Rottcodd

As I just noted on another response, mostly it was that I came up with a delicious turn of phrase and couldn’t not post it. And yes, while broadly I think that Google deserves every bit of shit that’s thrown their way and more - that they could vanish from the face of the Earth tomorrow and the internet could only benefit - this particular incident really isn’t a good example.

I have to admit that I was so pleased with that turn of phrase when it came to me that I went ahead and posted it in spite of the fact that this specific incident doesn’t appear to be a good example.

It’s really sort of amazing how few years it took to go from “Do no evil” to “Don’t even bother pretending not to.”

Nicely clarified.

Yes - the way I said it leaves the possibility that they have to pay at minimum their profit, and no - that should not be the case. They should have to pay at minimum their total revenue.

This shouldn’t be an exception - it should be the rule.

At the very least, companies should be fined every single cent that they made off of something criminal, and really, they should be fined much more than they made.

If they’re fined less than they made off of it, it’s not even really a fine. It’s just the government taking a cut of the action.

Sort of.

More it’s just the way I’ve pretty much always been. Before I was even really aware of it, I apparently figured out that I couldn’t control the outside world but I could control how I reacted to it, so that was what I focused on. One could sort of say that I did it simply because it made sense to me, but even that makes it sound more conscious than it was. It’s more that it just never occurred to me to do things any other way.

It was only much later that I discovered that there was a philosophy called “stoicism” that advocated that.

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius

I recognize that the universe is so vast that it’s likely that life forms other than us exist in it, but that’s the extent of it.

I’ve seen no verifiable evidence that they in fact do, so I don’t “believe” that they do.

Really, I don’t “believe” in much of anything for which there is no verifiable evidence. I don’t even understand how that works - how it is that other people apparently do. It’s not a conscious choice or anything - it’s just appears that there’s a set of requirements that must be met before the position of “belief” is triggered inside my mind, and one of those requirements is verifiable evidence. Without that, the state of “believing” just isn’t triggered, and it’s not as if I can somehow force it, so that’s that.

As far as I can see, governments are comprised almost entirely of psychopaths, opportunists, charlatans and fools, so I see little likelihood that they possess concealed knowledge regarding any nominal extraterrestrial life. First, and most simply, if they did possess any such knowledge, it’s near certain that somebody would’ve blabbed something by now.

Beyond that though, I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that any alien life form capable of traveling interstellar distances would, on arriving on the Earth, seek out contact with a government, much less limit its contact to a government. If they’re that advanced, it can only be the case that they, in their own development, either never bought into the flatly ludicrous and clearly destructive idea of institutionalized authority or overcame it before it inevitably destroyed them, and in either case, I don’t see any reason why they would lend any credence to our mass delusion that this one subset of humanity forms a specially qualified and empowered elite that rightly oversees everyone else’s interests. That’s our delusion - not theirs.

Right, but it’s not a paradox - it’s a conundrum. It’s not just that the person saying it is part of the first group, but that they necessarily are.

Since people want to believe that they “know better,” there’s a strong urge to count oneself among the second group, which immediately places one in the first.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who know better.

Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?

I already generally do.

What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?

I honestly don’t much care, but that’s because western civilization is circling the drain, warped and undermined at every turn by wealthy and powerful psychopaths, and it’s just not worth it to care, since there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop them

Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?

Some sort of revenue stream is potentially necessary, but that’s the extent of it. Advertising is just one revenue stream, and even if we limit the choices to that, there are still many different ways it could be implemented.

The specific forms of advertising to which we’re subjected on the internet are very much not necessary. And they don’t exist as they do because the costs of serving content require that much revenue - they exist as they do to pay for corporate bloat - ludicrously expensive real estate and facilities and grotesquely inflated salaries for mostly useless executive shitheads.

Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?

Again, that’s what I already do, so it would just add more sites to those I won’t visit.

Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?

At this point, the two are almost always one and the same. Internet technology is primarily harnessed to the goal of maximizing income for the well-positioned few, and all other considerations are secondary.

Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?

This is cynically amusing on Lemmy.

Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?

Of course they should, but they won’t, because they’re psychopaths. They’ll never give up any of their grotesque and destructive privilege, even if that means that they ultimately destroy the host on which they’re parasites.

I prefer “used-to-be-twitter.” I think it captures the context better, and it’s clunky, as it should be.

Money wins, every time.

And right there, you answered your own (presumably rhetorical) question.

The money people jumped on AI as soon as they scented the chance of profit, and that’s it. ALL other considerations are now secondary to a handful of psychopaths making as much money as possible.

Firefox.

Seriously. Every app I’ve tried has come up short in one way or another. Lemmy is best in a browser and the best browser is Firefox.

It strikes me that, sort of ironically, “infinite” is only a difficult concept to grasp if you’re smart enough to understand it.

Stupid people just sort of take it for granted. “Finite” is the thing they can’t seem to wrap their heads around.

The thing you’re apparently calling “traditional” seems natural to me.

I’ve never really stopped and thought about it before, but as far as I can figure, my brain expects the part of the system that does or would actually touch the surface to drag the screen in a particular direction through the simple workings of physics.

On a touchscreen, it’s simple - it’s my finger actually touching the screen and it drags the screen around exactly as I’d expect.

With a mouse, my finger isn’t the important part because it’s not touching the surface (or more precisely, the mousepad that substitutes for the surface). Rather, my finger is contolling the mouse, and the underside of the mouse is touching the surface. And as far as that goes, the “traditional” way it works is correct - when I move my finger downward on the mouse wheel, the bottom side of the wheel - the part that would actually be touching the surface if it was a purely mechanical system - is moving upward, so would drag the screen upward.

So to me, that’s what’s natural.

Years ago, on IMDb, a poster called rabbitmoon kept a thread going for years on the Rambo board that is still the best I’ve ever seen.

The whole thing started with him posting that he was shocked when, about a third of the way through the movie, there was a scene in which a character was shot with a bullet from a gun. Then he countered, completely earnestly and deadpan, every response he got.

The original thread is long gone, and the only thing I could find of it is an excerpt that was posted on Reddit - LINK

And not only will you make everyone’s lives better - seemingly ironically, by simply accepting the fact that you’re often wrong, you actually make it more likely that you’ll be right.

That’s the part that I think people especially need to understand, since a refusal to admit that you’re wrong is generally rooted in an ego-driven need to be right, and refusing to admit that you’re wrong guarantees that right is the one thing that you won’t be. You’ll just keep clinging to the same wrong idea and keep failing to fulfill that need to be right.

If, on the other hand, you just freely admit that you’re wrong, then you’re instantly free to move on to another, and better, position, making it that much more likely that you’ll actually be right. And if you don’t get it that time, that’s fine - just freely admit that you’re wrong again and move on again. Keep doing that and sooner or later you actually will be right, instead of just pretending to be.

So you’ll not only make everyone’s lives more pleasant - you’ll actually better serve your desire to be right. What more could you want?

I hadn’t thought about it before, but on reflection, I do too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if most people do.

Exaggerated a bit for effect, it would be more or less:

There = thehr

Their = thayr

They’re = thay-r

“There” is just simple and straightforward with a pure short ‘e’ sound and no particular stresses.

“Their” has more of a long ‘a’ than a short ‘e’ sound, and a bit of stress on the vowel sound.

“They’re” also has more of a long ‘a’ sound and it’s pronounced just a fraction longer than in “their”, and there’s a very slight pause between the vowel sound and the ‘r’.

Huh… learn something new every day.

Of course they did. That’s the next step in the perpetual war assembly line.