The person who decided a headphone jack is superfluous should be found, tarred, feathered, and left naked and alone deep in the alaskan wilderness covered in pigs blood for the wildlife to enjoy.
I believe Steve Jobs is already dead. And those who inherited his billions probably don’t mind all those extra AirPod sales, especially if people keep losing them.
I honestly don’t think it made a noticeable difference in terms of selling AirPods, it simply reduced cost.
I only buy phones with 3.5mm jacks on principle, and yet I stilled jumped at the chance to get Pixel Buds cheaper when I got my 5a because of how convenient they are. The decision between wired and wireless is now nearly exclusively because you prefer either fidelity or convenience over the other. Not whether or not your phone supports them. Besides, if you’re picking fidelity you probably scrutinize much more on a phone than headphone jack or not.
I’m pretty sure the rise of BT headphones is solely due to Apple removing the headphone jack.
Yes, I know BT headphones have existed before, I was an audio/technology editor, so yes I know. Which is why I also know how tough it was to get some half-decent BT audio adapter or earphones 10 years ago, even tho BT 2.0 was in every phone for close to a decade already. Then within few weeks to months after the jack removal and introduction of AP, the market got flooded with them. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence.
It may sound like a good thing to have so many choices, except you’re losing the original choice of whether you want it in the first place. Combined with another lovely trend Apple has kickstarted - non-removable batteries - it just means yet more ewaste.
And I’m sorry, but the whole idea of “true wireless” is fucking terrible. I use sporty BT earphones I can hang around my neck or just put in a pocket when I’m not using them. Fiddling with 3 separate small things every time I want to take earphones in and out is madness. Of course you’ll loss something eventually.
Then within few weeks to months after the jack removal and introduction of AP, the market got flooded with them. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence.
You can crawl the way back machine though and find that this just isn’t really true in an appreciable way. Yes, after 2016 we start to see more and more wireless headphones but is that because of the iPhone or because Moore’s Law means standards increase, production gets cheaper and form factors get smaller?
It may sound like a good thing to have so many choices, except you’re losing the original choice of whether you want it in the first place.
I don’t disagree with you at all which is why I still make it a point to only buy phones exclusively with 3.5mm jacks still included.
And I’m sorry, but the whole idea of “true wireless” is fucking terrible.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man. That’s totally subjective and your taste. The ability for me to put earbuds in under earpro is masterful. That I can do work and keep my phone somewhere off to the side and out of harms way is beneficial to me. That I don’t have to worry about routing a cable through my clothes to prevent it getting grabbed by moving machinery and parts is a definite benefit.
And I’m sure absolutely none of that applies to you and that’s okay! It’s why I still advocate for 3.5mm jacks because my use, and your use, is totally different and deserve different accomodations.
standards increase, production gets cheaper and form factors get smaller?
Here we can be pretty sure, because Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP, allowing stereo sound, has been widely available since mid-00’s (I got my first phone with it in 2005), BT chips cost pennies even then and mono earphones of that size were old news too, so none of that was anything special. And it’s not like Apple were the ones to make it affordable anyway.
I’ll credit Apple for putting it together in a meaningful way, but of course they had to do it the asshole Apple way. Honestly, Apple designers should be charged with crimes against humanity for their popularisation of built-in batteries and other disposability features, and all the idiot designers who followed that example, with them. If not on principle, then for all the ewaste.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Of course it is. But to be clear, I’m not against all wireless. So I’m not comparing ‘true wireless’ with classic cabled earphones, but with wireless earphones that have a cable connecting them and controls/battery somewhere between them. I wish designers would concentrate on improving this style rather than producing millions of buds people keep losing or discarding and then re-buying.
(Ed: I mean even TW can exist if people want, but the Apple effect makes everyone think that’s the only way to make earphones.)
I don’t disagree with you at all which is why I still make it a point to only buy phones exclusively with 3.5mm jacks still included.
Jobs died before the headphone jack was removed (iphone 7 in 2016, while Jobs died in 2011).
The villain we’re looking for is Jony Ive, Apple’s product designer until 2019. All other companies just copied Apple’s lead so if there is a responsible party, it’s him.
Yea fuck him too, bit ol’ Steve was quite a fan of the whole “remove every slightly extra option and then sell it back to the user” way of doing business.
It wasn’t Steve Jobs who took it away. Steve Jobs probably would have taken it away, but he also probably would have insisted on developing a technically superior but proprietary wireless technology.
I hate how we’re stuck in a limbo between headphones jacks and usb-c. Like the change was bad to begin with, but if you’re going to switch to usb-c, then do it fully.
USB-C for everything honestly would have been good if they had. But we’re stuck in a limbo
Don’t do this. This just creates more work for the FBI and you know that report is going straight into the rubbish bin. That is just wasting public resources.
No, what’s more productive is writing that this should be a crime. It’s currently not.
If you think otherwise, let’s pretend you’re a prosecutor. Which offence do you accuse them of committing (use a legal citation to refer to a specific section), list out each of the elements of that offence and explain why you believe each of them is satisfied.
The parent commenter asserts that it is a crime. What I essentially said is “prove it”. I assert there is no law that makes this behaviour a criminal offence. Prove me wrong. Don’t say “Well, this is what the law should be”, tell me what the law is.
If you want to talk about what the law ought to be, write to your legislators. It’s not the FBI’s job to write the rules. They only enforce what’s already there.
I don’t think the behaviour is right, and it may be illegal in other ways, but it isn’t a crime, and if it isn’t a crime, reporting it to a law enforcement agency is just wasting your time.
And it is the responsibility of law enforcement to figure that out. If I go to the police and say “that guy stole from me” and the actual criminal case ends up not being for theft but embezzlement, did I waste the agency’s time?
You don’t need to have a law degree to be entitled to file a complaint with the system.
By “illegal in other ways” I mean “creates a civil cause of action”. This is not something the police can help with. You don’t need a law degree to complain but I think you’re just being purposefully obtuse.
Last I checked coercion is a crime over here. Property damage is, too.
You’re one of those people who hear a smoke alarm, want to call the fire brigade, but first wonder whether it’s actually opportune, whether you shouldn’t deal with it yourself, whether the situation is bad enough, aren’t you. The answer is yes it is the department rather moves out too often than not often enough and chalks up burnt potatoes at the bottom of a now dry pot under exercise.
You have a reason to believe that a crime could have occurred because your innate sense of justice got offended. You can articulate which action of a particular entity offended it. That’s enough, they’ll take it from there. Might it go into the bin and you be told “sorry that’s a civil matter”? Yes. But that’s their job. Just as it’s the job of the fire department to deal with you not being able to cook potatoes.
My God. You just used words that you think are criminal offences, and then proclaimed that you think they applied. “Last I checked” my arse, you did not check at all.
And when I tell you to read the statutes and show why you think they apply, you go and say “No, that’s not my job” because you’re either too lazy to Google search the text of the law or you’re afraid of seeing that you wouldn’t be able to justify your point.
You claim this is a criminal offence. You can’t cite or don’t want to cite any criminal statutes substantiating your claim. Instead you just speak out of your ass instead of checking to make sure. The information’s there. You just don’t want to read it.
You’re wrong. Just quit the conversation already. You’re not winning this one.
You just used words that you think are criminal offences,
§§ 240, 303 StGB.
Yes I know that’s German law. I don’t know US law. But I bet if I sold you a fridge and three days later came into your house and said “sign this or I’ll destroy the fridge” that’s a crime in the US. “Computer sabotage” is the rough equivalent of “trespass” in this example, you still have property damage and coercion even if computer sabotage doesn’t apply for some reason.
(1) Wer einen Menschen rechtswidrig mit Gewalt oder durch Drohung mit einem empfindlichen Übel zu einer Handlung, Duldung oder Unterlassung nötigt, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.
(1) Wer rechtswidrig eine fremde Sache beschädigt oder zerstört, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu zwei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.
(2) Ebenso wird bestraft, wer unbefugt das Erscheinungsbild einer fremden Sache nicht nur unerheblich und nicht nur vorübergehend verändert.
I ran Google Translate on these:
(1) Anyone who unlawfully coerces a person into an act, tolerance or omission by force or by threat of serious harm will be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine.
(1) Anyone who unlawfully damages or destroys someone else’s property will be punished with a prison sentence of up to two years or a fine.
(2) Anyone who unauthorizedly changes the appearance of someone else’s property in a way that is not just insignificant and not just temporary will also be punished.
Firstly, the terms and conditions screen is not “force”. Secondly, the television is not damaged by making you accept such conditions. The software doesn’t work but you don’t own the software, you own the hardware. Even if there is no way to install other software on the system. Thirdly, the terms and conditions originally agreed to allow this (changes to the terms and conditions) to happen. It is not unauthorised. Fourthly, and most importantly, you can just physically click the “agree” button to the terms and conditions to get back the functionality. The remedy is for a court to consider that agreement unenforceable.
Firstly, the terms and conditions screen is not “force”.
Threat of harm. Though “harm” is a bad translation think of it as evil as used in “the lesser evil”. “Do this or I’ll do the nasty” is considered coercion. Wilfully causing a traffic jam can be coercion – ask the climate protestors, they had to argue before court how their use of coercion wasn’t reprehensible (sentence 2). The reason that works is because they can quote a selfless motive, I very much doubt Roku manages to do that.
Secondly, the television is not damaged by making you accept such conditions.
If a TV doesn’t TV then it’s damaged. It cannot fulfil its purpose of being a TV, any more. If it requires me to acquiesce to a nasty before it works, it’s functionally not a TV either because I have all right in the world to not tolerate nasty in any way whatsoever.
The software doesn’t work but you don’t own the software, you own the hardware.
Copyright, as in the right to sell the software, is a different thing than the use-rights in the software. By selling a TV that contains firmware, requires firmware to fulfil its purpose as a TV, you automatically license the shipped software to be used by the owner/operator of that device. Just as you’re required to deliver functioning hardware if you promise the consumer a TV, so are you required to deliver functioning software, if it should be necessary for the operation of the TV. If the license agreement says otherwise it’s void.
It’s important to distinguish this from computers, which are meant to run user-provided software. But especially as Rokus are (AFAIK) completely locked down and can’t run user-supplied software arguing that it’s a computer is bound to fail.
Thirdly, the terms and conditions originally agreed to allow this
If the terms and conditions allow me to break into your house and coerce you then those terms are void, and it’s still coercion.
Fourthly, and most importantly, you can just physically click the “agree” button to the terms and conditions to get back the functionality. The remedy is for a court to consider that agreement unenforceable.
Warranty would be another remedy (at least over here, we have mandatory warranty). Remedy being available doesn’t make something not coercion though, it just means that the attempt failed. But the attempt itself is punishable (sentence 3).
Now, granted, all that may not apply in the US. It really might be legal in the US. But it’s still not the duty of a citizen to know. If the FBI is tired of having to throw those cases into the bin then they’re free to ask the white house to try and get a law passed to make it illegal. Tons of laws are passed like that: It stands to reason that the executive, having to implement law, has some insight and inspiration to give to the legislature when it comes to which laws might be sensible.
You can click the “agree” button to get back full functionality.
Not without acquiescing to a thing I do not want. Not without the fear and uncertainty of whether a civil court would actually agree with that. Whether I can afford to go up against company lawyers in court. Not without being a legal expert.
As said: Remedy being available doesn’t mean that an attempt to coerce was not made, and the attempt itself is punishable. What about “the attempt is punishable” do you not understand?
First off: What definition are you referring to because I don’t see any mentioned that would imply what you said.
Not coercive would be giving the user the option to not agree to the new terms, not coercive would be not taking the telly hostage when the user wants to use it.
If Roku did not want to coerce its users to acquiesce, why did they choose such a drastic act? Is there any reasonable other motive? In defence you might argue technical necessity or such, very likely a losing battle but you might drag out the proceedings. but even then there’s still enough initial suspicion to start the case.
And, as said: It’s certainly not the job of an ordinary citizen to figure all that out. That’s the job of police and prosecutors.
It’s not a crime per se, but it does open them up to civil litigation. Because it’s a contract of adhesion, where the consumer gains nothing from the additional terms, cannot negotiate the terms prior to acceptance, and is forced into accepting the terms on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
In order for a contract to be enforceable, both sides need to be able to negotiate the terms, and both sides need to receive something meaningful from said contract.
It’s not a crime per se, but it does open them up to civil litigation.
If I am a shop owner and sell you a washing machine, and then three days later come into your house with a baseball bat saying “sign this or I’ll destroy the machine”, did I commit a crime?
The thing they want you to coerce you into is civil, yes, but that doesn’t make coercion a civil matter.
So I looked at his post history, and sure enough, there are multiple instances of “cheque” instead of check, “centralised” instead of centralized, and other obvious uses of British or Asian English.
Maybe NateNate60 is American by citizenship, but doesn’t appear to be a native American English speaker.
Yeah, that would definitely not go anywhere. Roku isn’t hacking into their device. OP probably bought a Roku Smart TV for like $75 (the cost is subsidized by Roku, hence why it’s so cheap) and is now complaining about it. It’s like buying an Amazon FireTV and then complaining about Amazon having control over the TV.
Edit: am I saying it’s right? No, but sometimes it pays to read the EULA. If you’re getting something for cheap, there’s probably a reason for it.
Non American here, and also not a lawyer, but I’m curious what the correlation is between consumer rights (or lack of) and the relative cost of the product. This is somewhat different to buying a cheaply manufactured product and it unsurprisingly falling to bits - though in many jurisdictions there are even basic rights for that situation, the price is irrelevent. Someone elsewhere in chat has suggested suing in small claims for the cost of the product, due to Roku intentionally bricking their own product unless the rightful owner (is the purchaser even the owner?) agrees to certain terms, even though OP purchased it in good faith. If a straight up refund is not available during a straight forward opt OUT option, we have a very unfair situation for the rightful owner of this product. Needless to say opting out should be as straight forward as opting in. Your suggestions is that if a product is of or below a certain price you must bend over and gratefully accept the corporation you paid money to, then inserting anything they like up your rear end. In my opinion your thesis is not price based as this is a common practice unfortunately in the consumer (and enterprise for that matter) tech industry where we have had shiny brand even expensive products initially sensitively torpedoed up our various orifices, only for brand HQ weeks later to press a button which flicks open hidden blades in the torpedo. No one wants or deserves this. The question is what recourse is there in OP’s jurisdiction.
I may be misunderstanding you if actually you mean that any tech corp can do such a thing at any time that you have paid for. In which case we agree. But it’s far from ideal and shouldn’t be accepted.
I’m not saying it’s right for them to do this, it’s a shitty practice and I’d definitely be pissed off. What I’m saying is there’s probably a clause in the EULA/TOS that pretty much says Roku has control over the function of the TV and either you accept those terms or you don’t use the TV. The price comparison was just pointing out the difference in experience between getting a $50-75 Amazon Fire tablet vs a $700 Samsung Galaxy tablet. The former is going to have ads all over it and Amazon controls it essentially, they tell you this, meanwhile the Galaxy tablet most likely has no advertising or additional strong-arming since you’re paying a lot more for it. The company is always out to get their income one way or another is simply the point I was making.
There is practically zero consumer protection in the US (assuming OP is from the US).
No problem, this is essentially the Human Cent-iPad South Park episode playing out in real life… Obviously without the shit eating and mouth to ass sewing 😂
I remember when gitlab.com was the most accessible alternative to GitHub out there, but it seems they’re only interested in internal enterprise usage now. Their main page was already completely unreadable to someone not versed in enterprise tech marketing lingo, and now this.
Thankfully Gitea and Forgejo have gotten better in the meantime, with Codeberg as a flagship instance of the latter.
On a tangent, why are all of these companies pushing AI programming? This shit isn’t nearly as functional as they make it seem and all the beginners who try it are constantly asking questions about why their generated code doesn’t work
It’s their wet dream. Making software without programmers.
Execs have never cared about the technology or the engineering side of it. If you could make software by banging on a pot while dancing naked around the fire, they’d have been ok with that.
And now that AI has come along that’s basically what it looks like to them.
Because greedy investors are gullible and want to make money from the jobs they think AI will displace. They don't know that this shit doesn't work like they've been promised. The C-levels at Gitlab want their money (gotta love publicly traded companies), and nobody is listening to the devs who are shouting that AI is great at writing security vulnerabilities or just like, totally nonfunctioning code.
VC’s and companies like OpenAI have done a really good job of propagandizing AI (LLMs). People think it’s magical and the future, so there’s money in saying you have it.
the beginners who try it are constantly asking questions about why their generated code doesn’t work
Because it ain't here to generate all their code for them. It's a glorified autocomplete and suggestion engine. When are people gonna get this? (not you, just in general)
I use CoPilot myself, but if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing yourself, you and CoPilot will both quickly hit a dead end together. It doesn't actually understand what you want the code to do. Only what is similar to what you have already written or prompted for, which may be some garbage picked up from a noob on the web somewhere. Books and research using your meatbrain are still very much needed.
It’s not in the interest of all the techbros to sell the new age AIshit as something less that can only do such small thing. They need to hype the shit out of it to get all the crazy investors money that understand nothing about it but only see AI buzzwords everywhere and need to go for it now because of FOMO.
It’s only gonna get much worse before it is toned down to appropriate usage.
Don’t even need to make it about code. I once asked what a term meant in a page full of a certain well known FOSS application’s benchmarks page. It gave me a lot of garbage that was unrelated because it made an assumption about the term, exactly the assumption I was trying to avoid. I try to deviate it away from that, and it fails to say anything coherent and then loops back and gives that initial attempt as the answer again. I was stuck unable from stopping it from hallucinating.
How? Why?
Basically, it was information you could only find by looking at the github code, and it was pretty straightforward - but the LLM sees “benchmark” and it must therefore make a bajillion assumptions.
Even if asked not to.
I have a conclusion to make. It does do the code thing too, and it is directly related. Once asked about a library, and it found a post where someone was ASKING if XYZ was what a piece of code was for - and it gave it out as if it was the answer. It wasn’t. And this is the root of the problem:
AI’s never say “I don’t know”.
It must ALWAYS know. It must ALWAYS assume something, anything, because not knowing is a crime and it won’t commit it.
I’m hyped about AI assisted programming and even agent driven projects (writing their own code, submitting pull requests etc) but I also agree that it seems just too early to actually put money behind it.
Its just so marginal so far, the UI/HMI has too much friction still and the output without skilled programming assistance is too limited.
For my private repos, hosted on my home server, I moved from Gitlab to Forgejo (Git, artifacts and containers images) and Woodpecker for CI builds. Woodpecker is not as powerful and feature complete as Gitlab, but for simpler needs it gets the job done.
Liberal economic theories beleive the free market is the best solution generally, but allow the free market to be intervened in or even entirely supplanted in cases of market failure or where significant social problems arise from private ownership. There is a lot of debate inside liberalism as to when a market has failed, or when a social issue requires intervention, which is why sometimes you will see centrist liberals and left liberals arguing. Just look at Canada with our Liberal Party, its a big tent party with a small social democrat rump(since most social Dems are NDP), a larger social liberal / left liberal group, as well as some centrist and “blue liberals” (these would be right liberals, who are harder to convince about market failures).
Liberalism can be progressive, especially when the main thrust of a liberal party is left liberal or social liberal. Some Liberal parties are progressive sometimes, then more centrist at others as members and the membership changes over the years (or often on the strength and leanings of their leader). All still liberalism.
A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use 'Liberal' to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist.. That's not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren't calling for communism.
The conservatives are only liberal in the economic sense. They are the party of book banning, anti-abortion and anti-lgbtq. Liberalism is also about human rights and freedoms. But just because you think gays should be allowed to marry and acces to have an abortion should be a right that doesn’t put you left on the political spectrum or even make you a progressive. Since that is pretty much a centrist political position in the rest of the world. Most Democrats are liberal in the economic sense but also in the human liberty sense. But only a few Democrats in the house and senate can be truly called progressives. Since most Democrats are fine with the status quo and aren’t pushing society forward. They are just fighting of the attacks of the GOP
A concept where political discourse is slowly shifted to one side or another over time. For example conservatism.
Politics are talked about the right who move even further right, the centralists are moved to old right and the leftists are moved to the center … the old leftists are now seen as extreme and unacceptable while the far right are also unacceptable but gain some ground … everyone shifts one step to the right and now everything is more conservative.
The right shift is what is happening now … but it can happen and shift towards the left as well.
That’s only true if you use the international definition of “liberal”. In America, “liberal” means “left wing”. And we’re talking about American politics.
No it doesn’t. Widespread ignorance does not change objective reality. This sort of thinking is Hyperliberalism. Just because most Americans are politically illiterate doesn’t mean the definition is changed. 40% Americans also believe the entire universe is only 6000 years old.
If you ask an american political scientist to define “liberal” they will tell you the “international” definition. If you allow technical and scientific terms to be subjected to “language just evolves” you end up with a Tower of Babble type situation where different groups of people are unable to communicate with one another despite using the same language and society collapses.
Saying something is obvious doesn’t make it true. The only noun you use in your first comment is “Democrats” so how is this not a discussion about politics? I am having a discussion about politics and I’m going to do my best to use political terminology in its established scientific meaning not a niche dialect that you believe is “common use.”
The world is much bigger than the USA. Americans only make up 15% of the English speaking world. What you call “common use” is just “ignorant and wrong” to the rest of us.
By any civilized standard democrat politicians are far right extremists (a few token exceptions are closer to right or even center-right on some points, but they have little effect on the whole). Republicans are outright deranged lunatics, mixed with a worryingly increasing percentage of fascists.
Well, they may like the attention and validation it brings. I knew someone who was asexual that had a lot of dotcom money. He loved to go to Vegas and gamble. He knew the house was stacked against him. He knew that the girls who sat on his lap only liked him for his money. He still loved the attention he got when he tipped big. I saw him tip a waiter $200 on a $150 meal. He LOVED it. And why?
“I used to be poor. I was a nobody. Now I make people happy with my money, and I feel good about myself.”
I’m not rich at all. But I have a really high paying job. And I tip 25-40% because I used to work at restaurants and coffee shops if they are mildly pleasant. During the holidays, I easily drop 100% tips at like a small sandwich shop.
I’m definitely part of the problem with tipping. But it makes me feel good to give a small coffee worker $5 for their hard work.
You’re not at all part of the problem. The problem is entirely concentrated in the employers’ unwillingness to pay workers a living wage. It’s not like they’d start if you stopped tipping; they’d be legally required to backfill some of the shortfall, but not enough that the person could actually survive.
As someone who has done tipped labor before: the bigger problem is the entitlement of the people who come to expect tips and negatively judge anyone who doesn’t.
I once got shat on for saying I reduce my typical tip of 25%+ down to 15% for waiters who were particularly bad at interactions, in a thread where a bunch of waiters were patting themselves on the back for forcing bad-but-fast interactions that allowed them to give the appearance of service.
Such as avoiding eye contact, ignoring gestures from a distance, and leaving a table fast to give them as little time as possible to put in follow-up requests, or waiting until someone’s mouth was full or with a glass up so they couldn’t elaborate, and some other stuff I don’t care to remember.
That’s so sad, you weren’t even doing a “No tip” just a “reduced tip.” Like, isn’t that how tipping is supposed to work?
I’ve faced it too, coworkers would tell me things like “we have a spray bottle with water so you can look like you’re sweating and working really hard and more likely to get tips.” Cool, because gaslighting people for money isn’t fraudulent or scammy at all??
The entitlement is crazy. I remember literally arguing “it’s not their responsibility to cover the gaps in our pay that our employer refuses to cover” and them acting like I was crazy to expect our employer to pay us a living wage when we could be raking in cash from tips.
Seriously, the tips were insane, but it wasn’t enough for these people. We could be getting enough in tips to be making $30+/hour each night, but apparently that’s not enough and entirely the responsibility of the people who come to our restaurant.
Yeah, I’m pretty convinced that the worst tipping culture comes from the people who act like not getting a tip is fucking blaspheme that should be punished by God himself.
Yeah, like I’ve always tipped the “standard” (15% here) as the minimum in the worst cases, my standard is 20-25% or more depending on the bill and time of service, et cetera; and they still had their panties in a wad over the idea that their brilliant shortcuts weren’t that brilliant and that someone might still see through them or at least appropriately judge their service over them, intentional or not.
edit: at the time it was 25% or more; I’ve only adjusted it slightly because I don’t make as much anymore, and even then it’s mainly when it’s a large bill, and I’m by myself, and either the service was just sub-par, or it was a very fast but expensive meal. Good eating is my vice.
Lots of jobs fully need a living wage and are for spare cash mainly. Your son delivering papers certainly doesn’t. I think we need to evaluate in that some.
There are a great number of jobs that pay a living wage. Working on a convenience store or Walmart does not need to be one.
And a living wage does not mean you should be able to live alone with your own kitchen and bathroom without roommates. Something past generations certainly need to do. Those single member working families that were paid s high wages typically worked in a mine or a higher paid job. No one could work at the convenience store and support a family alone.
So you think the parents of younger employees should subsidize Walmart’s business?
Even if you say that’s fine, there’s a deeper problem.
Let’s look at the most recent census: as of 2022, there are about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 15 and 19. Now that particular range is a little young, but that’s the breakdown the census gives us; and the cohorts on either side are about the same, so we can probably assume pretty safely that there are also about 20 million people in the US between the ages of 16 and 20 as well.
Since the end of the pandemic, about 20 million people in the US are getting paid below the almost-living wage of $15/hr. Cool, problem solved then, right?
Except no. The demographics are all over the place. First of all, not everyone between the ages of 16 and 20 are employed full time; in fact, almost 60% of them are not. Which means that, of those 20 million people making below $15/hr, only about 8 million are kids under the age of 20 who could reasonably expect to be able to live with their parents. Which means that 12 million of the people who are getting paid less than poverty wages for full time work are fully adults. That’s five percent of the US population.
“Ok so get roommates” you say. But the housing stock isn’t set up for that; in order to pay appreciably less in rent, you have to cram more than one person into a space originally only meant for one; often this is not allowed by the property. Plus, when you’re talking about people over the age of 20 (particularly once you approach 25), you’re increasingly talking about people with children; particularly in the demographic that works at a low-wage hourly job. In most cases, including roommates in that scenario would be inconvenient at best; and prohibited or even unsafe at worst.
“No one could work at a convenience store and support a family alone” you say—but again your assertion doesn’t line up with reality. According to a BLS report from 1975, “basic rates for grocery store employees averaged $5.19 on July 1, 1975”—that’s $29.46 in today’s dollars, and about 75% of the median household income across the country. Couple that with the fact that housing prices adjusted for inflation have more than doubled since the 1980s while wages have stagnated (median household income in 1970 was a little over half of the median home price; today it’s less than a fifth), and you see that, yes, a head-of-household could indeed have supported a family on a grocery store worker’s income. It wouldn’t have been easy, they wouldn’t have lived in luxury, but they would’ve been safely lower-middle class.
It’s also important to realize that when it was originally proposed, the minimum wage was intended to be a living wage. Roosevelt said, “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living.”
Minimum wage in 1975 was around 2 dollars and many rentals are two rooms or more. Grocery store may have averaged higher as most included meat cutters on prepared products and I bet that includes management. The shelve stocker likely getting 2 dollars an hour.
Ya let us value that the same as a guy working in a mine or someone developing software. Get serious people. We are paying to subsidize someone to work at Walmart is because we choose to do this. And why wouldn’t a person want to work a higher value job if the government is willing to top them up to a higher rate?
yeah I see your point and the fact that the research supports your conclusion but I don’t like it so I’m going to ignore reality
Ok buddy. If you’re not willing to have this discussion in good faith then neither am I. To wit: I made some points with data and included some examples as demonstration. You’re hung up on the examples and refuse to think about the points or the data as a result.
Not a boomer but not all jobs are valuable enough not do they need to be to be paid a living wage. Your 16yo babysitter doesn’t need to be paid a living wage while she lives at home. It is goofy how people think like this.
we literally had a bunch of underpaid minimum wage employees being pressured to work and take the risk on getting infected through the pandemic because they were essential to the fucking economy and logistics of our daily lives, yet we don’t want to recognize that as essential anymore because someone else has brainwashed you into it for no reason you’ve been able to elaborate. The 16-year-old needs to be compensated at the same rate as someone who does it for a living, proportional to the hours they work. It’s kinda wild how you’re angling to argue for underpaid child labor. This guy’s gotta be one dusty mf to think like that.
All jobs are needed from banking to Street cleaners. Not all jobs are equal and pay reflects that. And many jobs are simply extra for those not after living wages. It is silly to think that a 16 living at homes needs enough money to pay for rent of his own place plus all utilities plus all food and boarding. Get serious.
Except then if he is not working full time, then is just extra money to him. Isn’t after a living wage is he so justifying some extravagant wage that people that do support families and have full time positions need.
You are such a witty person. Seriously that is really witty. I never heard anyone suggest fax before. Where did you develop that skill or come up with such a novel expression? Do you get to say that often? It must be a real exciting moment when you can fit that into a conversation?
I don’t necessarily do it with tips, because I don’t really know those people, but I have a similar situation. I make good money at work and am very lonely/isolated in my social life, so I don’t have a lot of places to spend my money. But around the holidays I like giving big expensive gifts to my family and the few other important people in my life. They always think it’s overboard in terms of what I spend but I just really like the feeling that my money is going to make someone happy since it doesn’t really do much for me. I make sure to remind them that I’m not keeping score and not expecting them to give me something of equal value. I just like the experience of gift-giving.
I would not feel good about myself in that situation but I guess I understand…
For me it’s a slightly disgusting to pay money to another human being for fake attention, it’s very superficial and animal-like. But I can see how it can make some guys happy.
If “no, thanks” is not treated as a complete sentence, you’re in a bad crowd. Doesn’t matter if it’s beer with the coworkers or MDMA at a trippy cuddle party. “No” requires no further elaboration.
If you feel like discussing your reasons, feel free to bring them up. But you should not have to. If your “no” is not accepted about drugs, get out – because those people are in the habit of rejecting people’s “no” on other things, too.
And by the way, this rule is just as important, maybe more so, for people who do choose to take recreational drugs sometimes. Just because I’m okay having a beer in one context does not oblige me to do shots with your buddies.
Yea, they get a “No, thank you”. If they persist after that they get a “Fuck off”. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. Fortunately my friends I go out with will back me up if anyone gets pissed about my attitude.
Protonmails approach to requiring hCaptcha for everything, even their mobile apps, really turns me off. I can’t complete them. And I need another email to get in using their weird and creepy accessibility cookie thing. Nah thanks. If I need a second email to access my email I might as well just use that second email.
Who the hell downvotes a person for saying “I have a hard time with Captchas because they don’t provide accessibility options that allow entry to someone with my conditions” ?
Like, guys, Captchas being ableist is a well known thing. And they’ve only been getting worse, as they’ve been in an arms race with AI, trying to become more and more distorted, and most AI text recognition software is already better at Captchas than most dyslexic people.
I am always suspicious of free. How do they make money? Have to pay for things in life, and I’ve learned that you are either the customer, or the product. If your the customer, pay up. If your the product, your data is being dished out to somebody OR ad-a-palooza. If the free option is just ads, I can live. If every time I log on I feel like I am getting a vitual colonoscopy, pass.
The Proton free tier is pretty limited compared to Gmail, in particular for me, you’re only allowed 1 label. The basic paid tier opens up a lot more. They definitely want you to upgrade to the paid tier.
Your doubts are warranted, but with Protonmail and Tutanota there is no reason be suspicious. They are basically feemium products and their goal is to respect user’s rights
Yup, and it’s kind if a pain since their mobile apps aren’t great. I’ve been using them for many years, and lately have been considering jumping ship.
Email encryption isn’t something I actually care about. If I wanted to send someone a super private message, I probably wouldn’t use email anyways since it’s just clunky, and it’s unlikely the other person is using proton mail too (which means the message wouldn’t be encrypted anyways). All I really want is to not have my email provider be scanning my messages to profit from my data.
But the effort to switch to something else is making me stay…
Just off the top of my head: on iOS, the app is frequently slow to download new messages, occasionally (but not frequently) crashes or freezes up, opening a message from a notification is unreliable, it doesn’t support landscape mode, the search feature sucks (no filtering, sorting, etc), and it has some questionable design choices. Like, why does it include spam in the “All Mail” category? And why is it that swiping a message right sends it to the trash when doing that exact same interaction in the iOS mail app marks it as read? I’ve adapted to the difference after all these years, but it’s clearly a bad design.
Overall it’s not terrible; I’d give it like 4/5 or 3.5/5 stars, however with the price I’m paying for this (IMO overpriced) service I’d expect something a little better. I will say that the experience today is much better than it was a year ago, so even though it takes a long time, it does seem to be improving.
You don’t use encrypted emails only to communicate privately. If they are not encrypted, your e-mail provider will probably scan them, whether it is for profit or under request from the NSA. That’s what Snowden uncovered.
That’s a good point, but also the more I think about it the more I realize it’s futile. Google is 100% going to scan the messages I send to gmail users, and match it to me somehow.
Phone app? Yes you have to use their own app. On a computer besides the browser version you can use Thunderbird and other applications if you download ProtonBridge.
Yes, that’s still true. If you want to be able to use a third-party mail app, I would look at Fastmail or Mailbox.org. They don’t have free plans though.
I’ll be honest, when it comes to online purchases you may find that a protonmail email will require extra processing/fraud checking due to the amount of fraudsters that use it. Combine that with a vpn and it will just be a pain here and there with online purchases like additional ID verification/delayed orders etc…
They also expand your storage every year, so it’s not like it’s stuck there forever. For reference, I’ve been on Proton for about 3 years now (paid plan) and I have a data storage cap of 540GB and I’ve never had to buy more. Also, I all my emails so far only consume 340MB - so even on the free plan I’d still have years to go before I reached even 5GB.
I mean, there are definitely wrong ways to run Linux, like a single root user with no password, but your point is well taken. If Linux fanboys would keep the subjective gatekeeping to themselves the new user experience would be much more pleasant.
The fediverse is not a single database or server. It’s a protocol and standard that’s distributed by design. The fediverse as a whole cannot be centrally monetized, just like email can’t be monetized. A single provider could potentially choose to try to monetize either by requiring a subscription or showing ads, exactly like email providers do, but if you ever feel like they’ve stopped providing a good service you can just switch to another instance just like you can switch to another email provider.
Unlike a centralized service like Reddit, you’re not locked into a monopoly. Switching instances does not lock you out of the system as a whole, just like you can still receive email if you switch to another provider. With Reddit you can only access the platform through Reddit because it’s a closed source centralized monopoly.
One thing the fediverse seems to lack as far as I can tell is a way to link accounts, like how you can set up forwarding with email, which helps you switch providers. But the protocol and standard is still being developed so maybe that’s something that can happen in the future
A large company absolutely could come in and absorb the majority of lemmy traffic and build proprietary code and features on top of the main protocol, eventually making the open source protocol obsolete and supplanting it as a paid/closed-source service. It has been done repeatedly by tech companies, and it is the main reason many people distrust Meta’s interest in joining the fediverse.
For all the reasons you just mentioned, we should fight tooth and nail against that from happening, but we should at least be aware of the threat.
I think there are benefit of killing twitter, mocking el*n and skirting europe regulation on moderation laws. But the worry is there, I hope the devs stand their ground and rejecting any doubious modification from meta on fediverse protocols.
I’d be surprised if there’s more than one Meta instance, as “multiple instances” tends to make the UX more confusing for those who are unaware of it. So it shouldn’t be hard.
they’d abstract that away for their users, they won’t know or care. And if one instance gets blocked, they’ll just spin up a new one and migrate the data. Meta users won’t have to think about the whole fediverse aspect of it because it they had to, it would never get off the ground. So meta has to abstract it away or it’ll be DOA. Which means we have to keep blocking any and all meta instances when they’re identified as such
Zuck did an interview talking about how they were looking at doing a spinoff of Instagram, using Fediverse, for text based social media. Basically a competitor to Twitter. Rumor mill says it’s call Thread, or maybe he said that in the interview, I can’t remember.
I deleted the wrong comment, but responding here. I was thinking Thread like the home automation standard all the big companies are doing together. Figured Facebook was in on that. I did hear about the Fediverse entry though, just missed the name (which I bet they won’t use).
Zuck did an interview talking about how they were looking at doing a spinoff of Instagram, using Fediverse, for text based social media. Basically a competitor to Twitter. Rumor mill says it’s call Thread, or maybe he said that in the interview, I can’t remember.
Yeah that’s a great point. I think it would be hard to fully lock other clients out, but you could have an early internet style situation where you had some websites not supporting all browsers.
I think the email comparison is apt. We are currently in the bbs/dial-up ISP stage of the fediverse. When people had aol.com or netcom.com addresses.
That gave way to powerful centralized services such as Hotmail or rocketmail, that had the promise of never changing your email again. We then saw Gmail become the big boy on the block with amazing technology.
Even with these powerful entities, there were still hobbyists and corporate email.
I predict the fediverse will follow a similar path. lemmy.world and beehaw are like the netcoms, or even the bbs’s, basically hobbyists, and Internet communists setting things up for the common good, or simply because it’s fun.
We’re going to see instances fill up, become unstable, unreliable, etc. People will get frustrated when Lemm.ee, or their preferred instance can no longer support the volume they have attracted. We’ll see a professional service like a Hotmail that promises a forever home. You’ll likely also see vanity instances like what rocketmail offered. Given the nature of the interest based servers, we’ll likely see vanity instances come about singer than they did with email: starwars.fedi, lotr.verse, piano.lemmy, etc.
Once corporate interests start to see value in a powerful, stable instance that can collect user data and serve targeted ads (starwars.fedi is easy to target), they will dump enough money to push out the hobbyists. The hobbyists will not go away, but they won’t be needed anymore.
That’s when you’ll see the disruptor. Someone who comes into the space like Google did, and the fediverse will be an open protocol that is dominated by a few massive interests.
All in all, I’m not predicting doom, just the natural course of events, which actually will be great for the fediverse. Just like I love my gmail.com account more than my hotcity.com account, I think the future of the fediverse is bright, even if corporate interests get heavily involved, and dominate the 'verse, because there will always be room for innovations, and hobbyists, and while a single company could dominate, the protocol is still open for anyone to do their own thing, and not be bound to a single company if they don’t want to be.
I think this is spot on. It’s completely foreseeable that a well funded enterprise could stand up an instance that’s super robust and can handle a lot more traffic than current ones. They could, say, attract celebrities to do AMAs and handle the load. Or maybe they could create some communities that they stock with a giant amount of useful content.
They’d do it for free, and it would just be another instance, but it would become invaluable, with more and more communities hosted there, and more and more users making it their home instance, until the owners felt they were valuable enough that they put their content behind a paywall or they start serving ads. Sure, people could just move to other instances, but the point would be that suddenly doing without them would be painful.
But unlike Reddit or Twitter, it’s not as much as all or nothing situation, and other instances can compete in the same realm.
Incidentally, Google is kinda doing this with email.
If you run your own email server for your business, they will rate limit you under the guise of spam protection, even if your emails are never caught in their spam filters. Some business reported up to 12 hour delays on their emails being delievered. They want everyone to use preferably their own service, or at least another major giant’s, so they can push the smaller players out of the market.
During the Pascal-B nuclear test of August 1957, a 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) iron lid was welded over the borehole to contain the nuclear blast, despite Brownlee predicting that it would not work.
A high-speed camera, which took one frame per millisecond, was focused on the borehole because studying the velocity of the plate was deemed scientifically interesting.
This idea is so incredibly stupid that science needs to study precisely how much it won’t work.
Like, I wonder if the person who insisted on welding the lid in place had to go to a debriefing meeting where Brownlee showed the frame-by-frame of the lid. “So here we see the lid, and- Oh, it’s gone! Look at that. Gary, did you see it? The lid you put on there to cOnTaIn ThE bLaSt, you can see it for one thousandth of a second, and then it’s gone. It’s either in outerspace or it has been vaporized, and we’re never going to know because it happened so fast. So fast, Gary. A for effort, though. It was definitely worth bringing in the crane and a whole welding crew. Time and money well spent, because we now have a better understanding of the magnitude of how stupid you are, Gary. Here’s a print of that one millisecond for you to hang in your office. Get fucked, Gary.”
When Pascal-B was detonated, the blast went straight up the test shaft, launching the cap into the atmosphere at a speed of more than 66 km/s (41 mi/s; 240,000 km/h; 150,000 mph).
Woaw. Just wow.
Very interesting article, thanks for quoting it lol
For reference, earths escape velocity at the surface is about 11 km/s. I’m not sure how quickly the cap would slow down, but if it hadn’t been vaporised it surely would be orbiting the sun right now.
Also, the escape velocity from the Sun at Earths distance would be 16.6 km/s on top of earths speed, so depending on the direction it could’ve escaped the suns orbit as well.
I remember reading somewhere that it would be the farthest manmade object from earth, far outpacing the Voyager spacecrafts, assuming it didn’t vaporize.
They do something fun with this in the three body problem. It’s amazing and makes a ton of sense but in the real world the application will probably be a lot cleaner.
Waterfall method: talk about building a rocket for 5 years, build the rocket, rocket needs to be totally redesigned because we forgot to put a place for people to go - massive change reqeust, build new version. Project Delay: 27 years
Agile Method: a rocket is not software - do not use Agile
Kanban - kanban is agile
Scrum - scrum . . is also Agile. What are you doing, go back and do the waterfall one
Your comparison is interesting, but let’s consider some historical facts. The Apollo program, which successfully put humans on the moon, actually employed many principles we now associate with Agile methodologies.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a straightforward Waterfall process. NASA used frequent feedback (akin to daily Scrums), self-organizing teams, stable interfaces so that teams are an independent path to production, and iterative development cycles - core Agile practices. In fact, Mariana Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy provides fascinating insights into how the moon landing project incorporated elements remarkably similar to modern Agile approaches. Furthermore, here’s a NASA article detailing how Agile practices are used to send a rover to the moon: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/…/20160006387.pdf?att…
While it’s true that building rockets isn’t identical to software development, the underlying principles of flexibility, collaboration, and rapid iteration proved crucial to the missions’ success. Programs like the Apollo program adapted constantly to new challenges, much like Agile teams do today.
Regarding Kanban and Scrum, you’re right that they fall under the Agile umbrella. However, each offers unique tools that can be valuable in different contexts, even outside of software.
Perhaps instead of dismissing Agile outright for hardware projects, we could explore how its principles might be adapted to improve complex engineering endeavors. After all, if it helped us reach the moon and, decades later, send rovers to it, it might have more applications than we initially assume.
Also, Kanban was invented in the 40s as a process for automotive production lines. That’s why it aligns so well with maintenance and operations projects in IT. It’s ridiculous how more and more people claim it comes from software development and would not fit hardware projects, when that’s the core use case of the methodology.
Good points all - I was just responding to a comic strip that I think meant to riff on the old, “what the customer wanted”, “how sales described it”, “what engineering proposed” etc. about project management but it just wasn’t finding the funny as it put the onus on Agile like isn’t this a silly discipline - well, no. :)
Agile methodology is a defined framework for software development success. It helps teams adapt and solve specific needs at a given time and prioritizes accelerated time to market and the value of user insights. Agile is based upon a set of four values and twelve principles laid out in the Manifesto for Agile Software development.
See, the thing with that is it’s just really aspirational. Anything could be Agile if you do it in the right spirit, if the manifesto is the whole thing.
Edit: I suppose what I should have asked is: “Is Agile really a system, or just a philosophy?”
It’s both. The word “Agile” is used for either depending on context.
To that end, it’s several “systems” depending on if it’s used for straight-software development in a department, or manufacturing with technological components, or an entire enterprise using Agile concepts (like SAFe). Each one could be slightly different, and each one is some variation on the philosophy.
What it differs from mostly is a phase-gate approach typified by project management, where a plan is made, a budget secured, and a timeline set. All of those things are of course present in Agile, just in different ways and not one-after-the-other.
The big difference is project management has been around forever; Agile just over twenty years. So the former is what everybody knows by default, the latter sounds very “woo woo” to a lot of people. I think that’s really what the comic is trying to say - Agile stuff sounds silly.
Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.
This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.
Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.
They used to hang out with flat earthers and earth centrics, but I’m guessing they had to cut out some of the crazy stuff to appeal to larger audience, with the less tangible stuff.
steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”
…
Huffman has been a frequent attendee at Burning Man, the annual, clothing-optional festival in the Nevada desert, where artists mingle with moguls. He fell in love with one of its core principles, “radical self-reliance,” which he takes to mean “happy to help others, but not wanting to require others.” Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
There are some other funny bits in that article, like Spez having “large blue eyes” and once was a competitive ballroom dancer.
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