Spyke

Replies

piracy

Comment on

Netflix: Piracy is Difficult to Compete Against and Growing Rapidly

Press releases like this are corporate signaling to US Congress that they would like some lawfare and are willing to pay for it.

Pirate streaming growth itself doesn't 'threaten legal services' as TF suggests. Any threat that arises is created by industry's market response. It comes back to margins. Netflix could decide overnight to invest in a long-term 'hearts and minds' approach that includes a quality platform user experience free of hostile design, non-discrimination amongst devices, relaxed household access rules, attentive customer service, commitment to finishing programming properly, improved stream quality, etc. Becoming the Valve of streaming represents an expenditure increase, though. You're now a lower margin business with a very sticky and content customer base. That's not a story industry wants to tell its investors, knowing they will respond with 'you should be petitioning for bills that enable more market captivity'.

They do the right thing only as a last resort, because the right thing is expensive.

Comment on

‘It went nuts’: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood

The elephant in the room is that parental controls development is a total wasteland, and has been for years. There's no money in it. FAMAG is actively hostile to it and phone OEMs haven't got a dog in the race and already contend with razor-thin margins. It's one dimension of a broader political problem of digitization that smarter legislators and politicians have surely noticed by now, which is that unlike human beings, users increasingly don't have any rights or agency worth a damn, and are treated with contempt.

I like that a grassroots movement has remembered that parenting should be at the heart of children's technology access, but I fear such groups' 'useful idiot' value to authoritarian elements up to the same old tricks.

Comment on

*Permanently Deleted*

Reply in thread

AI filtering of Reddit isn't the way. The way is leaving the platform. This is beginning to remind me of the 'decrapify Windows' YT videos that offer 20-step multi-application guides for getting a tolerable experience, instead of explaining how to install Mac/Linux. Time spent on a rotten foundation is wasted.

Comment on

True to life

That's not the look of a bigot, it's the look of a man who's fed up with low-rent posturing clickbait. The look of someone who got a Salon article entitled What your household's toothpaste preferences say about White Fragility™ that he knows will be paygated or cookienoticed after two seconds' scrolling.

Comment on

What is Fediverse, precious!?

You explain it to normies by saying it's a link aggregator and discussion site and microblogger, like R/T. What they are really asking for, however, isn't a rundown of federation mechanisms but a rationale for the fed itself. 'How does it work?' really means 'What are the crucial differences and why do they matter?' So a good answer to that must talk about ownership, the profit motive, user friendliness, the perils of consolidation, etc.

Comment on

YouTube cracking on ad blockers.

  • 2025: Search removed. Spend a decade crippling the function, then claim the usage data support getting rid of it!
  • 2027: Expiring updates. Juice those watch numbers with a new artificial scarcity measure. Marvel Bullshit 49 Theatrical Trailer, available for seven days only! Featuring AI Robin Williams and a Mr B_ast guest ad!
  • 2028: Web Environment Integrity inserted. Hand warmer sales crater as mobile viewers relish their new handset functionality.

Comment on

The FTC and DOJ want to make sure it’s legal to repair McDonald’s ice cream machines

It doesn't surprise me in the least that franchisees would stop selling ice cream, and claim the machine is out of order. It's by far the most rational response from their perspective. It also has the benefit of conditioning your customers not to expect ice cream. But that then begs the question: who owns the McDonald's experience, the experience deliverer or the brand owner?

Comment on

*Permanently Deleted*

Reply in thread

The existence of the paid offering doesn't invalidate use of the free offering, regardless of whether people are permitting ads on the latter. Any given Youtube page is just a collection of web elements and a call to a video server: these things get loaded or blocked at my sole discretion. My hardware, my web browser, my internet bandwidth, my opsec, my time.

If I put household items out on the nature strip, I have no expectation that passers-by will have a cup of tea with me first, then take every item as an indivisible lot. So my proposal to Google is: take those items off the nature strip, put them back inside the house and lock the door. Until they do that, no issue exists, despite the company's efforts to fabricate one.

linux

Comment on

Firefox Devs Working on Tab Previews

I want to view multiple tabs at once, in a split-page view where I can scroll on one tab, then mouse-over to another and start independently scrolling on that one. It's probably the key feature I miss from Vivaldi. Is there some insurmountable obstacle in the engine that prevents implementation, or is it stubborn devs?

Comment on

*Permanently Deleted*

Grocery shopping is best done at small privately owned businesses. Small supermarkets in particular are and should be treasured by local communities. Something about their ownership structure and their lack of scale makes them more accountable to shoppers. They can't afford to engage in the data wrangling red and green do to work out the maximum price the market will pay for tuna on Thursdays between 6 to 7pm. The fresh produce is often better quality, the PA music less insipid (or absent totally, hooray for Aldi), the stock actually looks a bit different quarter to quarter. It's simply a better balance of power between org and individual.

If you're shopping at large corporate retailers, especially when making vice purchases, you're best using protection