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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even the CEO has acknowledged this. They serve you what makes THEM the most profits, not what YOU wanted, ever.

    For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add “Reddit” to the search. But then Reddit imploded as well, chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

    And Twitter/X likewise is now chasing profits over the needs of its customers, causing many to flee.

    As too is happening in so many other places, such as Stack overflow, and most of Hollywood itself was on strike for months, bc they have been chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

    Managers think they know better than customers what you want, or at least what you are willing to put up with.

    And now they are pushing AI to the rescue, to put even above the SEO results, but soon they’ll have to think about actually monetizing those answers, and the cycle will repeat at the level of SEO’d AI answers.

    DuckDuckGo works, for now. Maybe one day there will be a hostile takeover and it won’t anymore.

    Btw this phenomenon is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification of the internet - yes that’s the official term afaik!!:-)



  • I think a lot of shows are AWESOME, but then late-stage capitalistic enshittification happens and they become… far less so, and often quite TERRIBLE even, though ostensibly still have the same title, even though nowhere near being an identical show.

    One super-good example is Stranger Things, where the first season was really quite good! So many homages to nerd culture like E.T. and D&D - it was fantastic!:-) As I read though, the pair of creators had 2 rules: never use CGI, and absolutely do not “sell out”, i.e. a story should want to be told, not sold merely for the sake of cash. So after the first season where they made it b/c of their love for the craft, you can guess how the subsequent seasons played out (I believe one of the pair even quit over it).

    Arguably a better example is The Walking Dead - it started off REALLY good, but then… well… it too “sold out”. Actually I keep trying to force myself to get through it, I even started watching it over again from the start (a couple times now) thinking that would help, but have yet to accomplish this feat.

    Another is Designated Survivor. It had some big-name actors, most of whom quit (I think the show was sold to a different network… or something?), and the last season was just terrible, limping along before they finally put it out of its misery and ended it.

    The really fantastic shows - like Star Trek - had to prove themselves, then the creators were given leeway to subsequently make great sequels and spin-offs and even entirely unrelated titles. Fun story: Gene Roddenberry even created shows after his death, as his wife took his unfinished notes and lead their creation under his vision, like Earth: Final Conflict.

    TLDR: why offer you a good show when they can offer you a crappy show that they made for a tenth of the price, yet charge you the full amount?

    (though stupidly enough, they also seem to be trying to offer us even more terrible shows that cost 50x the price to make, and yet somehow suck all the more for that!? anyway it all seems to be based on greed + arrogance - they want to make money, but they do not want to put in the effort to actually earn it, e.g. by paying the actors a decent wage)




  • There have always been such (it is human nature) - but right now they feel bold enough to speak and act, whereas previously they had been too afraid and embarrassed to do so publicly.

    In South Carolina, various KKK-like groups said in advance that they wanted to kill people, wrapped barbed wire around baseball bats (in order to better kill people with), showed up to kill people, then actually killed people, then bragged about having killed people… Oh right, but the other side was not successful in securing a permit for their peaceful protest, so you know, there are “many sides” to every issue I guess.

    Misinformation/brainwashing techniques are powerful. Like if you believed that a particular type of human was the root of all evil in this world, then you SHOULD want them dead, under those circumstances… right? You do not bc you know better, not just about that one group but more fundamentally that it is ideas that bring about evil, not people. But the people killing people do not know that, and it is to the advantage of others who seek power, and want to use the army of sheeple to advance their own agenda, for those sheeple to not know that either.





  • The funny part is how that word supposedly may translate better as “maiden” than “virgin”, as in “young girl” rather than someone who has not yet had intercourse. I wonder how many people have been beheaded for asking about such things.

    Jesus Himself hated such over-religiosity - “Want religion that is pure and blameless? Take care of widows and orphans!!” - but sadly it seems the natural human condition.:-( The extreme irony is how He went to LARGE efforts to just constantly and consistently give the religious fruitcakes of His day the middle finger (“thou shaltest say to every Karen, fuck ye off”), which ofc got Him killed just like everyone else who tried it previously. So like… was Jesus one of the early atheists then, if you think about it like that…? :-D /s

    But I mean, in all seriousness, the gist of Jesus’ message seems to me to be to ignore the fruitcakes and just do the right thing, regardless (“the worker deserves his wages…”). So like, wtf does His teenie sexed-up mommy have anything to do with anything?! But Karens gonna Karen, I guess, and get all worked up about whatever drama they can either find or invent.


  • People have covered most of the bases here. The hardest part is that if you don’t go back soon, you will find that door is closed to you - at least to finish what you started, without having to start mostly over again. College can definitely be worthwhile, but whether it is worthwhile TO YOU is the issue. Also, once you get used to receiving a paycheck and not living on like Ramen… it is next to impossible to go back to being poor and spending every waking moment (and beyond) studying, especially for some undefinable end goal. But on the other hand, I’ve seen it done with like 15-year gaps in-between dropping out, joining the army/navy/whatever and then going back to finish up. Definitely think through all the angles here, b/c you don’t want to do anything that you will regret later - including wasting more time chasing something that you don’t really want to begin with.


  • There are MANY different kinds of devices, and each offer their own unique blend of functionality. The hardest to replace seems to be the phone part - calling emergency services or receiving a text using a laptop might be possible, but takes some setup and just is not quite the same as being able to whip out your phone and already be in a call one or two seconds later. Conversely, neither iOS nor Android are even attempting to replace actual desktop/laptop-like operating systems, and while using a tablet as a keyboard may be possible, nothing beats a true keyboard and mouse setup; although that said, a smart device (either phone or tablet) with a broadband data connection can offer a WiFi hotspot to a laptop, thus significantly enhancing its’ capabilities still further. Even some places that offer you WiFi may be super slow, unreliable, and/or do things like change the access code every hour or so, making it more convenient to simply provide your own - plus that’s a bit safer too (which would you rather use: a public toilet, or your own at home?).

    Having a printout (even if PDF) of a bus or train schedule isn’t nearly as convenient as being able to connect with an app to live updates - like “it should have been here an hour ago, what happened, do I just wait further?”, plus allows quick deviations like “am I so certain that this (other) route even runs on Thursdays?”. Even dumbphones with a data plan could access the Internet, but apps are much more convenient, thus useful for things you do often.

    Then again, some of that you could replace with a broadband connection on a laptop. What the smartphone provides is a nice bundle of features that, while each one could be replaced individually, is thought of by most people in the developed world to be often highly useful. Though ymmv - e g. people with addictive tendencies might rather prefer the barrier of having to pull out a larger device such as a laptop or tablet than to have immediate access to everything with a smartphone readily pulled from a pocket; and people who have a desktop at both work and home may want to get by with just a dumbphone for calls and texts.

    Funny story: some dentist offices refuse to take patients who do not consent to receive texts and respond with confirmation of the appointment an hour or so before - they apparently were burned so often by people who made appointments but never showed that now everyone has to jump through those additional hoops, and they get enough patients that acquiesce that they can turn away everyone who does not. But if YOUR dentist does not do that, then your need for a device capable of sending and receiving text messages is lesser compared to those who do. It still is worth noting though how common it is to have such devices - most responsible citizens have at the very least a mobile phone, though not all!:-P - and your access to services in public spaces increasingly depends on such, so especially in cities, though they have significant uses even in rural areas as well. And yet if you don’t use public transportation, always drive the same roads (or have a dedicated device for GPS, if you need that), and haven’t found the need yet for apps, that’s fine too? You apparently don’t need them while moving about, though they can offer great convenience - enough even to replace a laptop entirely, if you have quick access to desktops.