It's an example of why monopolies are harmful. They create distorted economies that don't serve consumers. Like ecosystems overcome by a monoculture, monopolies are inherently less resilient, less functional and prone to sudden disruption.
If there were multiple sources of traffic, the pressure to optimize to one source would be lower, and the disruption caused by algorithm changes would be muted. Which would mean more interesting content less driven by a narrow set of metrics
That's the rationale Google uses. "We're the best, that's why users pick us." They built a moat of investment in search and the browser that other companies can't compete with. But as a consumer, I am not willing to accept that argument. Ma Bell claimed the same thing. We're a lot better off economically in a world where Ma Bell was broken up, and Microsoft was forced to stop their anticompetitive activities. Google will be better off as separate companies, worth more than the sum of its parts
I recently read The Parable of the Sower and it really affected me, both because I felt empathy for the characters and because I saw some uncomfortable parallels in the recent history of our world.
I also was disturbed by The Sparrow. Though frankly I wouldn't recommend it for a lot of reasons.
Battle Royale is intensely violent, in a really personal way.
For graphic novels, From Hell is a really rough read honestly, but also really interesting
Two men have been charged with cutting down the popular 150-year-old Sycamore Gap tree next to Hadrian’s Wall last year in northern England, prosecutors said Tuesday....
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
There are a lot of aspects of the world that are wonderful, can't yet be explained, and maybe don't even need explanation to be worshiped and enjoyed. Religion is just a means to make sense of these parts of our cosmos (I myself am a complete atheist, but have friends whose lives have been definitely enriched by finding religion). The problems arise when manipulative people codify these beliefs into regimented systems of control. That creates an incentive to coerce others to follow the same beliefs. That in turn leads to religions beginning to be shaped by a kind of memetic survival of the fittest. Some religions try to short-cut the hard work of having actually good ideas that improve people's lives, by instead coercing people into beliefs that maximize birth rate and reduce individual thought.
On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically....
I have stopped using it to read news. I still use it to keep touch with my professional community (scientists who haven't moved to Bluesky or Mastodon), but that's it. I wish it would just die. Until then I've scripted it and blocked lots of elements to make it look exactly like old Twitter
The loudness of the plane, plus looking down at the device, plus the prop moving so fast and high enough off the ground that she didn't see it in corner of her eye.
It is nice to generate generalizable code examples, to give me clues how stuff works. I find that my work (marine biogeochemistry) is obscure enough that there's a certain level where I am still on my own. Which is a good sign for my future employability!
Yes, I still love my Shield, but there's no doubt it's getting long in the tooth, and there aren't any true replacements on the horizon. The Shield has also lost some features through time, like Nvidia's local game streaming, though Moonlight and Steam have helped fill that gap.
They aren't talking about an investment for a financial return. They're talking about investing their time and energy in a platform that then gets enshittified
Like them, I had the same lesson after changes to Google Home, Smartthings and have moved entirely to cheap stuff that works with Home Assistant and allows me total control
Religious extremists will always work to propagate their beliefs by coopting state resources: in this case, the education system. They know their ideas can't stand on their own merits, so they instead work to weasel their way in through forced prayer in school, teaching of religious ideas in science class, and of course, censorship of school libraries. It is theft of our taxpayer dollars to support their proselytization, which is ironic because some of these creeps are the same people raving about welfare queens and food stamps.
I'm glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time
I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
The thing is that the mainstream aspect will burn out, like most fads do, but the people who really love it will keep loving it, and some (usually small) amount of the new influx will also stick around permanently and enrich the community. It's just about surviving through the fad part that is hard.
that's disturbing, I'm very sorry you had to deal with that, having someone you were supposed to trust with your health, who suddenly pulled back the curtain and revealed themselves as an utter moron.
Same with leaded gas: it is a wonderful fuel additive; very effective and engines ran so well as they covered the world with lead microparticles. And CFCs: a really great refrigerant but it just also loves reacting with stratospheric ozone! Oddly enough, both commercialized by the same very evil man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
I feel conflicted about the whole thing. Technically it's a model. I don't feel that people should be able to sue me as a scientist for making a model based on publicly available data. I myself am merely trying to use the model itself to explain stuff about the world. But OpenAI are also selling access to the outputs of the model, that can very closely approximate the intellectual property of people. Also, most of the training data was accessed via scraping and other gray market methods that were often explicitly violating the TOU of the various places they scraped from. So it all is very difficult to sort through ethically.
Australia’s richest woman seeks removal of her portrait from exhibition ( www.cnn.com )
Android's photo picker will soon add a search function ( www.androidpolice.com )
Man gets realistic picture of his boat painted on fence intended to hide it ( www.nbcsandiego.com )
It's Over for Fossil Smartwatches ( www.droid-life.com )
Google Kneecaps Loads Of Very Big Websites After SEO Change ( aftermath.site )
Which are the most fucked up books you've read?
2 men are charged with cutting down famous 150-year-old tree near Hadrian's Wall in England ( apnews.com )
Two men have been charged with cutting down the popular 150-year-old Sycamore Gap tree next to Hadrian’s Wall last year in northern England, prosecutors said Tuesday....
Kremlin Disputes Report Putin Didn’t Order Navalny’s Death ( www.thedailybeast.com )
If it works, kill it. ( lemmy.world )
Rule of Google: if it works, kill it....
The little smart home platform that could ( www.theverge.com )
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
UAW secures historic union election win at Tennessee Volkswagen plant ( www.theguardian.com )
Smart locks from Chirp systems found to store app credentials in plain text ( krebsonsecurity.com )
Goofy is sued for negligence, inflicting trauma, in Disneyland collision ( www.latimes.com )
Android 15 will let you set a default wallet app ( www.androidheadlines.com )
Arizona State Senator Leads Prayer In Tongues On Floor Before Abortion Ruling ( www.huffpost.com )
X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in domain names, breaking legit URLs ( mashable.com )
On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically....
Big Tech passkey implementations are a trap | Proton ( proton.me )
Big Tech has implemented passkeys in a way that locks users into their platforms rather than providing universal security...
Chechnya bans all music deemed too fast or too slow ( edition.cnn.com )
Authorities in the Russian Republic of Chechnya have announced a ban on music that they consider too fast or slow.
US air force finds contractor who walked into propeller had become disorientated ( www.theguardian.com )
Stephanie Cosme, 32, was killed last year when she inadvertently walked into the rotating propeller of an aircraft in California...
Hate it when that happens ( sh.itjust.works )
Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment ( www.androidpolice.com )
West Virginia passes bill allowing intelligent design to be taught in high school biology classes ( www.science.org )
Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running ( www.theverge.com )
Lay them on me ( slrpnk.net )
Tennessee Senate passes bill banning chemtrails ( www.tennessean.com )
Lawmaker caught on hot mic branding Biden impeachment hearing as ‘Jurassic Park’ ( www.independent.co.uk )
cancel culture has gone too far ( lemmy.world )
Brazil's Bolsonaro indicted for suspected falsification of his personal vaccine records ( www.pbs.org )
In Cringe Video, OpenAI CTO Says She Doesn’t Know Where Sora’s Training Data Came From ( futurism.com )
me too ( mander.xyz )
Montana Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Wildlife Trafficking Charges as Part of Yearslong Effort to Create Giant Hybrid Sheep for Captive Hunting ( www.justice.gov )