cobysev
@cobysev@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why Do Sites Keep Shoving Features We Don’t Want Down Our Throats? 1 day ago:
Take YouTube Shorts for instance. I’ve made it clear I hate these things, but they keep popping up on my homepage every other week.
🤔 What’s the deal with this endless pushing of features we hate? Are they just ignoring user feedback entirely, or is there some secret strategy I’m not seeing?
TikTok is insanely popular among the younger generations, so YouTube, also being a video hosting site, wanted to jump on that bandwagon and leech some of the revenue from that style of video. So they came up with YouTube Shorts, to mimic the popular short-form upright video style.
The problem is, YouTube is NOT TikTok. Most of their user base doesn’t go to YouTube for short-form videos. So getting their audience to engage with YouTube Shorts requires them to shove it in our faces until we just get used to it.
That’s the strategy; beat us with it until we give in. They know we’re not going to go away. People aren’t organized enough to properly protest against features in a way that will scare a company into fixing it. So they’re going to keep harassing us until we’re so used to seeing it, we just don’t care anymore. Or until their content attracts the TikTok generation and successfully feeds a whole new category of revenue for the company. That’s the enshittification process for you; as long as it’s profitable, it’s going to stay.
I forget how I did it, but I blocked YouTube Shorts from showing up in my feed. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and that removes all ads on YouTube. I even blocked the YouTube app on my phone and redirected all YouTube links to Firefox.
I used to have another extension that blocked YouTube Shorts, but I don’t see it in my extensions anymore. But they still don’t show, so maybe uBlock Origin is doing it for me?
I also don’t allow YouTube to keep a history of my activity. Which makes my homepage just a blank screen. I’d been fighting them for years, trying to remove all suggested videos from my homepage, and now it’s so simple: I just don’t save my activity and they don’t recommend anything to me.
I have subscriptions that I follow and that’s it; I don’t let them suggest videos for me to watch. I don’t need to feed their algorithms or help them build a better profile on me. I’m very anti-advertisement already, and I do my best to not let companies influence my economic behavior.
- Comment on James Bond is responsible for many wasted vodka martinis 4 days ago:
The Vesper is James Bond’s personal invention, from the very first novel, Casino Royale. It’s basically his own custom twist on the vodka martini.
He explains he only has one drink before dinner, but he prefers it’s a large one, ice cold, and made very well. He drinks plenty of other types of alcohol throughout the books, but he’s pretty particular about this one evening aperitif.
The movies kind of latched onto it and just made him drink vodka martinis in general. Although the 2006 film Casino Royale had him order his custom invention from a bar, almost word-for-word from the original novel. It’s named after Vesper Lynd, the first girl Bond truly fell for in the novels.
- Comment on James Bond is responsible for many wasted vodka martinis 4 days ago:
James Bond was an alcoholic, with good reason. He didn’t drink vodka martinis for the taste, he drank them to dull the pain and horrors of his job. As much as he drank, he probably didn’t really taste the booze anymore.
The original James Bond from the novels was a dark and brooding high-functioning alcoholic, who operated at his best with a drink or two in him at all times. He was pretty useless without the drink. A vodka martini would quickly get him in the right headspace to accomplish his latest mission.
The movie Bond was reinvented to be this dashing, handsome womanizer who drank and smoked socially and was charming as hell. Basically, a 1950s ideal male fantasy. This Bond probably could’ve used a classier drink than straight vodka, but that’s one aspect of the books they kept pretty loyal.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #58 - Black Mesa (Half-Life) 5 days ago:
It’s not that bad. They have three difficulty settings: Normal, Black Mesa, and Hard. I played on Normal and I haven’t really struggled anywhere. I think I’ve only died once in my whole gameplay, and it was when I was fighting off waves of Marines flooding a single large space that I couldn’t leave. I’m assuming “Black Mesa” is their suggested difficulty level.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #58 - Black Mesa (Half-Life) 6 days ago:
Thanks for your support! My posts originally started as just a random screenshot or two of the latest game I was playing. But I always hated how people just talked about specific video games like everyone on the thread was intimately familiar with them. Especially if it was a game that sounded interesting to me. I wanted to know more about it!
So I decided to use my screenshots as a way to introduce newcomers to each game; give them a little intro to the plot and gameplay so they’d be interested in trying it out for themselves. Or to remind previous players of a great game they hadn’t played in a while.
By the time I started writing long-form blog entries on video games, I already had a bit of a series going and I didn’t want to suddenly change the title of my numbered posts. So they are “random” screenshots of my games, but they’re also a spoiler-free in-depth exploration of each game.
One day, I plan to go back and re-do some of my earlier posts so I can actually have in-depth discussion on those games too.
I’ve also been archiving my posts on a personal blog, in case any of them get taken down or blocked here for any reason. If anyone’s interested in checking out my history of posts, it’s a bit easier to review the archive at that link.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #58 - Black Mesa (Half-Life) 6 days ago:
They put a ton of effort into remaking Xen so that it blends better into the gameplay and story. I think I read somewhere that Half-Life took about an hour to slog through Xen, but Black Mesa, despite having around 4 hours of Xen gameplay, was actually really enjoyable.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #58 - Black Mesa (Half-Life) 6 days ago:
Here’s a bonus screenshot for you. I really like this image, just because it’s sort of an ominous “quiet before the storm” shot. Seeing both scientists watch you with silent anticipation as you’re about to cause a world-altering event in that next room.
- Submitted 6 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 21 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Movies have actually been a huge influence on America’s view on sexuality, if not the largest influence.
There’s one organization, CARA (the Classification and Rating Administration) who provides ratings for movies and TV shows in the US, and they’ve heavily censored nudity in film for decades, giving films shockingly high ratings if even a breast is flashed on screen for a moment.
This has caused studios to limit nude scenes, or to be extremely creative about sex scenes, to avoid higher ratings. Because the higher the rating, the smaller the audience will be, and they want to appeal to a larger audience.
If you watch American films from the 70s and earlier, seeing casual nudity in a film was a pretty normal thing, whereas you have to buy a porno just to see any nudity today.
This had a nasty backfire effect, where our culture now associates nudity with sex. We don’t appreciate the natural human body unless it’s under the context of sexual desire or procreation.
The crazy thing is, nobody really knows who the members of CARA are. Their identity is kept secret. The heads of their organization are known; you can check them out on their official website (www.filmratings.com/About), but the organization as a whole keeps their members’ names secret. So we have no idea who these people are who are censoring nudity in American films.
- Comment on Is it better to leave a country, or stay behind to fight for it? And what about the ethics of fleeing instead of staying behind? 1 week ago:
This depends on a lot of factors. If you’re part of a targeted demographic due to race, gender, religion, etc., then it might be safer to flee before you draw attention to yourself.
If you’re not a targeted demographic, then it might be best to stick around and stand up for your fellow citizens. But this could also lump you in with the targeted demographic and might eventually lead to your own persecution, so it’s a risky choice.
Either way, I still advocate for standing up to any oppression or persecution going on in your home country. No one should ever lose their home to dictators and/or fascists.
This is actually how a lot of states get divided politically. People see a place as a “red state” or a “blue state” and decide to either avoid them or move away if their political ideology doesn’t line up. But that just further entrenches the area into a political leaning. By sticking around and advocating for human rights and better community and respect, you can help prevent the splitting of communities and stop divisive concepts like fascism from forming.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 weeks ago:
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.I was worrying about this change because my Plex server provides free streaming for several of my friends and family and I didn’t want them to have to start paying for it. The whole point was to get them away from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.
But this sounds like, since I’m already a Plex Pass subscriber, my remote viewers will still be able to access my stuff for free. Do I have that right? Because if so, this change is just business as usual for me.
- Comment on Just watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Got me thinking can people in the military turn down an order because they disagree with it on sensible grounds? Like Trump ordering them to invade CN? 4 weeks ago:
I mean, I am the source. This was my personal experience while serving in the military.
But if you want official reports to back up what I experienced, here’s you go:
I was working in an Intelligence unit when Trump was president (not the one directly briefing him) and it’s all anyone talked about at the time. They had to be extremely careful what information they shared with him because he would just go and post details on his social media accounts.
My unit had to change a lot of their missions and coordination because Trump would expose our secrets online. It ruined a lot of ongoing missions we had planned, and we had to scrap and rebuild a lot of our programs after he blabbed about them.
Trump fires top US general in unprecedented Pentagon shakeup
This was more recent, after I retired. But he basically fired our top military leaders, then made his own suggestions for replacements, completing ignoring the official promotion system we have in place.
He didn’t want people with years of experience and exemplary service to lead our military, he just wants his own loyalists in charge so he can control the military. He nominated highly unqualified people for the positions, with the only seemingly common quality being that they were loyal to Trump.
He was also annoyed at how hard it was to replace key people and wanted to circumvent official processes so he can hire and fire people at will, like his old businesses.
- Comment on Just watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Got me thinking can people in the military turn down an order because they disagree with it on sensible grounds? Like Trump ordering them to invade CN? 4 weeks ago:
I retired from the US military 3 years ago. Yes, they can refuse unlawful orders. If I was still serving, I’d be abusing the hell out of that regulation right now.
During Trump’s last presidency, our intelligence community actually held back a lot of details in his intelligence briefings because we knew he couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut. He has a top secret clearance, not because he could be trusted with it, but because it was a requirement for his job. And he also reversed our decision to withhold clearances from sketchy members of our government, so a lot of untrustworthy people also got access to our sensitive data, and thanks to that, we had a lot of compromised missions during his first tenure as president.
But we also had a majority Democrat government, which kept him in check. This time around, he’s attempting to replace everyone he can with his “yes men” so he gets no push-back. He’s even been trying to replace military generals with his own loyalists. If he can control the military, he can basically stage a coup overnight and no one will be able to stop him.
Things are getting really dangerous right now, so that regulation about refusing unlawful orders is very important, and I hope our current military members are willing to exercise it as needed.
- Comment on Spent half an hour on it. Felt good. 4 weeks ago:
SQL is the language. Its name is also an acronym, for “Structured Query Language.”
- Comment on Spent half an hour on it. Felt good. 4 weeks ago:
They’re both acronyms, so yes? You always write acronyms in upper case.
Structured Query Language (SQL)
HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
Some exceptions to the rule exist, like “Database” is usually abbreviated as Db in acronyms. For instance, IMDb (Internet Movie Database).
Although considering database is a singular word, it makes sense to lower-case the middle letter of the word, as it wouldn’t be capitalized in the spelled-out word anyway.
- Comment on It may be true but doesn't help me today 5 weeks ago:
My first car was a 1991 Honda Ascot. I bought it in 2003 in Japan, when I was stationed there with the US military. I bought it off a fellow service member who was leaving the country, for $1,000. I gave it to another service member for free when I bought a better car a year later.
- Comment on U good, fam? 1 month ago:
Living the dream…
- Comment on ENHANCE 1 month ago:
I use a VPN that won’t load catbox images for some reason. If I turn it off, catbox starts working again.
- Comment on Day 201 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 1 month ago:
Epic just recently announced that they’re never releasing it outside of their store. They’re the exclusive publisher, so they have distribution rights, and their CEO Tim Sweeney is determined to snub his nose at Steam, even though Alan Wake 2 still hasn’t earned back its production costs. It’s a complete flop, but they won’t extend to the Steam market to help sales.
Unlike other games, where publishers sign exclusivity contracts with Epic Games for a certain time period, Alan Wake 2 was actually published by Epic Games, meaning that Epic Games gets to decide what systems the game releases on. So it’s not coming to Steam. Which means I’ll never get to play it, because I’m never giving a penny to that awful store of theirs.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #57 - Aperture Desk Job 1 month ago:
The plots of Portal 2 singleplayer, co-op, and PTI are very “distant” from anything happening with Half-Life.
From what I understand (it’s been a while since I read up on the lore), Portal 1 and 2 take place after the Combine invasion of Earth, shortly after the first Half-Life game. That’s why Aperture Science is almost completely devoid of life, minus the personality cores that are attempting to continue running things. It’s because of the resonance cascade incident at Black Mesa that Aperture Science is now mostly defunct, and Chell is trapped as a lab rat at GLaDOS’ mercy.
So the Portal series is pretty reliant on Half-Life’s story to justify their plot, even if it’s never directly addressed in the game itself.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #57 - Aperture Desk Job 1 month ago:
This is actually my second Steam Deck. I bought the original LCD-screen one back when they were first announced, but they had a nasty habit of the bumper buttons (L1 and R1) breaking. Sure enough my L1 button broke and I just never sent it back to get it fixed. I’ve just been re-mapping that button to the L2 (trigger) button instead.
Recently, my wife expressed interest in having a Steam Deck (she almost bought her own when they first came out), and she claimed she was perfectly content taking my old one, since she doesn’t game as much as me anyway. So I bought a fancy new HDR OLED-screen Steam Deck. It’s much more responsive than my first one. And the bumper buttons work! I forgot how nice it is to just play a game without re-mapping buttons first.
- Submitted 1 month ago to games@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on what exercises work for you to avoid back pain? 2 months ago:
I’ve been shaving since I was 12 years old (I’m 40 now). For most of those shaving years, I liked to get really close to the mirror, to ensure I didn’t miss a spot, so I always leaned far over the sink to get that close shave.
Unbeknownst to me, spending decades leaning unsupported over the sink for 7-10 minutes every morning gave me very strong lower back muscles, which also helped to stabilize my core. I never had back problems, even when all my friends, family, and coworkers started to develop back pain later in life.
About 7 years ago, I discovered the wonders of shaving in the shower. I put a small mirror on my shower wall and shaved without all the additional hassle of cleaning a sink and counter. It was wonderful… except I wasn’t doing my morning lower back routine because I could stand upright, right next to the mirror. My lower back started getting weaker over time.
About 4 years ago, I slipped while going down my stairs and landed hard, injuring my back. I used to be able to bounce back from a fall like that, but I actually had to go to the ER to ensure I hadn’t broken something; I couldn’t even sit up straight without pain.
The pain lessened but never really went away and I found myself finally stuck with permanent back pain.
I’m considering getting rid of my shower mirror and shaving over the sink like I used to, to help rebuild my lower back muscles and better support my spine. My wife deals with permanent back pain thanks to degenerative disc disease, and the things that helps her the most is building a stronger core and lower back muscles, to take the support away from the areas that want to cause pain.
- Comment on How Star Trek: Lower Decks Managed To Get Enterprise’s Jolene Blalock To Appear, And Why She’s Only Credited By Her First Name 2 months ago:
The creator of Lower Decks wrote her a letter explaining how important her character was to him and she read the script and enjoyed it. She also asked if she could just go by Jolene in this, which he was cool with.
Saved you a click.
- Comment on I never realized this 2 months ago:
A coworker of mine did this. He and his new wife took parts of their last names and blended them together to create a unique new last name for both of them.
- Comment on We all need Seaman back in our lives! 2 months ago:
Oh wow, this was actually a thing.
- Comment on Zelensky condemns Russian 'inhumane' Christmas attack on energy grid 3 months ago:
His last name has two Y’s. Zelenskyy. I don’t know why there are so many articles dropping that second Y now, but I’ve seen a bunch of them on Lemmy in the past few weeks.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #51 - Tavern Manager Simulator 4 months ago:
For single player games, I don’t see why players shouldn’t be able to play on their own pace.
Agreed, I always hate when games force me to rush an event or situation. I’m here to have fun! Let me enjoy it at my own pace!
Although I think the days in this game are plenty long enough. Just when I’m getting tired from running around, I realize it’s evening time in-game. It’s mostly morning that comes too soon. Once I’m prepped for the next day, I don’t have much time to run around and explore before it’s time to reopen the tavern.
I could just close earlier, but the more stuff I sell each day, the more money I have to work with for the next day. Upgrades cost money to unlock, so I’ve been saving up to expand the tavern. I haven’t bought any decorations and I only bought more tables so I can sell to more customers at a time. Although I don’t get enough customers to fill all the seats right now.
- Submitted 4 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 3 comments
- Comment on Lab Assistant Jobs 4 months ago:
If I had to ask my boss for permission to use the restroom all the time, I’d probably respond the same way.
