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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • A couple years ago I signed up for an email provider so I could use my own domain and avoid Google being able to kill my email account. They’ve got a spam filter, but it’s ridiculously bad. I’ve been looking for better ways, but still haven’t found them.

    Ironically, I’m hoping a free locally-run LLM will soon be able to filter emails appropriately. I haven’t seen anyone trying yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.




  • When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

    At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

    Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

    Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

    That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.


  • They’ve been quietly preventing Firefox from becoming a threat for a long time. There are constant little things that just mysteriously don’t work as well on Firefox, for no reason. People have changed the user agent and found that it works just like on Chrome with Chrome’s agent. Youtube was doing it for a while, and reviews on the search are another instance. I was at the Dentist’s and they were asking for a Google review, but I couldn’t find the spot to leave it. I switched to Chrome and it was magically right where it was supposed to be.

    So they already think Firefox could be a threat, and preventing ad-block is going to make it a bigger threat.



  • Because this is likely to drive a lot of people to try switching. And they’re the type of people who try to convince other people to switch, too. Techies, etc.

    When forced with trying to keep family safe from abusive and/or manipulative ads, this is a pretty hot topic. Plenty of people tell their family what browser to use and even set it up for them with ad blockers, etc.

    I’ve recently had some experiences that tell me my parents are at a vulnerable age and can’t fully protect themselves, so it’s pretty important to have control of this.


  • There’s a few things going on. At first blush, I agree with you. The vast majority of that stuff doesn’t need to be captured.

    But if you don’t capture everything, how do you know you got the stuff that will be important or wanted in the future?

    Also, historians are going to find that data to be an absolute gold mine. Unfortunately, a lot of it is in the form of video now and takes a ton of storage space.

    I think, in the end, most people are not willing to pay the price to archive everything. But some are, and they’re doing it.





  • To add to that last point, I worked for a company (at retail) that claimed to know that keeping customers was cheaper than getting new ones, and corporate even implemented a policy where the clerks on the floor had up to $100 to keep a customer happy. I never once saw that $100 used, and the one time I tried to keep a customer (who had just spent $3000) happy, management refused to let him return a crap $100 printer because he didn’t have the manual in the box. He had left it at home, and was glad to bring it in next time he was in. Nope. And that incident was within a week of implementing that system.

    So even when a company understands that point, it’s still really hard to make good on it at the levels that it can matter.


  • Well, I’ll give it a shot.

    Part of it is that they can’t know the point that someone is willing to stay vs leave, and they’re always optimizing for that point. Saving money is always the goal for expenses in a company.

    Part of it is that they have a budget that they can’t exceed. Sometimes a person is overqualified for the job, and the job simply can’t afford them. Sometimes that person will stay far longer than they should, when they could get paid much better elsewhere, and sometimes they choose to move when they’re only slightly underpaid for their skills.

    Part of it is that there is more to a job than money. Being comfortable, un-stressed, and generally happy is more important at some point than more money. The company tries to balance these things, as it’s often cheaper to relieve or prevent stress than pay someone to put up with it.

    In the end, it’s super complicated, but all about money, on both sides.



  • FTA: YouTube’s global head of health, Dr Garth Graham, said: “As a teen is developing thoughts about who they are and their own standards for themselves, repeated consumption of content featuring idealised standards that starts to shape an unrealistic internal standard could lead some to form negative beliefs about themselves.”

    And while I’m sure this is true, this is a minority of people, and they should seek help for their problem. There are far more who benefit from hearing about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and how to achieve it.

    They should already be hearing that stuff from their parents and teachers, but I have my doubts. And they’re much more likely to listen to influencers than authority figures at certain ages.

    But the whole thing is even more pointless. They’re mostly influenced by seeing these beautiful people constantly on TV, movies, and Youtube, and thinking that they don’t measure up to them. Simply stopping some health care videos is going to do nothing for the problem and only prevent videos with the information they need.