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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Linux is currently easier to use than Windows.

    Claim in dispute

    People who think otherwise are Windows users who think different equals worse.

    In this case different is worse. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I serve you peas you can argue that it’s not worse it’s just different. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I tell you I don’t know what carrots are and I don’t have any alternative suggestions, but if you can find a store that provides what you’re talking about, appropriately transport that to my location and teach me how to cook them I will do that, then I think it’s fair to say I’m just a worse restaurant. What’s not comparable is easy of use. If you don’t understand how a lack of plug and play affects ease of use then there’s nothing I can say that will fundamentally bridge that gap.


  • I’m not the person you’re responding to, but if I have headphones or speakers or a mouse that aren’t plug and play on Linux which is what I’m used to on windows, I think it’s fair to say that my experience with Linux is less easy than with windows. The average user is not going to consider that a hardware issue, and it isn’t a hardware issue. If it’s a driver issue, I’d call that a software issue. Im glad to hear your grandma is not having issues with Linux, but as a Linux user I have to agree with the other commenter. A not insignificant amount of people will run up against some issues with Linux that the average user is likely not equipped to solve. I’m not saying that it means Linux is bad, but it really isn’t helpful to act like that’s a complete fabrication.



  • Not the person you’re responding to, but “most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point” indicates to me that optimization was not a top priority. It’s not unusual for people to optimize after a proof of concept or something, but I imagine in gaming (I don’t do game dev admittedly) you don’t want that too late in the process. If they’re not planning on having it in early access, then their early consistent user base will be more worried about other things. If min spec is 8 then people with 4 won’t get it or won’t complain about poor performance because technically it’s their machine that’s the issue. Lack of complaints about that and feedback about other things further shifts the priority away from optimization. Plus, anyone who’s worked in dev spaces or probably any kind of deliverable knows that there are things that just don’t happen despite your best intentions. Things like optimization are the first to go in the dev space, so by openly admitting to putting it off, it does feel like an admission of “we were probably just not going to get around to it”. In my experience, the further out you plan to optimize, the more man hours you end up wasting, so I don’t see a company investing heavily in that at any point, but doing so post early launch seems wasteful if they legitimately cared about it.






  • You are suggesting a user configurable setting, but that’s exactly what they had. Apple had a user wide setting, and then individual apps could ask to override that setting. I have personalized ads off in my general settings, and though I would never turn them on, if for whatever reason I did want to, the best way to get me to do that would be to ask in the specific app I wanted to give access to that. Absolutely no way I would change my overall settings just for the benefit of one app. Others have noted that a second layer of consent was only needed if you did not use the Apple provided ad option, because Apple already has your opt in/out on file. I hope this causes Apple to also display the pop-up for those using Apple ad options. Most people probably just agreed to the tracking when setting up their phone, so forcing Apple to show the pop-up even if an app is using Apple as their ad distributor is ideal in my opinion. Users will be much more likely to opt out even if their overall setting is opt in. This will ideally make Apple and non-Apple advertising options on an even playing field and is better for users. If anything, it’s probably worse for developers because had they just chosen to use Apple ads before they were probably more likely to get targeted ads from the user since Apple would bypass the pop-up.


  • The “auction” is not a realtime auction that you might be used to IRL or anything, and these brands likely have AI already doing that. They likely have certain bid strategies and ad budgets. So they may be willing to pay up to $X to be in that spot for a user with demographic/behavior profile A and pay up to $Y for a user with profile B then the have an overall budget for that ad spot of $Q per day. All of those parameters are likely set by a specialized AI that monitors bid strategy over time. The AI might see that users with profile B download the app via the ad more often so they will spend more to capture that audience. It’s possible companies have their own internal strategies, but most ad platforms have at least some of that analysis built in and will regularly offer recommendations based on the data and have had that available for years.


  • Other than being an obvious ad for their own AI, the article was pretty informative.

    Per the article, the following were found to be affected. Probably anything by the publisher should not be trusted as they’re just a data mining company, so make sure not to download any rebrands or new releases from the same people. Chrome Web Store:

    • Urban VPN Proxy - 6,000,000 users
    • 1ClickVPN Proxy - 600,000 users
    • Urban Browser Guard - 40,000 users
    • Urban Ad Blocker - 10,000 users

    Microsoft Edge Add-ons:

    • Urban VPN Proxy - 1,323,622 users
    • 1ClickVPN Proxy - 36,459 users
    • Urban Browser Guard - 12,624 users
    • Urban Ad Blocker - 6,476 users

  • Absolutely infuriating. I’m upset the judge did not award the full extent of monetary damages even though it’s evident that Verizon is in violation of multiple agreements.

    I know it’s not how this works, but since the FCC put those rules in place as a condition of their acquisition of the other companies, and since they violated those rules, the government should be able to nationalize/seize the assets of the other companies. Verizon should not legally have them since they broke the agreement. I’d love to see not just a one time fine but a legitimate punishment. If this guy hadn’t done this they’d be knowingly violating their agreement still. The people doing this are disgusting and taking advantage of the people with the least amount of time and resources. I truly wish they all have the day they deserve.






  • I may be hallucinating now, but I swear I remember nearly a decade ago there was a paper or articles about how CG PCBs were using some electrical tricks that were non standard to minimize space or something. The design purposefully had arcs or short circuits or something. Maybe it was a temperature thing? I did a more than cursory search and couldn’t find much, but I vividly remember having conversations about it. Anyone remember anything like that?