Powderhorn
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org
Editor and tech enthusiast
At some point, I have to admit neither is true. Let’s see …
Wage slave and vandweller.
- Comment on 9 hours ago:
This is the most French comment I’ve seen in ages.
- Comment on 9 hours ago:
So, back in the day, you paid for a Windows license. An exorbitant amount unless you had a .edu email. You paid once, and they left you the fuck alone. No data/telemetry collection; MS had gotten its pound of flesh and was quite content to wait until a new version came out so you could either pay another license fee or just buy a new computer.
Now, the OS is functionally free because you are the product.
I picked up a mini PC a couple of years ago with Win11 Pro, 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD for $99. Only a few versions prior, a full license cost more than this whole machine, and some inflation happened in the interim.
If you have a pihole, it becomes immediately apparent just how often Windows is attempting to phone home. This is what’s commonly referred to as “surveillance capitalism.”
I’m going to guess you also use Facebook if any of this is a surprise to you.
- Comment on 9 hours ago:
If they were actually date brokers, I shouldn’t be single.
- Comment on Windows Vista's startup sound suddenly reappears in Windows 11's beta build, and no, it's not a joke 1 day ago:
I skipped XP entirely on account of its cartoonish interface, jumping direct to Vista when programs started dropping Win2K support.
- Comment on Fascists in power? WW3 escalating? Your workplace becoming more dystopic by the day? Join Tech Workers Coalition 101 and help us change that 2 days ago:
Know your audience. Just because you think something is a fit for this community does not make it so. And dismissive shit like this is not a fit for Beehaw.
You spammed, got called out for it, and now you’re saying the problem isn’t you, it’s everyone else. That’s the fascist playbook.
.ml has different rules. You don’t get to bring your litterbox here.
- Comment on Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. 4 days ago:
Is there truly an audience for “I don’t want any proof, just answer my question”?
As Elon said, let that sink in. Perhaps an unpopular position, but if that’s all users want and it makes them more money, of course that’s what Google will do.
I’m in no way suggesting this is a good direction, but it’s unsurprising.
- Comment on YouTube relaxes moderation rules to allow more controversial content 6 days ago:
Sure, but this is only going to expand the Overton window in one direction. People with facts tend not to be as inflammatory.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 1 week ago:
So, your assertion is that the IRS is a good source for information about the validity of the IRS? Case law doesn’t cover whether ratification actually happened, but rather that the courts are going with it.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 1 week ago:
Look, I’ve been in journalism since 1998 and off Facebook since 2014. If you want to believe I’m full of shit, you’re of course free to, but that’s a terrible analogy.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 1 week ago:
If you sole-source Wikipedia, I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m not going off on a research excursion to prove myself right from things I’ve read over decades. It’s of no import to me whether you believe me; if you’re truly curious, look into it yourself. The origins of the income tax are more complex than one article can assert.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 1 week ago:
There is no historical agreement that states ratifying the income tax itself actually happened.
- Comment on IRS Makes Direct File Software Open Source After Trump Tried to Kill It 1 week ago:
The Internal Revenue Service. It’s the U.S. tax collection agency, created a bit over a century ago under, shall we say, questionable circumstances.
- Comment on Gnome adds Pride themes! 🏳️🌈 1 week ago:
Christ, it’s like Linux distros are about choice!
- Comment on Gnome adds Pride themes! 🏳️🌈 1 week ago:
I’m still sticking with KDE.
- Comment on Some people defended Ars Technica in my previous post, here is a proof about how Ars Technica parent company secretly manipulate Reddit for their own benefit. 1 week ago:
I simply meant that you enumerated my exact problems with this post. I like you very much.
- Comment on Some people defended Ars Technica in my previous post, here is a proof about how Ars Technica parent company secretly manipulate Reddit for their own benefit. 1 week ago:
Why are you stealing my argument? I kid, but the facts are true.
- Comment on Some people defended Ars Technica in my previous post, here is a proof about how Ars Technica parent company secretly manipulate Reddit for their own benefit. 1 week ago:
Beehaw is not a place to have pointless arguments. But moving to ad hominems that are grammatically incorrect isn’t a great look. You’re beeing needlessly aggressive. I’m done here.
- Comment on Some people defended Ars Technica in my previous post, here is a proof about how Ars Technica parent company secretly manipulate Reddit for their own benefit. 1 week ago:
Not sure who this “Hurst” guy is.
- Comment on Some people defended Ars Technica in my previous post, here is a proof about how Ars Technica parent company secretly manipulate Reddit for their own benefit. 1 week ago:
I’m going to try to be civil here. You clearly know nothing about the journalistic process. What is a “custom cover”?
Yeah, at the corporate level, things are fucked up. But it certainly isn’t Conde Nast leading the charge. That ship has sailed. But dear god, figure out how to properly capitalize things!
You got pushback, much of it from me, on your prior post because griefposting isn’t really what I’m on Beehaw for.
Also, know your audience. People are here because we already know Reddit is a shitshow. I’m not sure what you’re attempting to do by posting twice in rapid succession. Ars and ProPublica have different standards and metrics, which is actually the sign of a thriving journalism community.
Having your feelings hurt by people disagreeing with you suggests little online exposure. But you’re frankly talking about an industry you have no knowledge of.
If nothing else, this belongs in Chat, not Technology.
- Comment on Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers 1 week ago:
If you still think Meta is providing a service, there are likely mental crisis lines locally. I don’t understand why anyone uses any of their platforms.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
While I largely agree with graf 2, graf 1 does a fair amount of question-begging.
Not to beat a dead horse, but for those using Reddit for news, it’s undeniable that media literacy has not been imparted. The theatre and IE comparisons fall flat because you can always just go to the website. Reddit has no monopoly here.
If one uses Reddit as though it’s an RSS feed, well, that’s not an Advance problem. Not trying to victim-blame here, but come on. It’s not a site for serious news. I’ve not been subscribed to any of the news subs in years because it’s people sharing shoddily written stories and then having useless debates that ignore the central thesis.
It’s fine for entertainment, but entertainment is not news. “Look at, that cute cat” is the target demo, not, say “I’d like to know about the latest developments in the Ukraine war.” It’s akin to going to Harbor Freight for ice cream. You can’t blame the tool store for not selling food.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
Ah, publicly funded news. Which the junta is trying to eviscerate.
I’ve honestly been pushing for the death of corporate journalism, as we’re past the point where it can be rebuilt. Under this structure, there is no path forward, especially given the widespread fealty revealed last fall by LAT and WaPo.
We have a thriving propaganda community within journalism, but that’s, uh … not the goal here. It’s not as though boots-on-the-ground reporters want to be doing this, but fucked-up motivators lead to fucked-up results in any industry.
But hey, a few more mergers can fix that before it’s revealed as a house of cards, causing mass layoffs while executives sip mojitos.
I hate this timeline.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
I probably read a few of your articles, unless you were covering Arch. Not sure if that was yet a thing at the time of the Digg fiasco.
It’s sad that those were the incentive structures, but I find it unsurprising. By my final years in a newsroom, reporters had quotas for social-media posts. Guess what you’re not doing when you need to tweet eight times a day? Actual reporting.
One might say, “OK, but it doesn’t take that much time out of your day,” which I’ll grant, but it takes you out of the flow. If you’re thinking about your next tweet, you aren’t thinking about what other source you need to talk to that would solidify the story.
Corporate journalism is digging (no pun intended) its own grave in many cases. Longform is still going strong (e.g. Ars, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic), and I’m relatively certain Ars has cost me way more than just the subscription. I learned about Factorio on there, and a few weeks later, I got my life back.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
This particular setup is small potatoes. You want to talk monopoly? Gannett is a far better target (NB: I used to work for Gannett).
Sure, Conde Nast has a high MAU count, but they’re still producing quality journalism. And I fail to see how putting a finger on the scale – driving readers to good stories – is really a problem.
Given current trends in journalism overall, this is corporate overreach, to be sure, but this is a competition for eyeballs that goes all the way back to Twitter and Facebook killing local journalism by training readers to not click through to the original sources, thereby depriving them of ad revenue.
This is simply advocating for further erosion of the industry. Case in point: Gannett was already, 10 years ago, producing generic wire pages for scores of local outlets. One guy in Austin (Adam) read the AP News Digest, and without so much as a budget meeting, we were replicating it nationwide, just cutting stories (usually badly, since the business model at the hub was to hire new grads and pay them shit until they burned out) to fit each paper’s ad stack.
Algorithms Being Manipulated is in no way unique to Advance. This is a red herring. Journalism is in crisis, and any way to keep the lights on is fair game.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
Yeah, I realized after submitting that I’d written in majority idiom, which wasn’t my intent.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
Having poured more idiom into three short grafs than at any time in my history of writing, I felt the need to come back and revisit other things.
Before I get to the issues with the title,
They have the ability to kill the other news outlets if they keep doing that. Avoid them as if your freedom is dependent on it.
… oh, no! Gannett and Sinclair will be marginally affected. News outlets have already been dying for decades. The solution to this is certainly not killing more of them.
But as an editor, that title really grinds my gears.
If you want to go upstyle, that’s fine. But commit to it. As it stands, this is a bunch of Random Caps, making it look more like a Trump tweet. Why is “their” lowercased?
“YSK” – already something that should never be used when making a breathless pronouncement – is serving zero function here. Then we have the … interesting style choice of a comma set solid with a trailing ellipsis, followed by no period on “etc.”
I mention all of this not to be mean, but rather to show what decades in news editing turns one into. And decreased traffic to those sites would endanger editors before reporters. Readers have been lamenting the decline in editing since the buyouts began in earnest back in the aughts, but it’s a vicious cycle.
Less revenue, fewer editors.
I’d hazard a guess that, on Beehaw at least, users are aware of Advance’s holdings. Anyone who’s been following, for example, Ars’ coverage of Reddit has seen the disclaimer at the bottom of every story.
So, this is not news but rather, “Look what I ran into on Wikipedia!” Cool. If I posted every Wikipedia story I ran into, I’d likely get a vacation.
It’s important to remember that people can do excellent work for shitty corporate overlords. Pointing at Ars (literally my only paid subscription) and other properties still committing quality journalism under increasingly fraught circumstances is tone deaf.
But more to the point, who the fuck is still getting “news” off Reddit? The goal here should be getting people to stop using Reddit (admittedly, I’m still on there for niche topics), not to punish the journalists toiling to create the stories that get linked there by marketing.
- Comment on YSK: Condé Nast Parent Company is a Major Owner of Reddit, You Should Avoid their Publications (Wired, Ars Technica, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue,...etc) as Much as Possible. 1 week ago:
Shilling on Reddit is of course not a great look, but boycotting these publications will only hurt journalists.
The C-suite can always get nice golden parachutes when things go downhill, while writers and editors get a pittance if anything when layoffs and buyouts come down the pike.
Should corporations be able to have their fingers in so many pies? No. But the horses are gone, so debating the barn door is irrelevant.
- Comment on Microsoft wants a version of USB-C that “just works” consistently across all PCs 2 weeks ago:
Somewhat pointless without all cables supporting those features, though.
- Comment on Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks. 2 weeks ago:
It’s going to be so much fun adding these to the extant chaos of Austin roads.
- Comment on The internet thinks this video from Gaza is AI. Here's how we proved it isn't. 2 weeks ago:
They all use algorithms – that’s what software is – but equating what’s been done for decades in software with AI is disingenuous. By this definition of AI, that was baked into Quark 3.3 and Photoshop 5 (not CS5, just 5).