Spyke

Replies

Comment on

Not an employee.

I remember reading the original of these without the tagline up top. The guys name was Abs Delfuego (I’m not making this up, you can google him). He posted by omegaweapon on Reddit. He had a neighbor with a disabled son, and Abs made an arcade machine for him.

His wife had died a couple years prior, and he started a business making arcade cabinets and occasionally maki no custom machines for charities. After he lost his wife he just kinda started not caring about being polite. If anybody got uppity with him, he’d cancel the contract. Just flat out, here’s your money, I’m done.

There were a lot of unhappy bosses calling gabs to apologize. Also a lot of people threatening to sue. I wonder what happened to him.

Edit: Apparently I can’t read, and this wasn’t Abs. I could swear I read something similar from Abs, but as the first line calls the person Caleb, I was mistaken.

Comment on

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

Reply in thread

Lawmakers and judges should not be allowed to make decisions on something they know nothing about. This is a huge problem with people not even wanting to educate themselves, and then deciding how the rest of us get to interact with the internet.

That being said, Firefox is only popular with tech folk. They have just over a 3% market share. I’m a developer and I don’t know anyone but myself that uses it. My mother would think I was talking about a cartoon if I brought it up. A lot of lemmings use it, but o would not call it a popular example.

Comment on

What do you miss from the old internet?

I just miss when you could search for things on search engines and find what you were looking for. I miss when putting operators, quotes, and parentheses actually changed the search results.

I miss when AI wasn’t shoved into EVERYTHING. I miss when the internet was usable to be honest.

Comment on

Nebraska Mom pleads guilty to abortion after Meta gives DMs to cops

Reply in thread

It’s also sensationalist bs. The actual charges were for performing an abortion without being a doctor and for concealing the death.

It was her daughter that she gave abortion pills to, and then helped dispose of the fetus. The daughter was 29 weeks pregnant and the law (since 2010 btw) is abortions can only be performed up to 20 weeks. The daughter also only got the charge for hiding the body.

But yeah 29 weeks is well past viability. At that point it’s more like inducing still birth. Nobody pleaded guilty to abortion. We need to fight for our rights, but we also need to do it while educated.

All of these rage bait titles are getting ridiculous.

Comment on

A Jury Will Decide If Google's App Store Is an Unjust Monopoly

Reply in thread

Epic games decided they don’t want to pay 30% of every transaction to Google or Apple. They sued Apple already and lost. They’ve filed an appeal, so we will hear more on that soon ish. I’m not an epic fan at all, but 30% of all sales is ridiculous. Epic themselves take 12% on the epic store. Valve, Apple, Google—none of these companies should get a third of the sale price for everything sold through an app downloaded from there store. Not just the price of the app, but all app revenue. Every in app purchase. All of it.

The $25 registration fee is just for the account. That’s negligible considering Apple charges $100 a year. It’s the commission these companies take that epic is suing over.

Comment on

What is good to eat when you have no appetite?

Reply in thread

I’ve had illness that broke my swallowing. Soylent is relatively good tasting, has the nutrients you need, and goes down fast and easy. It isn’t pleasant to live on, but I did it for almost two months and it was way better than only eating soggy bread. I definitely recommend Soylent.

Edit: there’s also (I’m sorry I don’t remember the brand) a really good cinnabon breakfast shake that tastes good and helps break up the monotony of a meal replacement shake only diet.

Comment on

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

Reply in thread

Actually yes. Around 2010 Firefox still had like 60% market share. Now, chrome dominates the market and Firefox is in single digits. Chrome gives you so many conveniences, and only a small amount of people care about what you give up for those conveniences. “My data isn’t important. Who cares about what I do?” Is a common response to data mining and sharing.

Most people don’t want to put the time and effort into researching these things. Most people just don’t have the energy.

But again if you don’t know anything about a topic you are asked to make a decision on, you should recuse yourself. It’s unfortunate that most people making decisions about tech know very little about it.

Comment on

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

Reply in thread

That’s a fair point. This case is even more complicated, as either the author of the article doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or a word was missing. The article says the judge wasn’t sure if mozilla was a browser or search engine, and Mozilla is neither.

I still hate the confidently incorrect assertions people in charge are making to negatively impact the way the largest and most complete telecommunications and information system works. Just look at facebooks trial where zuck had to explain how the internet works to the people who were deciding if his company was doing something wrong.

Comment on

What is good to eat when you have no appetite?

Reply in thread

My issue was with my swallowing. So actual toast was too crunchy to reliably get down. When the butter melted in the microwave, it sort of “set” into the bread. So it was super soggy and easily “dissolved” in my throat. So I personally couldn’t really eat “solid” foods. Microwaved cinnamon toast was the best way I found to get carbs.

Edit: could to couldnt

Comment on

The Self-Driving Cars Wearing a Cone of Shame

Reply in thread

I gotta disagree here. Our goal of we want cars to be around should be to replace ALL human drivers. Especially on highways. Cars can communicate with other cars, which would almost completely remove congestion and traffic from people who’ve never heard of zipper merging and people who refuse to let anyone in front of them ever because they need to save that three seconds.

People drive like assholes. Road rage incidents are not infrequent. People speed, drive drunk, cut people off, forget their exit and do incredibly stupid and dangerous things to get back instead of getting off on the next one, and overall should not be trusted piloting a 2,000 pound missile around other folks.

If every car was self driving, then safety on the road would skyrocket. Travel time would drop drastically. There would be no downsides (other than it won’t solve the US’s car-centric design). Am I saying we are ready? No.

I’m saying “they need to aid the driver and not replace them” is way off base. Idk what your commute is like, but I’d feel a million times safer if asshole A didnt drive around blaring his horn and brake checking me because I’m only going ten mph over the speed limit and not the 20 everyone else is, while asshole B is riding my ass trying to get me to speed up, leaving me 0 space to brake in an emergency.

Comment on

A Jury Will Decide If Google's App Store Is an Unjust Monopoly

Reply in thread

Epic is suing Google with claims that Google has a monopoly on their App Store. It will likely not be successful.

Epic already sued Apple 2 years ago with an incredibly similar trial. Epic lost that trial, but has filed an appeal, so they may get their day in court again for that one.

The complaint is that epic started allowing its Epic Direct Payment service through Fortnite on mobile. Google and Apple both take a 30% cut from any sales through their App Store. Apple pulled Fortnite from the App Store basically immediately. Google followed suit several hours later.

Epic expressed their intent to sue both companies immediately. They likely were prepared to litigate, knowing the two would not be happy. I do think personally that 30% is a ridiculous amount. Valve also takes a 30% cut from games sold on steam. I think that is criminal for all of these app stores.

I’m not an epic fan, but they only take a 12% cut on their store, so I have to applaud them for that.