BilboBargains
@BilboBargains@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam? 5 days ago:
There’s an argument for using these services in the early stages because they often operate at a loss in the hope that they will secure a monopoly in the future. The trick is to immediately abandon them when they jack the price up. I recently heard that in the food delivery space virtually no one is turning a profit.
- Comment on Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption 1 week ago:
It would not be surprising if found to be true. Difficult to see how the current business model operates at a profit. Their long term goal is the usual loss leader model until a monopoly is achieved and then slug us with ads, sell all the data, hike the price, etc. Sickening to watch them cosy up to fascists. They are probably supplying any and all the agencies with intelligence scraped from their user base. If Facebook were a person they would be a psychopath.
- Comment on Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ? 1 week ago:
It’s not a reason to discount someone’s views, is why. Addicts are still people, worthy of respect and dignity. The real reason to discount RFK is that he’s wrong about most topics pertaining to health and he doesn’t respect the science or evidence that contradict his opinions. The problem is that most of the electorate is scientifically illiterate, the end result being an over privileged dunce like RFK deciding how your health care is organised. Can’t put an insurance premium on that. Good luck guys.
- Comment on How long would it take a black Hole to fully absorb a person from event horizon to center of the earth style? 1 week ago:
Seems that way. Physics predicts completely wild outcomes at the extrema, in this case gravity but also for things that are very small. Quantum entanglement is a very curious phenomenon seemingly transferring information over vast distances instantaneously, faster than the speed of light which is impossible.
- Comment on How long would it take a black Hole to fully absorb a person from event horizon to center of the earth style? 2 weeks ago:
As I understand it, the enormous gravitational force causes time and space to become inverted. Instead of velocity being defined as time to displace position, time occurs over displacement. A person on the event horizon would be apparently frozen in place until they eventually faded to nothing. Not sure how that analogy works since light doesn’t escape a black hole but it’s how Brian Cox explained it.
- Comment on Europe Has a New Plan to Break Free from US Tech Dominance 3 weeks ago:
Who would have thought that populating walled gardens and other enshitified services is a terrible idea?
One of the fundamental problems is that our leadership is becoming increasingly illiterate in technology. In order to leverage the economies of scale for large systems we need to either content ourselves with enshitified corporate solutions or enable collectivised approaches. Wikipedia is an excellent example of this, more of that please.
- Comment on At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do? 3 weeks ago:
Light em up
- Comment on Article: I switched to eSIM in 2025, and I am full of regret 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think a physical SIM is a guarantee that the phone number remains intact. The SIM is a token in the system that links a piece of hardware to a phone number and that link is maintained by the carrier. My phone spontaneously stopped being able to make calls and receive SMS. I went through the usual steps to rectify it but no dice. The carrier had to manually reconnect my number because it had become a victim of their periodic cull of disused numbers. Took quite a few calls over a period days to achieve this. ‘yes I have turned it off and on…’ ad nauseum.
- Comment on 'LeBron James of spreadsheets' wins world Microsoft Excel title 1 month ago:
Excel was developed as a quasi accounting tool for keeping track of basic numerical data. Presumably it gained popularity with small businesses and within corporations. The way it’s used currently goes way beyond the original scope. I’ve personally met many people using it for PhD research and engineering, which is a testament to the versatility of the design but also, wtf.
- Comment on at what point in life it's too late to go back to school? 1 month ago:
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of education. I went back to school at 32 with very little formal education. It was tough but having graduated after ten years I never regretted it. I’m doing a job that I love and have more employment options. Whether or not you go back depends on many factors, especially if it is a serious investment in time and money. I didn’t like my work and that was what motivated me but I had savings and no debt or responsibilities.
- Comment on for a better future for ur children 1 month ago:
If you listen carefully you can hear them squeak one out occasionally.
- Comment on for a better future for ur children 1 month ago:
You’re not going to beat the mosquito or rotavirus when it comes to environmentally friendly killers. Lethality, prodigious. Carbon footprint, minimal (small amount of flatulence, don’t worry about it). This comment was sponsored by Gnawed VPN.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
How they bite without the teeth?
- Comment on 3rd-person shooters optimized for controllers? 2 months ago:
People play FPS games on a PC using a controller?
- Comment on Radon 2 months ago:
OPs has distilled his job title from ‘political agitation meme technician’ to ‘shitposter’.
- Comment on Where the fuck am I? 2 months ago:
Do ostriches have attention deficit disorder?
- Comment on Why would a company force you to use a rental car instead of your own for a drive to the office/Christmas party? 3 months ago:
Most domestic insurance policies do not cover the use of a vehicle on company business and your employer would become implicated in the event of an accident. This necessarily implies that driving to work is not company business which doesn’t make sense to me. Do they think I was out for a drive each morning and just so happened to be in the vicinity of my workplace so I thought why not drop in for a shift? Them’s the rules.
If you do get into an accident and they ask you ‘what gear were you in at the moment of impact?’ Tell them Gucci sweats and Reebok Classics.
- Comment on There was no need to ever improve upon THIS 3 months ago:
It’s about 5-10% more in the UK. The maintenance on a reliable transmission is fairly minimal but any mechanical problems are almost guaranteed to be a nightmare buried under a mountain of metal. I’ve been spared that trauma so far but I remember test driving a used VW Passat which clunked with every shift. Thanks for the test drive, bro.
- Comment on There was no need to ever improve upon THIS 3 months ago:
This works well and it’s not a hill I’ll defend but automatic control of temperature is better when it’s done well. In the UK we have a culture of driving cars with manual transmission and I’ve never understood it when automatic transmissions exist and are pretty good. People wanna feel like they are in control of stuff.
- Comment on Why would I buy this? 3 months ago:
Short answer: you wouldn’t buy this game, given your valid criticisms.
This type of extortionate pricing policy speaks to the general user base being nobs, die hard try hards and probably a toxic gaming environment. Having a barrier to entry in any activity prevents total idiots from entering. Consoles have made it easier for people who don’t understand how to operate a PC to play games but that necessarily means those games will be replete with obnoxious people. The advent of smartphones has done that for the internet.
- Comment on 4chan fined $26K for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act 3 months ago:
It’s ofcom but my phone desperately wants it to be Offcom for some reason
- Comment on 4chan fined $26K for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act 3 months ago:
Offcom has been drinking, came home in a blackout and committed domestic abuse of 4chan. Does Offcom even internet? Alternative plot twist, Offcom is trolling 4chan.
I wanna say that Offcom is doing a good job and trying to protect British people in good faith but I feel like they are being used as a cudgel by the British ruling class to advance an anachronistic agenda. Don’t forget, they fired their expert drugs advisor for telling them that MDMA is comparable to horse riding in terms of safety. They want certain things to be true, regardless of the scientific accuracy.
- Comment on I've recently turned into a blocker. 3 months ago:
Haven’t felt the need to block anyone but it’s nice to have the functionality
- Comment on AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds 4 months ago:
This is a sane way to use LLM. Also, pick your poison, some bots are better than others for a specific task. It’s kinda fascinating to see how other people solve coding problems and that is essentially on tap with a bot, it will churn out as many examples as you want. It’s a really useful tool for learning syntax and libraries of unfamiliar languages.
On one extreme side of LLM there is this insane hype and at the other extreme a great pessimism but in the middle is a nice labour saving educational tool.
- Comment on #freepenisman 4 months ago:
How big is Penis Man?
- Comment on OK what is your Roman name? 4 months ago:
Assius
- Comment on Who the fuck needs an x axis anyway 4 months ago:
Who’s gonna make all the technology, music, art, etc, after we’ve finally cured autism? We might have to start re-autisming people.
- Comment on QUACK QUACK QUACK 4 months ago:
Excellent news. Autism finally squared away. We can dedicate our scientists to finding a cure for trumpism.
- Comment on How did easy access to Porn while growing up impacted Gen-Z ? 4 months ago:
The only people this effects is people who don’t know how to operate a torrent client or have a friend that does, e.g the old people that dream up these ineffectual laws. They want to put the genie back in the bottle by making it someone else’s problem and it will fail like the war on drugs has utterly failed.
Meanwhile, back in reality, developing normal sexual relationships is much more complicated than abstaining from porn. It comes from a cohesive society that values education, healthcare, community and compassion for others. How are we still trying to make abstinence only methods work despite their horrible track record? Our politicial class are mendacious morons from a bygone era.
- Comment on Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’ 4 months ago:
Capitalism prevailed during the rise of the internet but correlation is not causation.
Rockets were sent into space and capitalists would surely love to claim that achievement too, unfortunately it was first fascists followed by communists with the capitalists getting the bronze medal. Should we now decide that space flight is fascist-communist? No. Only scientists and engineers know how to do that. Why didn’t Genghis Khan invent the internet? He didn’t have enough capitalists, surely that was the problem.
