Creeps

Why would we believe the promises of the ones who ruined the primary utility of their core product in the first place, and convinced or blackmailed the rest of the internet to take part in the ruination ? An advertising corporation will tell us to put cyanide on our pizza if it makes them an extra buck this quarter, and google is worse than that. Profit despite the social costs is doing no evil /s

This is some self imposed (not you) dystopian stupidity. Good on you for giving them warning, telling them straight, and then following through. Hope you went on to better and brighter things.

Then Hire cheap human intelligence to correct the AIs hallucinatory trash, trained from actual human generated content in the first place which the original intended audience did understand the nuanced context and meaning of in the first place. Wow more like theyve shovelled a bucket of horse manure on the pizza as well as the glue. Added value to the advertisers. AI my arse. I think calling these things language models is being generous. More like energy and data hungry vomitrons.

Good thing FB and Insta themselves are skippable.

Politicising climate change was yet another distraction from dealing with it in a cohesive and unified manner. Divide and conquer.

All three authors have criticised the CCP in the past. The awards were held in Chengdu, land ot pandas , spicy food , and snowflake leadership. Two of the authors are from international Chinese diaspora . The snowflakes running the country are incredibly sensitive to what ethnic han Chinese outside China - especially in public spheres - say about them. They threw Gaiman in for good measure ( atleast theyre consistent which is kind of surprising). This is just another small measure of softpower being exerted. Any author with reliance on that market is either self censoring or prepared to not have access to it. So clearly its what Hugo did in order to leave in one piece. Mustve been some interesting conversations go on.

Non American , and non brit here. Why is this waste of energy so interested in the UK and Europe now ? I know there will be plenty of cynical takes which I will probably endorse however I’m interested in what his actual motivation might be. Does he just want parties in power in the given country that he has influence over for the sake of legislative advantage for his businesses? Or is it trollconomics for sake of driving signups to his failing social network I forget the name of?

Wheres the melodrama in this post ? I’m detecting enthusiasm maybe, but not melodrama. They’re looking for peoples thoughts and experience, i.e what your own terms are for making these choices. Seems reasonable. Sharing that is optional of course and I also choose not to, end of story.

Destructive. The intention being to return to a perceived ‘status quo’ which was effectively a policy(more like ideology) of cultural annihilation. The behaviour of an authoritarian occupying force, rather than one of partnership. Stirring up the worst in our backwater colony while they prepare to fleece their credulous voters while dangling plastic carrots (oooh tax cuts).

News sites also need to stop going on about it. Its like feeding the troll. I’ve never used the thing other than looking at it briefly in its early days, and yet I’m constantly hearing about it. And here I am commenting about this apparently (Western) globally important website which has served no purpose in my life. What a waste of energy all around. Self perpetuating negative feedback loop tech wank. Digital town square my arse. The little I know about it is from bad headlines which I wish I could unsee as its of zero consequence.

Thanks for the headsup. This is the final push I needed. Been running Jellyfin for 6months or so but need to put more time into it. Plex has been great, and I’ve also been paying (though felt a little conflicted) a sub which I’m willing to do if it keeps a worthwhile project on an honest trajectory aligning with my needs and restrictions, for a good service or product. However they're now doing exactly why I started on the self hosting path. Who’s to say the third party is jot going to be a heavy handed industry body, corrupt authority , let alone the problematic world of adsales? They’re walking a very strange line and seem very confused about their purpose. Other than the all ruining ‘growth’. Seeya plex.

Well this was a strange way to find out Fisk died. And in 2020. I’ve ended up in a bubble I don't like.

Stick close to her and trusted family and friends. Though cash must be accepted legally , its hardly used. Getting a simcard requires registering with your passport now. If you're okay with that, a cheap burner phone with wechat for payments and comms and standard phone number yo get hold of your family back home. Needless to say you wont be anonymous so my attitude when visiting there was kind of just accept that, and don't do/say anything stupid. i.e assimilate temporarily with that way of life. All of these concerns are only a small part of life and of course a billion or so people are living with it. You are totally right that the place is full of interesting and amazing history, culture, food and really friendly and hospitable people despite the bs they have to put up with.

Yeh the files being little pieces of paper, and the folders being old office folios are skeumorphic. Skeumorphic was (or is?) sometimes used more generically for ui elements made to look physical so perhaps the pseudo 3D shading, dropshadows, bevels and highlights qualify much of OPs examples, though they aren't representing any specific type of physical object necessarily. Just objects to be grabbed and used (clicked).

I’m sure trends will bring us back to a similar style at some point like they often do.

Its not just embarrassment we should feel. Arbitrary constructs are still capable of creating massive unneccessary human tragedy, repeatedly.

Non American here, and also not a lawyer, but I’m curious what the correlation is between consumer rights (or lack of) and the relative cost of the product. This is somewhat different to buying a cheaply manufactured product and it unsurprisingly falling to bits - though in many jurisdictions there are even basic rights for that situation, the price is irrelevent. Someone elsewhere in chat has suggested suing in small claims for the cost of the product, due to Roku intentionally bricking their own product unless the rightful owner (is the purchaser even the owner?) agrees to certain terms, even though OP purchased it in good faith. If a straight up refund is not available during a straight forward opt OUT option, we have a very unfair situation for the rightful owner of this product. Needless to say opting out should be as straight forward as opting in. Your suggestions is that if a product is of or below a certain price you must bend over and gratefully accept the corporation you paid money to, then inserting anything they like up your rear end. In my opinion your thesis is not price based as this is a common practice unfortunately in the consumer (and enterprise for that matter) tech industry where we have had shiny brand even expensive products initially sensitively torpedoed up our various orifices, only for brand HQ weeks later to press a button which flicks open hidden blades in the torpedo. No one wants or deserves this. The question is what recourse is there in OP’s jurisdiction.

I may be misunderstanding you if actually you mean that any tech corp can do such a thing at any time that you have paid for. In which case we agree. But it’s far from ideal and shouldn't be accepted.

Yeh can upgrade them at purchase. From 256gb storage to 512gb will only cost you one kidney.

I think they mean the same thing happens alot in reverse: YT vids about news articles. Not wrong, but whataboutist.

Yeh that was one of the most shocking aspects of Boeing behaviour post the first Max crash. But it was the attitude from the top. Blaming the victims, on effectively racial or cultural grounds. An incredibly cynical and disgusting tactic, to deflect from their own abject failure of a business model resulting in death. The whole corporation showed how it values its passengers in those moments for me, ( and as a non American). They have no interest in our safety and due to this I haven't stepped on a Boeing plane since the Lion air incident. Not that they care. It also made me wonder to what extent Boeing are responsible for the poor air transport safety history of Indonesia and elsewhere. I would bet they haven't put a cent into atleast helping to improve it, considering how much money they have probably made there - it being an archipelago and the 4th most populated country globally. Several hundred people were sacrificed in order to expose these criminals for what they are. Profit making is too often a conflict of interest when lives are at stake.