TheFeatureCreature

@TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Worldwide Smartphone Market to Decline 13% in 2026, Marking the Largest Drop Ever Due to the Memory Shortage Crisis, according to IDC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Only 205? I would’ve thought we’d be in the thousands by now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon BUSTED for Widespread Scheme to Inflate Prices Across the Economy— Amazon, its vendors, and competing retailers are price fixing, hiking up prices for consumer products⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The issue I’ve had with the “Just shop somewhere else. Don’t use Amazon” is that it’s very US-specific response. Amazon has absolutely dominated the online shopping space in Canada for years because they are one of the few companies that dealt with the biggest reason why shopping online in Canada has been difficult: Shipping. $15-$30+ shipping fees are normal in Canada for most other retailers which means you could be paying double the cost of your order (or more) just on shipping alone, so as soon as Amazon came in and offered free coast-to-coast shipping they had basically won the market instantly. There were teething issues, of course, and their earlier shipping contractors were horrendous but they did smooth most of that out.

  Nowadays they still have very little competition that can beat them on shipping, but there are more and more options popping up. There are some Canadian online stores that offer free shipping or free if over a certain reasonable amount. The COVID pandemic really pushed a lot of local retailers to set up affordable online ordering and delivery systems for local customers, so that has also become an option. Aliexpress has also greatly improved their free shipping process to Canada and considering most of what Amazon sells is just rebranded Aliexpress stuff, it’s a great way of getting the same items for cheaper if you’re ok waiting a few extra days. So most of my online purchases these days have been a mixture of Canadian retailers and Aliexpress.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 day⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes I use my phone so little that I only need to charge it every 2-3 days. Nearly everything that it does my PC can do better and not try to lock me in to a dozen different monthly weekly subscriptions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brave CEO claims news about Brave Browser tracking its users is “fake news”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It is wild to me that Brave still maintains such a highly regarded position amongst privacy “enthusiasts” and websites. The godawful news about the browser, its company, and the CEO has been constant since the day it was first announced and it’s clear as water that the browser is not private nor even remotely ethical. Far as I am concerned, it should have faded from the public conscious back when they were injecting their crypto referrals to skim money without you knowing. Or all the times the CEO opened his mouth and revealed that he is a supreme piece of shit.

  And even if it was private, just the fact that it’s yet another Chromium browser is a total non-starter for me. I am so sick and tired of the ocean of alternative browsers that directly or indirectly support Google’s browser monopoly, often while proclaiming they are a great Chrome alternative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What the fuck

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Reddit banning posts with "join-lemmy.org"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Also subreddit mods will sometimes remove such posts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m lightly active in the headphone enthusiast space. Even in the more light-hearted circles there is still an elevated amount of placebo bullshit and stubborn belief in things that verifiably make zero difference.

  It’s rather fascinating in a way. I’ve been in and out of various hobbies over the course of my life but there is just something about audio that attracts an atmosphere of wilful ignorance and bad actors that prey on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does most American's give shit to the French when if not for them we would have lost the revolution?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  American exceptionalism at work. Decades of being lead to believe they are the solver of the world’s problems and the centre of the “free” world. I’d also many don’t even know that the French were involved because US education is very good at altering history to make them look superior.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have a rasberry pi 5 collecting dust, what are some neat useful things i can do with it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed. I ended up with the 4 because a local electronics shop had it for a good price back in the day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have a rasberry pi 5 collecting dust, what are some neat useful things i can do with it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a Pi 4 running as a PiHole and Pi 5 running as an SDR server with 2 radios attached to it. Both are connected via Tailscale as well so I can access both from anywhere I want, especially useful for the PiHole so I have adblocking anywhere on any device.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New Letter Warns Next Grok ‘Mistake’ Could Be Leaked National Security Files⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just his handlers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The new Microsoft copilot key is impossible to properly remap.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Base model Macbook Airs are very hard to beat for price:performance, especially now the new base model has 16gb of RAM. I’ve been to numerous local computer shops and felt and tried numerous Windows laptops that were around the same price and they all felt like flimsy plastic trash.

  The Mac Mini is also very good for its price and size. My dad is considering a base model Mini to replace his Windows office computer which is on 10 and reached EOL and he doesn’t want 11.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2 Underperformed, and There Won't Be a Third - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No way in hell I’d pay its nearly $100CAD asking price.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Should be said that some alternative search sites, such as Ecosia, share some of your information with their upstream search providers which does include Google.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeover⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It unironically is, and it’s not entirely the fault of the users either. The average person doesn’t know what FOSS means, what instances are, or what a federated service is and many platforms do a poor job of explaining what those things are and why they are superior.

  Additionally, people need to understand that FOSS is not a selling point to the average user and that throwing that term around will go in one ear and out the other. As far as they are concerned their apps are already free because they don’t have to pay a transactional monetary value for them and “open source” is beyond meaningless to them and they couldn’t care less.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anthropic CEO Amodei warns of AI’s fast-coming changes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The cult demands more capital. More sacrifice. More more more more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solargene, a space colony-builder where you can expand on the planets and moons of the solar system (including space stations), with complex, modular building mechanics (with support for Z levels) released on Steam⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ouch, those user reviewers don’t paint a very pretty picture. Sounds like this could’ve used more time in the oven.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨White House tech chief slams EU AI Act, champions Trump's approach as Davos begins⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Considering US tech companies helped overthrow their democracy - they should all be considered extreme threats to national security.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that tends to happen when you blow billions on snake oil.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft warns that China is winning AI race outside the west⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d imagine because AI in China isn’t a massive for-profit cult propped up by technofascists with speculative values greater than the combined GDP of entire countries who have basically seized political power and are now running amok.

  China is many things but they are not stupid. Handling AI the way the west has would be an extreme threat to their own authority and control.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The new owner of GOG discusses taking on Steam, the devil of DRM, and following in Nightdive's footsteps⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Razer’s AI wearable is a headset with built-in cameras⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  E-waste.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dell admits consumers don’t care about AI PCsDell is now shifting it focus this year away from being ‘all about the AI PC.’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Goddamn Dell of all companies is the only one that seems to get it. I’m shocked.

  Welcome to the world outside of your own ass, Dell. The air is fresher out here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Death of DeviantArt and the art-site shaped hole haunting the Internet -- Multi-hyphenate⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  3D artist here. I am active on numerous art websites, including DeviantArt and Cara.

  I joined Cara quite a bit later than everyone else so I can’t give too much commentary on it yet, but I will say that it is very much not dead. It certainly has an active and growing community, but it is still a niche site so don’t go in there expecting it to be the next Twitter in terms of userbase size.

  DeviantArt, on the other hand, is quite a bit more unfortunate. It actually has a rather sizeable community still but the heartbreaking part is watching the owners systematically sabotage it. Nearly everything they’ve done in the past several years has been catered towards driving AI use/growth while letting every other part of the site fester and rot. I don’t share my DA profile with clients or family members because if they click off my profile there is an extremely high chance they will be hit by a wall of untagged fetish porn and AI slop that will never be tagged despite the ToS requiring such.

  Just a few months ago DA removed their official app from mobile app stores for some reason and it became very clear that that was how many users engaged with the platform. Myself and many other artists on DA noticed a very sudden and very large downturn in user engagement and views. They also made some back-end algorithm changes that made this even worse but they have never confirmed that and I doubt they ever will. Membership subs basically exist just to give you extra AI prompt credits and cloud storage space and maybe better selling rates assuming you actually sell anything. The other features, like boosts, have been broken for months now.

  Platforms come and go over the years but DA should go down in history as the one that turned to their core userbase, the very people that built them and funded them for so many years - and punched them right in the goddamn face.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There should be a way to upvote a post/comment while selectively downvoting a *part* of the text.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There is.

  It’s called commenting. You leave a comment talking about the issues you had with the post.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Raspberry Pis are cheaper than Mini PCs again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Got a 4b running Pihole and Tailscale. Love it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-Americans: what would you do in a situation where a foreign country run by a extremist dictator began producing nukes?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Slight correction: Two-party, first past the post democracy means that only 51% of the population decide which dumbass fucks the country while the other 49% effectively get zero say or representation in government.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA To Bring Back The GeForce RTX 3060 In Q1 2026 To Tackle Current-Gen GPU & Memory Shortages⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if we’ll see a shift towards graphical stagnation with upcoming game releases. With RAM and GPUs being so expensive, there will be a lot fewer customers that can afford the hardware to play upcoming, graphically-demanding games and so targeting that demographic is economically unwise.

  It sucks that this is the situation we find ourselves in, but I’m actually kind of interested in what will happen. A new age of hyper-optimisation would be so awesome.