Heresy_generator
@Heresy_generator@kbin.social
- Comment on China unveils video of its moon base plans, which weirdly includes a NASA space shuttle 6 months ago:
The only reason Elon Musk is not the world champion of ridiculous vaporware promises with laughable timelines is because the Chinese government exists.
- Comment on Meta spent $4.3 billion on its VR division in three months, and made *checks figures* $440 million in return 6 months ago:
You're not really talking about higher taxes, you're talking about reworking the corporate tax system. As things stand now higher taxes would encourage more of this sort of behavior, not less.
Corporations only pay taxes on profits, so money spent on business activities, re-invested back into the company, paid to employees, etc. is not taxed. In this system, taxes are kind of a penalty paid for taking money out of the business; the higher taxes are the less incentivized profit-taking is.
If your company made $100 million in profits at a 20% tax rate you get to take home $80 million as opposed to re-investing $100 million back in the company and not paying any taxes, so the incentive to re-invest isn't very high. But if your company made $100 million in profits at a 40% tax rate now you can only take home $60 million as opposed to re-investing $100 million, which becomes a much better value proposition on re-investment.
- Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say 6 months ago:
[If we can't swamp Americans with CCP produced propaganda then there's no point in even site even existing]
- Comment on All New Atlas | Boston Dynamics 6 months ago:
They're not specific about that but I would guess not:
https://bostondynamics.com/blog/electric-new-era-for-atlas/
They say it'll be stronger and have a broader range of motion but my supposition is that being electric rather than hydraulic means the more explosive leaping and acrobatics are out. The old Atlas was just a test platform but this seems to be intended as an actual product.
- Comment on So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post 6 months ago:
It's completely absurd that he's saying this as an anti-bot measure. The bots exist because they generate revenue for the scumbags behind them, a small fee is just going to be part of doing business for them. He's not trying to stop bots, he's trying to monetize them.
- Comment on So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post 6 months ago:
The people running the bots will pay because they'll still be getting an ROI. And once the people running the bots become Musk's most important revenue stream, his most important customers, what do you think that's going to mean for regular users' experiences?
- Comment on AI Has Lost Its Magic 7 months ago:
[AI used to be a fun toy but I'm bored of that now and just use it for mundane tasks I could easily do myself but instead offload to AI because creating negative externalities, especially negative environmental externalities, for minor convenience is the bread-and-butter of late-stage capitalism and I'm too oblivious to notice.]
- Comment on DeepMind’s New AI Beats Billion Dollar Systems - For Free! 8 months ago:
For Free!
I hope people are starting to wise up to this game. It's not free; it costs Google a ton of money to run the servers and pay the programmers but this is the way everything in tech works now: The big players burn a small part of their vast piles of money giving their service away for free or cheap to corner an emerging market by forcing out small players who don't have the war chests to allow them to do the same. Once the big players are fully established the barriers to compete with their market dominance are so high that no one apart from other mega corporations could even dream of it. That, of course, is when the enshitification and price hikes will begin.
- Comment on Court To Elon: No You Can’t Just Ignore The SEC’s Investigation Into Your Failure To Comply With The Law 8 months ago:
Yeah, Elon; you can't just ignore that this exists until it goes away. It's not your kids.
- Comment on Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox 8 months ago:
Or they can be the browser that rejects the inclusion of bloat for functionality most people don't actually want and be the go-to for people who want a secure, private, light-weight web browser that's, ya know, intended to browse the fucking web. I'm so sick of web browsers trying to be application platforms; shit's been going on for decades and it was never a good idea.
- Comment on this is a france countryball according to bing ai 8 months ago:
Was "make it as soulless and corporate as possible" part of the prompt?
- Comment on A fake app masquerading as password manager LastPass just got pulled from the App Store | TechCrunch 8 months ago:
Yikes; that can't happen. Android users should understand that the Play Store is the like the Wild West and they need to watch their asses, but Apple is constantly seducing their users into complacency when it comes to security and privacy within their ecosystem.
- Comment on Skyrocketing bluesky engagement since opening to the public 8 months ago:
I don't understand the categories' purpose here. Can't someone be all three? Or are they presented as a hierarchy, like "likers" have liked but not followed or posted, "followers" have followed someone but not posted, while "posters" have posted?
- Comment on Samsung purposely knives customer's TV to weasel out of repair 8 months ago:
American "libertarianism": Unfettered freedom from any consequences for big businesses with Christian theocratic authoritarianism for the people.
- Comment on Why Everyone Should Still Use an RSS Reader in 2024 9 months ago:
I fucking hate software these days.
Feedly
Okay, let me check it out:
Create an account
No. I'm just trying to buy some RSS software. This should not require an account.
Feeder
Sign up for free
Inoreader
Create account
NewsBlur
Try out NewsBlur
Oh good, finally. Wait; this is browser-based? Why the fuck would this be browser-based? I'm not looking for a website or a plugin, I'm looking for software!
- Comment on The man who owes Nintendo $14m: Gary Bowser and gaming’s most infamous piracy case 9 months ago:
Convicted of felony contempt of business model.
- Comment on Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not 9 months ago:
The front display on the Vision Pro is an attempt at keeping you from being isolated from other people while you’re wearing it. In Apple’s photos, it looks like a big, bright screen that shows a video of your eyes to people around you so they feel comfortable talking to you while you’re wearing the headset — a feature adorably called EyeSight. In reality, it might as well not be there. It’s a low-res OLED with a lenticular panel in front of it to provide a mild 3D effect, and it’s so dim and the cover glass is so reflective, it’s actually hard to see in most normal to bright lighting. When people do see your eyes, it’s a low-res, ghostly image of them that feels like CGI. The effect is uncanny — the idea that you’ll be making real eye contact with anyone is a fantasy. And there are no controls or indicators in visionOS for this external display, so you never really know what other people are seeing.
I just don't understand why they included this at all and suspect it will be quietly dropped rather than improved on subsequent iterations. I can't imagine believing that the added weight, cost, and energy required ever being worth it even if it worked well.
- Comment on The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending 9 months ago:
Still, 60% of consumers said they prefer self-checkout as of 2021
And it's fucking weird how vocal and entitled the 40% in wanting the majority's preference to go away because they don't like it.
- Comment on New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion 10 months ago:
Member-only story
Medium wants me to pay them to read a story from "Homeless Romantic" who is listed as a "Ph.D. Rocket Surgeon & Aspiring Troglodyte"?
Are they fucking high?
- Comment on Hackers steal NFTs worth millions. In other news, NFTs worth millions. 10 months ago:
Wash trading doesn't count.
- Comment on Motivational 10 months ago:
"You will never be happy :)"
- Comment on Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data 10 months ago:
This is every fucking business story right now:
- Company offers good product or service at price that competition can't compete with
- Competition fails because they can't compete
- Now that the old competition is gone and the company's product or service has a market dominant position new competition faces massive barriers to entry
- It turns out the company's product or service was never profitable or sustainable with the features that were offered and they lied about having a path to profitability
- With no competition, the company either starts raising the price of the product or service, removing previous features, paywalling previously free features, or all of them at the same time
- People rush to defend the company that has engaged in shitty, bad-faith business practices from the start and blame their customers instead
It's the last part that's most depressing.
- Comment on Mozilla announces their new AI website builder, community reacts appropriately 11 months ago:
Wow, what a wonderful innovation for the SEO spam websites industry.
- Comment on Tesla again threatens to sue Cybertruck buyers who try to resell the cars 11 months ago:
That's transparently what this is. It reminds me of his years of "self-driving taxi" lies; they're trying to convince people that if they buy a vehicle from Tesla they're not spending money, they're making an investment that will pay off in the future.
- Comment on Transparent Wood Could Soon Find Uses In Smartphone Screens, Insulated Windows 11 months ago:
The headline is:
Why scientists are making transparent wood
- Comment on Walmart, Costco and other companies rethink self-checkout, some stores removing them 11 months ago:
Different strokes for different folks; I much prefer to quickly check myself out rather than waiting in line for someone to check my stuff out for me while dragging me into small talk and packing my bags in the most illogical way conceivable.
- Comment on Walmart, Costco and other companies rethink self-checkout, some stores removing them 11 months ago:
Oh come on; I don't want to go back to having to make small talk with the slow old woman running the register.
- Comment on Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law 11 months ago:
And all they have to do to keep that money flowing is make sure they don't publish anything that might jeopardize Google's dominant market position.
- Comment on Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law 11 months ago:
So now Canadian news outlets are partners with Google and they have a significant revenue stream that depends on Google's continued success. If you thought you saw a lot of big-tech cheerleading out of the media before just you wait; we're in a whole new era.
- Comment on Linda Yaccarino’s Very Unmerry X Mess 11 months ago:
Glenn Greenwald says
LMAO.