definitemaybe

@definitemaybe@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Enshittifinancial Crisis⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A company buying money to buy it’s own stock makes sense though, doesn’t it? A share buyback reduces the number of shares, so remaining shareholders are holding more equity (as a percentage) than prior to the buyback. It’s just the reverse of issuing new shares. If the company has no productive use of the capital, then a share buyback is a way to make the company more “lean”, shedding unneeded cash to increase (relative) value.

  Borrowing money to do so just means that they are deemed credit worthy by enough bond investors that they can borrow at low enough rates that the debt repayment costs are less than the value shareholders would expect from a dividend payment and/or that they don’t want to issue dividend payments for some other reason (like the idea that dividends should be consistent and only ever increase or they’re valuation gets slaughtered.)

  The whole stock market is a bubble now, anyway, so this is the heart of our problems. About 2 decades ago, financial reporting allowed companies to shift their PE ratio away from Price-to-Earnings ratio and instead report on Price-to-Forward-Earnings ratio. This is the company’s projection of their future earnings potential, but investors just seen to accept that a “PE” ratio means the same thing it did for the preceding, like, century. A PtFE ratio of 25 is insane, on historical contexts, yet that’s completely normal now.

  Insanity. And yet the market keeps going up. Even the '08 crash was just a small blip, compared to what it should have been.

  I’ll just put my tinfoil hat back on over here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, it sort of is, but only for the specific question of asking for agreement with the preceding statement.

  “This weather, eh?”
  “The Leafs actually have a chance this year, eh?”

  But not like “What’s your favourite colour, eh?” (Unless, maybe, it’s in the context where it’s obvious, like someone decked out head-to-toe in pink.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MONOCULTURE⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Indoor clean farms are pesticide free. Currently only economical for some crops, of course, but likely a good option in the long run for sustainable food production in general without using up all our land.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How could you do this to me?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s MS? MicroSoft?

  If so, I just use Chromium for my “work” browser with M365 web apps for most things, and only spin up my Windows 11 VM when I need to do heavier OneDrive or Excel tasks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How could you do this to me?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  CachyOS has been absolutely fantastic for me. As a quick example: I just installed Minecraft Java edition with the Prism Launcher. It’s in the CachyOS repo, so it was 1 step to install Prism Launcher. Even easier than Windows—I didn’t even need to search for a download page. Cove to think of it, I’ll also get automatic updates whenever I do a 1-step full system upgrade, so it’s going to be 0 maintenance.

  The year of Linux has arrived. I used to make fun of all the Linux evangelists, but they’re right this time. Linux offers a better experience than Windows, for most common use cases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Steam Input would work, I’m pretty sure. I think I could overload all the buttons on the back so that they do all the complex D-Pad stuff. I haven’t tested if this is possible, but I’m imagining something like: pull starting direction from the DPad, press button on back for quarter/half/full/shuriouken movement, then execute with face button. So, like, DPad-Left+R3+A does full roll starting from facing right, then A.

  Alternatively, I could load a radial menu on one of the touch pads with specific moves to execute in one click, with DPad input auto-toggling switching between directionally-correct radial menus (or maybe L3 as a manual toggle or something).

  There are lots of options… Maybe I’ll try and see what I can figure out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are input macros considered cheating or accessibility tools? I like the idea of learning fighting games, but with my thumb injuries, I literally can’t do the key inputs.

  I assumed key input macros would be banned, so I never looked into this as an option. I remember hearing about upset when even official pressure-sensitive input controls on DoA3 were banned in a major tournament in that game, let alone custom input macros.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?

  Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.

  “I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.

  There going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but there are also lots of other ways around it. Non-chrome browsers (or Chromium-based browsers) still allow for good extensions that can block YouTube ads.

  Firefox + uBlock Origin still works great, even when all the front-ends are broken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pipepipe has been more reliable for me, lately.

  But who knows how long these alternative front-ends will last? It’s a constant cat and mouse game between volunteers and Google.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The challenge, as always, is to never underestimate a bubble’s capacity to outlast your solvency. I personally know people who have been heading against the housing “bubble” in Canada bursting since 1999. They’ve spent a lot of money with nothing to show for it, yet, and missed out on housing prices, like, quadrupling? Quintupling?

  So, good luck. Buying out-of-market puts might be a safer bet, since you’re most likely to “just” lose all your money, with a small chance of a massive payout of it “properly” crashes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly right. Parent poster is conflating the investment in “AI” since 2022 (almost exclusively meant to mean LLMs, like ChatGPT) and specialized “AI” systems (almost exclusively “machine learning” systems).

  A LLM is just about useless for any sort of surveillance or data analysis tasks. The bigger fear with LLM proliferation is as a propaganda machine, astrotufing the whole Internet with mass LLM-generated bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft doing shady Microsoft stuff again⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe try ReviOS? It’s a “playbook” file you run on a clean Windows 11 install that strips out all of the telemetry and junk, and mostly “just works”. The only big potential pain point, imho, is not getting automatic driver updates from Windows Update.

  I just installed CachyOS with virt-manager running ReviOS in a virtual machine. For my needs, it’s amazing. Arch Linux allows for easy updates to the latest versions of software and CachyOS further improves it with optimized, pre-compiled packages, which is particularly relevant for a smooth gaming experience. (Outdated packages aren’t a good mix with new games, and the optimized packages improve performance.)

  The only “big” challenge I’ve had with Windows is getting videoconferencing working smoothly (my webcam is flickery), but that’s not a big deal. Zoom in Linux works great, and Teams/Zoom both work well in browser (in Linux). So, most of my work stuff is in the VM, but I have Zoom and a separate browser (for Teams meetings) installed in Linux.

  This setup requires a bit of technical skill; you need to be able to find and follow guides. (Ex. I need to troubleshoot why I couldn’t change the VM resolution, and the fix was to download a set of VM tools in Windows.) If you have light technical skills to search for and read guides, it shouldn’t be too challenging.

  (I use Arch, by the way.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨have some standards⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but even so: that hardware isn’t going to be obsolete or wear out for a long time.

  Compared with going to a concert that can be $10K for 2 people to attend a single show.