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dogslayeggs

@dogslayeggs@lemmy.world

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Arizona accuses Amazon of being a monopoly and deceiving consumers with “dark patterns” (www.theverge.com)

Arizona's Attorney General, Kris Mayes, filed two lawsuits against Amazon on Wednesday for allegedly engaging in deceptive business practices and maintaining monopoly status. The first lawsuit accuses the company of using dark patterns to keep users from canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions, violating Arizona's Consumer...

dogslayeggs , (edited )

I hate Amazon probably more than most people in the world and have been boycotting them since roughly 1999, but... "dark patterns???"

EDIT: TIL a new term, and it refers to something I have hated for years.

dogslayeggs ,

Ah, so dark as in evil, not dark as in low light. I hadn't heard of that, but going through the darkpatterns.org website is basically a laundry list of shit I hate.

dogslayeggs ,

I've been boycotting Amazon since 1999, so no I haven't been paying attention.

dogslayeggs ,

Remember when the slashdot effect was a thing that mattered?

dogslayeggs ,

Seriously, that's really low rates. Healthcare and all that overhead is usually at least double of the actual salary.

dogslayeggs ,

Someone probably reminded Elon of the giant government grant he took to expand the supercharger network and that he could make the company liable for losing all that money.

dogslayeggs ,

Nah, I have been in meetings with him before. While he was an asshole that I hated due to the way he treated my customer, he was really smart and spoke very lucidly and concisely. He had a vision and was doing everything he could to achieve it.

Nowadays it's like he has no coherent vision and is just doing whatever wild shit comes to his head. I think when he went from "barely a billionaire who spent it all and nearly went bankrupt" to "holy shit printing billions" then all guardrails came off and he let himself go free.

dogslayeggs ,

It's eco-conscious, not eco-friendly.

dogslayeggs , (edited )

I'm old enough to remember when cable didn't have ads. I was really young, maybe 5ish, but even then it was confusing to me when they started adding commercials. That was for bad TV with the antenna. Then it was only HBO that didn't have ads, but we couldn't afford that until I was much older.

EDIT: I guess my memories of being 5 years old aren't very accurate.

dogslayeggs ,

You're right. I guess I was remembering premium channels and some niche channels that were cable-only. Most channels available on early cable were just piping non-local broadcast channels down a cable.

dogslayeggs ,

I didn't say I got it over antenna. I said TV with commercials was for TV that came from the antenna.

dogslayeggs ,

Planes only use GPS because GPS has a very rigorous signal integrity program that others don't have. The "safety of life" requirements on GPS are onerous. Also, GPS has both L1 C/A and L5 (not enough L1C or L2C to be useful yet) signals. I don't think Galileo or GLONASS have extra signals, but I think Beidou does (not an expert on other systems).

Just this January, ESA completed the safety of life analysis requirements for Galileo to be used as a civil aviation signal.

dogslayeggs ,

The military won't give access to the decryption keys to that many organizations, especially foreign organizations. The crypto tech and keys are both classified, so anyone handling a unit would have to be given at least Secret clearance. Anyone doing the key updating would need to have Top Secret clearance (I think, not 100% on that). Every plane would have to be constantly monitored at all times (both in flight and while at foreign airports) by cleared personnel to ensure the boxes aren't taken by adversarial states.

dogslayeggs ,

EVs are awesome. I loved the two I had. The only reasons I don't have one now is I hardly drive anymore and am doing construction on my house that makes a truck become useful. If there were an EV truck that wasn't the size of the house I'm building or the cost of the house I'm building, I'd have gotten that. Instead I got the Maverick hybrid.

If you enjoy the luxury of the Benz, then the Model 3 would have been a step down. There are a lot of good EV options in the luxury range, but very few in the low end range. The Volvo XC40 was really fun to drive and pretty comfortable. My friend loved her Porsche Taycan (that might be too high end, not sure). My coworker just got an i4 and really likes it.

dogslayeggs ,

so they wouldn’t have known how shitty it actually turned out to be.

Hard disagree here. A) I knew from the first moment they showed a picture of it how bad it would be. You could tell it was a car a 7 year old would design and have all the faults that come with that. B) Those people have had years to cancel those deposits, during which we've seen how shitty it was going to be.

dogslayeggs ,

As much as I want this to be true, I'll have a hard time not filing this under "GRR Martin and Patrick Rothfuss cowriting a new series" level of believing it will finish any time soon.

dogslayeggs ,

This seems like a lot of detail... like maybe too much detail for it to be real??

dogslayeggs ,

Fair enough. I'm glad to be shown my feelings were off.

dogslayeggs ,

Going to Mars hasn't been intangible since the 90s. The only thing holding it back is the cost. NASA could absolutely go if they had a $200B budget... mostly because they don't spend their money wisely and waste shitloads on contracts with Boeing. They SHOULD be able to go to Mars with a $50B/year budget (current budget is in the $25B range), but government contracts are horrific.

A private company should be able to do it with $100B total price. But who wants to spend all that money?

dogslayeggs ,

Yes, they are spending a lot of money on space, but they haven't dumped the necessary money to go to Mars (yet). Bezos spends about $1B of his own money every year on Blue Origin, which is a far cry from $100B. Musk has probably spent a few billion of his own money total, because he has a ton of contracts to actually make money that is being put back into SpaceX. And their entire program (Starlink, Falcon, etc) is around $78B, as opposed to $100B for just Mars. Branson has stated publicly he is no longer spending more money on Virgin Galactic.

dogslayeggs ,

I just have a carrier that gives me free international data and calling, regardless of the level of plan.

dogslayeggs ,

T-Mobile and Google both do it in 215+ countries for unlimited basic data (not 5G). T-Mo charges between $75/mo for that and $90/mo for 5G data internationally (not unlimited). Google charges $35/mo with unlimited data (doesn't guarantee 5G). It's not difficult for them to do or even expensive. Most just choose to make it more expensive.

dogslayeggs ,

I don't know if the stack will work, unless you have tall ceilings. Standard dishwasher is 3ft, a miniature dryer is 2ft, and a miniature washing machine is 2ft. That's 8ft without stacking hardware, and standard ceilings are 8ft 2in.

dogslayeggs ,

In the US, the standard size ceiling is due to the length and width of 2x4s. 8ft 2in is an 8ft 2x4 plus the top and bottom plate minus the flooring and ceiling drywall. In newer and more expensive houses, 9ft is starting to become more common as people are spending more and more on building.

dogslayeggs ,

I disagree. It's way more that they aren't hiring the right people to do the job. I've been asked to do some analysis, but the only tool I know how to use is Excel so that's what I use to answer the mail. If I had access to a database person to help me build a better tool I'd be happy to not use Excel. But I don't so I do what I can to do my job.

dogslayeggs ,

Yeah, I have access to database tools to do my job, but I don't know how to use those tools so I use Excel to do shit it really isn't optimized to do.

I am 100% part of the problem when I create a spreadsheet with formulas cross correlating data from 41000 entries, 9000 entries, and 1200 entries.

dogslayeggs ,

You completely missed the point of what you are replying to. The point isn't that you SHOULD buy music from online sources instead of CDs. The point is that CDs aren't "the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries." They are directly contradicting a point someone else made by saying CDs are not the only way to buy digital popular music in most countries. They even specifically said popular music, not whatever niche music some random person is into. They also mentioned iTunes because it services 119 markets, which directly counterpoints the statement about being available in most countries. They never advocated for iTunes like you imply.

It's almost like you lack reading comprehension. "Soms people here on Lemmy are even more insufferable than any other social media."

dogslayeggs ,

Yes, but this is about what is available in most countries, not what is available in all countries. That still leaves 119 markets and 80% of the world's population being available. Pretty sure that counts as "most."

Also, the point isn't about iTunes, it's about alternatives to CDs for digital music. China likely has some online store to buy music, but I have no idea.

dogslayeggs ,

Yeah, I haven't been able to parse what that phrase means in a real sense.

dogslayeggs ,

TV doesn't give you feedback. It's purely passive. TV isn't always on. It can be turned off or walked away from. TV doesn't fit in your pocket (well, outside of those shitty portable TVs that used 8 batteries every 2 hours) and go everywhere with you. TV doesn't have your friends on it (unless you live in LA). TV doesn't have random people from different countries you've never heard of tell you, specifically YOU, that you should kill yourself for some embarrassing thing you did.

TV does have negative impacts on our lives, and there are costs that I had on my life that my parents had less of (they still had TV, just black and white with only 3 channels). I definitely spent more time indoors growing up and know less about how to do manual work than my dad. I also know more about the world in general and am open to more ideas than my parents.

dogslayeggs ,

I'm comparing TV kids vs 50's kids, not internet kids vs TV kids. I didn't have the internet until I was 18.

dogslayeggs ,

Why should power be available to all? If the activity is both incredibly wasteful and brings no value to the public or to the state or to the utility company, why should the utility not be able to prioritize getting power to people who need power to live?

There are these huge crypto mining farms in Texas, and people are literally dying each year from the power grid failing. Why should the crypto farms be protected when they could be cut off in times when human survival is at risk?

dogslayeggs ,

I mean, I've been on Google Fi for almost 8 years. It might cease to exist eventually, but I care about since it has saved me roughly $20/mo for 8 years. It also has free international data/calling and wifi partnerships around the country.

dogslayeggs ,

Same here. Signed up the first week it was open and have enjoyed it since. Free international data/calling is great for people who travel a lot.

dogslayeggs ,

Who uses Windows 11 anyway?

Roughly 19.5% of all computers worldwide run Windows 11. While I don't know the exact number of computers in the world, that has to be in the multiple billions. So, yeah, a lot of people use Windows 11.

dogslayeggs ,

A) Don't use fucking Amazon.

B) It would require a third party to scrape Amazon's entire search catalog, which Amazon would almost certainly block.

dogslayeggs ,

I'm not a plugin developer, so this is just a guess; but I think they scrape from specific items, not the entirety of Amazon's database.

dogslayeggs ,

Keyed vehicles are stolen just as easily.

dogslayeggs ,

Disco Stu would be proud.

dogslayeggs ,

On duckduckgo those are only suggestions that shape the results. They aren't "ignored" but also aren't enforced. You can search for things in quotes that don't ever show up and put a minus sign on things that do show up.

It fucking infuriates me, but it is still better than Google.

dogslayeggs ,

If I see something on Amazon that I want, I just go to the manufacturer's website and order it directly from them. If they don't have a site that sells it, then I try other online stores besides Amazon. If they only sell on Amazon, then I decide I just don't need it.

dogslayeggs ,

The only search worse than Amazon is probably Wayfair.

dogslayeggs ,

I started boycotting Amazon back in 1999 when they pulled the 1-click patent bullshit. I loved them before that.

dogslayeggs ,

I was an edgy college kid who was raging against software and business process patents. Their 1-click patent started me on a 25 year grudge.

dogslayeggs ,

In 1999 Amazon applied for and was granted a US Patent for One Click Purchase. Before then, everyone had a shopping cart that you had to go into to check out and pay. Amazon realized that a huge percentage of people would add stuff to their cart and then leave without buying anything, either because they decided they didn't REALLY need that thing or because they found it cheaper somewhere else or whatever. They allowed you to save all your credit card info plus shipping preferences, then just hit "1 Click Purchase." It was convenient for shoppers because they didn't have to go through the whole checkout steps or add everything then come back later to check out. They could just hit a button and be done. For Amazon, though, it prevented the dreaded "items left in cart."

Other sites like Borders and Barnes & Noble, etc also implemented the feature, since it made a lot of money. Amazon filed for a business process patent (I think they also tried it as a software patent??) and forced the entire internet to go back to normal shopping cart purchases. They ended up losing the patent lawsuit in the EU, but that didn't stop them from enforcing it on US websites. Borders and BN both implemented "2 Click Purchase" to get around it, but the damage was done. In everyone's minds, Amazon was the place to go for convenience and speed. Amazon made more money, while others started losing money. With that extra money, Amazon was able to move into the "niche" of Walmart, since Walmart hadn't yet figured out e-commerce. Amazon out-Walmarted Walmart on the web and became the trillion dollar behemoth we have today.

dogslayeggs ,

Do they have an electric truck that isn't the size of a small house?

dogslayeggs ,

That design choice was revolutionary at the time.

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