cygnus
@cygnus@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 6 days 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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. 3 weeks 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 5 weeks 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 1 month ago:
I wonder if this ties into our general disposability culture (throwing things away instead of repairing, etc)
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Should cable subscribers be counted 200 times, once for each channel?
- Comment on 1 month ago:
True - I guess it depends on whether we’re defining “subscribers” as people or total paid accounts.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
I don’t think those numbers are additive like that - you’d be double-counting people.
- Comment on 1 month 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? 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 2 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 2 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 2 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.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 months ago:
80s memorabilia and 3D printers are not exempt form marketing. They are products just like anything else.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 months ago:
How do you think you “found” it? A whole supply chain of people, from branding to packaging to advertising, made it so that you can “find” things on websites that are themselves outright advertisements or at least funded by them.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 months ago:
If this irony, good job because I think most people will fall for it.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 months ago:
Yeah, this is self-aggrandizement from a group of people who consistently believe they’re smarter and more self-aware than everybody else, when in reality they just lack self-awareness. Nerds will smugly post in this thread as a wall of funk pops and Star Wars slop looms behind them.
- Comment on Samsung brings ads to US fridges 2 months ago:
Me yelling “enhance” at my router so it blocks ads better
- Comment on Samsung brings ads to US fridges 2 months ago:
I couldn’t even list all the horror stories I’ve heard firsthand about Samsung appliances, including massive damage to people’s houses caused by leaks.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
I wish the second-hand battery market were more lively. Using half-worn car battery packs seems optimal for home use.
- Comment on Stop Talking to Technology Executives Like They Have Anything to Say 2 months ago:
You nailed it. Attention accrue to them because of their money (and the power it gives them), not the other way around. Without his money and control of OpenAI, Altman would be - along with Elon Musk - just another dork posting on Reddit during his shift at the electronics store, and would get the attendant amount of public attention.
- Comment on 18% of people running Nextcloud don't know what database they are using 2 months ago:
I use the prebuilt Hetzner one and have no idea either.
- Comment on How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone | Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy. 2 months ago:
DMCA takedown abuse isn’t anything new, this article seems like it was just due to 404 media having to deal with it, onlyfans is tangentially related and clearly just used in the headline for clickbait purposes… I really expected better of 404 media, The issue is a valid and increasingly worse one, it shouldnt need a clickbait headline. “DMCA Automation is ruining the internet” or something to that effect would have been a lot better.
That’s true, but if the important thing is to draw attention to this issue, this is a good way of doing it even if it’s a creative interpretation of the truth.
- Comment on Leaked emails link NHS data privatiser Palantir to Jeffrey Epstein 2 months ago:
Damn, I didn’t know Jeff had boys too.
- Comment on Instagram Caught Hiding Posts That Say "Immigrants Make the Country Great" 2 months ago:
Those who use Instagram will keep using it and forget all about this within 24 hours.