arc

@arc@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Premium is getting a huge price hike in over a dozen countries, sparking user backlash. Some countries are experiencing hikes between 30% and 50%⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People pay YouTube instead of using an adblocker?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Biden really, really doesn’t want China to flood the US with cheap EVs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Protectionism only works in the VERY short term. If the USA doesn’t pull its finger out of its ass and make affordable good EVs, then its automotive industry will crash and burn. Because the rest of the world unaffected by tariffs will be buying Chinese (or Korean / European) EVs and not American ones because they’ll be expensive and suck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate local file search in Windows. So many times I’ve wonder why my machine is crawling and I go to the taskbar and discover Windows search indexer is killing my machine.

  For the other stuff in Windows 11, I wonder if it knows I’m in Europe because I’ve not seen any egregious advertising - it has the default shit they set up for you like the MSN home page in Edge which is annoying but it can all be changed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have Windows 11 on a couple of machines and honestly it’s just Windows 10 with a somewhat slicker taskbar and control panel. Functionally it is almost identical. I’m sure there is a random bunch of changes on the periphery but it’s really not a compelling proposition if someone has Windows 10 and is happy with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla to lay off everyone working on Superchargers, new vehicles⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When you have a narcissistic sociopath for a boss don’t expect job security. All these layoffs and his insane letter will do is cultivate toadying, fear, distrust, cliques and a culture of backstabbing within Tesla.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rabbit R1 is Just an Android App⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If they weeded out some of the shittier ideas they’d be one in nine or eight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rabbit R1 is Just an Android App⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw the Marquess Brownlee review of this thing last night and I wonder why companies make this crap and who is fool enough to fund it. It’s obviously doomed to fail, as are most “smart” gadgets & devices. The best that can be said for it, is at least there is no subscription to use it and it’s not outrageously expensive but that’s damning it with faint praise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I expect their logic is their review “curation” racket is a sideshow and the real money is selling information to agencies and sales companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never seen much reason to use a real name on Glassdoor. They demand visitors sign up to see information, and every logon it demands more details. So I am glad I used a throwaway account and I expect many others did too, or filled it in with junk. I hope their database is poisoned with garbage. I’m sure they will continue to turn the screws - using a mobile device? You MUST use our app etc. I hope people realise that LinkedIn already sucks and here is something even worse moving into the same space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  From the article that they acquired a professional social networking app so their intention is clearly to be like LinkedIn - real names, links, career history, “social”. They want to monetize that information to sell to recruiters and salesmen.

  So basically they’re nakedly greedy and they continue to suck. I thought LinkedIn was awful but Glassdoor is a whole new level of awful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Glassdoor is little more than a shakedown service like Yelp or Tripadvisor. It looks superficially useful but the real purpose is to suck information out of users to monetize, and extort businesses for $$$ for review “curation”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: it's not just Tesla, 1/3 of cars in built in the last ten years have passenger/rear windows that are almost impossible to break in an emergency.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s still possible to open it before the car submerges. It’s also possible to open it if you have the wherewithal to wait until the inside is nearly full. That’s providing you know where the damned release lever is. But if you’re panicking and pulling the electronic release and nothing happens then you’re going to die no matter what. Same too if the car is on fire or whatever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: it's not just Tesla, 1/3 of cars in built in the last ten years have passenger/rear windows that are almost impossible to break in an emergency.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And Tesla, being the helpful sort, also makes it hard to open the doors in an emergency. The front might have manual door release mechanism somewhere - good luck finding it when the car is on fire or sinking. The rear… not so much.

  EuroNCAP is changing its testing regime to end some of the BS of removing physical controls and it should probably include door handles in that regime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Usage Of Elon Musk’s X Dropped 30% In The Last Year, Study Suggests⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really. Pre-musk, reporting racism & other abuses was more likely to illicit a response than not. Nowadays it is a was of time to even bother unless it is extremely overt… And all the shitheads with few exceptions who were perma banned got reinstated no matter how awful they were.

  And the situation with blueticks is self evident. It used to mean somebody noteworthy - journalists, actors, politicians, authors, scientists etc. Now it’s trolls and narcissists with money to waste on a vanity tick. Popular feeds will have pages of inane comments by these scumbags to scroll through. There are even actual Nazis with blueticks who complain/brag about the ad revenues they receive from engagement. It couldn’t be any more removed than the way it was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Usage Of Elon Musk’s X Dropped 30% In The Last Year, Study Suggests⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Doesn’t surprise me. Musk has cultivated and emboldened racists, homophobes, cryptobros, misogynists, and the far right and the platform has turned into a cesspit. Meanwhile scammers & bots run rampant and the blueticks stink up every thread with cretinous remarks and trolling.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people have just given up with it, or moved to another social media that isn’t so toxic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Usage Of Elon Musk’s X Dropped 30% In The Last Year, Study Suggests⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Definitely. I think it has just about reached a critical mass users writing content to attract new users and it looks so similar to Twitter there is practically zero friction in moving. I think it’ll really kick off when we see more heavy hitters coming over - big news networks, public figures, governments etc.

  I think news orgs in particular should be removing themselves from obnoxious social media platforms (e.g. Twitter) and move to somewhere where the engagement is more genuine and not toxic rants by racists and morons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BBC: Extending our Mastodon social media trial⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If a server were an obvious conduit for disinfo then other servers could defederate from it. But if it was different accounts on different servers mixed in with authentic users then it’s almost impossible to remove. What tools does mastodon / lemmy even provide to spot inauthentic behaviour? And because we’re talking different servers run in different ways there is no clear picture from above that can be formed in the same way that a centralized social media platform might have - identifying suspicious clusters of nodes or traffic.

  As for federation’s future we’ll wait and see. Both bluesky and threads are talking of providing federation protocols - threads using activitypub and bluesky it’s own API. As for Mastodon & Lemmy I see a lot of positive interest in these things. The fact we’re commenting on Lemmy instead of Reddit says a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older PCs⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because Windows is also perfectly fine for running Windows applications & games. It can also be a royal pain in the arse to set up Windows emulation on Linux depending on your graphics card and some other factors.

  It’s actually easier to get Linux running on Windows since it has WSL. I have Ubuntu running under Windows with IntelliJ open at the moment and postgres running in the background right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France uncovers a vast Russian disinformation campaign in Europe⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes you can have a social discourse. What I mean is somebody took time to turn some disinfo in meme form and amplify it. This is inauthentic actors poisoning discussions with lies and division.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BBC: Extending our Mastodon social media trial⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I do fear that as federation grows, then so too will potentially the same threats that happen on centralised social media. The fediverse is going to have a lot of vulnerable servers who won’t moderate or detect trolls & bots and over time the issue could become extremely onerous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BBC: Extending our Mastodon social media trial⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All large news orgs and NGOs need to do the same - federate their server which becomes the source of truth, and then mirror the content over other social media which is not federated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France uncovers a vast Russian disinformation campaign in Europe⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Europe certainly is. I should note that while most of their campaigns happen over on Twitter & Facebook that if federated social media ever took off in a big way it would happen there too and it might actually be harder to control if it did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France uncovers a vast Russian disinformation campaign in Europe⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well yes and obviously. Russia is a bad actor and obviously wants to sow division & doubt over the war in Ukraine, to sow division in general, and to slander political enemies. They have a special interest in interfering with US and European politics.

  They’re not the only bad actor of course. If you see memes & misinfo trend about immigration, Ukraine, drugs, vaccines, climate change, abortion, gas & oil, politics, NATO, EVs, MAGA, Palestine / Israel, dissidents etc. then invariably there is a bad actor driving that crap. They’ll use their clusters of bots on Twitter to amplify the info until it gets picked up by useful idiots looking to retweet around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Journalist says he finds it ‘surreal’ to have account on X suspended after writing critique of platform⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s time for news orgs and journalists to say a) “we’re hosting our content on our own Mastodon server and that will be the source of truth for federated platforms (eventually including Threads and Bluesky)”, b) “we will mirror the content across non-federated social media platforms that support free and fair reporting”.

  In other words give Twitter the middle finger and make the content available everywhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Settle His Jet-Tracking Beef, New Book Claims⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s worse than that. The usual way of buying a company is a memorandum of understanding followed by due diligence, followed by signing a contract and then the actual completion. Elon went straight to signing the contract and then had big old shit fit when the Twitter board held him to the terms of the contract and the penalties for pulling out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hogwarts Legacy has officially cleared Zelda as 2023's best-selling game worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. Some game “reviews” were such absurd, performative straw man attacks at JK Rowling that they bordered on parody. I’m thinking of the Wired one in particular but others were equally bad. The irony is these diatribes clearly helped the game, or rather, this really good game sold well in spite of that crap. Ultimately these websites just undermined their own reputations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hogwarts Legacy has officially cleared Zelda as 2023's best-selling game worldwide⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought it was a great game that captured the spirit of the books & movies so well. Thankfully all the mock outrage and bogus reviews didn’t affect its sales and probably boosted them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wait for “try prime for 30 days” offers. I’ll sign up for it, instantly cancel it to prevent recurring bills, and then order whatever it was I was thinking of over the last six months. Because once upon a time I’d be on Amazon all the time, browsing this and that, but it has become such a cesspool that I infrequently bother. If I wanted to wade through a sea of Chinese OEM crap and counterfeit products, then I might as well use Aliexpress and be done with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get 'Comfortable' Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would be surprised if their sub service was not a failure. In fairness the service has hundreds of games but most in the last 5 years has been garbage and beyond that, where is the value? As a consumer I might as well buy old games on GOG, Steam or wherever at my discretion rather than be locked in to a sub that costs the same and have nothing to show for it afterwards.

  These services need thousands of games, across a range of publishers. Even better if they support downloads or streaming as options. So basically I don’t see subs working unless it is large platform owner who can incentivize publishers to partake in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get 'Comfortable' Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Subscriptions are taking off, just not Ubisoft subscriptions because most of their games are derivative shit.

  And personally I don’t have an objection with the concept of subscription as an option. It’s no worse than streaming music or videos, or renting a DVD / VHS back when. But whatever the service is will have to have a LOT of content, not just back catalogue but new stuff too with fair & reasonable terms for people to want to subscribe.