FinishingDutch @ FinishingDutch @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.

Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.

Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.

I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.

I just buy physicals of the reference books I really want and pirate the digitals of anything else that isn’t sold DRM-free. I WILL own what I bought, whether they like it or not.

In short, the complexity acted as a filter. It was a barrier to entry, which meant you had to be a bit of a nerd to get online. Back in the ‘90’s, people made fun of you for being an online nerd. But it also meant that the people who got online tended to be smarter. More educated.

The internet of the ‘90’s had a very nerdy culture. The worst debates were about Star Wars vs Star Trek. We disagreed on some things, but on the whole it was ‘us nerds’ online.

Now that we made it this easy, there’s no longer a filter: you can find anyone and everyone online. Including some folks who can’t really handle this much freedom without being assholes with it. The web also gravitated towards bigger platforms which, ironically, have much less of a community feel than the old web. In the 90’s, I knew everyone on a forum by name. But on a subreddit with a million people, there's no real ‘community’.

The web these days is also overrun with politics, which simply wasn’t a thing back in say, 1995.

I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.

My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.

But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…

Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.

It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.

Welcome! We can definitely still use a few more people, especially if they’re willing to contribute to content.

Well, if by ‘similar priced’ you mean: a very cheap player, it might make sense.

But in 2004, I carried an iPod 4G which had either 20 or 40 gigabytes of storage. You’d need a backpack full of MD’s to match that, even if you put lower quality songs on there. I had my iPod filled with everything from podcasts, audiobooks, complete albums and enough random music to never hear the same song in a month. Absolutely loved that iPod!

Sony made some really sexy devices, but the format itself just came out too late for it to have widespread consumer appeal. MP3 was just way more convenient, and a lot of folks still rocked discmans like myself.

That said: it was actually a very popular format for the media. I was a journalism student 2001-2005 and it was the format we recorded all interviews on. The radio station where I worked at had MD gear, but also used Marantz compactflash recorders, which I personally preferred.

Yeah, I’m pretty much done with Lemmy right now. It’s just getting way too much. The sky is falling every five minutes.

We had those for decades in the Netherlands. They were literally small supermarkets on wheels. They had a limited assortment on board, but you could order specialty items for delivery next week. They were reasonably popular in the 70’s and 80’s, even in larger cities. Those days, there were fewer supermarkets and they tended to close at 5-6 pm. They also didn’t really do delivery like we have now.

They are still around in a limited way, but usually only for small villages that don’t really have a supermarket.

Here’s a modern example.

I fully support anyone and everyone being armed. It’s a shame we can’t have them here in the Netherlands, but I’m very pro-self defense and self reliance. The government will only protect you so far, if that. And an armed group is much less likely to get fucked with.

I support gays with AK’s, queers with auto sears, transfems with FN’s and everyone else who feels the need to protect themselves and each other.

Frankly, it’s stressing me out. The non-stop barrage of Trump, Musk and other bullshit is just a bit too much on here. I get how the platform generally is very left leaning, but it really does feel like the sky is falling every five minutes, you know?

For me, calls interrupt my workflow with things that don’t need immediate attention anyway. So it draws focus away unnecessarily.

I also prefer to have a written record of things if they’re important. That way you can always refer back to it. A phone call just annoys me at best and divides my attention. So it’s in their interest as well that I can respond when I’ve got time.

Eggs are a food staple: they are consumed often and in larger quantities. They are eaten directly, but also included as ingredients in a lot of food. So this means that the price of eggs directly impacts your budget/ability to buy them directly, as well as for goods made with them. Same with milk, potatoes, wheat, etc. Their prices tend to be a sort of broad economic barometer.

And we actually do use hamburgers as a metric. There’s the Big Mac Index for example. It’s used to measure purchasing power between different countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

I’m definitely not feeling it.

I loved Doom 2016, and was annoyed as fuck when Eternal had all that silly, aggravating platforming. And this trailer feels like it’s drifting further and further from what I consider to be Doom.

I loved 2016. So did everyone else. Why can’t we just have more of that? It’s not rocket science, you fuckheads.

That tracks for sure. The most enthusiastic guys at work also happen to be the ones who put in the least actual work. Sure, it has some uses… but the things it gets wrong are significant enough that no sane individual should rely on anything that AI is involved with making/running. The intelligence part just isn’t there yet. People are effectively getting wowed by a glorified ELIZA chat bot.

That’s not a journalist, that’s an activist with press credentials.

A journalist reports, a journalist is not supposed to BE the news. And while critical questions should be asked, just shouting insults like that is not the way to go about things. If you want to do that, go stand in front of the building with a sign. Shit like this only makes the job harder for actual journalists who are there to do a job.

Probably more economical to buy the kid a tub of lube and teach them to keister it at that point :D

Seriously though, I fully agree. Even here in Europe, there’s always ‘something’ that can happen. And I’d want a direct line to my kid just in case.

I’m in my early 40’s. I’m still mortified when the phone makes a sound when it shouldn’t. I always double check it’s on silent while going to a movie for example. Meanwhile there’s fuckheads three rows up playing TikTok at full volume while the trailers are running.

Honestly, you should legally be allowed to beat someone like that to death with their own device.

If someone actively plays loud shit in public transport, they should get a lifetime ban for it. Nobody likes being on public transport; I’d drive a car if I could. I’m basically forced to be there.

So if someone actively makes that worse, they should be forced to walk and contemplate their life choices.

It’s so fucking annoying. Your phone shouldn’t really make ANY sound as far as I’m concerned, but I’ll allow a low volume ring or single beep or bloop for a notification. But if your phone feels the need to make a sound every 20 seconds while you’re looking at the fucking thing, you need to turn that shit off.