I got addicted to YT shorts for a little while, but I've mostly stopped doomscrolling now as, counter-intuitively, it wasn't addictive enough to keep me engaged. Sure, the first few dozen hours the carefully designed feedback loop keeps you engaged, and then... it wore off, at least for me. The algorithm seemed more interested in pushing what was popular than what I was interested in. I tried gaming it by quickly scrolling past things I didn't care about or had already seen a million times (like those retention farming 3-second loops of reddit/twitter screenshots), and hanging around on stuff I liked, but it didn't seem to budge the needle.
I guess it's a lot like real drugs - you build a tolerance and you need a bigger dose to get the same effect. In this case, no bigger dose is available.
the 'no randomness = no free will' argument is pretty common, but how does randomness ensure free will? It's still something out of our control, just it can't be predicited. Why is it any better to be a random automaton than a predictable one?
It's the difference between getting to choose between your favorite and least favorite meal vs. a choice between two random meals. The former is easy to predict, the latter is impossible.
Word has defaulted to saving in OneDrive (if you turn on autosave and you're signed into an MS account) for years now, I think since the Office 2016 > Office 365 update. The only real change I see is that the document will now be given a name with the date instead of just 'Document 1'. Maybe it's a little more aggressive about turning on autosave for you? The autorecover location is still in appdata.
Lots of comments about the questionable choices of this person regarding disclosing all this information. To add to the pile, they got a friend fired from McDonalds, and don't seem particularly bothered about it... https://bobdahacker.com/blog/mcdonalds-security-vulnerabilit...
Apple and Google insist their walled gardens are needed for user safety and security, but they can't even catch popular apps violating their own policies. It casts (even more) doubt on their ability to screen for malware, phishing, etc, which are already rampant.
You're not wrong, but Apple and Google probably remember things like the Facebook VPN fiasco of 2018, where Facebook's VPN app was banned from the app store for breaking privacy rules – and then they turned around and abused enterprise app certificates to sidestep the ban.
> By installing Onavo, millions unknowingly granted Facebook full access to their digital activity. App usage, browsing habits, and precise timestamps were silently collected. Facebook VPN didn’t just observe its own users - it tracked behavior across rival platforms like YouTube, Amazon, and Snapchat.
> ... Engineers exploited Onavo’s infrastructure to install a root certificate on phones, masking Snapchat’s servers to decrypt user activity.
This is an obvious security hole that should never have existed, but the fact that Facebook eagerly exploited it, while abusing VPNs for tracking and enterprise certs for sidestepping app store privacy rules, shows the threat landscape.
Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
It's unnatural how large and complete their monopolies are.
Call your legislator and demand web installs without scare walls and hidden developer flags. With no phony restrictions on app type, technology choice, JIT/runtimes, or UI adherence.
I agree, but we shouldn't end app stores entirely. I don't want to go back to the days of Windows in the 2000s where you always had to download random executables from websites to install software.
> Technically alternative stores exist on Android.
You have to navigate five settings menus deep to enable the ability to even install them, and after that the OS scares you into thinking it'll turn your phone into a grenade.
Unless you're 0.0000001% of users, you will never do this.
Google knows what they're doing. It's the tyranny of defaults.
Game developers like Epic would certainly like to pay less money to Apple and Google than they pay to Nintendo and Sony (and Microsoft for the Xbox game store), but what's the legal argument for terminating Apple and Google's walled-garden game store businesses? And doesn't Android already allow sideloading?
> Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
The web is the internet for most people, and neither Apple nor Google have installed paywalls and distribution gateways for third-party web pages. (Apple does restrict browser engines, but ironically that might be the only thing preventing a chromium monoculture.)
Phones aren't rinky-dinky little games. Games, that mind you, have over a dozen choices in terms of platforms and are highly competitive.
Phones are used for everything in life. Finding jobs, finding romance, ordering food, paying for things, navigating. You can't even pull up a menu at a modern restaurant without a phone.
Phones are the entirety of computing for over 50% of Americans. Are we going to let two companies own the entirety of that and tax it?
Imagine if our cars were like phones. When you take your Honda out for a spin, if it couldn't visit certain destinations. Or if your car taxed McDonalds (which passes the cost onto you) every time you stop by. Imagine if it shoved its view of what it wants you to see in front of you, forcing you to take detours or miss your objective entirely. That's what our lax regulatory environment has allowed to happen to computing.
> Imagine if our cars were like phones. When you take your Honda out for a spin, if it couldn't visit certain destinations
What web sites are you seeing that are blocked on Android (or is is just an issue in Chrome?)
Have you tried turning off "Safe Browsing"?
It's arguably a legitimate safety feature, but I believe you can turn it off and visit any web site.
I think sites presenting forged or expired SSL certificates are blocked (probably a legitimate security feature), but it may be possible to add them manually if desired.
And yet, people keep buying i Phones. They have a choice. And they are opting in to a closed platform. Likewise with PlayStations and Wiis versus computer games.
Consumers largely don't care and are not interested in esoteric concepts like free software. I would be careful about dictating how things should work.
agreed, I don't think the drive is fake, they're just that bad. Only SSD I've ever had fail spontaneously on me (the one other SSD failiure was my fault for accidentally unplugging it during a firmware update).
I do wonder what these people's thought process is, to want to make gay marriage illegal. I grew up in a Christian household, and definitely used to be homophobic, as a sort of default. But once I was old enough to think for myself (I think around ~14 or so), I considered the issue and realised I was being stupid. My reasoning was, if people of the same gender want to be together, it doesn't affect me and is none of my business. I went from a vague, abstract dissaproval/discomfort to not caring, or a vague 'good for you' sentiment.
The entire thing has had me wondering ever since, when people who should be capable of learning better (i.e, not surrounded solely by bigots that prevent them re-considering/speaking up) are homophic, transphobic, racist, etc, what is going on inside their head? Have they just never given it thought? Like, what does a rational argument against homosexuality look like? I have always been forced to conclude that bigotry is irrational on the level of full-on delusion.
It could also be indicative of the issues bigots have with their own sexuality. A good example of this, was a Hungarian MEP who as a married man and an author of ultra-conservative Hungarian constitution defining marriage as being between man and woman only was caught fleeing a gay sex-party in the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some people think state-recognized marriage is a special privileged legal status for the purpose of having and raising kids. Ie, that the focus actually isn't on the adults who are the ones to get married. In which case, couples who know they can't possibly have kids are trying to con the state out of the benefits without accepting the associated responsibility. I don't know what faction of people with this view take is to it's logical conclusion regarding for example infertility, but I'd be very surprised if there weren't at least a few and not completely shocked if it was a majority.
What's going on inside their head is disgust. They have been told that some people are dirty, and the revulsion comes from a place deeper than rational thought. Once you believe that, you'll believe anything about your opponents: that they want to kill you, that they want to molest children, that they hate decency and want to destroy your country.
Steven Pinker does a good demonstration: he takes a brand new comb out of a package and stirs a glass of water with it, then offers it to you to drink. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing wrong with the water. And yet a fair number of people won't do it, and those who do will still feel just a little weird about it.
That's extremely low stakes. The higher the stakes, the harder it will be to overcome it.
Clearly, you did, and others have as well. But for many others, the constant reinforcement of their prejudices means that they simply won't reconsider their premises. As far as they're concerned, these are basic facts that are confirmed for them every day. The only people who tell you otherwise are disgusting and dirty.
I went through exactly the same steps as you, and I think where people get hung up/disagree with you is on the "it doesn't affect me" step, and of course there's a small minority that's just assholes.
For some people, it is literally a fear that they ways in which they are specially privileged is being attacked. This was particularly obvious in the debates about equal marriage in the noughties and tens; people claiming that same-sex marriage would 'devalue' their own marriage. Which, in their eyes I suppose it might, because it would diminish how special they were.
But you see similar themes in most anti-equality movements, just generally a bit more veiled (I was kind of astonished how _blatant_ the opponents of equal marriage were about basically admitting "we object to this because it is an attack on how society considers us to be better than you").
There's people who are prone to react to new ideas with curiosity and people who are prone to react to new ideas with suspicion, fear, intolerance. It's that simple. You're right, it's not rational. Identity by gender/sexuality/race/etc. is so fundamental, so the latter group reacts most strongly and negatively to new ideas about identity. Religion fans the flames. Most don't take back control from their religious upbrining the way you did.
This sounds like homophobic baiting but I'll bite.
Perhaps they want protection for being forced to testify against their spouse? Perhaps they want the benefits of being able to share bank account? Maybe marriage provides access to better and necessary health insurance. Theres also inheritance, SS benefits, etc. Perhaps they are christians and want to get married as a religious thing. Perhaps they just love each other and want to be together forever legally in the eyes of the law. Or maybe, like me, they want to be gay married purely because they think it would make you uncomfortable.
Dismantling the moon would disrupt the Earth's orbit, so the most likely version of this scenario is not beneficial/benign (e.g, grey goo scenario), so you need to factor in the chance that you'll be dissasembled before you see it happen to the moon.
> Dismantling the moon would disrupt the Earth's orbit
Not by itself. I basically agree with your broader point, of course, but on this particular detail, if someone's goal is to turn the moon into something like a Culture Orbital with the Earth at the centre*, the overall momentum of the system doesn't need to change.
* Or the old barycentre at the centre. This is also a terrible idea, please don't do this. Apart from anything else, mistakes are inevitable and large chunks of moon/O will rain down on us.
EDIT: turns out I should have done some more reading, this was already considered over 20 years ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rico_(dog)