_pete_
@_pete_@lemmy.world
- Comment on YSK: It's possible to get search results from Google without the annoying 'AI' answers at the top 2 months ago:
I guess YMMV, I just tried a few places around me (UK) and it found them all. You can also defiantly tap on a place to select it.
Did you try it recently or a while ago? I know it was pretty woeful when it came out but it’s improved a whole lot over the years.
- Comment on YSK: It's possible to get search results from Google without the annoying 'AI' answers at the top 2 months ago:
I wish Kagi wasn’t as expensive as it is.
If it was $5 a month for unlimited searches I would be all over it but 300 searches is too few and $10 is too much money.
- Comment on YSK: It's possible to get search results from Google without the annoying 'AI' answers at the top 2 months ago:
Pfttt… at least with DDG you can turn any of that stuff off with a button in a UI rather than having to make a new bookmark or fuck around with your browsers search engine.
You can even turn the ads off if you want.
Also, Apple Maps is totally fine, it’s not overloaded with ads like Google Maps is and it basically always finds the place I search for.
- Comment on Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads 3 months ago:
Tab groups are coming but in the mean time containers work well enough for me with the added benefit that they’ll also block tracking from the sites that are within them.
- Comment on TitanFall 2 at 3$ 3 months ago:
Ah yea, my bad :(
- Comment on TitanFall 2 at 3$ 3 months ago:
I don’t know for sure in this case but some EA games require you to use EA Play as a launcher, even if you buy the game through Steam.
- Comment on TitanFall 2 at 3$ 3 months ago:
It’s EA Play now, which is actually somehow worse than Origin was.
Still, Titanfall 2 is actually a great game (probably my favourite of the PS4 era) and is well worth a little suffering for.
- Comment on Google is discontinuing the Chromecast line 3 months ago:
- Comment on Google is discontinuing the Chromecast line 3 months ago:
I feels like they either badly copy (see Gemini) or don’t think about what they’re offering (see Stadia’s busted business model) they’re content to milk the existing services they’ve already got and make them worse by cramming in more ads (see YouTube, Google’s search result pages) and they cut out or dictate the web through their monopolies (see AMP and Chrome) rather than working with other parties to make good products.
They feel like Hooli in Silicon Valley, basically the definition of a fat tech giant who doesn’t do any innovation of their own.
- Comment on Google is discontinuing the Chromecast line 3 months ago:
I feel the original Chromecast was probably the last truly great original Google product, it was simple, it was inexpensive and it worked - you just plugged it in, joined your network and you were off, there really wasn’t anything like it at the time.
I really hate what they’ve become.
- Comment on Bungie CEO faces backlash after announcing 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce, will be laid off | Pete Parsons has spent $2.4 million on classic cars since Sony acquired Destiny developer Bungie 3 months ago:
Destiny was supposed to be their “forever” game, the problem is that after 2 dozen expansions:
- New players are extremely intimidated about joining
- Old players dislike losing the content they’ve paid for when it’s vaulted
- Long term players will eventually get bored of playing the same thing they’ve been playing for years
Live service games just won’t last forever like they want them to.
- Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything? 10 months ago:
Hard disagree with that, DDG searches are accurate about 90% of the time that I use it (which as a web dev is quite a lot) if they aren’t hitting Google with the same term rarely wields any better results.
- Comment on Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies. 11 months ago:
Apple Maps and Fastmail.
Fastmail is paid but the 1Password and disposable email address system makes it worth it for me.
- Comment on Inside the 'arms race' between YouTube and ad blockers / Against all odds, open source hackers keep outfoxing one of the wealthiest companies. 11 months ago:
I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.
The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.
As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake 1 year ago:
The problem was that people weren’t really interested in any of it.
The UI was cluttered and messy to look at, none of it was as polished or natural to use as iOS or Android.
Plus there was no Google Maps, no Google Docs (and Office 365 wasn’t around to replace it), even that apps that were in the store felt pretty bad quality. I had Spotify on my iPhone and it was nearly flawless, when I switched to Windows Phone it kept cutting out or crashing or disconnecting from the mobile connection, it just wasn’t fully baked.
- Comment on Why advertise on YouTube? 1 year ago:
I’ve seen a few video games and movies that I’ve gone on to look into from YouTube ads.
90% of them are total annoying bollocks though.
- Comment on Are Internet boards and Forums dead 1 year ago:
the more traditional style of forums are still around too.
They’re very rare these days though. It’s a whole lot easier to keep all your interests in one place rather than heading off to one forum for gaming chat and another for programming chat and another for gardening chat.
Keeping it all in a single feed means your interest can be piqued at random times and you’ll be more likely to interact.
- Comment on Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed 1 year ago:
In the UK at least, switching banks is super easy, I’ve done in twice in the last 2 months because they offered free cash to do so, there is enough competition that the banks have to make it easy to move or else they lose customers.
For government, generally most systems are built to be as accessible as they can be because there has been [gov.uk/…/accessibility-requirements-for-public-se… ](whole raft of legislation) written up to cover this.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a problem (power companies etc could prove to be sticky) but there are legal requirements that entities above a certain site have to meet.
- Comment on X is working on ID verification, what’s next? 1 year ago:
The best time to leave Twitter was when Elon took over, the second best time is right now.
I think would be a step too far for most
