cygnus

@cygnus@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Are Cars Getting Rid Of Android Auto?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m surprised you didn’t hear about that, because it was a huge controversy. it was limited to a few countries though (or maybe only the UK?)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The equation they are thinking of, though, is “will the cost of those who actually quit using Windows outweigh the cost of building and maintaining this feature.” Funnily enough the inability to move the taskbar is what finally pushed me to Linux full-time, but the overwhelming majority will complain and stick to Windows.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Default subs were already heavily astroturfed garbage. Smaller subs still generally fly under the radar, for now at least.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rules of acquisition, rule 214. Never begin a business negotiation on an empty stomach.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It seems to be a term directed at white people, so no, probably not… I don’t speak Hindi, I just remember seeing the etymology of Ferengi a while back.

  FERINGHEE - India, usually disparaging : a Eurasian especially of Portuguese-Indian descent www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Feringhee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rules of acquisition, rule 214. Never begin a business negotiation on an empty stomach.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty odd name for a restaurant – it’s a derogatory term to describe foreigners, like a Greek restaurant named “Barbaros”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I like that phrasing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s true, but to reuse my comparison to Romans, we call Augustus “emperor” too despite the term “imperator” being co-opted from an earlier, different meaning. I can see both points of view here, I just don’t feel strongly enough to see it as a red flag. God knows there are lots of other, actual red flags.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I know, but convention is to use a person’s final and highest title. Nobody refers to Julius Caesar as “quaestor”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think the Merkel cmparison is accurate - no one called her Leader, we called her the Chancellor (Kanzler), because that’s the job title. “Chancellor” is a pretty specific word in English with a narrower meaning and clearer connotation than “leader”, which can be used in a huge variety of contexts. The problem is that English doesn’t have a 1:1 translation of Fuehrer as we do with Kanzler.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We also use “Dalai Lama”, for example. Changing it to “leader” would lose a lot in translation. There’s a very long list of more problematic things with Musk and this ego project than this particular wording choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How One Uncaught Rust Exception Took Out Cloudflare⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Could be, but Rust has been around long enough that we’d see this already, no?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How One Uncaught Rust Exception Took Out Cloudflare⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like I’ve seen an insane number of error messages in various apps and websites around the unwrap method.

  I suspect this is related to LLM usage somehow. We’ll probably see a lot more of this type of problem (sudden flareups of a particular bad code implementation)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s OK, you’re on Lemmy, we all use Linux here so you’re among friends (or bitter enemies if your distro of choice is Ubuntu)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Value of NVIDIA Now Exceeds an Unprecedented 16% of U.S. GDP⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You may be right, but I hope you aren’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Value of NVIDIA Now Exceeds an Unprecedented 16% of U.S. GDP⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The dotcom crash was no joke. Most people here weren’t around for it (as adults at least) so they brush it off. I’m not saying this next crash won’t be bad, I’m saying it won’t have the knock-on liquidity effects of 2008.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Value of NVIDIA Now Exceeds an Unprecedented 16% of U.S. GDP⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe the reliance on index type funds has increased at a drastic rate.

  Very good point, although this will disproportionately harm individuals, and the people in charge don’t really care about that so it won’t be as disruptive as somebody important (like a bank or a hedge fund) getting into financial trouble.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Value of NVIDIA Now Exceeds an Unprecedented 16% of U.S. GDP⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, this article should compare nVidia’s revenue to the US GDP (both measure of annual production). But we know why they aren’t, as it wouldn’t produce an alarming stat.

  Not really, because Nvidia’s revenue is far less exorbitant than its market cap. I’m not sure why c/technology is suddenly a dumping ground for every random Medium blog, which is as trustworthy a news source as somebody’s Facebook feed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Analog bags" are in. Doomscrolling is out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Zoomers are in their 30s now? [insert Matt Damon ageing GIF]

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stephen Colbert Reveals ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Role As Paramount+ Sets Premiere Date — NYCC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I totally won’t be watching it either, because Paramount+ is definitely the only possible place to find it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if this ties into our general disposability culture (throwing things away instead of repairing, etc)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Should cable subscribers be counted 200 times, once for each channel?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True - I guess it depends on whether we’re defining “subscribers” as people or total paid accounts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think those numbers are additive like that - you’d be double-counting people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If my googling is right, in total there are ~207 million subscribers.

  This says 128M, which seems far more plausible. variety.com/…/disney-stop-reporting-subscriber-nu…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Entry-Level NAS recommendations?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends how attractive it needs to be. “Entry level” could be an old PC you kave kicking around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe this article was written by a bot to distract us from the bots talking about other bots. Maybe* I’m *a bot. Hmm…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So perhaps the real story is simply “lots of tech marketers don’t understand their audience”. Which I think is true. When companies put their spec sheets and feature lists front and center, I’m definitely more likely to pay attention than if I have to dig through screen after screen of meaningless fluff to get any relevant details. So that’s something marketers could (but generally don’t) do to influence me.

  It depends on the brand and who their target market is. I’d argue that Framework, for example, market in this way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  First off, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply.

  Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.

  Of course, and marketing itself works with generalizations about demographics and targetting etc. As in anything there are extreme outliers, but there’s definitely a bell curve, and I doubt most people are as near the poles as they think.

  The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)

  Sounds lke you’re primarily a value shopper in this case, which is fair, but for every one of you there’s a r/battlestations poster who spent more for something aesthetic - and unlike others here I won’t start “no true nerd-ing” those people away out of convenience. I to a certain degree am one of them, and I’m definitely a nerd (as is everyone on Lemmy). I’m sure there are different things you choose to splurge on.

  I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.

  In the industry we’d rarely refer to those people as marketers (more like “market research”, basically statisticians and much less cool) but you’re right that it’s on the same continuum. Focus groups fall in there too. I wouldn’t really count it in this argument though because for most of us it’s a fait accompli when we’re faced with whatever is on the store shelf. It isn’t something we can be “immune” to in any meaningful way, short of becoming a self-sufficient hermit.

  But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.

  But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain? We often don’t realize all the subconscious triggers we’re subjected to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism. There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.

  Perhaps, but I’d argue people who click on ads knowing full well it’s an ad are more enlightened than the nerd - sorry, “geek” - who thinks they operate on a higher plane of existence, not knowing that online review was bought and paid for or that Reddit post was made by an LLM.

  Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)

  This is a bit different because it isn’t really an emotional decision - they are are fungible, functionality being equal. But would you choose, say, a computer acse without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I genuinely believe I’m immune to advertising.

  You are not - you just don’t see it as such. Even if you didn’t use the internet at all (which we can see is not the case) you would still fall victim to its network effects.