COASTER1921
@COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Restart of Three Mile Island tests US appetite for nuclear revival 6 days ago:
FT asking $75/mo for digital access is insane. I’m happy to pay for quality journalism but that’s simply out of reach for most Americans. I’d love to know how their management determined this was an appropriate price.
- Comment on YouTube tests removing viewer counts — here’s what we know 3 weeks ago:
I don’t know what’s up with the algorithm pushing these lately. If it’s a video with 4 views from a channel with no subscribers I’m probably not interested in it. Sometimes they have a good thumbnail/title so I give them a chance but 9/10 times it’s terrible. Also often extremely right wing for whatever reason.
- Comment on LinkedIn fined $335 million in EU for tracking ads privacy breaches 4 weeks ago:
I thought that without blocking cookies the tracking is still active, even if you’re not being served ads from them. In those same LinkedIn privacy settings you’re automatically opted into having your data used to train AI models.
- Comment on LinkedIn fined $335 million in EU for tracking ads privacy breaches 4 weeks ago:
LinkedIn has some of the most obfuscated and complex ad targeting settings I’ve encountered. There needs to be a retirement to have a one click solution to disable ad personalization.
- Comment on Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun 1 month ago:
Web browsers don’t integrate to a single account and payment system, nor do they preemptively load entire websites before you start browsing. So you’re always waiting for actions to complete or for images to load which feels slower. Mobile websites also tend to be very bloated slowing things down further than if the same functions were done natively in an app. There’s also no consistency between websites so you never know when something will/won’t work nor how far away you are from checkout. And then to top it all off there’s browser compatibility, which is typically pretty poor for anything that isn’t Chrome/Safari.
If a web browsers could really do the same thing all these companies wouldn’t feel the need to make their own device specific apps.
- Comment on Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun 1 month ago:
Even the best websites don’t feel as smooth as native UI elements, and somehow browser compatibility is still a very common issue. Signing in with Google and using gpay for checkout is kind of close, but each website has different design elements complicating the experience while giving up the same amount of your personal data as if using an everything app.
- Comment on Switzerland authorizes removable PV plant on railway track 1 month ago:
And you can repair them without needing to shut down a whole railway. All these projects to put solar panels in novel places are totally pointless and solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
- Comment on Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun 1 month ago:
This is why everything apps are so popular in many parts of the world. Using a mini-app from the internet running within another app is far preferable to downloading a whole app you may never need to use again. The way they do it in China is so seamless even if you’ve never visited the business before. There’s never any special account creation or entering of payment information.
- Comment on This might also apply to conferences. 1 month ago:
Nah the side rows are for when you expect the lecture to be boring or unproductive and you want to leave early.
- Comment on Slapping Chicken 2 months ago:
There was a viral YouTube video of doing exactly this a few years back.
- Comment on Dynamic pricing 2 months ago:
Are happy hours and lunch specials not dynamic pricing? It’s just a different way of framing it as a discount rather than surge price, but it’s basically the same idea as far as I’m concerned. I’m happy to vote with my wallet on this, if Wendy’s decides they want dynamic prices then I’ll just go elsewhere. Fast food certainly isn’t an essential.
- Comment on Authy got hacked, and 33 million user phone numbers were stolen 4 months ago:
The problem is so many services requiring SMS to be that second factor. From what I’ve heard it’s easy enough to steal a sim that if you’re being explicitly targeted it’s basically the same as no second factor. Yet even if using an authenticator app most services require you to still have SMS/phone as another option for the 2FA.
For Authy specifically they’d need to guess your master password and then hijack your phone number, and for users of Authy I suspect their passwords are not easily guessed as it’s already a step above the standard SMS only 2FA most services require.
- Comment on CATL battery successfully powers electric plane with 1,800-mile civil aircraft expected 4 months ago:
The US really doesn’t understand that there is simply no competing with these batteries. To try to block the import of them is only going to set our own local industry back in their ability to compete in the global economy. And ironically the BMS systems for CATL are still using American semiconductors, so the US still gets some revenue from their massive expansion.
The most viable competitors to CATL are all in China too. I’d be somewhat supportive of a CATL specific ban due to their notoriously terrible employee working conditions and crazy NDAs/non-competes, but to ban all Chinese batteries in the US would be a huge mistake.
- Comment on Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse 7 months ago:
When they charge many $100s for an extra 8gb the value of the bare minimum 8gb doesn’t look so terrible (if only comparing to Apple). Especially considering the performance of swap on a fast SSD.
- Comment on Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM 7 months ago:
Part of the difference is that the Apple silicon Macs aggressively use SSD swap to make up for limited memory. But that’s at expense of the SSD lifespan, which of course isn’t replaceable.
I’d never recommend a Mac, but the prices they charge to get a little more RAM or SSD over base are crazy. The only configurations offering any “value” are the base models with 8gb RAM.
- Comment on Microsoft reveals costs of Windows 10 end of life security update — and it might be more than you'd expect 7 months ago:
This is just going to lead to people using outdated Windows 10 for various reasons. I don’t use Windows much but have it installed. The trackpad gesture customization is basically gone in Windows 11 but was at least serviceable in Windows 10 (to change virtual desktops and volume easily).
- Comment on Reddit started doing what they always wanted to do, sell user content to AI. 8 months ago:
Not only did they have the option, as I understand it the API was even configured as such since all requests from an app shared the same API key. They’re basically whitelisting like this now but only for the accessibility oriented 3rd party apps.
- Comment on Why Charging Your Gadgets Over 80% Is Such a Bad Idea | iFixit News 8 months ago:
Yes, but to increase longevity energy density goes down substantially. Manufacturers (and many users including myself) would not make this decision for something as weight and size sensitive as a phone. The lithium ion batteries currently used already last for 2 years after all and are relatively small. A single model S battery contains 7104 individual cells for comparison. Further, lithium battery recycling has made substantial progress over the last year and will already need to be done at scale when higher volumes of EV batteries have reached their end of life. The impact of the of life phone batteries even from the entire world will be dwarfed by that of the 26 million EVs already on the roads today with thousands of cells each (or equivalent if using prismatic cells).
Some cars use LiFePO4 batteries for the superior longevity. But the range is reduced to somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 their lithium ion counterparts. The industry is moving away from this trend in recent years in favor of traditional lithium ion with a software limited charge/discharge range.
- Comment on Reddit started doing what they always wanted to do, sell user content to AI. 8 months ago:
If they hadn’t applied the same charges to legitimate 3rd party applications they could still do this and have avoided the massive community backlash.
Considering their horrible track record with advertising and selling Reddit premium this should be the single best way for them to finally monetize their platform. They didn’t need to destroy what little credibility they had remaining to their users to get to this point, but for whatever reason they did.
- Comment on Why Charging Your Gadgets Over 80% Is Such a Bad Idea | iFixit News 9 months ago:
The chemistry from holding that last 20% of charge for a while is what causes the degradation. The BMS can tell the system to stop charging before it’s full but it can’t do anything itself to prevent the cell from slowly being degraded by full charging.
This is is a problem that occurs on the order of years and that’s why the EV companies care but phones historically don’t. More easily replaceable batteries is the real solution here, not software stopping you from fully charging.
- Comment on Elon Musk demands another huge payday from Tesla 10 months ago:
I’d argue we’re at the point where that would be a good business move too. It wouldn’t fix my main issue of but allowing 3rd party repairs so I wouldn’t buy one, but I know several people who have bought other brands due to Elon.
