willington
@willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 1 day ago:
Lots of companies feel the need to serve their users on their way up.
Once they feel they got much or most of the market on lock, they no longer need to justify themselves to their users, and a cycle of pure valueless exploitation begins, aka enshittification.
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 1 day ago:
You didn’t read my message.
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 1 day ago:
That’s just a longer way to say, yes, shareholders asked for it.
Just because they didn’t ask it in letter form or explicitely that doesn’t mean much.
Look, if M$ does this ‘agentic’ move and its shares drop 20% overnight, then, and only THEN you’d be right to say the shareholders did not ask for it.
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 1 day ago:
Billionaires, looking for more mass control.
It is not for our benefit.
- Comment on FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site 1 week ago:
Owners win.
If have a plot of land with some cherry trees on it, I can get a landless person to pick most of them for free.
I make an offer “for every 100 pounds/kilos of cherries you pick for me, I’ll let you keep 1”. If the person who receives such an offer has no land of their own, the have to agree to avoid starvation.
That’s why our system needs a huge class of the landless, resourceless, and assetless people. Then for the priveledge of touching a privatized resource you have accept the privateer’s conditions.
Fencing off resources and protecting the fence by the threat of death is how this scam works. And it is impossible to fix this societal problem by simply trading more and better as an individual. The ruleset of the game is tuned for mass free energy extraction from the assetless class at the macro level.
- Comment on Elon Musk says Optimus will 'eliminate poverty' in speech after his $1 trillion pay package was approved 1 week ago:
There needs to be a hard cap on wealth at around 100 mil, but defined relative some multiple of a median yearly salary.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
If I were assuming I would not need to converse first.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
In a democracy there will be persusion in the form of arguments.
But in a democracy the demos is not actively or low-key campaigning to give away their power, to put the interests of economic royalists ahead of their own.
In other words, the quality of energy is not defensive when someone tells you to be more proactive, faster, more zealous in defending your own interests.
The first functioning democratic governance was practiced by the pirates. Why? Each pirate could kill half the crew at night. And they all knew this fact about each other. So they did the rational thing: nobody’s voice can be ignored, or there are dire concequences.
The only way democracy works is if most people will want to govern, make policy, make and change the rules of the game, own the game, and not merely passively playing the ruleset they inherited from their ancestors.
Once you encounter someone who lacks that hunger to be an administrator and not merely a passive and reactionary player, more arguments is the wrong way to go. These passive people cooperatively bind to economic royalists and their entire view of life is not 1, 5, or 10000 arguments away. They together with the economic royalists are an obstacle, not some harmless loyal opposition, but basically a team of rapists and their enablers.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
That’s fair. Then to me you are neutral at best, assuming you are largely apolitical.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
Your thinking sucks.
I want a comrade who will help me govern my world.
I don’t want a dead weight that requires a lot of persuation before they can even let out a fart.
I am thinking ahead. I can persuade you now, and tomorrow I will have to persuade you again. Anytime I want cooperation I will need to persuade you. And you are just one person. I am going nowhere fast with that approach. The default for you becomes one of passivity. And then I have to start persuading you after thing have gotten already very bad.
That will not do.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
No. We need to start thinking and talking like me first. There must be anger and a demanding atmosphere.
Courts are not the only way.
Other ways: legislation, direct action, economics.
We have to impose our will. Don’t act lke a warmed over fish.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
Because he or she works for Google’s image and status management interests.
Does not matter consiously or unconsciously. Does not matter paid or free. Dependent or independent. Good faith or bad. Bot or human. None of it matters.
What matters is the result of their action/speech, and the priorities. And it is loud and clear what those are.
“Google must be trusted and given all the information first. Then, if you can find mismanagement, try to procecute your grivance after an injury has occured and was proven.”
^^^ We need to flip the script here.
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 1 week ago:
I disagree that we need to find mismanagement first.
Never mind that Google is 100% opaque from outside and is not subject to inspections by its users.
Even if Google had an open door policy inviting and empowering any and all citizen auditors, I would still disagree that Google gets the benefit of doubt by default, and only after something blows up can we begin asserting our interests.
I think we can assert our interests any time, for any reason, and for no reason at all, with arbitrary aggessiveness, limited only by our own practical considerations.
Instead of waiting for things to go wrong, we can protect our interests before there is even a chance of things going wrong.
Can.
Will we? Each person has to consider their situation pragmatically, but if they considered everything and decided to assert themselves, we would be idiots to insist Google gets the first dibs, they have the initiative, and so how dare we want to limit Google in any way without first PROVING harm. Horse. Shit.
I take the same view toward any monopolies in general. We should not bother proving harm. We should break all monopolies as a matter of principle, even if they are “harmless.”
And Google shound be given as close to zero information as possible. As a matter of principle.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
- Comment on The Value of NVIDIA Now Exceeds an Unprecedented 16% of U.S. GDP 1 week ago:
Then you want real and enforced competition.
- Comment on US Government Urges Total Ban of Our Most Popular Wi-Fi Router 2 weeks ago:
For me it will depend on what that foriegn country is, how it is governed, its cultural norms, things like that.
I don’t have more trust in Chinese government than I do American.
How about some real privacy rights instead of making me choose my surveillers.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 4 weeks ago:
We’ll just wait to be picked up.
Or not.
- Comment on Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia 1 month ago:
We need to concern ourselves with what the corporations do.
Who gives a shit how they explain themselves?
Once the corps do something egregiously bad, we should not ask for an explanation. We should insist they change how they behave. Period.
- Comment on Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books 1 month ago:
Bad corporate behaviour is a political problem.
Here we are talking about technological solutions for political problems. Why?
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 1 month ago:
I mran quality and giant compendiums for their industries/themes.
If some store sends me their catalogue, they’re soliciting. That’s the practice I want to go away.
Instead, say I am in the matket for suits, I pick up a giant men’s apparel catalogue which has ads from every source imaginable. This can be a website too, paper is optional. I come to them when I need something. Every apparel store, vendor, and dealer is in thete. It is competitive and neutral. The owner of the catalogue may not sell their own things in the same catalogue (amazon breaks this important rule). The owner of the catalogue is regulated and may not reject ads for any reason in order to avoid bribes from the vendors to silence their competitors. The ads themselves are regulated and must be truthful and informative, without the psychological manipulations. Talk about the product and do not talk about how I will feel after the purchase.
That’s the vision I have. Computer Shopper was pretty close to this.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 1 month ago:
Bring back catalogs.
Who here remembers Computer Shopper?
When I want something, I’ll come to you. Don’t come to me.
- Comment on Mods react as Reddit kicks some of them out again: “This will break the site” 1 month ago:
That’s not necessarily an issue. The mob is often right.
I’ll take the mob over the despot any day, unless I am the despot.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Right wing influencers and pundits are calling for war and killings as we speak.
We’ll see how they will be investigated.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Truth and “Truth social” are different things.
Truth is good.
Truth social is an owellian social network that is at war with the truth.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Elon sieg heilling twice and then signal boosting facists and illegally cutting democratically approved and institutionally valid spending, that hasn’t radicalized anyone.
Totally normal behavior.
It’s gotta be the video games and the dark web. What’s dark web? It is any web space I don’t know about.
I am not a fan of a few billionaires locking up every freedom we used to have so they can keep trucking toward the world’s first trillionaire.
- Comment on Mods react as Reddit kicks some of them out again: “This will break the site” 1 month ago:
I think the concept of moderation by an individual needs more scrutiny. Why not build a software algorithm to allow for subscribers to vote on moderation actions?
In other words, instead of vertical top heavy moderation, privide a more level, more horizontal process, where our peers play a significant role, or even act as co-moderators.
We are recreating in software all the top down vertical hierarchies we tend to be sceptical of in the real world. Why?
Imagine if there was no jury trial? How much worse would thing be?
So why do we build an online world with a lower standard than we use to build the physical world. That’s just sloppy.
- Comment on Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’ 2 months ago:
More like Google/Alphabet is doing what it can to close up the net, and hopes that openness on the net goes into decline.
- Comment on "Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership 2 months ago:
Can’t prove anything, but I have always had trust issues with Youtube’s numbets. Youtube is a for profit company with horrible owners at the top, and would they distort the numbers for political or financial reasons? I think they would.
I think Youtube and Reddit inflate and deflate vote counts and view counts when something is important to the owners.
Granted that is what I think. Can’t prove it. But Google, Alphabet, Youtube, and the new entrants like Grumble, they are black box for profit companies. Can they pass an independent audit for ther view and subscriber counts? We should not trust anything from these bad actors. Certainly don’t assume good faith. Audit them by five indepencent and transparent auditing companies to prove their numbers are legit. Every six months. Evert year. Forever. Until then I take all those view and subscriber numbers with a fistful of salt.
Linus from LTT was ostensibly really popular. I never watched it. Lets say their old numbers were legit. Is it possible some nephew of Youtube’s CEO is starting a competing channel and Youtube fudges the numbers to help push the nepo channel ahead? To me, yes, it is possible. I have very little trust for those black boxes. “Trust me bro” is all they got so far, and I have little reason to trust these entities.
- Comment on Half of Young Men Would Rather Date an AI Girlfriend Than Face Loneliness or Rejection, New Report Reveals 2 months ago:
I don’t want to eat paint chips. Dating AI is even less appealing.
- Comment on Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs 2 months ago:
I wish my eyesight was so good that I could see obvious flaws in a 4k image.
- Comment on Uber and Lyft drivers in California win a path to unionization 2 months ago:
Legal, yes.
Literal, no.