astraeus
@astraeus@programming.dev
- Comment on It’s the End of the Web as We Know It 6 months ago:
Linux is a prime example of quality that isn’t paid for. No one forces you to pay for Linux, you can of course support the maintainers and donate, but it’s not a for-profit endeavor.
- Comment on It’s the End of the Web as We Know It 6 months ago:
Advertising, by design, is intrusive. It’s fighting for space in your mind whether you want it to be there or not. We can shelve that topic because it’s a side item here.
The difference between making a big deal of nothing and being completely on-topic is that the article itself goes into the responsibilities of publishers and platforms, how they have a responsibility to make the internet a better connected, more human-friendly place. You don’t see massive sources of misinformation locking down their content, but you will definitely see potentially credible sources of information doing that. It’s counter to the premise of the article entirely.
I don’t believe it’s myopic at all to point out that it’s backwards to expect the internet to thrive when quality information isn’t readily available. Sure you can use a different search engine, seek out free content and resources, all of which require an in-depth dive to find anything worthwhile.
The topic of this post is why the internet is dying, and while I recognize people need to make money to eat I think these news media sites are more than capable of providing for their employees with or without a paywall. Megacorps like Google, Meta, and Microsoft having control over what gets the most clicks is definitely contributing to rapid enshittification. Especially when they’re sending most traffic to articles that either have a paywall or a steady feed of bullshit.
- Comment on It’s the End of the Web as We Know It 6 months ago:
The paywalls restrict the flow of quality information, which happened before LLMs started scraping the web. If you don’t have money to spend on all of these news subscriptions you aren’t allowed to educate yourself. It’s class-based gatekeeping, plain and simple. They could tactfully include ads, but no one ever tactfully includes ads. They introduce pop-ups, fullscreen banners, interjections every 25 words, or the best is the articles that are just slide shows that take you through 30+ webpages.
- Comment on Send a message! Use a virtual pipe bomb! 6 months ago:
If you parse out random words from the bee movie to fill in the fields and change IPs every few minutes, gonna be tough
- Comment on It’s the End of the Web as We Know It 6 months ago:
Laughable that as the article begins to talk about publishers the Atlantic paywall shows up. Definitely not another reason why the web is dying.
- Comment on I don't really know how to deal with coworkers who emotionally dump their issues on me 6 months ago:
I think the reason may be two-fold.
The first part, in the eyes of most older people, a man is not supposed to be emotional or give into their more “feminine” feelings. This means they don’t want their wives or children to be the ones that hear the things that concern them or probably scare them, deep down. Most of the stances of conservatives seem rooted in fear, not reason.
The second part is that you are another man, a younger man, and because they don’t know you well you are less risky to tell these things to. They can confide their fears in you because you are a young man, with a life ahead of you and you’ll give them an ear even if you don’t intend to. Really they are probably hoping someone will hear them even if they can’t really pour their hearts out.
- Comment on What would happen if every atom on earth was to simultaneously double in size? 6 months ago:
Biological functions would also be impacted
- Comment on The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store 6 months ago:
You had to hack your phone to make this happen. I already explained that I don’t want to be bothered having to put time and effort into making my phone work. Maybe it would be fine as a fun little project, but I’m not going to depend on a jailbroken phone as my main phone, even if the risk it fails is rather low.
- Comment on The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store 6 months ago:
Yeah lower quality as in the Android phones that cost less than $1000. Because flagship Samsung Galaxy phones generally run more than that. The cheaper Samsung phones also fall into this category.
I had these problems with Android up until 2018 when I got fed up with dealing with each phone having problems that required a time commitment to resolve. Six years later and I have no regrets at all.
- Comment on Anon gives dating advice 6 months ago:
They found the one hack that everyone has missed
- Comment on The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store 6 months ago:
Because it works. I don’t have to figure out what (A01839: Device error has occurred.) means or weird Android nonsense all the time. If I wanted a constant project I already have plenty with work and actual things I enjoy wasting my time on. If it’s my computer I can mess around, if it’s my phone it’s just a pain in the ass. Even Samsungs can get weird like that sometimes, although the lower quality and price Android phones are the worst for it.
- Comment on Biden administration actively censoring the word "Palestine" just like the New York Times 6 months ago:
It was a nice laugh to see China as one of the countries which officially recognizes Palestine as a sovereign state.
- Comment on Biden administration actively censoring the word "Palestine" just like the New York Times 6 months ago:
This is literally because the US does not officially recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. If they were to call it Palestine, they would be undermining the government’s stance. That doesn’t mean they agree with it, in fact her slipping on it could be a sign she personally disagrees with the government’s stance. However the feds have never formally recognized it as a state and for them to do so publicly would put their jobs in jeopardy.
Not agreeing with any of it, just wanted to make sure the reason this is happening is clear.
- Comment on Why is "Dear X" considered more formal than "To X" in e-mail/writing? 7 months ago:
At every single company I’ve worked for this has been the accepted form of opening an email. There are hardly any circumstances you should be using “Dear (insert name here),” in a work email.
- Comment on why did the eclipse not darken proportionally? 7 months ago:
Our eyes also have the ability to desensitize to higher levels of light input, so the sun at high noon will be really bright but it’s the same as if you were in the complete dark for an hour and walked out into a brightly lit room. The eye gets used to the bright light. The same thing happens walking inside a low-light house from a bright day, it will take a minute to adjust but once you do your eyes have a completely different perception of light intensity.
With the solar eclipse, even 1% of the sun showing still lights an area greater than indoor lighting or perhaps even outdoor lighting, so we perceive it as still somewhat bright. This is sunset-level sunlight but the source is above instead of behind the horizon.
- Comment on Pros and cons of getting a job at a very small software company? (14 employees) 7 months ago:
Or Ed is maintaining the servers full-time and doesn’t have time for your desktop/laptop issues
- Comment on Why don't passanger airplanes come with parachutes for people? 7 months ago:
At what cost though? Like a single parachute without an automatic release system costs hundreds, if not thousands. You multiply that by 150 and it’s infeasible. Now include an automatic deployment system, and we’re talking tens of thousands per unit. Not including maintenance and repairs, long-term storage costs, the added weight on the plane.
Logistically, plane accidents that result in loss of life are so rare that it would make more sense to equip every car in production with ejector seats then it would to equip every plane seat with automated parachutes.
- Comment on Why don't passanger airplanes come with parachutes for people? 7 months ago:
I literally thought about this on my flight a couple weeks ago, if the plane loses power in the air most people in the plane are just gonna go down with it. I imagine most if not all passengers have no idea how to properly operate a parachute.
- Comment on Stop Killing Games — An initiative to stop publishers & developers killing games 7 months ago:
So Ubisoft has just pulled the server plug on The Crew rendering the game useless for everyone who bought a copy? Obviously a ploy to get people onto the new entries but the only issue is that since it’s not an offline game, they have rendered a good inaccessible. This was probably in the TOS, but even so I think one could argue that is a terrible position to put a customer in who may have spent more money on DLC and likely spent a lot of time on progressing in the game.
- Comment on Humans are not perfectly vigilant 7 months ago:
Pretty damning for the current state of AI, I’m just glad it’s not a hype piece like every other article out there. AI is nowhere close to the same thing as a useful tool, it gains much more from us than we do from it.
- Comment on Why is there no true Progressive party in America right now? 7 months ago:
No corporation wants to support a progressive party. No one profiting from corporations want to support a progressive party. There goes 99% of the wealth in America.
- Comment on [deleted] 7 months ago:
Yeah, but it could be they live in one of the states driving American inflation at a ridiculous rate and $6500 a month is barely enough to cover rent and bills.
- Comment on [deleted] 8 months ago:
There’s much more value outside of the screen than inside the screen. The internet is finally becoming less an escape from reality and more just an extension of reality. This feels very anecdotal, I wonder how much of this perspective just comes with age.
- Comment on [deleted] 8 months ago:
Not only a late addition, but purposefully not clarified or explicitly stated at the beginning, or even at the end, of the article. This is like fine print, but tucked into the content of the article so that you have to read the entire piece to get that information. Even then, if you are in the midst of the article you might not even consider how it impacts the framing.
- Comment on [deleted] 8 months ago:
Is Wired owned by Advance? The answer is yes. Condé Nast is a subsidiary of Advance. Advance has a 30 percent stake in Reddit.
This is why they call it “the Internet’s Greatest Authenticity Machine” because we know there’s nothing authentic about that cesspool. There’s even less authenticity behind a biased news article framing itself as disconnected from the subject. Not once do I see mention of Wired’s relationship to Reddit, if your owner has a 30% stake you should disclose that.
- Comment on Reddit gets ready for IPO, setting a top valuation of $6.4 billion 8 months ago:
Who’s shorting RDDT?
- Comment on What would be a good glue to repair this spatula with that wont he toxic or come undone in a dishwasher? 8 months ago:
Modern non-stick is great, but you have to get the right ones. The cheap non-stick is terrible, stuff like Calphalon is great. You spend a bit more, but it makes cooking and cleaning so much easier.
- Comment on Do you ever worry that you're secretly a psychopath that unknowingly manipulates people around you? 8 months ago:
It’s almost a guarantee that I have some form of ADHD.
- Comment on Do you ever worry that you're secretly a psychopath that unknowingly manipulates people around you? 8 months ago:
I relate to this. People who know me know that my thoughts and the things I say can be quite challenging. I’ve never been one to simply accept what’s considered acceptable. I always question everything, I’m always thinking about how things can change and be different.
I’m always hoping to help people see what can improve their lives, but sometimes it’s not our place to say things or do things to help other people like that. A lot of people don’t want someone who can see their weakness and try to show them a way to improve, it’s demeaning and insulting to most people.
I’ve always tried to have a positive outlook on constructive criticism, but what constitutes constructive criticism and something further is a lot different for one person than it is for the next.
- Comment on Do you ever worry that you're secretly a psychopath that unknowingly manipulates people around you? 8 months ago:
With a name like Thorny_Insight, I imagine you’ve already accepted and internalized the possibility that your internally critical mindset is equally external.