UnderpantsWeevil
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
- Comment on It was rigged? 14 hours ago:
But, it was a media event. It wasn’t “rigged”
You could gamble on it, which means there was money to be made courting suckers.
I’m sure the lion’s share of “rigged” proclamations were coming from folks who got baited into bad bets.
- Comment on The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet 14 hours ago:
Once Twitter has been (hopefully) de-platformed we can talk about Mastedon and the Fediverse and the idea of a non-corpo platform.
BlueSky is as prone to enshittification as Twitter. If you’re waiting for BlueSky to take off, you’re just setting yourself up for the next rug pull.
I mean, go to BS and enjoy it while it lasts. But don’t think this is the future.
- Comment on We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth. 15 hours ago:
Earth’s surface is 2/3rds water and that’s not changing.
But intense heat means more storms with stronger winds and heavier rain. Imagine a Cat 5 hitting the coast every year.
- Comment on They used to be all metal too. Its time for a revolution 2 days ago:
Making all my toy cars out of plastic not because I’m cheap but because I’m authentic.
- Comment on Elon Musk Fans Are Losing So Much Money to Crypto Scams 2 weeks ago:
You’d think if these people read the news outlets they share their stories with that they would have seen one of the articles already because they’re so common.
Crypto scams have overwhelmed the news feeds. I see scams showing up on the front page of my fucking retirement account. Dumb money retail investors chasing fictitious capital are setting off a feeding frenzy.
- Comment on Robinhood admits it’s just a gambling app. 2 weeks ago:
Tesla, a failed venture living off government subsidies
It’s not a failed venture precisely because it lives off government money. Show me a Fortune 500 company and I’ll show you a large stream of public sector receipts.
- Comment on Robinhood admits it’s just a gambling app. 2 weeks ago:
Citadel commands something like 8-10% of daily market volume. They’re the textbook Too Big To Fail investor. SEC won’t touch them for that reason alone.
- Comment on Robinhood admits it’s just a gambling app. 2 weeks ago:
Long term market rate of return is positive (extremely positive of late), where as casino gambling is EV negative.
But options and futures exist as a short term hedge on equity investment. Combine that with the vig Robinhood takes on the front end in the form of higher asset prices, and you end up with an EV negative return - more consistent with high stakes gambling than equity investing.
- Comment on Support local bands 2 weeks ago:
Really knows how to give a pounding
- Comment on Support local bands 2 weeks ago:
Me, at the opener for Bright Eyes
- Comment on Elon Musk Fans Are Losing So Much Money to Crypto Scams 2 weeks ago:
A lot of the people falling for these scams are straight up mentally ill or disabled.
It’s funny to think of some blowhard yacht guy getting scammed. Less funny to see an adult with Down’s Syndrome or Schizophrenia or Dementia get played.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 85 comments
- Comment on If you're not serious about cheating then you're not serious about winning 2 weeks ago:
What is with people and self-snitching?
It’s AI generated and getting passed around Twitter/Right-Wing Facebook ad part of MAGA hysterics.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 9 comments
- Comment on A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse | Users own their content, and Loops doesn’t sell or provide videos to third-party advertisers or train AI on them. It will be open source 2 weeks ago:
But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user?
You have more control over your front-page content. If you don’t want to get a particular feed, you unsubscribe from it.
- Comment on A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse | Users own their content, and Loops doesn’t sell or provide videos to third-party advertisers or train AI on them. It will be open source 2 weeks ago:
who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media
I don’t watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.
What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?
I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.
But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You’re still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you’re going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.
But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you’ve got a degree of control (I don’t have to listen to Rogan if I don’t want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.
- Comment on A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse | Users own their content, and Loops doesn’t sell or provide videos to third-party advertisers or train AI on them. It will be open source 2 weeks ago:
it drains our energy and motivation
All this time, I thought the daily grind of employment - consuming 8-12 hours of my day for someone else’s profit - was what exhausted my free time, limited my opportunities for socializing, and drained my enthusiasm for local organizing. Turns out it was the fifteen minutes of free time between meetings checking current events that was to blame.
It’s like digital weed
So its palliative care for our lack of comprehensive healthcare, but even less effective at the job?
- Comment on A TikTok alternative called Loops is coming for the fediverse | Users own their content, and Loops doesn’t sell or provide videos to third-party advertisers or train AI on them. It will be open source 2 weeks ago:
TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful
TikTok is profitable because it is addictive. But the idea that short-form video is less useful than print or radio is flawed.
I don’t understand why anyone would use this.
For the same reason someone would turn on the TV or pick up a magazine.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
The ANC made a special point to protect the apartheidists during their Truth and Reconciliation hearings. It wasn’t until said white farmers began violently resisting efforts to repatriate land to native farmers that the government lost control of retribution. Even then, they weren’t “slaughtered”. Quite a few simply abandoned their properties.
Quite a few white South Africans are currently leaving to become converts to Judaism in order to participate in the Israeli Settler Movement
- Comment on Sympathy for their PTSD 3 weeks ago:
Israeli conscription is becoming as fierce and draconian as Russian conscription. A big reason why the Israeli economy is tanking stems from the mass mobilization of working age adults to do war crimes.
- Comment on Norwegian government to set 15-year age limit for using social media 3 weeks ago:
Social media isn’t bad inherently. Addictive algorithms, violation of user privacy, etc. is bad.
Cigarettes aren’t bad for you. It’s just the burning tar and the nicotine.
- Comment on Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers 3 weeks ago:
Many European companies canceled contracts with US companies because of the NSL risk.
I’d be curious to see who they were. My guess is that they are relatively small and easy enough to circumvent without breaking ties with America as a whole.
But I’m not seeing Exxon, Boeing, or Microsoft pull out of Europe, despite being deeply embedded with sanctioned regimes.
- Comment on Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers 3 weeks ago:
Its an American-based company, owned and operated by American businessmen. They’re not going to burn their own guys, even if some of them are spooks (no evidence that anyone on the core dev team is a spook, but crazy to think the FSB would have people in and the Five-Eyes guys wouldn’t).
But I do wonder how long until we start seeing mainstream code-forks that span geopolitical regions. Will we have a Digital Iron Curtain, with BRICS countries doing their own FOSS branches independently of NATO block?
- Comment on Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers 3 weeks ago:
This is hardly the first time the core Linux code stack has been forked and independently developed. Seems like this is going to invite a Russia-specific development environment that just pulls in updates from the main branch and adds in Russia-internal development (which will likely then be copied by non-Russians and backloaded into the core Linux stack under someone else’s name, because why waste good dev work?)
But the argument appears to be anyone with a Russian-sounding name is getting removed from the core development team, until they can prove to the American team that they aren’t… spooks, I guess? Also
The driver code to which the dropped maintainers contributed remains in place.
So this isn’t such a high security risk that the code is being pulled (presumably because its been vetted and appears beyond repute). This is purely a CYA move to eliminate veterans on the team because they were forthright about their identities.
should be based in a more open, mor asvanced in laws and neutral territory.
Its not clear how a policy of booting people based on their surnames accomplishes this.
- Comment on Nvidia blocks access to video card driver updates for users from Russia and Belarus. 3 weeks ago:
There’s an old joke about agents from the CIA and KGB sharing a drink at a pub in Berlin.
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
- Comment on Nvidia blocks access to video card driver updates for users from Russia and Belarus. 3 weeks ago:
there are other ways to get those drivers.
Not only will they have back doors, but they’ll be screening for shittier updates and working on hacks that liberate the hardware from proprietary software updates.
Beginning to feel like the good old Internet Wild West over on the eastern internet.
- Comment on X's idiocy is doing wonders for Bluesky. 3 weeks ago:
Lemmy doesn’t have anywhere close to Bluesky’s use base
- Comment on Not allowed to work from home 3 weeks ago:
Teamwork makes the dream work.
- Comment on Not allowed to work from home 3 weeks ago:
Keep telling the DBAs that my company outsourced a big chunk of their tech stack to that its against company policy to work all the way on the other side of the planet, but they refuse to show up to the office.
- Comment on REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets 3 weeks ago:
