supergeek133 (u/supergeek133)

supergeek133 commented on Proton joins suit against Apple for practices that harm developers and consumers proton.me/blog/apple-laws... · Posted by u/moose44

meesles · 2 months ago

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory

Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.

supergeek133 · 2 months ago

No, it isn't. It literally created a second class of phone users in America.

Specific example: When on dating apps you see "green bubbles" as a red flag/un-dateable trait, it has done considerable harm.

supergeek133 commented on Zoom bias: The social costs of having a 'tinny' sound during video conferences phys.org/news/2025-03-bia... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

supergeek133 · 5 months ago

So many people are overengineering this... I have a wireless Jabra headset. Works great. At home I use one of those usb speakerphone pucks, works great. Not these super special desktop mics that streamers or radio broadcasters use.

The people who try to use their webcam mic or the built in mic are the ones causing most of the problem (yes I'm also looking at you Macbook users).

I always thought it'd be a great idea if in your internal Teams or Zoom instance you had a "send this person a new headset" button to fix the problem.

supergeek133 commented on Scrum's “Product Owner” Problem rethinkingsoftware.substa... · Posted by u/rbanffy

supergeek133 · a year ago

Whenever you see one of these "it's product" or "it's engineers" all I can think of is "someone has more business context or knowledge than the others"

The best teams I've ever worked on as a product manager/owner is where we have shared context. These problems described here are minimal. In those teams I could provide technical input to engineers, and engineers gave me "consumer facing" suggestions on features.

I've believed for a long time that lack of business/use context drives a lot of these issues.

Take for instance I currently work at an IoT company, and if I'm working with engineers who have no idea what a thermostat does/how it works other than "makes it hotter or colder" then we have much more difficulty building shared understanding of a feature request.

I also know this because 10 years ago that was my simple understanding of a thermostat... so it was much harder for me to understand why we were doing certain things.

supergeek133 commented on Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week cnbc.com/2024/09/16/amazo... · Posted by u/jbredeche

pton_xd · a year ago

I think this was a pretty obvious end-goal when they required everyone to relocate back to Seattle and go in 3 days a week.

As a tangent, everyone I know at Amazon is over-worked and stressed out. I legitimately don't know anyone whose happy there. How is that a sustainable corporate culture?

supergeek133 · a year ago

The friends I have that work there that love it are absolute workaholics.

Amazon takes every minute they're willing to give, they're successful and consistently promoted/paid more.

This is also why I'll never work at Amazon. Haha.

supergeek133 commented on The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO androidauthority.com/sams... · Posted by u/thunderbong

daghamm · a year ago

I really liked the plans Samsung employees had to give old phones a new life. I have a box of mostly working phones from different companies and I often wish there was an easy way to use them for different automation tasks around the house.

Anyway, I'm not surprised it didn't work. Engineers see possibilities while lawyers only think about how something goes very wrong and the company ends up in court.

supergeek133 · a year ago

One frivolous lawsuit destroys the revenue from multiple happy customers. Unfortunately.

supergeek133 commented on Apple found in breach of EU competition rules theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/malermeister

WrongAssumption · a year ago

Visa and Mastercard do very explicitly allow cash discounts.

https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/d...

What they didn’t allow previously was adding a surcharge to credit transactions. But regulation forced them to allow that as well. So not the best example overall.

supergeek133 · a year ago

The State of MN stopped accepting certain credit cards for many DMV type activities, and now only accept ones that allow an explicit surcharge (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex).

supergeek133 commented on The U.S. crime rate is still dropping, FBI data shows nbcnews.com/news/crime-co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

silisili · a year ago

I'm not going to argue the statistics because obviously I don't have all the data, but I do have to wonder how much (if any) attribution goes to people giving up on the police?

"Why bother, they won't do anything" has become a rather common phrase I've heard a lot in the past few years, from family to random retail workers, but I'm unsure if that sentiment is growing or not.

* Adding due to replies, what I thought may be obvious - the phrase above is never referring to murders, usually property crimes.

supergeek133 · a year ago

That's the interesting bit for me.

I DO believe people are calling the police less for crime, even violent crime.

However, how do you have an official source of "I decided not to call the cops".

supergeek133 commented on The U.S. crime rate is still dropping, FBI data shows nbcnews.com/news/crime-co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

wolverine876 · a year ago

An interesting analysis, but do you have links to the primary sources or to a more credible source than the Daily Caller?

> As a personal anecdote, my car was broken into last year and I did not bother filing a police report.

What does that represent? Not only are you just one person, people have been behaving like that for generations, not just the last 4 years.

supergeek133 · a year ago

How does one have an official source of "A crime was done to me but I just decided to not call the police"

supergeek133 commented on U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly nytimes.com/2024/03/21/te... · Posted by u/jcfrei

khazhoux · a year ago

> I've seen people actually reject relationships because they don't date people with "green bubbles".

No, that's stupid. Sorry, not trying to be a jerk, but there's no other way to put it: that's just stupid and not worth any consideration in this argument.

Even putting aside the unlikelihood of what kind of idiot would someone have to be to reject a relationship with an Android user, the basic premise of caring about blue vs green is too shallow to form as any basis of a massive suit like this.

"Apple must be broken up because people think my Android phone isn't cool" ??

supergeek133 · a year ago

But this cultural issue is literally quoted in the DOJ complaint against Apple.

Apple, by overlaying iMessage features over SMS and only accessible to iPhone users have created a virtual second class of phone users.

supergeek133 commented on U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly nytimes.com/2024/03/21/te... · Posted by u/jcfrei

AlexandrB · a year ago

> Are your various friends/family all tech-y people?

Not at all. A few of my friends are techies and they use Android/iPhone about 50/50. Family is mixed as well. No one in family uses iMessage.

> I've seen people actually reject relationships because they don't date people with "green bubbles".

This seems like a feature, not a bug. I don't think you want to date someone who makes important life choices based on Apple marketing.

Edit: Is this a "Bay Area" problem or something? Or maybe a "young people" problem? I just can't imagine caring about whether someone messages me with "blue" or "green" text bubbles.

supergeek133 · a year ago

I'm not saying I run into these people, and I agree with your take.

> Not at all. A few of my friends are techies and they use Android/iPhone about 50/50. Family is mixed as well. No one in family uses iMessage.

I would bet money this is the opposite of the majority experience.

u/supergeek133

KarmaCake day810December 18, 2013View Original