FinishingDutch
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 7 hours 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? 18 hours 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 weeks 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 weeks 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 weeks 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 weeks 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? 3 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 [Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday 4 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 [Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday 5 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.
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 5 months ago:
I actually do have WPE… it was in a bundle one time, so I got it for free. Tried it once, but I’m conceptually not a fan of running extra software on my gaming PC to run fancy wallpapers.
Supposedly it’s not TOO power hungry and can turn itself off when gaming. How’s your experience been with that?
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 5 months ago:
I still have PTSD from the era of the ‘polyphonic ringtone’ hype. Those were the ‘fancier’ ringtones that weren’t just your usual beep or bell.
Usually you’d buy them by sending a text message to some expensive number and it would be sent to your phone. If you were dumb, yoi could get basically scammed into a ‘subscription’ so you’d get sent these expensive ringtones frequently. Many a teen got yelled at for that mistake in the late 90’s.
If you were a tech savvy lad, you could hook your phone up to your Windows PC and upload shitty ringtones yourself as well as wallpapers and such.
These days, who gives a shit? My iPhone ringtone is still the default ring. I honestly don’t care what it is, as it’s usually just annoying anyway.
- Comment on Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app 5 months ago:
Paying for ANY wallpaper is just silly, much less a subscription model.
The only time you should pay for one if it’s an artist you want to actively support and/or thank for that specific work.
- Comment on I have no idea how to react to this. 5 months ago:
Back in the Trump days I saw a documentary on YouTube about the rise in LGBTQ+ gun culture.
Basically, most of the interviewed folks reasoned: I’d rather not need or use a gun, but the people who want me dead all have them, so I want to protect myself. Obviously, there’s also just people in that community who enjoy guns regardless. Both are perfectly valid reasons.
- Comment on Oxygen 5 months ago:
After it gets dark, they refill it with lighter fluid. Every morning they light it fresh with a big ‘ole Zippo.
- Comment on The Extreme Cost of Training AI Models. 5 months ago:
Geez, you’d think Gemini would be better than it is if they spent that much on it…
- Comment on Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers 5 months ago:
This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.
- Comment on Inaccuracies 5 months ago:
Some works will outright lie about it. For example, the TV show and movie Fargo specifically tell you it’s a true story, and even that names have been changed but ‘the rest has been told exactly as it happened’.
To me that’s weird. It doesn’t really add to the end result in my opinion, but would breed distrust when people discovered it was wholly fictional.
Still, even with things that are meant to be accurate portrayal of an event, it’s always good to check the facts. Hollywood just can’t help but fiddle with reality to tell a more interesting story, even when it doesn’t need it.
- Comment on FTC urged to make smart devices say how long they will be supported 5 months ago:
Well the new account was for the new streaming service which replaced the old one. And since that’s a different company… different TOS, obviously.
It was mildly annoying, but at least it means I can still use the radio I bought.
- Comment on FTC urged to make smart devices say how long they will be supported 5 months ago:
It’s really in the tech sector’s best interest to do that anyway. Because as a consumer, I’m now quite hesitant to buy a thing without knowing if it’s going to be properly supported.
We’ve all been burned before. My Sonos webradio lost functionality for a while after some backend streaming service was defunct. They did manage to fix that but it meant installing a new app, new account that sort of thing. It’s annoying- but at least the manufacturer did the right thing to keep it working. I can only imagine how frustrating it would’ve been if the entire thing stopped working with no support…
Basically, that experience is why I’m no longer willing to buy things that wholly depend on outside servers and the like to keep working. There’s too much risk of ending up with an expensive paperweight.
- Comment on Butcherbirb 5 months ago:
“Oi, cunt!”
- Comment on Bill! BILL! Bill! BILL! 5 months ago:
While I’m not fundamentally opposed to kids learning basic math, even at that time it was used (think 1990-1996) it was a bullshit argument to ban them. After all, they were already cheap enough that a kid could have one on their wrist!
Heck, you can now buy them for less than a dollar on Aliexpress. But why would you, since literally every smartphone has one built in. It was silly to ban them.
- Comment on Bill! BILL! Bill! BILL! 5 months ago:
Those were actually banned at the schools I went to as a kid. Along with calculator watches, couldn’t have one of those either. ‘Because you need to know math and won’t always have a calculator on you when you grow up’ 😂