theparadox
@theparadox@lemmy.world
- Comment on 10 reasons why we should move Israel to Utah 2 days ago:
They’d also get access to those sweet AI doctors.
- Comment on Anon loves GOG 6 days ago:
I haven’t played TF2 in a long time so I can’t comment on that specifically. I just wanted to expand on criticisms. There is a lot to be critical of - the lack of proactivity and resistance to change goes far, far beyond whatever is happening with TF2.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish them ill - I want them to be better. I want to shine light on the bad and hope the public will force them to be better.
- Comment on Anon loves GOG 6 days ago:
Also anticompetitive practices and lying about anticompetitive practices. Neglecting the entire system for extensive periods of time and rarely being proactive about anything that requires they change anything or do actual work. Their servers often break on Tuesdays with no warning or notice or consistent timing. They had forced arbitration for quite a while and only dropped it because some clever lawyers made it extremely expensive for them to keep using it.
In my eyes, they are a bunch of semi-douchy gamer folks who stumbled into being the most successful digital storefront on PC and have dominated by default for literal decades. They are gamers as such and have had a few decent ideas. They also aren’t obsessed with the next quarter and don’t eagerly sacrifice long term for short term gains. I have no problem giving them credit for that. They also occasionally take actions/stances that, whether or not it is their primary motivation, feel pro consumer to their customers. They are mostly just lazy and hesitant to change anything until forced to - they are absolutely fucking rolling in money and don’t want to mess with a good thing.
If there was a well-funded competitor that wasn’t lead by money hungry asshats, I think everyone would feel differently about Valve.
GOG has its own issues, but honestly I’m just happy they both exist, even with their flaws. In this capitalist hellscape full of businesses eager to harvest every cent possible from customers with no regard for anything but their next quarterly profit… I’ll take heavily flawed.
- Comment on It's funny how once a country has Universal Healthcare they never give it up. 1 week ago:
That’s why they won’t let US citizens have it, and pretend it’s something else when they get old enough for Medicare.
- Comment on is this marketing 4 weeks ago:
It feels like almost everything has become a race to the bottom. Who can cut corners and exploit everyone else the most effectively?
It’s one of the many freedoms we enjoy in the USA. Freedom from law, order, and regulation reigning in the worst excesses of capitalist greed.
- Comment on is this marketing 4 weeks ago:
I don’t disagree. I’m just frustrated that most of them are big and shitty because they’ve eaten everything else.
My trimmer just died recently. I researched a replacement… best reviewed and best fitting my needs… only available on Amazon. A similar model was available at Walmart or Target… Eventually found one at Best Buy (not aware of whatever horrible shit they’ve done recently). Couldn’t pick it up at any store nearby before I’d need it, but they delivered… using Doordash.
- Comment on is this marketing 4 weeks ago:
While I make quite an effort to avoid unethical companies, the list has only grown since I started. I suspect the only reason it hasn’t grown exponentially to include the vast majority of companies I still use is that I haven’t dug into every single company to find out how unethical it is.
Run by Technofascists? Run by regular fascists? Supports fascists hoping for quid-pro-quo benefits? Human rights abuses? Exploits workers? Pollutes the environment as much as it can get away with? Busts unions? Dodges taxes? Embraced AI? Exploits customers? Embraces surveillance capitalism? Collects and sells personal data? Heavily enshittified? I could go on and on.
- Comment on My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app. 4 weeks 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. 4 weeks 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. 4 weeks 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. 4 weeks 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 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think they are talking about the average person. I think they are talking about those in leadership roles.
- Comment on 5 weeks 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 5 weeks 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. 💀 5 weeks 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 month 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 month 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 month 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 month 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 month 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 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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... 2 months 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... 2 months 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? 2 months 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? 2 months 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? 2 months ago:
Mamdani literally strategically avoided a fight with Hakeem Jefferies because it’s not the time.
- Comment on Sound of silence 3 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? 3 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.