winternett (u/winternett)

winternett commented on TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday reuters.com/technology/ti... · Posted by u/xnhbx

bearjaws · 8 months ago

> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness

I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.

winternett · 8 months ago

As someone who's been on TikTok for years now, it's extremely fake, the algorithm is a total ruse, as most of what trends is based on seeing news stories repeated hundreds of times, and most other content has the same repetitive music behind it... Far too much repetition and subtle seminaries in trending content, down to the way videos are color graded to be honestly real & organic... I've had a few videos go viral, but most things that do go viral are memes, the minute you want to push out anything remotely serious or related to business, they want money to let it pass the visibility gate.

I won't miss it if it does get banned. It's stressed so many people out for no good reason, and sucked up millions of hours of free labor from unrecognized & unpaid creators that deserve better.

That doesn't mean that any Meta product is good for content creators mind you.

winternett commented on U.S. appeals court strikes down FCC's net neutrality rules tvtechnology.com/news/six... · Posted by u/pseudolus

yesco · 8 months ago

I've always felt the FCC was an inappropriate path for enforcing this. Ideally it would be powers granted to the FTC either through legislation or potentially through existing powers they might already have in this domain.

The FCC's jurisdiction on this was already shaky even before Chevron was overturned, I think the moment activism was pushed in this direction net neutrality was doomed a decade of unending lawsuits. Even if they somehow made it passed the courts, I'm not quite convinced the FCC would be motivated to actually do much about this even with a sympathetic administration. Consider that prior to the internet, they were pretty much created to do the opposite of what people want from net neutrality.

These are just my armchair thoughts though.

winternett · 8 months ago

We simply wouldn't need as much bandwidth if storage on devices was improved on devices and we went back to a model of collecting our entertainment as data files. These files could be shipped on memory stick & SD cards. All streaming is being pushed so much for is the ability to rent data access (access that can be removed once monthly payments stop), and streaming is dramatically wasteful in terms of bandwidth & power resources... If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies, it's only gouging to drive consumers to downloadable file culture again, namely resources like torrenting.

Big business will eventually need to abandon this old "market domination" model because of consumer demand to own physical files if things work correctly. Millions of people streaming the same movies and music over and over again is very wasteful and not sustainable in the long run, as each monthly service is a different (continually increasing) bill, it will only serve to bring bootlegging operations back to popularity in the long run... As once you download & save a digital file, it doesn't really require that bandwidth again & again per device.

Subverting Net Neutrality is just another way companies will exert greed on consumers, but in the long run, consumers will always win when they withdraw from subscriptions and these companies begin to falter.

We should be paying $25 a month for Internet service by now, and $2 to permanently buy a movie, and perhaps $4 to buy an album on memory stick. That would be the fair future... Instead, they're charging each user $24 a month just for (very limited selection) Netflix alone, and each other service is doing the same... Companies stand to lose everything in this battle because of the huge infrastructure (up-front) investments they need to make in order to operate... Customers can go back to pirating Mp3s, Mp4s, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, and even Tape decks if need be. It's long overdue for the industry to check itself and do a reset... Bandwidth is not the real battle going on here, it's all economic.

winternett commented on Spotify is full of AI music fastcompany.com/91170296/... · Posted by u/segasaturn

jsheard · 8 months ago

Maybe so, but Spotify is especially bad at paying artists a fair share even amongst their peers. If Apple and Amazon can afford to pay artists twice as much per stream, and Tidal can afford to pay three times as much per stream, then the problem with Spotify is... Spotify.

winternett · 8 months ago

It's quite obvious the CEO being paid reportedly around $300m a year is pocketing money that indie artists generate for the site. Most of these tech sites aren't really interested in delivering value into the communities they serve... Musicians need to wean themselves off of jumping into these types of old "gig economy" schemes, as they really don't provide any return on the huge amounts of time invested in building them up... :/

winternett commented on Insiders Stealing Instagram Usernames? javier.computer/instagram... · Posted by u/edent

utdiscant · 10 months ago

"I’ve keep taking screenshots of everyone who’s asked about acquiring my account. One interesting pattern: the majority of these requests come from profiles without any photos. I find it so weird that people are so eager to get a username when they don’t even share content!"

If I had an account with a huge amount of followers, then I would also not initially reach out from that main account in order to negotiate the price.

winternett · 10 months ago

The same schemes for account promotions likely come from insiders too. As far as I've observed, the messages I get on pretty much every platform are too well organized to be outsiders, some even make it through spam filters. I'm so over social media to be honest... It's a haven for fake vanity points that really doesn't guarantee any sort of real life achievement.

winternett commented on Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/thimabi

OptionOfT · 10 months ago

I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days.

iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have?

Every website these days starts to automatically play videos, with no way of disabling that (looking at you Fandom, and until recently, Ars Technica).

All video is consumed in a streaming manner. At least when you watched a movie over cable it didn't consume bandwidth. But when you watch the same movie on YouTube TV it is counting towards your 'limits'.

And you cannot set proper limits, as they calculate your usage once per day. Go over, $10 per 50GB on Cox. And your limit is 1280GB, even on their 2Gbit connection.

So unlike with your car where you have a pretty decent view on when it's empty, and you can fill up at almost the same price as the previous tank, here you're screwed twice, once because you can't measure, and second, because the price is outrageous.

For a 2Gbit connection, you can actually go through your limit in ...

2Gbit = 250MB / sec. 1280GB = 1310720MB. 1310720 / 250 = 5242.88 seconds, or 1 hour, 27 minutes and 22.88 seconds.

Insane. We need more competition.

winternett · 10 months ago

The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all.

They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections.

We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.

winternett commented on Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise theregister.com/2024/10/2... · Posted by u/LinuxBender

jmclnx · 10 months ago

>So, if you use Chrome, or a Chrome-based browser

Seems Mozilla may have an opening in browser market share, if they allow add blocking extensions.

But how long before sites start blocking Firefox ? Already on some sites have issues when people are using a VPN.

Yes, I did try browsing with out add blockers, and the experience was terrible. Some "mainstream" sites you would think would know better had multiple popups. So blocker on.

I would not mind ads as long as they were not intrusive, but seems it is getting worse and worse.

winternett · 10 months ago

All of these workarounds are temporary & flimsy --- They will not last long and will certainly not get better, as the rules put in place as well as the tech behind ad delivery are rapidly and constantly changing. We as users & consumers are being abused by these practices, and ads and monthly subscription models are being used as a weapon to get us to pay ridiculous (& arbitrarily increasing) prices for mostly unhelpful services and entertainment now more than ever that still include ads -- It's the beginning of madness & a new form of veiled consumer mass-fleecing. By accepting the ad infiltration and enrolling, we're only funding our own process of shooting ourselves in the foot. They're even getting as bold as to stop sales of physical media (DVDs and CDs) to not allow choices during the worst economy that could possibly exist for consumer opportunity.

The underlying problem is the abusive and untrustworthy way modern ads are being implemented into everything by big business & media companies. They're removing the ability to block ads, because they want to sell a new monthly subscription just to get less ads, and the price will go up until most people can't afford to be on the Internet at all... They're also secretly lobbying to prevent independents from running websites and apps in many ways too. This model was tested on Twitter, where it's gentrified the community now, and driven most past (free) users completely off the platform... Twitter is still highly unprofitable, so it's completely baffling to me as to why companies think this new ad-spam business model will actually work in the long run for their profit. We will also have no options for interaction or entertainment if the Internet goes out, save for a few people with physical media saved from a long time prior to the outage... It's Titanic-Level hubris to buy into this business model.

These ads create such an absolutely jarring experience in navigating sites now, I actually completely avoid implementing them on my sites and apps for that same reason, and to be honest, I never click on them no matter what. With the ways that social apps, and ad content is converging, the Internet, once highly useful for valid information, is now a hellscape of distraction, undesired content, and disinformation meant to drive political overload and consumerism. We need to start asking where the happy medium is in all of this. Not everything should be for-profit, and laced with ads, and the things that have ads can perhaps be less essential to serious need and function.

Microsoft embedding ads into it's OS and office apps is a perfect example of how the frenzy to capture pennies per click has turned on it's head. people are writing secure and private documentation on apps that are willing to place tracking and adware so easily into mission critical applications that it's eroding trust in products altogether. We should expect more from these very large and well profitable companies that are entrusted with mission critical services. Elon scuttling Twitter for his own personal gain was not a crime, but in many ways it was a failure of trust for the service, and I'm honestly still surprised how people are still paying for verification on the platform and buying Teslas to fund his nonsensical ego-maniacal escapades in elitism.

As a consumer economy, we need to shape up and start sending messages to these corporations to shape up and put customer service and respect back at the forefront of their operations at the risk of failure. This model of abusing customers until they pay is NOT in line with a democratic country, and apparently Congress is never going to get it's act together on tech regulation, so we need to vote in more savvy reps that will pay deep attention to tech fleecing and manipulation. Otherwise, by next year, we'll need to watch a video ad between reading each paragraph, and in 5 years we may damn well be required to watch a 3 minute ad before being able to exit our cars.

winternett commented on OpenAI to become for-profit company reuters.com/technology/ar... · Posted by u/jspann

kweingar · a year ago

Can anybody explain how this actually works? What happens to all of the non-profit's assets? They can't just give it away for investors to own.

The non-profit could maybe sell its assets to investors, but then what would it do with the money?

I'm sure OpenAI has an explanation, but I really want to hear more details. In the most simple analysis of "non-profit becomes for-profit", there's really no way to square it other than non-profit assets (generated through donations) just being handed to somebody for private ownership.

winternett · a year ago

>Can anybody explain how this actually works?

Every answer moving forward now will contain embedded ads for Sephora, or something completely unrelated to your prompt...

That money will go into the pockets of a small group of people that claim they own shares in the company... Then the company will pull more people in who invest in it, and they'll all get profits based on continually rising monthly membership fees, for an app that stole content from social media posts and historical documents others have written without issuing credit nor compensating them.

winternett commented on Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses about.fb.com/news/2024/09... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

casenmgreen · a year ago

> IIncredible amount of negativity here.

It's FB. They're not popular. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, because I expect it will be absolutely stuffed with user surveillance.

winternett · a year ago

And they'll likely drop support/updates for it quickly after release... These out of pocket devices are sunsetted faster than mobile phones, especially so because they require completely independent development teams that companies love to roll essential staff off of.

There have been so many attempts to make VR glasses that it's really not innovation at this point, it's just gimmicky throw-away pocket tech. Something far better to invent is a phone that can project on walls, or project a full-size keyboard onto a table for an easier writing experience.

Most of these companies are gutted by investors, and turned into profit machines... There are very few visionaries leading projects now, and huge hurdles with IP theft and related lawsuits that hold up most of the typical innovation, unless these companies come up with game changing ideas that focus less on pushing out ads, they're going to fail with micro-projects like this. VR glasses have been around for ages, none of what Zuckerberg demoed was revolutionary, gotta be honest about it.

winternett commented on Ask HN: What's the Alternative to Agile? · Posted by u/animal_spirits

solardev · a year ago

At the small teams I've worked in, having just a Kanban board as the single source of truth was both more useful and way less stressful than dogmatic Agile. Something like Linear, Github Projects, Airtable, Trello, or (if you must) Jira.

It minimizes the time spent on unnecessary bureaucracy and ceremony, while still giving you the transparency and flexibility behind Agile. Supervisors and such can look at the board and see what the team is working on and what stage they're at. And when emergency things inevitably come up, that's when you pause what you're working on, temporarily put that in the "on hold" column, and work on whatever the new critical priority is before going back to your original work (usually) or else pivoting altogether (which often happens in more top-down orgs).

A Kanban is by nature not prescriptive, but after-the-fact descriptive. It respects people over processes – a fundamental part of the Agile philosophy that too often gets buried in dogma – by respecting each worker's autonomy while also giving the team as a whole flexibility. If you need to change things up, you just send a few messages or do a huddle instead of spending half the day arguing about points and then arguing about them again in the 2-hour retrospective.

In the most dysfunctional orgs I've been a part of, it wasn't really Agile anything or any particular tool that was the problem, it was that they were so middle-management heavy that most of the dev time was spent managing up instead of coding. That isn't a something tooling can in and of itself solve, but I've found that the heaviness of the tooling is often a good proxy for the dysfunction of the management layers. In that case I'd fight to simplify things and make work more efficient, or ask for a transfer to a more efficient team, or just leave the org altogether. When there's that many head chefs in the kitchen, every minor feature becomes a political battleground and no real work will get done, no matter your process.

winternett · a year ago

Most of these methodologies came from the car making industry... I think if we realize that and compare making cars to the process of managing software, it's easy to adjust and manage aspects of efficiency & output.... The problem is that humans (the actual devs and process managers) are not often accounted for in the process now, as robots have taken over most of the aspects of car making, so while Agile may look ideal in many cases, the output if often not predictable when staff can quit, rebel and burn the factory down, join unions and demand more pay, or take vacations (for example).