 3 comments out of ~116 total, but yeah, they were solid mentions I agree.

OpenStars , 5 months ago

Don't forget that they will then switch sides and try to copyright "their work", preventing others from even thinking about their work without paying the toll.

Hey, what if I were to draw two circles...

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

OpenStars , 5 months ago

I mean... in this instance what he is cooking is explained in the OP: he uses Taco Bell ingredients to "cook up" something "special". Which he then allows you to smell - he's so friendly to share like that.:-P

OpenStars , 5 months ago

That's the same reason that the Windows OS sucks so bad: the "customer" is the companies paying for licenses, not individuals wanting things to "just work" without an entire IT department at their backs.

Although I would guess that even stockholders would not like the fact that these companies lost billions of dollars.:-|