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Comment People just won't pay for news like this (Score 2) 56

People paying for newspapers got a tangible thing with intrinsic value (bird cage paper, oil change mat, emergency bumwad) for a small price, and an experience that they do not get with a website because everything is samey when experienced in the browser. There's nothing else quite like reading a newspaper, although that went downhill too — cheaper paper, smellier ink, same-ier news. When most papers are mostly just reposting the AP on paper, why not just read the AP online?

The feds have got to love how much data Google grabs on everyone, they can surely get any of it for a price, and it's not even their money. Even if we were doing antitrust these days (which we mostly aren't) they wouldn't want to break up Google any more than they do Microsoft or Apple.

What's the news media got left? Go full Idiocracy in a bid for eyeballs?

Comment Re:Honestly this is small potatoes (Score 5, Insightful) 49

In this case, every action he's taken supports only one end goal: Doing as much damage as possible to the United States and Ukraine, up to and including the destruction of both if possible. Now who 1) would want to make that happen, 2) controls Trump's purse strings because they're the only ones who will bank with him, and 3) has a lot of embarrassing intelligence on him?

Comment It's a bit incompetent (Score 1) 107

I use Bluesky, and I have been kicked off of Twitter for saying not so nice but also true things about Elon Musk (no fact checking to speak of, just got the boot) so I can't compare them now. But some things don't work right. Their algorithm shows me a lot of kinds of stuff I never interact with, though it always is showing me new accounts. I guess by "we don't have an algorithm" they meant it was very primitive. When I try to post images they come up as all black in the correct dimensions. It worked for a couple of days and then stopped. This includes thumbnails for webpages. Apparently this only happens in Firefox so it's tempting to think it's their fault, but it doesn't happen to me on any other site so clearly Bluesky is doing something weird and problematic. Other people have reported the same problem, so it's also not just me.

Comment Re:"Today, we're bringing you Android 16" (Score 1) 16

Today, they are bring it to specific devices.

Later, others will bring it to others.

I do feel a bit left out, though. Most android users do definitely get a shorter stick when it comes to update lifespan. I am still on 11 or something. How long before there's a serious security issue that can't be fixed with a play store update?

Comment Re:A fork in the road. (Score 1) 90

I already have 1 foot in the grave via systemd, why are they trying to take my other foot?

It's mostly their fault you have systemd as well if you're not a redhate user, because Debian's main excuse for adopting it was that GNOME was doing so. If you are, well, you can only blame yourself. Though also, at this point, you have non-systemd options.

Comment Re:Well, Wayland on Nvidia is still fsck'd (Score 1) 90

So, of course, now stop supporting X and force me to use something that won't work going forward as the devs blame Nvidia and nothing gets fixed...

They're probably not wrong about it being Nvidia's fault. Nvidia drivers have been decreasing in quality relative to AMD's (they only have to work well for CUDA for 90% of Nvidia's current revenue stream to be secure, at least as far as the drivers go) and they have never put much effort into supporting Wayland. I find I'm actually looking forward to my next GPU coming from AMD, but that comes with a couple of caveats. One, I am not going to run Windows. AMD's Windows driver is still bad by most accounts. Two, this is quite some years after the last time I tried an AMD card and found it didn't work worth a crap. That is, not only am I not involving the OS where AMD is weakest, but a lot of time has passed.

Given that AMD has only recently open sourced their GPU virtualization software, I will want to wait a while anyway, and I have no plans to buy a GPU in this generation. I bought a 4060 Ti 16GB as adequate for 2k gaming, and the cheapest Nvidia card of its generation to have 16GB, which I wanted for LLMs. In older games I can often do 4k60 Ultra, and I play mostly older games, so for me even the gaming performance has been surprisingly decent. Pity about the price, it was too much even with $50 off.

Comment Re:Never say forever? (Score 1) 49

With half-lives of 2.7-5.3 years for major PFAS compounds (PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS), it would take approximately:

It seems like you're accounting for only very short-lived examples, but there are over 10,000 of them. Even if production stopped today, they would still be coming out of products in use and people's bodies for years, and since it's easy to make new ones and we tend to ban specific products instead of classes of chemical, they will be difficult to control if we exert our usual minimal effort.

Comment Re:It's not a decline... (Score 4, Interesting) 107

I think people expect commercial social media networks to be something they can't be -- a kind of commons where you are exposed to the range of views that exist in your community. But that's not what makes social networks money, what makes them money is engagement, and consuming a variety of opinions is tiresome for users and bad for profits. When did you ever see social media trying to engage you with opinions you don't agree with or inform you about the breadth of opinion out there? It has never done that.

The old management of Twitter had a strategy of making it a big tent, comfortable for centrist views and centrist-adjacent views. This enabled it to function as a kind of limited town common for people who either weren't interested in politics, like authors or celebrities promoting their work, or who wanted to reach a large number of mainly apolitical people. This meant drawing lines on both sides of the political spectrum, and naturally people near the line on either side were continually furious with them.

It was an unnatural and unstable situation. As soon as Musk tried to broaden one side of the tent, polarization was inevitable. This means neither X nor Bluesky can be what Twitter was for advertisers and public figures looking for a broad audience.

At present I'm using Mastodon. For users of old Twitter, it must seem like an empty wasteland, but it's a non-commercial network, it has no business imperative to suck up every last free moment of my attention. I follow major news organizations who dutifully post major stories. I follow some interest groups which are active to a modest degree, some local groups who post on local issues, and a few celebrities like George Takei. *Everybody's* not on it, but that's OK; I don't want to spend more than a few minutes a day on the thing so I don't have time to follow everyone I might be interested in. Oh, and moderation is on a per-server basis, so you can choose a server where the admins have a policy you're OK with.

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