And that's why you never, ever allow yourself to get roped into using a web-based ANYTHING related to operating a physical machine. If I need an internet connection for a machine to operate then I don't want it, full stop, end of.
Your most is not my most. The many, many games I've bought are all on GOG - and that's not by accident. The first thing I do after a purchase is download it immediately onto my local file server. If aliens abduct my whole city to place it into some sci-fi zoo, I will lose none of my ability to play them all in perpetuity, as long as they bother keeping the lights on, and my PC keeps ticking over...
Oh, this is bad - spying on us remotely and controlling our minds isn't enough, they made sure they can switch off motor control to the feet of anyone they might want to apprehend! Forget hiding, you can't even RUN anymore! What else do you think "foot switch" IS ?!? /s
Quality has nothing to do with it. Any game I paid money for would get nuked from orbit the instant it tried pushing any kind of ads at me. The type of games I play aren't even ALLOWED to access the internet, nor do they have any reason to try. I never liked ads much, but it has been quite a while since my ad tolerance reached 0.00 exactly. Anything that has anything to do with them gets dropped or worked around by whatever means necessary. Sorry, not interested, be they good or bad.
This is nothing short of "precrime" and therefore an utterly unacceptable abomination. NOBODY should EVER suffer the consequences of what they would be "likely" to do. ONLY that of what they actual DID DO. After they did it.
If I ever needed any proof that we are headed straight to hell in a handbasket at relativistic speeds, the very concept that anyone could entertain this idea with a straight face for any length of time has to be it.
The decision of coasting along towards whatever I am likely to get or making an redoubled effort and come in well higher on any exam should solely and exclusively be MINE, not up to a piece of retarded code whose creators think they have it all figured out.
While legally no private platform owes nothing to no one (quite the contrary - they reserve the right to boot you absolutely for no reason whatsoever at any time), there SHOULD be a legal obligation for any platform that is recognized as a monopoly (or even just near-monopoly) to keep offering you service, with other means available to mitigate real problems you might be creating. No, as far as I'm concerned, this is not up for debate.
What if you could just be booted off the internet for no reason whatsoever, and told to go use "a different one" because this one owes you no service? What if you could be told you are no longer allowed to use public roads in any way whatsoever, for no reason, just go find "some different means" to get around? If your email provider kicks you out, you have a genuine choice of some other ones instead. If Youtube or Facebook or Twitter or Steam or Twitch kicks you out THERE IS NO "OTHER" FACEBOOK to go to.
Type of service being replicated (say, Vimeo instead of Youtube) IS NOT an actual alternative - each of these platforms are overwhelmingly used by most people to the exclusion of the others - it's like being offered an "alternative service" on some "alternative phone network" only used by maybe a hundred people in your city. Every time a platform is near-exclusively preferred by the public, that platform IS effectively a monopoly even if there is an exact copy of it offering identical service on every street corner, and SHOULD be legally bound to offer you basic service no matter what, even if it has other means to prevent you from abusing it...
Are you actually setting those cookies BEFORE anyone ever clicks on anything? Because if so, the banner will do absolutely nothing to make you more legal, or more in compliance, or whatever. If you are not, then the banner is working GREAT for me - because I never agree to any of them, I just hide them all out of existence.
And no, I'm not otherwise "in control" as you're trying to imply - not sure what your browser lets you do, but all mine lets me do is accept or reject cookies wholesale - no such thing as "keep cookies from this site indefinitely, allow some from that one but delete them as soon as I leave the page, and refuse everything from that other one", accessible through simple means, per-site, on the UI (or anywhere else in general). Yes, I could try finding an extension that lets me do this properly. Yes, THAT would be an actual pain to find (yes, I already tried); the banner I don't see isn't.
Why bother... According to very much official statistics in my country, of those who end up on a ventilator flat out nine out of ten go straight into the grave. Yes, really. Piece of advice from someone who spent his entire adult life very much aware of what it means to not struggle to take a breath: if you end up having problems breathing these days... I hope you had a nice life.
Repeat after me: the only platform worth wasting... sorry, investing time into that they can't take away from you at any moment for no reason whatsoever is the one you host yourself.
Yes, this probably consigns you to invisibility unless you're already famous AND there's some trivially simple way anyone can use to follow you on your own platform using their own clients.
Which means our kids badly need to work on platform-independent content federation and specifically, discoverability on it. We? Don't sweat it, we're fucked, end of story.
And it's always amazing to me the people who insist that internet platforms should censor an arbitrarily defined cesspool of garbage never seem to realize that this never stops until it's full-on censorship of everything that might possibly offend anyone, aka nothing but anodyne trash, hiding behind the worn-out "we don't have to allow anything, we're a private forum!".
I have no more wish than you to read most of that cesspool - but there are no mid-stops on that slope; and forums requiring me to wear a muzzle controlled by some inevitably power-tripping mod look to me like the worse of the two outcomes, especially when there is no real choice of some mythical "other platforms" and the real choice is only between being silenced on the de-facto sole option available or not being heard at all.
(Note: none of this is meant as specific to 8chan in particular - they certainly don't make it easy for anyone to defend them; it's just what happens everywhere every time in the long run, and I don't see it serving anyone's interest beyond the short-sighted "read no evil, therefore the problem is solved!" approach)
I'm sure the problem was duly identified back at the design stage and proactively "solved" by including the warning to not take the car out of cell service areas on page 7243265 of the rental agreement, in 3-point font.
EXACTLY. These kids are as relevant to the general attitude towards modern lack of privacy as, say, Linux users are to general level of knowledge on how to force a computer to do your bidding when it doesn't seem inclined at all to do so. Outliers to the extreme. Basically nobody I ever spoke to face to face even understands "what the big deal is" let alone actively try doing anything for their privacy - and no, it's not just "the kids"...
I don't think it was worse - but it sure wasn't a helluva lot better. See, before the Information Superhighway for most people most news arrived through a specific channel that carried a certain mark - you could read Reuter-stamped news that was assumed to be mostly factual or you could read tabloids and be aware that they are considered... well, a lot less factual. Your choice - and a conscientious one. Unfortunately, once the Internet strolled in and anyone had unlimited access to any information they sough the concept of "trustfulness" of said information somehow fell completely out of view.
Perhaps this merits some explanation - contrary to the standard theory of information where you have one bit of data that can be objectively true or false, as far as I'm concerned there's an inseparable extra quality to ANY single bit of data, ranging continuously from 0 to 1, describing how much you trust it (which changes every time that single bit of information gets transferred from host to host). Again, unfortunately, there is no such concept associated with raw information today - people simply choose to trust whatever they like hearing, with the concept of truthfulness getting blurred to naught because hardly any source of "news" on the internet has a reliable trust score associated with it - especially not social media. Unconsciously, people assign high trust to information obtained from their peers that would otherwise warrant hardly anything above "exceedingly poor" in any objective survey.
Not sure what the solution is, but formalizing the concept that there is NO such thing as an objective bit of information (without some degree of subjective trust associated to it) sounds like a good start. The sooner it becomes standard knowledge that it's pointless to discuss anything without also considering how much we trust it (and potentially why) is pointless, the better. There's no such thing as "but I they just said in the news...!" argument anymore - you can boost believability of a piece of data by referring to a news source with a high trust coefficient, or (preferably) by critical reasoning and citing sources of, well, a high trust coefficient. We need to understand that "but cousin Vinnie said" (the same thing as "I just read on Facebook") carries (or at least SHOULD carry) the trust value of basically zero to anybody else...
Which is why buying ANYTHING that relies on "cloud" connectivity in order to function is a fool's game. Just don't. Yes, there are always other ways. Yes, they do demand you becoming a 24/7 sysadmin cursing his wretched fate. The choice is yours, and there's no winning move...
Oh, someone totally should, just to make a point. And then find someone else who can make it go viral on YouTube. Hmmm, how about Psy...? The world totally needs more Gershwin Gangnam Style!
I reject the apparently default assumption that Hadopi led to decreased piracy in the absence of meaningful comparison with a few other places that had absolutely nothing like Hadopi going on (and may or may not have also seen decreased piracy in a comparable timeframe due to... who knows... zeitgeist? Emergence of viable alternatives? Folks getting older?)
On the post: Cricut Hastily Walks Back Plan To Charge Cutting Machine Owners $10/Month To Fully Use Their Purchases
And that's why you never, ever allow yourself to get roped into using a web-based ANYTHING related to operating a physical machine. If I need an internet connection for a machine to operate then I don't want it, full stop, end of.
On the post: Google Disbands Stadia Game Developers And Signals Potential For More Trouble Ahead
Re:
Your most is not my most. The many, many games I've bought are all on GOG - and that's not by accident. The first thing I do after a purchase is download it immediately onto my local file server. If aliens abduct my whole city to place it into some sci-fi zoo, I will lose none of my ability to play them all in perpetuity, as long as they bother keeping the lights on, and my PC keeps ticking over...
On the post: Pudding-Brained 5G Conspiracies Somehow Get Even Dumber
Oh, this is bad - spying on us remotely and controlling our minds isn't enough, they made sure they can switch off motor control to the feet of anyone they might want to apprehend! Forget hiding, you can't even RUN anymore! What else do you think "foot switch" IS ?!? /s
On the post: 2K Sports Could Have Avoided Its Un-Skippable Ads Backlash If The Ads Were Better Content
Quality has nothing to do with it. Any game I paid money for would get nuked from orbit the instant it tried pushing any kind of ads at me. The type of games I play aren't even ALLOWED to access the internet, nor do they have any reason to try. I never liked ads much, but it has been quite a while since my ad tolerance reached 0.00 exactly. Anything that has anything to do with them gets dropped or worked around by whatever means necessary. Sorry, not interested, be they good or bad.
On the post: England's Exam Fiasco Shows How Not To Apply Algorithms To Complex Problems With Massive Social Impact
Bullshit!
This is nothing short of "precrime" and therefore an utterly unacceptable abomination. NOBODY should EVER suffer the consequences of what they would be "likely" to do. ONLY that of what they actual DID DO. After they did it.
If I ever needed any proof that we are headed straight to hell in a handbasket at relativistic speeds, the very concept that anyone could entertain this idea with a straight face for any length of time has to be it.
The decision of coasting along towards whatever I am likely to get or making an redoubled effort and come in well higher on any exam should solely and exclusively be MINE, not up to a piece of retarded code whose creators think they have it all figured out.
On the post: Mixer Shuts Down, Showing Again Why You Don't Need To Freak Out By Copycat Competitors
Re: Re:
While legally no private platform owes nothing to no one (quite the contrary - they reserve the right to boot you absolutely for no reason whatsoever at any time), there SHOULD be a legal obligation for any platform that is recognized as a monopoly (or even just near-monopoly) to keep offering you service, with other means available to mitigate real problems you might be creating. No, as far as I'm concerned, this is not up for debate.
What if you could just be booted off the internet for no reason whatsoever, and told to go use "a different one" because this one owes you no service? What if you could be told you are no longer allowed to use public roads in any way whatsoever, for no reason, just go find "some different means" to get around? If your email provider kicks you out, you have a genuine choice of some other ones instead. If Youtube or Facebook or Twitter or Steam or Twitch kicks you out THERE IS NO "OTHER" FACEBOOK to go to.
Type of service being replicated (say, Vimeo instead of Youtube) IS NOT an actual alternative - each of these platforms are overwhelmingly used by most people to the exclusion of the others - it's like being offered an "alternative service" on some "alternative phone network" only used by maybe a hundred people in your city. Every time a platform is near-exclusively preferred by the public, that platform IS effectively a monopoly even if there is an exact copy of it offering identical service on every street corner, and SHOULD be legally bound to offer you basic service no matter what, even if it has other means to prevent you from abusing it...
On the post: With Theaters Closed, The Trailer For Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' Debuts In Fortnite Instead
Wrong venue. Should have been premiered in that Duke Nukem 3D movie theater from 30 years ago... :P
On the post: Yes, This Site Uses Cookies, Because Nearly All Sites Use Cookies, And We're Notifying You Because We're Told We Have To
Re: Re: Cookies before clicks
Hey, a fellow noybee! :) Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look...
On the post: Yes, This Site Uses Cookies, Because Nearly All Sites Use Cookies, And We're Notifying You Because We're Told We Have To
Are you actually setting those cookies BEFORE anyone ever clicks on anything? Because if so, the banner will do absolutely nothing to make you more legal, or more in compliance, or whatever. If you are not, then the banner is working GREAT for me - because I never agree to any of them, I just hide them all out of existence.
And no, I'm not otherwise "in control" as you're trying to imply - not sure what your browser lets you do, but all mine lets me do is accept or reject cookies wholesale - no such thing as "keep cookies from this site indefinitely, allow some from that one but delete them as soon as I leave the page, and refuse everything from that other one", accessible through simple means, per-site, on the UI (or anywhere else in general). Yes, I could try finding an extension that lets me do this properly. Yes, THAT would be an actual pain to find (yes, I already tried); the banner I don't see isn't.
On the post: Emergency Room Doctor: Getting Best COVID-19 Treatment Ideas Via WhatsApp
Why bother... According to very much official statistics in my country, of those who end up on a ventilator flat out nine out of ten go straight into the grave. Yes, really. Piece of advice from someone who spent his entire adult life very much aware of what it means to not struggle to take a breath: if you end up having problems breathing these days... I hope you had a nice life.
On the post: Appeals Court Says Parents Can Continue Suing The Three Mesquite Police Officers Who Helped Kill Their Son
Re:
Ah, yes, the first mistake right there - assuming that the "protect" bit was ever meant to have anything to do with the population...
On the post: Twitter Suspended Cory Doctorow For Putting Trolls On A List Called 'Colossal Assholes'
Same old, same old.
Repeat after me: the only platform worth wasting... sorry, investing time into that they can't take away from you at any moment for no reason whatsoever is the one you host yourself.
Yes, this probably consigns you to invisibility unless you're already famous AND there's some trivially simple way anyone can use to follow you on your own platform using their own clients.
Which means our kids badly need to work on platform-independent content federation and specifically, discoverability on it. We? Don't sweat it, we're fucked, end of story.
On the post: 8chan Founder, Who Has Denounced The Site, Now Facing 'Criminal Cyberlibel' Charges From Current Owner
And it's always amazing to me the people who insist that internet platforms should censor an arbitrarily defined cesspool of garbage never seem to realize that this never stops until it's full-on censorship of everything that might possibly offend anyone, aka nothing but anodyne trash, hiding behind the worn-out "we don't have to allow anything, we're a private forum!".
I have no more wish than you to read most of that cesspool - but there are no mid-stops on that slope; and forums requiring me to wear a muzzle controlled by some inevitably power-tripping mod look to me like the worse of the two outcomes, especially when there is no real choice of some mythical "other platforms" and the real choice is only between being silenced on the de-facto sole option available or not being heard at all.
(Note: none of this is meant as specific to 8chan in particular - they certainly don't make it easy for anyone to defend them; it's just what happens everywhere every time in the long run, and I don't see it serving anyone's interest beyond the short-sighted "read no evil, therefore the problem is solved!" approach)
On the post: Driver Stranded After 'Smart' Rental Car Can't Phone Home
Re: What did they expect?
I'm sure the problem was duly identified back at the design stage and proactively "solved" by including the warning to not take the car out of cell service areas on page 7243265 of the rental agreement, in 3-point font.
On the post: As The World Frets Over Social Media Tracking For Advertising, Young People Are Turning Fooling Sites Into Sport
Re:
EXACTLY. These kids are as relevant to the general attitude towards modern lack of privacy as, say, Linux users are to general level of knowledge on how to force a computer to do your bidding when it doesn't seem inclined at all to do so. Outliers to the extreme. Basically nobody I ever spoke to face to face even understands "what the big deal is" let alone actively try doing anything for their privacy - and no, it's not just "the kids"...
On the post: Academic Consensus Growing: Phones And Social Media Aren't Damaging Your Kids
Re: Information without evidence.
I don't think it was worse - but it sure wasn't a helluva lot better. See, before the Information Superhighway for most people most news arrived through a specific channel that carried a certain mark - you could read Reuter-stamped news that was assumed to be mostly factual or you could read tabloids and be aware that they are considered... well, a lot less factual. Your choice - and a conscientious one. Unfortunately, once the Internet strolled in and anyone had unlimited access to any information they sough the concept of "trustfulness" of said information somehow fell completely out of view.
Perhaps this merits some explanation - contrary to the standard theory of information where you have one bit of data that can be objectively true or false, as far as I'm concerned there's an inseparable extra quality to ANY single bit of data, ranging continuously from 0 to 1, describing how much you trust it (which changes every time that single bit of information gets transferred from host to host). Again, unfortunately, there is no such concept associated with raw information today - people simply choose to trust whatever they like hearing, with the concept of truthfulness getting blurred to naught because hardly any source of "news" on the internet has a reliable trust score associated with it - especially not social media. Unconsciously, people assign high trust to information obtained from their peers that would otherwise warrant hardly anything above "exceedingly poor" in any objective survey.
Not sure what the solution is, but formalizing the concept that there is NO such thing as an objective bit of information (without some degree of subjective trust associated to it) sounds like a good start. The sooner it becomes standard knowledge that it's pointless to discuss anything without also considering how much we trust it (and potentially why) is pointless, the better. There's no such thing as "but I they just said in the news...!" argument anymore - you can boost believability of a piece of data by referring to a news source with a high trust coefficient, or (preferably) by critical reasoning and citing sources of, well, a high trust coefficient. We need to understand that "but cousin Vinnie said" (the same thing as "I just read on Facebook") carries (or at least SHOULD carry) the trust value of basically zero to anybody else...
On the post: You Don't Own What You've Bought: Under Armour Smart Hardware Gets Lobotomized
no thanks
Which is why buying ANYTHING that relies on "cloud" connectivity in order to function is a fool's game. Just don't. Yes, there are always other ways. Yes, they do demand you becoming a 24/7 sysadmin cursing his wretched fate. The choice is yours, and there's no winning move...
On the post: George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue Is In The Public Domain And Gerswhin's Nephew Is Worried Someone Might Turn It Into Hip Hop
Oh, someone totally should, just to make a point. And then find someone else who can make it go viral on YouTube. Hmmm, how about Psy...? The world totally needs more Gershwin Gangnam Style!
On the post: UL Pushes Security Standards For The Internet Of Broken Things
Ah yes, because all that IoT crap is totally UL-compliant already...
On the post: Study: Hadopi Has Been Great For Big Artists And Labels, Bad For The Spread Of Culture And Smaller Or New Artists
No.
I reject the apparently default assumption that Hadopi led to decreased piracy in the absence of meaningful comparison with a few other places that had absolutely nothing like Hadopi going on (and may or may not have also seen decreased piracy in a comparable timeframe due to... who knows... zeitgeist? Emergence of viable alternatives? Folks getting older?)
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