SnotFlickerman

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Because what LinkedIn really needed was Xbox ecosystem integration. /s

I like how they say "LinkedIn" is getting in on gaming when their parent company (Microsoft) fucking owns the god damned Xbox.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Originally read this as "unleash" capitalism... maybe not the best font choice.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

No, they're both ostensibly open source and standalone. I'm an avid Bitwarden Free user, but Aegis has been my go-to for a long time.

If it's a standalone completely offline app, like Aegis, I'm at a loss to what they could offer that is any different than what Aegis already offers.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

...but wouldn't that undermine the fact that it's standalone and offline?

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

This is called "kicking you off the ladder so they can finish pulling it up behind them."

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

"You'll own nothing and be happy" should have been taken as the threat that it was when the WEF first promoted the notion.

The "be happy" part is the threat, they want us smiling as we suffer.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm all for the REDUCE part of the three R's and am okay with doing with less, what I'm not okay with is a future where literally every aspect of human existence is a rent-seeking service.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Even when senior management or executive roles are available, the terror of nepotism usually rears its ugly head.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Brutal. I'm so sorry to hear about that for you man. Loyalty is always a one-way street with these people. They demand loyalty but will turn you out to the street the second its profitable for them.

Like I've said before, Donald Trump is America's Id, he represents all the worst impulses that exists in the minds of the so-called "elite."

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I wonder if that had anything to do with low interests rates and Venture Capitalists practically throwing cash at startups?

Other industries just simply didn't have the same advantages, and now that tech companies no longer have those advantages either, they're becoming just like any other corporation.

Also, tech companies are on the forefront of businesses who sell services to other businesses which tends to be much more profitable than selling to consumers. Regular consumers have never been Google's customers, even though most regular people use Gmail. Their customers are the advertisers.

People were throwing money at tech because tech was "disruptive" which meant finding a way to skirt existing employment laws, destroy established industries with worker protections, and then boost the prices to insane levels once they've completely wrecked traditional competition. See: Uber.

I wonder why they were throwing so much money at tech? It wasn't about Union Busting, was it?? Oh wait, it totally was.

Many of these companies are currently suing the US Government claiming the FTC has no authority to regulate them and that the National Labor Relations Board is "unconstitutional."

Acting like "tech" was in any special position other than being poised to exploit the living fuck out of everything feels pretty naive.

Related: The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of “Blues” The tech barons are and were fascists. They're happy to pay unwitting people very well to help build a terrible new world nobody else actually wants.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

If you'd read the article, you'd have realized it's specifically because of a bad implementation by Apple of their URI scheme for handling links.

They're literally suggesting users use Brave over Safari because it isn't susceptible to cross-site scripting in the same way.

They urge iOS users in Europe to use Brave rather than Safari because Brave's implementation checks the origin of the website against the URL to prevent cross-site tracking.

This is anything but Apple propaganda. It's literally calling Apple out on a huge failure of their own design.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Then I retract my statement and hope you have a good day.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Also three horses...

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/8dc1bcfd-cd1e-4d9e-93a9-69ed4a809a36.png

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Your link is just to a picture, not to an article.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Good, sick as fuck of these chucklefucks committing piracy on an absolutely massive scale, making a fucking mint off of it and then hiding behind "fair use." (Last I checked fair use was for fucking people, not giant fucking corporations to copy the entire fucking internet and profit from it.)

You know what they did to the Pirate Bay when they committed mass piracy but didn't actually make much money? The music industry literally pushed for laws to change in Sweden so they could send them to jail. It feels like they did this because The Pirate Bay simply didn't make enough money.

It's like in the US, as long as you commit the biggest crime, and make the biggest profit, they'll make up any worthless fucking excuse to justify you raping the public for a quick buck. Because in my eyes, these guys are doing something no different than The Pirate Bay, but because Microsoft/OpenAI is Big Business, a blind eye is conveniently turned.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Plex is probably not what you're looking for, but it has a built-in subtitle search.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I knew I shouldn't have trusted a doctor that smelled like that!

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

It's like they want me to give up finding a job when half the job interviews are fucking scams.

"nObOdY wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe"

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I'm old enough to remember when ASUS was viewed as one of the best hardware manufacturers you could go with.

It has been a long, slow decline for ASUS. They really manufactured their own demise here.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

The usual. Hardware quality slowly goes to shit, company starts getting tricksy with consumers to make money instead of making quality product.

The big one was the BIOS update that nearly fried a lot of 670 motherboards that ASUS turned around and tried to avoid taking responsibility for, trying to pin issues on the consumer.

It's capitalists being capitalists. Completely ruining their brand to squeeze out a short term 1% increase in revenue.

We are in the "how many of my customers can I screw over and completey piss off and still make a profit" stage of capitalism.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

It's funny, ASRock went from a company I'd never fucking heard of to one of the top names in the space. I used to be like "what's this no-name brand?" and now I'm like "Oh ASRock, I know them."

Unrelated, I miss the old Gigabyte Dual BIOS, where it had a backup BIOS in case the default got corrupted. Which mine did, a lot.

EDIT: NZXT? Wait, this NZXT? https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2021/NZXT-Recalls-H1-Computer-Cases-Due-to-Fire-Hazard I'd personally wait a while before jumping all in on them. Fire hazards in components is a pretty big fuckin deal.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I have an MSI currently, and when I was searching I never encountered one with a dual-BIOS. I'll keep an eye out in the future, thanks.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I remember them being quality in the 90's and early 2000's, but 2008 tracks for about when their products first began to take a downturn.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I mean, in the US governments eyes, that's already what they're doing...

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

I usually don't love YouTube videos, but these are some incredibly cool things that he got some hands-on time with, so I gave it a quick skim-watch.

First, it's cool as hell that we have confirmation that Disney is using modified Steamdecks to control some of the robots they're using in their Star Wars themed theme parks. It was previously theorized this was the case based on photos, but this is the first confirmation I have seen. That means Disney is in some capacity an institutional purchaser of Steamdecks, which means Valve is moving into the big leagues with their products. Business-to-business sales is vastly more profitable than direct-to-consumer and having buyers as big as Disney is a big deal.

As for the Disney virtual reality tech? I've seen demos of it before, and he does a really excellent explainer of how it all works here. There's multiple aspects to it, from using it to move around objects on a stage without moving a stage, think like a literal upgrade of circular stages of ages past, to allowing a person to fully explore a virtual reality world, feeling like they're walking naturally forward, while always staying in place. It's really fucking brilliant technology and it's brutally sad that it's owned by Disney exclusively because they're bastards about copyrights, patents, and trademarks. It will be really hard to get around Disney's legal muscle to get anything similar off the ground without paying Disney likely a mint for patent access.

Anyway, worth a watch for anyone interested.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

They do, however, allow data caps.

These new rules are not the same as the old ones and there's definitely a handful of things that the big companies wanted that they indeed got.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

My source is the document the FCC presented as their new net neutrality rules, which can be found here:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

Page 317-318, Section 534-535 "Application to Data Caps"

Section 534 discusses the professor who suggests data caps should be banned, and section 535 discusses how the commission disagrees and how data caps will remain.

535. We agree with Professor Jordan that the Commission can evaluate data caps under the general conduct standard. We do not at this time, however, make any blanket determinations regarding the use of data caps based on the record before us. The record demonstrates that while BIAS providers can implement data caps in ways that harm consumers or the open Internet, particularly when not deployed primarily as a means to manage congestion, data caps can also be deployed as a means to manage congestion or to offer lower-cost broadband services to consumers who use less broadband. As such, we conclude that it is appropriate to proceed incrementally with respect to data caps, and we will evaluate individual data cap practices under the general conduct standard based on the facts of each individual case, and take action as necessary.

Also, you get an upvote for asking for a source. Cheers.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

A lifetime supply of tapeworm food!?!?!?

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/a654b375-37a5-415a-84c4-46bd3cf2adc6.webp

Ho-de-oh-de-oh-in-day...

SnotFlickerman OP , 1 month ago

There's also some minor discussion in the MeFi thread about "federated search" as well.

Self-hosted search also seems like a strong possibility.

SnotFlickerman OP , 1 month ago

https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

For folks not understanding the sealioning reference.

https://d-shoot.net/files/kagiemails.txt

I think this is petty and sad behavior from the CEO of a company and I think this is a man that does not understand boundaries at ALL.

And you know what I truly believe? I already thought this before based on seeing his responses to feedback, but I believe it a thousand times more now that I've been on the receiving end: I think it genuinely eats him alive that someone doesn't agree with him or doesn't think he's doing great work, and he also truly believes that if he can just keep explaining himself to them they'll OBVIOUSLY see it his way. He cannot accept that someone might think Kagi sucks, to the point where he has to reach out to someone like me to try to argue them into Thinking Correctly.

SnotFlickerman OP , 1 month ago

It's interesting that you mention MetaFilter, because they're literally in the process of transitioning fully to a non-profit organization.

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26430/MeFi-Nonprofit-Update-March-26-2024

They're the only aggregator that still isn't flooded with ads and has pretty decent moderation policies.

There's absolutely a reason I linked to the discussion over there: because it's quality, and it's the first place I saw the article pop up.

SnotFlickerman OP , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

From your other comment it seems that it’s also an indexing site (besides being a community - from their “About” page). Is this correct?

Yes, it's got a really old-school layout, because it's been around since 1999. To me, the fact that they've managed to avoid advertising for 25 years while having the main indexing site as well as things like Ask MetaFilter, IRL meetups, and even a jobs board, it means they've been pretty darn good at managing their finances and figuring out how to support the site long-term without ads. They're also in the process of becoming an actual non-profit organization. They pay their moderators a living wage, because it's a job. That's... pretty amazing.

The comment section takes a bit to get used to, because it's just chronological order of comments, no sorted threads. Very, very old school web ethos. However, if you can get used to it, some really amazing discussion can happen in there.

One of the benefits of the ways MeFi posts work is often you have users doing massive amounts of research and providing literally mountains of links and analysis, you can get pretty lost in the weeds on some posts.

It's been the source of high quality discussions for a long time and there's some really interesting professionals on there who have been staples of the community for a long time. Think hackernews and how many people it has from the industry, but instead of it all being tech people (MeFi has it own share of techies) it is thoughtful and sometimes expert opinion from a large variety of disciplines, as well as first person accounts from people of all walks of life.

It's also where I first found this link (The Man Who Killed Google Search) and decided to post it here.

SnotFlickerman OP , 1 month ago

The high cost of housing is squeezing people all over the globe and we're seeing a spike in homelessness in first-world countries from USA to Australia, where the affordability of housing is out of control, on top of explosive inflation of food costs.

It may not be that they "don't want to pay" but simply not enough people have enough discretionary income to pay enough to make the business financially viable.

I mean, that's what happened to Beeper and while I was a very early on their sign up list I decided to never give them any money. When it became clear they weren't able to keep things going on how much money they were making from paying users: Micigovsky sold to a larger company.

I think it's an issue that the services they're offering actually cost more than the market is actually effectively able to bear and they're trying to hide that fact with advertising and data sales to cover operating costs.

More simply put: Consumers don't actually have enough money anymore to be able to support a business, and businesses essentially now must rely on other businesses as customers to be able to functionally exist financially. Only other businesses have the finances to support new business.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

This is a relative upgrade of classic Persona Management Software, using an AI to produce the comments instead of a human.

I was wondering when this would leave the military and political sphere and enter the mainstream... and here we are, it's straight being advertised pretty blatantly.

Further, it is why we need the same strict advertising laws we have for television and radio for the internet.

If it's an ad, it should have to say it's a fucking ad.

I've been pissed about this since Correct the Record and Cambridge Analytica. There is zero political willpower to do anything about it because the political groups were some of the earliest adopters of this fucking trash.

Ads, of any nature, political or otherwise, should be fucking labelled accordingly, god damn it. This isn't fucking hard.

EDIT: I wonder if this will result in independent websites like Lemmy to start using a filtering service similar to a Pi-Hole checking if the source of the comment is in any way tied to an advertising content delivery network. Start banning users and comments based on their source as an ad. Surely this would lead to advertisers using VPNs to try to bypass it, but... it's time we at least started considering ways to fight this.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

"Most Reddit Addicted City" was Eglin Air Force Base in 2014. Eglin has a history of research about social media influence at their facility.

https://archive.is/1jhHe

That post has been pretty blackholed by the internet at this point. The bots probably started as early as 2010-2012.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Persona Management Software has existed for at least a decade. The only difference here is you're removing the human that controls it from the equation, because AI is now advanced enough to produce what sound like realistic responses in real-time. You used to still have to have a human with a bunch of pre-written scripts running hundreds of sockpuppet accounts through Persona Management Software. Now it's just one step removed with the AI working with the pre-written scripts for you.

AI is simply enhancing what was already a long-standing terrible practice. It was already a terrible practice before AI was involved. In this case, it was poisoned before AI was even applied.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

hackernews continues to be a pretty good resource, even though it can be kind of hit or miss, and often it's not about new technologies.

I fell deep into the hn thread about Super NES cartridges, not exactly new technology, but it lead me to things like videos of people hacking a Famicom to do ray tracing in real time.

hackernews can still often feel like it has too much about the FAANG companies, tho, so like I said, hit or miss.

---

MetaFilter is similarly hit-or-miss because it's a general-interest site, but it has a lot of coders and makers on it, and often there's really good tech discussions there... but they're probably the minority of the threads on MeFi.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

This is what the government gets to farming literally fucking everything out to third parties whose goal is profit instead of making government agencies that exist to do the same job whose goal is to serve the people.

Like, no shit, Sherlock.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

https://matrix.org/blog/2021/07/21/germany-s-national-healthcare-system-adopts-matrix/

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

you can’t trust it’s done by the best people because it’s only done by those who are willing to work at 30% of the pay.

I dunno, I think I'd consider having enough scruples to care more about what you produce than how much you get paid to be "The Best." Some of "The Best" programmers I have seen are fully on the Free Open Source Software bandwagon.

Because I can't trust that those who are profit-oriented are willing to bring "the best" without doing things exactly like in the article. "The Best" are busy nickel and diming you to death while hiding their best work from you. That's not the best, that's a selfish asshole who doesn't give a flying fuck about the future of humanity, only themselves. That's far from "The Best." That's just "Fuck you, got mine."

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

This just in: Palmer Luckey is a piece of shit. This is what you bought when you paid for the Oculus Rift.

Somehow I already knew this was Anduril.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Fascist nerds get way too excited about the worst aspects of any fiction.

See: Starship Troopers, Helldivers 2, and so on.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries

It was founded in 2017 by inventor Palmer Luckey with investors and founders associated with Palantir and SpaceX. Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril's major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.

This was months after he left Facebook. He left in March 2017 and opened Anduril in June 2017.

Point one against him was that he sold Oculus to Facebook. Point two is that he used his earnings from Oculus/Facebook to start a military hardware company with focus on autonomous weapons.

In other words, everyone who paid money to support Oculus ended up supporting this. This is what the profits of Oculus Rift bought: violent weaponry with more concern for profit than humanity. Great job, VR gamers!

Like seriously, though. If I buy a video game console, I shouldn't have to be concerned the profits will be used to make weapons.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

OP: I hate this school!

Also OP: Nobody recognized my loss.jpg meme and nobody was upset by my trollface! All that work for no response!

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

...except for voice actors, who conveniently got a carve-out.

SnotFlickerman , 1 month ago

Just like Trent in Exotic Birds.