fodor

@fodor@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla Firefox is getting a free built-in VPN, with a catch⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  OK, maybe better than nothing. Until they start selling more of your data lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Iran says it will show ‘zero restraint’ if energy infrastructure is targeted again⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Right right, because of the giant Saudi army. Scary, egads!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Search referrals to the web have plummeted, AI links are 'less than 1%' of traffic⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  That depends on the search engine, of course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did we win?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course we didn’t win. the more hoops you have to jump through, the fewer people who will install their own apps and then you lose all of the community support. And Google didn’t promise not to change their plans in the future. So you know that they’ll promise this now. Maybe they’ll backtrack a little if they have to and they will try to ratchet things up six months later anyway.

  Real solutions involve either breaking up monopolies or breaking up monopolies, which is why some of the other cell phone vendors’ actions recently look positive. If there are two versions of Android that are popularly used, then the banks will have to support both of them and then everyone can run away from Google whenever they feel like it. But if there’s only one popular version and Android itself gets more and more locked down then that is Google seizing the entire market and they will cut out all of the other cell phone manufacturers as soon as they can. that will be just as bad as Apple.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One in four CEOs say AI is a bubble but will continue investing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No one is stopping to ask whether it’s all worth it? … Actually, I think millions of us make comments to that extent every day. We’re kind of upset that these scam artists are dominating the stock market enough to fuck with our retirement plans. If the rich people were gambling with their own money, that would be stellar. But they aren’t. And… I sure wish we could stop them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Motorola confirms GrapheneOS support for a future phone, bringing over features⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the point, right? Google is trying to lock down Android even more, and third party vendors can see the increasing risk. If they fork now, they can maybe undercut the increasing monopoly efforts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The same people who rage against authority love moderating communities where their ideology is the only one allowed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If people are trolling, they can get banned and troll elsewhere. That’s common sense, right?

  And one might say they didn’t mean to troll, which just means they need to lurk moar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should this be the year we finally try voting for other candidates?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  First of all, it’s not wishful thinking. Second of all, many of us have been doing this for decades. And most importantly, if you only try to express power through your vote, then that will definitely not be good enough for real change. It’s incredibly important that you get out there and do other things at other times, however you reasonably can given your situation in life.

  There’s an old saying that everyone is equal on election day. Actually that’s not true because of gerrymandering and the Electoral College and disenfranchisement. But even if it were true, then everyone would not be equal the other 364 days of the year. Or non-election years. So don’t rely on voting to solve problems, but do it anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Step 1. Add AI. Step 2. Add (broken) switch. Step 3. Pretend to fix switch. Step 4. Hide switch in sub-menus. Step 5. Remove switch.

  … And all they actually need to do is make “AI” an extension. Let the users install it if they want to, or don’t. That’s the whole point of extensions. But they would never dream of that, hell no.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol what terrible research. “No! The parents have no control over their children. None! Please ignore all of human history.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The reason the rich borrow money is to take advantage of tax loopholes. It’s not about being reasonable or what ought to make sense. They are gaming the system, that’s it. So, how does it work?

  If they have investments in the stock market, then they get taxed when they sell those. So even though the investments are usually going up in value, they don’t want to sell too often. But they still need to buy things.

  So, where do they get money for living, houses, cars, travel, etc? If they get paid for working a job, their income is taxed a lot, meh. If they sell their stocks, they get taxed a little, meh. But if they get a low-interest loan, that money is not taxed.

  And you might say hey, money’s gotta be paid back some day. But remember, the goal is to find the loopholes, the places and times where either you don’t pay tax or you pay much less tax. And those loopholes are all over the place. In the end, the details are just boring. Most financial scams have just enough moving parts to look amazing, but if you take an hour to figure them out, it’s nothing exciting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Historically, taxing the ultra-rich at 90% or 95% has not stopped them from staying rich, and it also helped everyone else get more social services.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who told you that it never works? … Checks notes … the capitalists did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, the rich people wrote the laws. You think they didn’t leave loopholes for themselves? … Tax law doesn’t have to make sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We don’t wonder anything. If you were wondering, you never bothered to think about it for more than three minutes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December, thanks to AI⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a problem for the future team, not the current bosses who will give themselves golden parachutes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes of course it would hurt Google’s economic growth. That’s one of the good points. Why pay for new features that nobody wants to support a company everybody hates. Better to go FOSS and make the world a better and safer place, and also save your taxpayers a lot of money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lawyers set to argue that Instagram and YouTube intentionally addicted and harmed teen in landmark social media trial⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, my dear, if it’s the same, why do internal messages at Instagram and other such companies describe it differently? They know that they can tweak the algorithm to manipulate people, and especially children, into overusing their system. You can argue with us, but it gets absurd if you’re trying to argue that they don’t know what their own data tells them.

  TV can’t do that. You turn on the channel or you don’t, that’s it. There’s no real time individual manipulation. Of course TV execs wish they had that power, but they don’t, so they didn’t get sued.

  Now, is it actually addiction? That’s an interesting question. Some experts say no.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And the garbage takes itself out, marvelous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it theoretically possible Trump and ICE are killing a very large number of immigrants (like 25% of those detained) and no one knows?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The way to do that now is to send them abroad to disappear or die. That’s the deflection. Otherwise there are dead bodies in the US and state murder charges with no statute of limitations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gaming market melts down after Google reveals new AI game design tool — Project Genie crashes stocks. (A.K.A . Investors panic because they don't understand what "real" videogames are)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Basically you don’t understand. Investors sell when they think the companies will fuck shit up. That could be because they think the product is obsolete, or it could be that they think manglement is going to do dumb shit. Take your pick. Remember, it’s gambling about the future, not about what’s right or reasonable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course we shouldn’t trust anything blindly, but we also need to use common sense. Have we seen proof that what’s claimed to be true is in fact true? No. But it might be true, and it’s consistent with what Meta would do. So if your cautious minded, you should assume it’s true for now while you go through the next few years of your life waiting for discovery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If companies are lying in their advertising to the general public, then that is something the companies are responsible for. You can blame the victims, but that’s kind of stupid because there are so many people in the world who are not technically savvy. They don’t have the resources, background, knowledge, and skills to evaluate whether what the company is telling them is true. That’s why there are laws designed to protect consumers from lying companies.

  Would it be great if everyone was an expert in everything? Yes. Are they? No. They never will be. That’s why we have laws.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. It looks like the claims are based on specific aspects of California law (put simply: wiretapping, privacy, and deceptive business practices). Do they have a strong case? I don’t know, not worth my personal time to research state law on these issues.

  Is there enough to go to court? Certainly the lawyers think so, and I agree. If Meta is claiming E2EE (which it is) and then immediately undercutting that by re-transmitting large numbers of messages to itself (which is alleged), that sure feels deceptive to me, and it’s easy to think that a jury might agree.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some car lovers oppose bike infrastructure, when more bikes would mean fewer cars on the road?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s an easy fix. Just jack up annual registration or taxes, but only for large trucks and SUVs, to $10K a year. Problem solved… Or make it a scale based on engine size, or total car width/length/height, whatever. It’s so easy to regulate… And in fact the US used to regulate large vehicles more strictly, so we already know that it can be done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some car lovers oppose bike infrastructure, when more bikes would mean fewer cars on the road?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you ride in a town or city a lot, you know one big piece of the answer: jealousy.

  If there are more cyclists, you’ll see them more often riding by you at red lights and lines of cars at stop signs. Drivers hate this; it reminds them that sometimes cars are slow, and they love their cars, so they get angry.

  If there are more cyclists, drivers will have to be careful not to hit them, and being careful is annoying. Right now, depending where you live, the driver can say “almost no cyclists are out here, so I wasn’t expecting them, they need to be more careful”. And the drivers believe it, and their friends do, too. But more cyclists around would make those excuses look like the BS they actually are.

  And related to the second point is that, if cyclists increase in number, they will demand (and get) more bike lanes and protected areas to ride and park. This will absolutely come at drivers’ expenses. Drivers know this. So even though fewer cars would decrease congestion, drivers know that they would be inconvenienced in other ways, and that would again remind them that they aren’t as important as they want to be.

  Finally, in the US specifically, large SUVs and trucks are causing massive increases in dead pedestrians, children, and cyclists. The increased death rate over the last ten years is appallingly high. If cycling is normalized even more, clearly political opinion will shift, and those giant vehicles will be heavily restricted or taxed, or their insurance rates will skyrocket, or drivers will be charged more frequently with manslaughter for the death that they cause every day. People are reasonably afraid that their unreasonably large vehicles will be taken away from them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I'm struggling with depression, I get ostracized as a "loser" that haven't accomplished anything but if I die in a tragic accident tonight, I'm a "young man with a bright future ahead"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Look. This is politeness. This is slightly different, but kinda related… I’m a teacher. If a kid got bad grades, obviously he did, the parents will see that. In my written comment, should I say he was a slacker? No. Why bother. Better to express hope for what he can do well in the future.

  The same information is conveyed, but the respect shown to the person is different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Davos, NVIDIA, Microsoft CEOs deny AI bubble⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What benefit? Seriously, what benefits are you actually talking about?

  Maybe they exist in niche areas, like improved translation software or some such thing, but maybe that’s just normal “use computers better” technological advancement and not actually anything magical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LLMs are already doing fascists a favor by ensuring that anything that is reasonably eloquently formulated on social media is automatically suspected of having been written by LLMs.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, this isn’t doing them a favor at all. Cultists have always ignored things they didn’t like and embraced things that they did. Generative IAI doesn’t change that in any way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Israelis demonised as a ‘vehicle for hatred of Jews’, says UK terror laws watchdog⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s weird to watch the news from the UK. People protest the deaths of innocent folk, including huge numbers of children in Palestine, and they’re accused of being anti-Jewish or pro-terrorist. And that’s not to say racist jerks don’t exist because they are out there in large numbers. But it’s fairly clear watching a protest what the protesters are opposing.