FinishingDutch
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
- Comment on Are there any Lemmy/Mbin instances by women for women? 1 week ago:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
It really comes down to this: if you want your own space for particular interests, you should create one and find likeminded people to populate it. Just waiting for it to magically appear isn’t going to work. Be assertive.
- Comment on A 'US-Made iPhone' Is Pure Fantasy 2 weeks ago:
Sure, plenty of small phones with good battery life back then. Owned a new phone every three months or so, innovation went that fast in the 90’s.
But those small phones have a few drawbacks. Too small for my hands and you can’t really shoulder it like we used to with landlines.
I also mis proper flip phones like the Motorola Startac. You could snap those closed with authority. Can’t quite do that with those modern folding screen flips.
- Comment on A 'US-Made iPhone' Is Pure Fantasy 2 weeks ago:
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
I’d looooove a return of the brick phone. Modern phones feel small and dainty in my giant hands. Meanwhile, battery life absolutely sucks. I’d love a modern brick phone that does calls, text and nothing else. And a battery life of a fulm week.
- Comment on This is unfair! 2 weeks ago:
GET your HAND off my PENISSSSS!
- Comment on Today's Survey. One point for everything that you have NEVER DONE 3 weeks ago:
Only one that I haven’t done is paper checks. Those weren’t really a thing here.
Of course, a few of those have come back around to be used by younger generations. There’s teens who rediscovered Polaroid and other film cameras in recent years. Ten years ago, cassettes saw a resurgence and vinyl was also selling well.
- Comment on Always guard against living in the world of fantasy rather than undeniable facts 4 weeks ago:
I miss the 1996 internet, when it was just us nerds arguing about Star Trek versus Star Wars. We never should’ve invited the rest into our space. That was the beginning of the end.
- Comment on The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst 4 weeks ago:
They’ll make it back in HOURS, especially if it launches on PC same day. I went to the V night launch way back when. There were 500+ people in line at the store I went to. I didn’t sleep for three days after getting it. The hype train is only getting started and will ramp up to supersonic once we get a firm date. I’ll be buying a copy for every platform that I own. It’s going to be sheer fucking pandemonium.
That guy has NO CLUE whatsoever in terms of GTA hype and popularity.
- Comment on The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst 4 weeks ago:
Companies need to grow a spine. Good games sell regardless of what’s out. If your confidence in your own game is so low that you’d push it to a slow release date, it’s probably not worth playing anyway.
- Comment on Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content 1 month ago:
Good grief, modern education has really failed that person if they don’t recognise the nam Leon Trotsky. He’s basically responsible for at least three chapters in any history textbook worth reading. Your post was CLEARLY a joke to anyone with half a brain.
But hey, I’m not surprised at what happened. Because the quality of moderation really took a nosedive since the API fiasco. Lots of not-shitty mods jumped ship or got banned, leaving only folks like that in charge: petty, dumb little dictators.
Well, we’re glad to have you here :D
- Comment on Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content 1 month ago:
Reddit going full mask-off 1984 huh? Next thing it’ll be illegal to downvote things Reddit likes to push… Or why even bother with the votes anyway, Reddit will just show you only the things that it deems good for you, like the benevolent Big Brother.
Fuck that place.
Also: welcome to all our new members! “We’re Not Perfect, But At Least We’re Not Reddit!” ™
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 1 month ago:
Correct, as the article points out. Sites aren’t made with smaller screens in mind, and 62-68 percent of web traffic is made with phones.
Phones are not JUST a status thing, but having a better one is certainly more appealing to consumers, rather than a device that they and others know is purposefully gimped.
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 1 month ago:
Consumers just aren’t that interested in a product that’s visibly cheaper and worse than what everyone else is carrying. And that is what a smaller phone signals.
Phones are a status purchase; they all do basically the same things, but most people gravitate towards higher end phones because they offer all the fancy features. Flagship phones are all large, so that’s what you see in the marketing. Just like you’ll never see a car company put its cheapest base model on a car catalog cover.
A smaller phone tends to cut corners; it’s not just smaller, but also functionally worse. While the price might be appealing, the potential customer also knows that using said phone will mean a worse experience, and might even get them ridiculed because they got ‘the cheap one’.
So we can absolutely go back to small phones - we just don’t want to. Smaller, cheaper, worse products just don’t appeal to a status-conscious buyer. If phone manufacturers offered the same specs at different sizes, that might change. But any savvy tech buyer knows a smaller phone is worse than the bigger one.
Back in the pre-smartphone days, size was a thing companies could compete on since customers wanted small, light, distinctive designs in premium materials. Like the Motorola Razr V3. These days, that just doesn’t work.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
You’re absolutely right in that it’s a risk.
But you can always buy a CD or digital album and rip the DRM off it. Or pirate it. Assuming you care enough to do that anyways.
Me, I’m not really a music fan. Only reason I have YT Music is because it’s included with YT Premium. So it’s not going to bother me much if certain songs or albums disappear. I’ll just listen to other stuff. Music is merely background noise to me.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
Except a physical library can only hold so many books, they don’t have most of the books I want and you need to return them. A physical library is not useful to me.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
I usually use Anna’s Archive or Lib Gen, depending on what’s actually up and working. Anna scrapes Zlib as well as other sources. Usually that’s where I can find the really obscure stuff.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
I am, yes. It’s not the book download site that I use personally, but you can never have enough options.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if yoy subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music in the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
- Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books 1 month ago:
I just buy physicals of the reference books I really want and pirate the digitals of anything else that isn’t sold DRM-free. I WILL own what I bought, whether they like it or not.
- Comment on Reddit plans to lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says | Reddit executives also discussed how they might introduce more ads into the social media platform 2 months ago:
Welcome! We can definitely still use a few more people, especially if they’re willing to contribute to content.
- Comment on The End of an Era: Exploring the Final Sony MiniDisc Walkman Models 2 months ago:
Well, if by ‘similar priced’ you mean: a very cheap player, it might make sense.
But in 2004, I carried an iPod 4G which had either 20 or 40 gigabytes of storage. You’d need a backpack full of MD’s to match that, even if you put lower quality songs on there. I had my iPod filled with everything from podcasts, audiobooks, complete albums and enough random music to never hear the same song in a month. Absolutely loved that iPod!
- Comment on The End of an Era: Exploring the Final Sony MiniDisc Walkman Models 2 months ago:
Sony made some really sexy devices, but the format itself just came out too late for it to have widespread consumer appeal. MP3 was just way more convenient, and a lot of folks still rocked discmans like myself.
That said: it was actually a very popular format for the media. I was a journalism student 2001-2005 and it was the format we recorded all interviews on. The radio station where I worked at had MD gear, but also used Marantz compactflash recorders, which I personally preferred.
- Comment on Elon Musk just offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion 2 months ago:
Yeah, I’m pretty much done with Lemmy right now. It’s just getting way too much. The sky is falling every five minutes.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 5 months ago:
Agreed. If someone can’t be bothered to write two sentences, they really have no business being on a discussion platform. Because clearly they won’t be contributing much if anything to the conversation.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
These days I just assume nothing’s playable offline. It_ not like my PS5 is ever offline anyway, so it’s not really a point of concern for me.
The actual reason I like physical games is because they’re generally cheaper when they just release and get discounted far sooner than digital games.
For example: Armored Core VI costs 69,99 euros on PS Store.
An online game store here sells it for 19,99 brand new. That means I can buy a copy for myself, I can gift you copy, buy a third one to light on fire as a sacrifice to the gaming gods… and still have money left over for two frozen pizza’s.
That’s why I like physical.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
It’s not the price point. Most of the people who’d be in the market for one wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t take discs. When I bought my PS5, I specifically bought the disc version. So I’m not going to ‘upgrade’ to a machine that doesn’t have one and only really offers ‘improved performance’ as its main selling point. It just doesn’t make sense.
If you’re new to the platform and are used to buying only digital, it might be more palatable. But as someone who’s been with Sony since the very first PlayStation: I’m gonna pass.