skuzz
@skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
- Comment on Whatever happened to the days when shit just...worked? 1 day ago:
The mobile companies are slowly hiding all radio controls to guarantee the user is too inconvenienced to keep turning them off. Guarantees more enriched telemetry gathering.
Happens at the app level too, although it may be less malicious and more crappy coding. Watch Duty on Android, for example, is really a pain of an app in that regard. You can disable android’s WiFi/Bluetooth scanning, but their app uses that Google service specifically instead of raw GPS, so you lose the ability to get location-based wildfire alerts. If you don’t consent to Google stalking.
What a trade-off, if you don’t give away your location Metadata, you can’t be kept safe from fires?
- Comment on Whatever happened to the days when shit just...worked? 1 day ago:
They used to run on a model of “we know best” which is arrogant, but passable in a developing industry like earlier mobile where things needed work. Unfortunately, they still think they know best, and that closed-minded approach only works so long until you lose sync with the tolerance of the general public. Honestly surprised it took them this long. iOS and MacOS have both rotted terribly.
Take the UI aspects alone. Samsung “leaked” hints about a glass UI, saw user feedback, and pivoted. Apple released a glass UI because they would have never checked what users actually wanted, nor even bothered to see the user feedback from Samsung users and realize it’d apply to them as well.
- Comment on "Whatever You Get Your Podcasts" 3 weeks ago:
There are podcast aggregators out there that aren’t just Apple-ify, although now that I’m doing a cursory search, maybe a use for Google’s silly search engine to waste Google’s servers for good.
Search:
“podcast name” filetype:rss“podcast name” filetype:xml - Comment on "Whatever You Get Your Podcasts" 3 weeks ago:
And yet, annoyingly, these podcast platforms hide the podcasts’ URLs as hard as they can, even though these providers don’t host the podcast or files, and a “podcast” is just an XML file pointing to mp3 or m4a file URLs. (Not disputing you, just that the increasing non-openness of something they don’t even have to pay storage or bandwidth for is pretty ridiculous. They are nothing but a man-in-the-middle attempting to extract profit.)
- Comment on Guess what you cannot turn off for some stupid reason! 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, I agree, but it also makes a weird kind of sense. Properly regulated stock markets exist to ground the crazy people. Without them, they’d be doing things like building slave cities on nuclear waste for profit.
- Comment on Adding stickers to my fruit so it's harder to recycle 4 weeks ago:
Look at fancy pants Germany over here with more than one brand of banana in a store.
- Comment on Guess what you cannot turn off for some stupid reason! 4 weeks ago:
Samsung’s emoji/GIF injector is neat, but Futo Keyboard may be a viable alternative. It seems to be progressing little by little. As long as the vendor doesn’t go “evil” in a future release.
Also Samsung’s autocorrect is an abomination. So often it doesn’t correct a wrong word, or over-corrects a real word. There’s no appeasing that drunk algorithm. Sure, you can un-teach wrong words by hitting “…” next to the suggestions and deleting the suggestion, or periodically resetting the learning dictionary, but how is that keyboard such a needy little shit? Love the alt keys and number pad overlay.
- Comment on Guess what you cannot turn off for some stupid reason! 4 weeks ago:
Futo seems very promising once you change the UI settings enough to fit your fingers well.
- Comment on Guess what you cannot turn off for some stupid reason! 4 weeks ago:
I’m really surprised “shareholders” with any intelligence don’t start calling out their investments as liars during earnings calls. Tech companies have done this shit for years. Force features into the “on” position by default, force it back on frequently, force not having an off switch to disable the feature. Then they can tell shareholders that user adoption of new shiny widget F is so popular, millions of users are “using” it. Even though the tech company just has NewThing turned on by force and users are completely unaware it is even on, if they even ever use it.
Same crap is done with streaming services partnering with cell carriers and cable providers. Falsify user numbers even if the person just gets it for free and never uses it.
These companies only do this to falsify metrics to make their quarters look good… What if they actually made features users wanted and the user numbers became real?
Or, here’s crazy talk: what if it was illegal to use such tactics to falsify numbers? Gasp.
- Comment on Popular Tech Youtuber Enderman looses his YouTube channel after AI error 5 weeks ago:
Antitrust Google. Fork YouTube as part of it. All existing content must be preserved. Remove YouTube’s ability to sell licensed content (cable TV channels, music, on demand). YouTube can then be purchased or spun off as a “YOU Tube” again - content made by people for people. Brand saved, community focused. Monetization heavily regulated (governance or internal governance, but just make it a requirement.)
Or just let it burn and replace it with something else. Video’s just super-expensive to host and provide, probably by design to keep others out of the market.
- Comment on Never buying milk from Walmart again 1 month ago:
This is in every way superior.
- Comment on Never buying milk from Walmart again 1 month ago:
The American version of those are fun. Two months before the expiration date, stored in a dark space around 50F or less, they separate into globs. Not spoiled, just separated. Globs settle in the bottom of coffee. Once you get enough air in there, you can shake the everloving shit out of it, and the globs break apart into a delightful foam that floats on top.
- Comment on Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck? 1 month ago:
There sure are, and if necessary they can be applied and are good practices in general. As long as these web sites still see user traffic, monetized or not, even with users using workarounds, they’ll keep thinking what they are doing is cool, and the only problem is that they just have to monetize harder, and then “obviously” all those workaround users will fall in line and monetize like everyone else once they’ve “fixed the glitch”.
If they see a void of user traffic, that gets their attention. Of course, for the person viewing the content, the person has to make a conscious choice to go elsewhere/watch something else/do something else. Would be a good time for content creators to start shifting as well. Patreon even lists a bunch of video services that are not YouTube: …patreon.com/…/360046704651-What-are-my-video-hos…
- Comment on Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck? 1 month ago:
When I see content blocks like that anymore, I just leave the content behind and go elsewhere. Malicious companies will not get my clicks. They can fuck right off.
Good sign though, means they are getting desperate. It is our duty to starve them of traffic.
- Comment on Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck? 1 month ago:
Rabbit ears are cheap and don’t need internet. PlutoTV, Samsung TV, Roku TV all exist. So many free choices.
- Comment on Hide modal for 2 weeks 1 month ago:
I only decided to set up a personal AWS for some minor things after having worked on it at employers for many years, after watching employers accidentally spend $3000 a day or $1 million a month or $35,000 in error. Cloud is the devil, bring back servers. One flat piece of hardware you can do whatever with…but even that’s not sacred. If you use hosted servers, the hosts often still charge for ingress/egress and other things now, so you still fall into traps if not careful. Simpler though.
So I guess, storing your own server in your office is the way to go, but then the ISP issues…
Let us all just go back to paper, actually.
- Comment on Updates that don't tell me what is being updated 2 months ago:
Play store does the same game.
- Comment on Updates that don't tell me what is being updated 2 months ago:
For apps with generic update messages that also have source control and changelogs available: check to see how often the updates are just a manifest version bump and nothing more. Way greater than zero.
Most version revs for apps are just to reset review count and bury negative reviews with “review of an older version”.
It’s all gamification of walled gardens. Walled gardens that need to die.
- Comment on YouTube will let users booted for 'repeated violations' of COVID, elections policies 'rejoin' 2 months ago:
Leave Google.