theparadox
@theparadox@lemmy.world
- Comment on My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app. 5 hours ago:
So would reverse engineering an app, so that you prevent it from doing things you don’t want it to do, be legal?
- Comment on My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app. 5 hours ago:
The EU laws may not be worded so horrendously. I’m barely familiar with EU law beyond a little of the GDPR.
- Comment on My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app. 9 hours ago:
It was actually forced onto the US by a clever US politician who pushed it into the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Europe also approved the treaty and I assume the European counterparts still stand.
The WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in United States law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). By Decision 2000/278/EC of 16 March 2000, the Council of the European Union approved the treaty on behalf of the European Community. European Union Directives which largely cover the subject matter of the treaty are: Directive 91/250/EC, creating copyright protection for software; Directive 96/9/EC on copyright protection for databases; and Directive 2001/29/EC, prohibiting devices for circumventing “technical protection measures”, such as digital rights management (also known as DRM).
- Comment on My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app. 13 hours ago:
…and civil action if you try to reverse engineer or circumvent the app in any way… because the app’s code is copyrighted. If you do it for someone else or make a post explaining how you did it things can get really spicy. Lord help you if you profit commercially from it.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
I don’t think they are talking about the average person. I think they are talking about those in leadership roles.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
I should have been more clear. I know they are being manipulated. I don’t blame them for everything.
I’m trying to acknowledge a justified and legitimate frustration, not discourage everyone from focusing on the real source of the problem.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
While I agree that those hoarding wealth and power are the primary target, a lot of boomers keep voting for fucking fascists and refuse to acknowledge the leopards eating their faces.
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
While I technically agree, they are trying…
https://cybersecuritynews.com/lg-monitor-app-installs-adware/
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
That’s your buying habbit. They’ve had that for a while now.
For TVs a single sale gets you a microphones for “voice features”, maybe a camera for web video chatting, and can take snapshots of your screen every X seconds to ID what content you are watching, and so much more.
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
I understand what you are saying. If they reduce the price of their TV (and the profit that TVs sales generate) they are just removing the profit from one category into another.
I honestly don’t have enough energy to write a better researched response - I spent more time than I wanted trying to find any numbers as it is.
If you want to believe that the gigabytes of data your TVs regularly send to their manufacturers and their business partners aren’t a primary driver of lower prices… and that it is really because it has become markedly cheaper to mine precious metals and manufacture semiconductors than it has to run factory farms, then go ahead.
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
So in order for it to be real, everything must be merged together into a single source of revenue/profit?
I am in no way confused as to whether or not they could make a profit without selling TVs - it says to me that the more TVs they sell, the more the platform can make. The platform becomes the profit generator and the cost and sale price of the TV hardware then becomes a line item in the platform profit calculation.
I’m not a business major but I don’t understand how separating the services and hardware that delivers the services into two measures invalidates my assertion that the services are the profit driving force and the hardware is secondary to that. With the hardware being secondary, keeping its price low or at a loss makes economic sense if the platform generates that much more profit.
I’m arguing such logic has driven down the prices. What are you actually asserting that is relevant to my point?
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
So you are saying that they are talking about profit and not revenue. Profit - the actual net gain the company gets and the sole reason businesses exist in a capitalist economy, and arguably the more important responsibility of a corporation to its shareholders…
Gross profit:
Source 2021 2020 Device 25.6 58.2 Platform+ 57.3 30.6 To me, it looks like they are making more profit from the platform than from the TV sales themselves. To the point where they could, as you say, literally sell TVs at a loss, and still profit…but that barely matters when it comes to the price of the TV?
When the TV is on the modest end, I think that matters a whole lot.
They won’t be giving away 75" TVs or anything, but I think “platform” revenue has sizeable impact on why you can get absurdly cheap 27" flat panel TVs from Vizio and the like.
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
I don’t disagree that manufacturing costs have gone down, but I question whether that or ads, data collection, and other new smart TV “features” have most contributed to the lowering price of TVs and other electronics.
- Comment on We don’t need 75-inch TVs, we need 75% off basic survival. 💀 1 week ago:
A lot of it is actually data collection (mass spying and surveillance) being used to harvest and sell vast quantities of data… and that subsidizes the price of the device.
Basically, if we make the devices cheaper and spy on every customers, it becomes more profitable to sell at a loss to get more customers to spy on.
- Comment on All we did was make the already rich even richer 2 weeks ago:
Nonsensical? Ludicrous? I’m deeply offended by your unpatriotic rantings, you communist coward. It is, by far, the most efficient system… for siphoning money into the pockets if the already rich.
You just need to work harder at pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. You may think you have grit, determination, and intelligence but clearly you don’t have enough of any of those things because, if you did, you’d have managed to be born to rich, connected parents.
- Comment on Mars Bar from the 1990s found during house clearance - shrinkflation in action 4 weeks ago:
I would also be surprised if the cost of production, now using cheaper ingredients and far more automation, hadn’t also decreased.
- Comment on they wudda given him a standing O, and carried him out on their shoulders... 5 weeks ago:
I’d be more likely to believe that his staff posts things and he’s only somewhat aware of what it means.
- Comment on Why do they do this... 1 month ago:
They want a presence on your phone, collecting any data the phone OS allows. They want to send you notifications. They want to prevent you from exerting any control over the experience - you can’t block ads for an app as easily as you can for a webpage… and if you help anyone else do it you are literally committing a felony.
- Comment on Why don't politicians during a hearing let the person they are questioning actually answer questions and speak? 1 month ago:
“No Republicans are acting in good faith” doesn’t mean “only Republicans aren’t acting in good faith”.
- Comment on Why is AOC a big deal? She just speaks common sense and calls out absurdity. Have we really gone that far off the rails where we don't do it ourselves? 1 month ago:
I wholeheartedly agree that “It’s not politically wise” is often a bullshit excuse.
However, when you are an openly socialist mayor in the process of overhauling numerous aspects of city laws and regulations, opening a war on additional fronts is risky. The US public is tired of more of the same, but that doesn’t mean we live in a post-Red-Scare society.
From what I understand, he’s focused on improving conditions in NYC to demonstrate that the policies and theory are effective and accumulate some public wins. If he doesn’t play nice in the meantime, national Democratic leaders might find ways to prevent him from getting many victories in NYC.
Similarly, going to war with the NYPD would likely lead to them purposely doing a shit job to make him and his policies look bad. Police unions have done it multiple times. Again, he’s looking accumulate good will first so that the public will stay on his side when the NYPD pulls that bullshit.
Normally, I’m in favor of organized labor… but using that power to protect corruption, racism, and the capital class basically makes them class traitors so get no sympathy from me.
- Comment on Why is AOC a big deal? She just speaks common sense and calls out absurdity. Have we really gone that far off the rails where we don't do it ourselves? 1 month ago:
Mamdani literally strategically avoided a fight with Hakeem Jefferies because it’s not the time.
- Comment on Sound of silence 2 months ago:
To be fair, I also hate to be left alone with my own thoughts for even 1 minute… I’m just considerate enough to use headphones.
- Comment on Why is leadership valued so much over expertise? 2 months ago:
The OP said:
Pretty much every company I’ve been in or know of values a vertical trajectory instead of a horizontal one for its employees i.e becoming a manager nearly always means a faster salary progression than becoming an expert in one or multiple fields.
Why is expertise valued less?
I didn’t say we don’t need leaders. An owner or a manager may be in charge but that doesn’t make them a leader.
- Comment on Why is leadership valued so much over expertise? 2 months ago:
The structure and values of the underlying society revolve around individuals amassing power and wealth for their own benefit rather than any kind of collective good. Often the boss, the owner, the one in charge leans on their wealth and power. They were born with resources or hoarded them and feel that the most valuable contribution anyone could make is risking their own wealth (investing). As such, they themselves deserve most of the control of the organization (company) and deserve to be rewarded with most of the fruits of their worker’s labor.
If you have good social skills and exude confidence - this comforts the boss. Now the boss likes you and you get promoted and more money. If you are capable of doing great work but don’t know how to kiss the boss’s ass or don’t make the boss believe you know what you are doing - you aren’t as obviously valuable to the boss.
Get rid of the boss and decide how to do things democratically among your peers? Now you’ve seized the means of production.
- Comment on If online services (such as Netflix) only ever raise their prices, does that mean they offer less and less value for money as time passes? 3 months ago:
Technically, no. However, in today’s society if you are making aren’t making more profit this quarter (line go up) than last quarter you are seen as failing to meet your fiduciary duty to shareholders. More accurately, if the rate at which your profit is increasing isn’t increasing (line describing line go up) you are likely seen as failing the shareholders.
It’s no longer acceptable to deliver to your customers, make a steady profit, and be sustainable. Now you must cut every possible corner, deliver as little value and use as little labor as possible, make more profit, and “stay competitive” or your company may as well be failing… in the eyes of investors.
Unless you claim you are working on a technology like AI that can eventually let the company fire all of its workers and make all the money without having to pay humans for labor… in which case ignorant investors will light money on fire for you until they think someone else is definitely going to do it better or they think you can’t deliver.
- Comment on Is it safe to use a non-gaming computer for light gaming? 3 months ago:
Reminds me of when I first tried to play Quake (I think? some old arena FPS) over dialup. I tried for a few minutes hoping my ping would even out. At one point I had ~4,500 ping. That’s 4.5 seconds between my input affection what I saw on the screen. Needless to say, I was often gibbed before I got to see my inputs manifest.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Is there not a future in which the AI bubble bursts, and we are in a glut of datacentre memory and storage with no buyers?
There is. Unfortunately, not even the chips on the memory used by data centers is compatible with consumer hardware. They use extremely high performance, expensive HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), we use DDR memory. Unless consumers start getting affordable devices that are compatible with such memory, there is not much hope of buying what has been or is in the process of being made for data centers.
There should be a cataclysmic bottoming out of the market that leads to a period of cheap, abundant parts.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Nobody needs any entertainment, but some people enjoy hobbies like gaming.
no company has ever responded to more sales with lower prices
Prices are going up rapidly thanks to AI data centers exploding demand by orders of magnitude more than retail customers. There is no end in sight to the price increases.
If you want a gaming device, buy it sooner rather than later. That’s all I am saying.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Sure. I guess it depends on your anticipated financial situation and your priorities.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Honestly, the way shit is going, get what you can while you can. Gaming is only going to get worse and more expensive by the week.