OpenStars
@OpenStars@discuss.online
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 8 hours ago:
A super-long time ago I got a Nexus, b/c they were awesome, and Google was still thought of as being somewhat awesome for offering those.
Nowadays I have been dreading the thought of a Pixel - I’d more likely get a Fairphone I think - but whatever I get, it’s sad to think that a custom ROM is probably going to have to be the default for so many people:-(.
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 11 hours ago:
But these rules only seem to apply to apps that follow the rules. Or perhaps on an OS that does so. Hence a custom ROM would be able to bypass it, or connecting the external storage to a computer via USB or some such? At which point it seems needlessly restrictive. But, I am no expert, and it would indeed increase security for a naive user, so likely that’s what they are aiming at.
- Comment on Fossils 13 hours ago:
Humanity’s closest living relatives, the Chimpanzees, live in forests. They diverged from our lineage 6.5-7.5 million years ago, and there are almost no fossils for them. Except for a statistical fluke, someone studying solely the fossil record could be excused for thinking that they never existed at all… but they do!
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 15 hours ago:
Thanks for sharing!
Oh wow, so much going on there.
What if a malicious app decides to place child pornography or a crypto mining whatever onto your device - but since its space is “private”, can unethical people now legally do that, and simply blame that Google wouldn’t let them see into the space, hence they “did not know that it was there”? This would seem to open the door to so very many problematic issues…
On the other hand this seems related solely to “external” storage - I haven’t used external storage on an Android for… actually I’ve never used it iirc. For this Netflix case, would they disallow downloading onto your device unless you have an external SIM? Also, if you used external storage, then how da fuq could they control you popping that external storage into some other device entirely, like a rooted device with a custom ROM!? It would have made so much more sense for internal storage… or possibly I am missing something there.
In any case, that sucks that Google seems more and more to be buying into the “walled garden” philosophy - you know, “for your convenience”, aka selling YOU as the product to the investor class.:-(
A quick search seems to suggest there is no known way around this, except to use an older Android OS:-(. I would hope that this would absolutely wake people up to realize why Google cannot be trusted - as if what happened to searching wasn’t enough on its own.
- Comment on Fossils 19 hours ago:
At least, older than our words.
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 1 day ago:
Looks like the last release was 2020, so yeah they almost certainly meant laptops.
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 1 day ago:
I am not certain I know what you mean.
Netflix hasn’t given any reason for ditching downloads on Windows: when Windows Latest asked about it they were simply directed to the relevant support document, which confirms that a new app is “coming soon”, without the download option.
The fact that downloading is still available on Windows is purely bc the update hasn’t rolled out yet.
They think (unproven) that this radical change might be due to the cheaper licensing options if they remove the ability to download. A cost-benefit analysis where Windows users will either take it and like it or else who cares about Windows mobile users anyway if they leave. Either way, a victory for licensing companies, or they’ll spin it that way regardless.
My worry is that it will embolden them to go still yet further, making it harder on both pirates and paying customers just bc they can get away with doing so.:-(
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 1 day ago:
Android in the last couple versions has locked its file system down too
Really!? I’m a bit behind, but somehow this surprises me. I mean, not the intention, bc Google’s motto these days is “definitely be evil”, but that it had gotten this far this fast.
Anyway at a guess all you’d have to do is download whatever you want, then root, profit, then turn off root and it wouldn’t even know? Plus the tons of ways that you can do things without even needing root access these days, and I haven’t even mentioned yet a custom ROM. And ofc piracy, where someone else obtains the video files, e.g. ripping from a physical medium. So they will most definitely lose that flight. And in the meantime, the most honest customers are the ones who suffer.
Overall I just chalked this up to: anyone who uses Windows phones (or iOS) basically is at the mercy of profit-seeking behaviors. You will own nothing, and like it - or else!:-(
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 1 day ago:
Let’s not pretend that an “average” mobile user is capable of doing that?
Which is why we need to help one another to get there:-).
- Comment on Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads 1 day ago:
“While downloads will no longer be supported, you can continue to watch TV shows and movies offline on a supported mobile device,” the Netflix document says
So essentially Windows devices are no longer “supported” wrt this particular feature.
It essentially means the Windows app will be little more than a wrapper for the Netflix website.
It’s possible that the move means Netflix can save some money on licensing, which may cost extra if downloads are included – enabling users to take shows and movies around with them and watch them without an internet connection.
So once again everything devolves down to licensing - i.e. it sounds like they were pressured into this hard choice to leave those users in the cold, which they did. Probably bc the user base of Windows phones is so tiny?
Though that is one of the main advantages of Netflix these days, as opposed to e.g. piracy.
TLDR: Ultimately it is yet more enshittification, and while due to licensing rather than Netflix, still it is Netflix users (on Windows phones) who will bear the burden.
My advice would be to disable automatic updates and coast for a long while on the current app version, though that can be easier said than done due to multiple locations of automatic update settings. I have zero experience ever with Windows phones, but good luck if you want to try it!:-|
- Comment on Meirl 2 days ago:
- Comment on Tesla must face fraud suit for claiming its cars could fully drive themselves 3 days ago:
Now watch as Musk faces “consequences™”.
Why, he might have to pay a fine of a full hour’s worth of profits that resulted from his actions!?
- Comment on Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news 5 days ago:
This title is ambiguous: reduces belief in the fake news topics themselves, vs. that fake news exists.
Anyway, yes, it does wonders for mental health and sanity to unplug from that cesspit of human “alternative knowledge”!:-P
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 5 days ago:
We must always keep the needs of the truest victim in every scenario first and foremost (and exclusively) in our thoughts, and ask ourselves: how will this impact tHe EcOnoMy ThO?
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 6 days ago:
theguardian.com/…/bird-flu-human-transmission-pre… mentions that:
the US has accumulated a national reserve of four types of flu vaccine that could provide some protection against H5N1 in case of any future outbreak. But even this stockpile would not be sufficient for the entire country, and Digard explains that governments face a desperately difficult decision when it comes to balancing the economic cost of vaccines against trying to ensure that they are as ready as possible for an outbreak.
and later that:
The World Health Organization (WHO) says its estimates suggest that 4-8bn doses of influenza vaccines could be produced within a year in an H5N1 pandemic. Experts say that would require a significant expansion of the global capacity for making flu vaccines, placed at about 1.2bn doses. “Remember that it takes two doses, three to four weeks apart, to achieve protective immunity,” says Poland. “You can quickly do the maths and see where that leaves us.”
Also more generally that:
“There is increasing concern at the scientific and public health levels,” says Dr Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research group, who has previously compared the rising infection rates among animals to “the rumbles prior to an earthquake”.
Although perhaps he means people getting sick, rather than people dying? Still, a more-virulent-than-usual flu seems likely to be dangerous for the elderly and immunocompromised people?
This is I think the part that I only vaguely recalled:
While manufacturers have been working on H5N1 vaccines since the mid-2000s, research has always indicated that they pose a much greater technical challenge than the seasonal flu vaccines distributed each year. In particular, the jabs seem to require a far larger dose to generate a sufficient immune response. A dose of the H5N1 vaccine candidate manufactured by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is 90 micrograms, six times the size of a typical seasonal flu vaccine. Poland says this would make it far more challenging to produce the jab at the scale required.
(emphasis added)
So… yeah, it sounds like the
eliteUSA citizenry will be okay - or at least, those who have access to healthcare plans and/or who can afford the cost themselves - but the rest of the world would not be so fortunate, just like with COVID?It also seems to cast doubt on whether H5N1 - which hasn’t been shown to infect people yet, lately - will be included in the Fall, if that would raise their costs significantly? Does whoever make those care more about costs or saving lives & easing suffering?
Even if this next pandemic is a thousandth the severity compared to COVID, our brokenness and lack of trust in the healthcare system within the USA will create panic regardless. Then again, the Biden administration really does seem to listen to scientific advisors, rather than tell people to inject bleach into themselves, so perhaps they will make the right call after all.
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 6 days ago:
Hrm, I thought one of these various articles mentioned some significant technical hurdles to building up sufficient stocks of that, over a perhaps 2-3 year period. But maybe that meant worldwide whereas what you are most likely referring to is the stock distributed solely within the USA.
- Comment on ‘My whole library is wiped out’: what it means to own movies and TV in the age of streaming services 6 days ago:
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 6 days ago:
Thank you for the helpful additions there.
Knowing that it’s already been possible for the virus to make the jump, and that there is an upswing of the virus overall, does make it seem quite likely that it will make another jump again soon.
Is there a reason you think it unlikely that once it does so, it will just immediately stop there and not undergo human-to-human transmission?
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 6 days ago:
While this is certainly a possibility, and we should be prepared for it,
This is mostly what I was going for:-). But yeah, you bring up a good perspective: companies aren’t known for paying for things that are not needed, and since the milk is safe after pasteurization…
In my other comment in this thread (I have no idea how to properly make links to comments, without kicking you off your instance to view it), I quoted a linked article describing how the fatality rate was extremely high, as in literally over half - though I did not dig further to see e.g. how many were immunocompromised to begin with.
Thank you for sharing the detail that they all were caught directly from animals. That makes sense:-).
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 1 week ago:
It’ll just bring the population down to a more manageable level. You know, get rid of a few more of The Poors. bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO!
theguardian.com/…/bird-flu-strain-found-in-us-cow… - another one linked to from this article - says:
If bird flu did begin to spread between humans, it would be a cause for significant concern because the H5N1 virus has a high mortality rate. From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases were reported in 23 countries, and more than half of those people died, according to WHO. So pre-pandemic vaccines have already been stockpiled.
Tbf, those people might have been the ones at greatest risk like the elderly and immunocompromised, so the actual fatality rate in the general population would probably be significantly lower… possibly more like a bad flu than anywhere close to COVID, but it’s still not great to have to contemplate no matter what.
So I have a thought: let’s totally ignore it, b/c we all (
the Elitesuh I mean “everyone”, yeah totally that’s what I meant) will be safe forever, whoo-hoo! :-P - Comment on Overweight people more likely to take sick leave, European study finds 1 week ago:
Like spam emails, it worked. People have likely clicked, and here we are talking about it. As long as it continues to work, they will remain in business… :-(
What bugs me about it is that it’s The Guardian, from which I tend to expect better. Therefore, I went ahead and clicked it, and am tremendously relieved to see that mostly it’s just an overly simplistic title - it would have read much better as something along the lines of “measuring the economic impacts of obesity” imho - though the article itself is still somewhat slim.
Globally the costs of overweight and obesity are expected to soar from $1.96tn in 2020 to $4.32tn by 2035, according to the World Obesity Atlas published last year.
- Comment on Lack of bird flu testing may be hiding true spread of virus on US farms 1 week ago:
As far as I have been able to read, nobody wants to pay for it.
Fyi, people are mostly safe, for now, so long as the milk drank is pasteurized.
Though its spread everywhere (most recently in Walrus - click “Bird flu” in red at the bottom of the article to see a list of recent developments) indicates that it might start jumping to humans soon. Whatever that means, it doesn’t sound ideal.
- Comment on Lemmy's major collective account cake days are coming up soon. 1 week ago:
I didn’t even recognize her, but as soon as I heard her voice it was clear. :-)
- Comment on Rubén Baler, neuroscientist: ‘We are guinea pigs. Our attention has become a profitable commodity’ 1 week ago:
It’s how you use the tools that count, and I think both types need (self-)restrictions placed upon them to be maximally effective and fun. Even a gun has a use, within certain bounds e.g. Ukraine can put them to great use.
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 1 week ago:
Exactly! It’s literally a service done to the Truth, which is the main goal for many of us, not to have a feeling of being “correct” or lording that over others or vengeance against someone we do not particularly like as in out- vs. in-group dynamics, but rather to rise above all of that shit and find stuff that really matters.
Put another way: if I make a correct statement, and then follow it up with two incorrect statements, then people should not trust me, hrm? Or Lemmy. Or perhaps this community. “They” get to then state how “wrong” we are - correctly! And making the other side be correct… is something that we should revile and fill us with disgust:-D.
Which is why perhaps how we say something is almost as important as what we say, I am learning, and thought I would share that also with you. Full disclosure: I am usually very bad at it, which is why I want to learn to get better.
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 1 week ago:
As Lemmy grows, it will attract all kinds of people. And many - e.g. lemmygrad.ml and the person who wrote the Lemmy code to begin with - are outright tankies (as far as I understand that word, it seems to mean: die-hard communists, aka such extreme leftists that they have wrapped around to becoming authoritarian rightists except with left-wing talking points, which ofc they do not see the irony in that, thinking that the correctness of their cause entitles them to act in an identical manner as the “other side” that they purportedly despise).
And like Reddit, some are literal and actual children, or at least younger people, so there’s that to consider.
But aside from all of that, people are people, and that’s just the way it is, I suppose. And even on top of that, sometimes as we dig we find that we have more in common than first appeared, so some of it is pure communication style. e.g. someone saying “let’s not hastily jump to conclusions” and someone saying “hey, we should investigate this!” might be saying the same thing, in a roundabout way. Plus too many react to the “tone” of a message more than its content, and on and on it goes…
All we can do is focus on our own parts that we ourselves have control over:-).
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 1 week ago:
I presumed all of that would already be done. Then again, perhaps not. Then again, a giant military industrial contractor may have ways around such anyway, which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look, though either way I would expect the situation to at least superficially look innocent.
You could write a letter, maybe get a petition signed to back it up, to the hospital and ask that their internal security do such? Or the police in that local area.
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 1 week ago:
Excellent!:-)
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 2 weeks ago:
You too!:-)
- Comment on Is Boeing in big trouble? World's largest aerospace firm faces 10 more whistleblowers after sudden death of two 2 weeks ago:
I apologize for my wording - I agree with you that I was out of line. There was some point I was trying to make, about the need to be cautious with our wording, but somehow I ended up doing the exact thing I was trying to warn about, didn’t I? Anyway, sorry.