Comments by "LoneTech" (@0LoneTech) on "Louis Rossmann" channel.

  1. In particular, better than a youtube ad, which has at least a 40% chance of being a clear scam, and 70% chance of being abusively loud garbage in those first seconds.
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  2.  @Llortnerof  You mean the little countdown before the skip button? That consistently lies by counting slow, and now they're often swapping it out for "video will play shortly" or something like that. Its purpose is to draw your attention so you don't look away from the ad. I've seen it bug out and stick in forced mode on a 15 minute ad.
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  3. Always remember: Just because you think they're out to get you doesn't mean they're not. And Louis brought public evidence.
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  4. Since they're using DASH to assemble the video, I guess what we'll have to do is fingerprint the video chunks, and skip those that don't belong. Imagine that, content ID for improved user experience.
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  5. Sounds more like Adobe's goals, terms and methods are so toxic it's unsafe to use them, whether pirated or not.
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  6. ​​@kanstantsin-buchat's very different from SSL. Web browsers already support client side certificates, useful for user authentication. DRM is all about not trusting the user and making them relinquish control of their computer, and doing it via downloaded software like this is fundamentally breakable. Basically, it's making both distributors and users pay to be insulted, with bonus security risks.
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  7. Refund? They should return the stolen goods and compensate the victims. This is them doing some of that in hopes they won't be forced to do it all.
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  8. 6:15 A moment or appreciation for the driver who noticed he was in the way and did something about it.
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  9. There's a bunch of other things that section 1201 shouldn't be restricting, such as accessibility and format shifting. It's a nasty section. Another part in need of fixing is that vexatious DMCA takedowns have no penalty (currently, the only demand is they represent a copyright holder - not that that copyright has any relevance to the case). "Smart" TVs, in particular, should be fixed to stop forcing ads and surveillance. And as usual, quite a good point that these restrictions aren't doing what they're claimed to be for - they make it illegal to remove anti-usability sabotage from products, a service that will already be done for you at those piracy sites they're holding up as so evil. The legitimate customers bear both the costs for the sabotage (big money for e.g. DeNuvo and Adobe) and the pains of the hostility (because clearly nothing makes you less trustworthy than buying from a legitimate vendor). Most of the time the publishers are too craven to even speak plainly when asked if they do such sabotage, let alone *why*.
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  10. But was it sturdy and easy to assemble? And how is the picture quality?
    60
  11. This case shows you shouldn't accept their "free" offers either. They're claiming the "free trial" is why they should get away with negligent manslaughter.
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  12. I think about the studio's side quite often. They're also victims of the publishers and distributors. Oddly enough, I don't think "we're hitting them harder" is a reason to accept getting hit. And hosting is emphatically not expensive today, and very much a distributor created problem when they insist on streaming instead of plain transfers - specifically so they can shut it down.
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  13. This is not a reddit AMA. It is an advertising thread in a company subreddit disguised as an AMA. Actual AMAs go elsewhere.
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  14. Well there you go. That makes sponsorblock competition to youtube premium income, so it will be attacked just as viciously as ad blockers.
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  15. This doesn't sound like the sort of thing you should trust to firmware. I believe Boeing recently made some demonstrations of some risks with that.
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  16. And they know it. It's like when Willy's would only offer self scanning to customers who signed a form declaring they'd read and accepted a terms of service document that did not even exist. They require their marks ("customers") to be on the hook for breach of contract before there's ever any conflict.
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  17. I once paid for YouTube Premium. I was offered three features of interest: ad-free, family sharing, and pre-caching (misleadingly labelled downloads). YouTube kept showing me ads, claimed my mother wasn't my family, and removed the pre-caching feature. For background, years before they offered premium, I had asked them for the option to buy the ad slots shown to me. They refused, and more than quadrupled the ads, apparently convinced they can't sell ad-free without first making their ads completely insufferable.
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  18. Nope, but they did get sued for deceptive practices in pushing their subscription tiers.
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  19. Oh, it's worse. At a minimum they're collecting data on exactly who doesn't want their data collected. They're actively opposing you and the law.
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  20. I think opening the VP8/VP9/VP10 codecs (from On2) publically and as basis for AV1 may count. As for the youtube platform itself, they certainly seem enthusiastic about drawing ire.
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  21. I find your optimism unfounded. While they may finally voice the question, it'll be a "why me?" with themselves firmly in a victim role. That's not reflection, it's speculative misdirection.
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  22. Better yet, visible dislike counts gave a popularity measure to suggest confidence in the rating. Far from perfect, but helpful for viewers. Youtube decided to "protect" posters from "negativity" by... only showing it to them. I have no clue why they decided to push that lie.
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  23. Here in Sweden that search should not be required, as the credit info companies send us a copy of their response to each lookup. That said, dumb shit happens still. We had a blind man fighting off the TV extortion company Radiotjänst i Kiruna while they claimed their "interpretation" defined the law. With your drive, better times are coming. Best wishes.
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  24. Make sure you have a recovery plan; back your documents up, verify the backups, and probably get an alternative software option too. Something like Knoppix or Puppy Linux, so your machine will be operable when that Windows installation fails. Just this week Microsoft announced yet another critical bug in their network stack enabling remote takeovers of all functions of the computer. Just a routine oopsie.
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  25. "Not good alternatives" is based on prioritizing some convenience (e.g., preestablished registration, huge selection, easy ordering and prepaid next day delivery including carrying up the stairs) over inconveniences like looking around, fair dealing or that pesky "warranty of fitness for particular purpose" that's legally required of a normal purchase. Most people who make this choice also consider writing a list of pros and cons too much effort. Network effect and confirmation bias are very strong here.
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  26.  @FirebunbunYT  Spiffing Brit's videos titled "Youtube Is Broken" discusses the "promotion" feature. In particular the exploit where you can pay to destroy others' channels is remarkable.
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  27. Incorrect. There is plenty of software that is respectful of user privacy and user rights, and additionally shared without demand for payment. With FOSS in particular (a rebranding of free software as described by the free software foundation) you have the right to study, improve and share it, not merely use it. Have a look e.g. at Debian's philosophy and social contract.
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  28. When none of us spend. Good luck trying to not spend time.
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  29. They also block viewing the site with a web browser.
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  30.  @hubertnnn  Of course not. That's as idiotic as the common thief's claim "if it doesn't scan, it's free". Because the document does not exist, claiming you've read it is a lie, and signing the document with that statement is perjury. As ridiculous as the legal system is, it rarely takes jokes well.
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  31. ​ @tzorfireis425 Don't forget, the "option" to not get spied on likely doesn't do what it says, just provides them another data point to sell. This is how all the tracking companies view the "do not track" header, for instance.
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  32.  @midlowreborn  I can't quit something I've never done. I don't expect you to read past the first three words this time, either.
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  33. Paranoia is unreasonable fear. It is not unreasonable to fear those who abandon reason and exploit others thinking "surely they wouldn't". Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
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  34. They never reverted the damage, so what exactly did they lose?
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  35. Sony music, who intentionally broke the CD spec to the degree iMacs had to be modified with a drill to remove the unusable disc (great design, Apple). Sony Computer Entertainment repeatedly destroyed functionality (e.g. SACD and Other OS) on sold machines, including key selling points, while advertising "it does everything" (I don't expect they've stopped). Each time blaming their victims.
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  36. A classic "goddag yxskaft" example. As the classic Swedish tale goes, there was a man carving an axe handle as he saw a stranger come walking down he road. This man was hard of hearing, so he made some guesses as to what the stranger would ask, and so their dialogue went like this: "Good day!" "Axe handles." (He'll probably ask what I'm making.) "The rye is tall this year." "Four miles." (And how far it is to town.) "Aren't you a bit twisted?" "To the left." (And which way to turn at the branch in the road.)
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  37. Sony are literally infamous for repeated bad acts like this. They never cared.
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  38. The premium feature of letting paying customers buffer subscribed videos ahead of time lasted what, two weeks? I now expect them to continue worsening their services.
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  39.  @Sonny_McMacsson  Those were not the source of the free software movement. It is a grassroots philanthropic response to hostile restrictions. For proprietary publishers (Microsoft being the main example), the restrictions exist to enforce profit (even when counterproductive, making people seek alternatives). For the free software movement, the sharing exists to retake control (of one's own tools and work). Note that money is not a factor for the latter, but dedicating significant effort requires not living in abject poverty.
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  40. While a slightly more complex interpretation, I think it may be 3 enabled by 4, redirecting the motive: "A free software phone is imperative to create, by all means, so whatever means these guys picked is fine by me." This allows for cultish recruitment of people not driven by profit. When people want something to be true, even believe it's the foundation of their self image, like "I'm honest" or "the government is lying to us", they tend to make extremely biased readings of any situation vaguely connected to the idea.
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  41.  @marcogenovesi8570  That's one xenophobic take on it. Things aren't automatically safe by being US made - and in particular US lack of regulation has made "made in U.S." into an absolute joke, among many other false markings. E.g. "recyclable", "organic", "flushable" etc. It actually isn't unreasonable to expect such a thing of a reseller; but you have a market in which it's unlikely for a responsible trader of any kind to have success, maintained by the most egregious exploiters.
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  42. ​ @TheBunzinator  Side note, used to be Canon made all HP printers. No idea which way that goes today.
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  43. Except they broke the normal experience. They take money for ad-free services they don't deliver.
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  44. That's an odd way to spell French and Les 12 travaux d'Astérix.
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  45. It's worse. Should you be unsatisfied, this document says you're not allowed to bring in other parties to resolve a conflict, e.g. a contract lawyer or actual law enforcement, but are bound to whatever they dictate through their arbiter. That part, known as "forced arbitration", is one that probably should be illegal - but if you succumb to the pressure to sign this thing, you're not allowed to even ask.
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  46.  @CptJistuce  A lot of CS departments think so. It's very clear their job is not to serve the customer but get the errand dismissed ASAP.
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  47. That is equally inexcusable and even easier to solve. Remember the space required to keep the last known good version? That's the running version. There's no need at all to interrupt that while downloading a new version, which goes in the next slot. Only after the download has finished and been verified does it make sense to proceed to the switching step. And don't try to tell me a car, which is legally required to have redundant sensors, can't afford to have dual banks of flash memory.
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  48. You can't necessarily count on it not spying on you. Open source allows you to do is find out and fix it, but it's no guarantee anyone went to that effort for you. Very much in the vein of right to repair.
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  49.  @ddkapps  You forgot the "we can unilaterally change these terms at any time" part.
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  50. Adversarially modified codes are already happening. I saw a report just yesterday of some city sponsored anti-graffiti QR spam (or was it supposed to be report links?) altered by overlays to point to a pro-graffiti documentary. Granted, not as nasty as the deappetizer mentioned in this thread already, but they can do arbitrary things, including exploiting bugs in the scanners.
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  51. Two days? I once spent over a year returning to and rereporting the same blatant spam, at reducing frequencies. Absolutely nothing happened to the spam, but youtube frequently deletes my comments instead.
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  52.  @thedave1771  New features, bug fixes, updates for compatibility with other changes all have value. It's reasonable to pay for those. That's drastically different from demanding everyone has to pay indefinitely for a chance to maybe keep what they have.
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  53. And of course an extra fee for having not been helped by a teller, too.
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  54. I disagree with one statement: "The intention is to prevent piracy." The intention is to make the publisher pay the DRM peddler. As the DRM itself is purely antifunctionality, and pirates are unaffected, only legitimate customers harmed, "prevent piracy" is at best a shoddy excuse.
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  55.  @LN997-i8x  Usually it's that the math works for them, not the company. Just grab those bonuses and leave with accolades before the consequences catch up.
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  56. "Stop stabbing me!" "I have never stabbed you with an awl."
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  57. By Apple's metrics, if they make it hard enough to break into the device (durability), noone will attempt repair and they profit. Note how their "longevity" metric was reduced repairs, not prolonged usability.
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  58. This is exactly why I sought out Hue lights in the first place; I connect them to Home Assistant using a Conbee II USB dongle.
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  59. YouTube's response has been entirely clear: They know this pisses people off, they know they're doing it without reason, and they don't care one bit. They've intentionally designed it to be unfixable. For them, it's far more important that a system be automatic, no matter how wrong (including directly illegal), than to make any sort of sense.
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  60. Parties that have signed this document wouldn't be allowed to say so, no. They'd be able to discuss the text of this document (as that was information made public through no fault of theirs) but not whether they themselves were offered the same one, or any at all.
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  61.  @brettski74  It's murky waters. They would be bound regarding their agreement, but this document isn't their agreement. Inevitably they'd stay mum because Apple could (and very likely would) punish them regardless of right.
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  62. Top notch repair video! I particularly appreciate where he showed something in the marketing blurb that might be real with the matched opamps. And yes, grinding off component markings is quite literally playing dirty; it's blatant sabotage.
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  63.  @NedTheDread  By explicit design no. That's what the OEM bootloader lock prevents. Otherwise the umpteen layers of recovery systems might actually have been usable!
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  64. It's much easier to have Chrome itself recognize and skip that piece of code. It would just be an undocumented optimization, the specialty of e.g. nvidia's driver division. The fun part: That's exactly what ad blockers are. Code to remove hostile data and get at the content more efficiently. The only distinction is the degree of hostility; Youtube have decided to upgrade the baseline for ads from distraction to obstacle.
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  65. ​ @Mallchad  There's an extortion industry out there that calls it "DRM" or "copy protection". Malware added on with the specific purpose of making devices not function. The specific machinations, like time bombs and ransoms, vary, but the core remains.
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  66. It's not just tightening. The parts that slide don't have the right surface properties or shape. You get effects like tightening deforming them so only the center has any pressure, where it has the least leverage to stop it folding. Adding a rubber washer might help.
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  67. ​​ @TorutheRedFox Technically it doesn't even say you reached the domain owner - only that a certificate authority (of which there's an insane number listed) signed off on the name. It completely trusts e.g. GoDaddy, Amazon, China Financial Certification Authority or Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu. You can extend some web browsers e.g. with Certificate Patrol to at least alert you if the certificate changes unexpectedly.
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  68. Pretty sure it is. It shouldn't take many points: 1. Owner owns printer. 2. Owner does not authorize disabling of printer, a purely hostile action. 3. No click-through EULA can form such an authorization.
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  69. They could have e.g. not instituted their policies to dismiss all negative feedback and allow transfer of the remaining endorsements to different articles.
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  70. While disposable income is nice, I wouldn't want to take away the right of people to share their creations and contributions freely if they so choose. I think we agree on something that Microsoft have been trying to hide and prevent for decades: If you buy software, it is yours. That's what buying is. With FOSS you get the plans too so you can study and improve it, as well as the right to share again.
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  71. Well, that is indeed ridiculous. By the way, last I checked XCover was the only reasonable Samsung phone, at least hardware wise; their lockdowns on the other hand are madness. Prior to that, S5.
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  72. This is indeed near FUBAR.
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  73. I'm stupidly sensitive to gluten. Contamination happens. For me it results in negative nutrition and several painful hours stuck in the lavatory, with damage that doesn't fully recover. I'd probably be more careful about it if it was immediately life threatening; as long as that doesn't happen multiple times every week, I'll live. Other conditions can be far more severe, e.g. peanut allergies can cause asthma and cardiac arrest. The level described here is where an article goes from "gluten free" to "may contain traces of gluten". That distinction happens when it's handled at a facility that also handles gluten, even if they take care to avoid contamination. Even "gluten free" is only a concentration limit. I might prefer to avoid the risk by getting a prewrapped food, but it's fairly normal for restaurants not to have that (or single serving packs). Far better they say they can't accomodate me than serve me a sauce that ruins my night.
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  74. There's one reason: Batteries will swell a little during their lifetime, and that means you want to leave them some margin, without letting them rattle around. Adhesives are a simple option to achieve the latter constraint. Not necessarily a good one, mind. The traditional method involves a mechanically constrained frame integrated into the battery pack. In the eyes of these manufacturers, replacing that with glue is a win/win/win scenario: cheaper to build, negligibly lighter or smaller for advertising, and harder to repair. For customers/owners, that's loss/illusory/loss. For society, that's all loss; there's nothing to gain in making the insanely rich marginally richer, nothing to gain in making tools break (aside from actively damaging ones like farting cars). It's environmental crimes for the sake of greed.
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  75.  @deftknight7418  On some level, I agree; the original idea of the patent served a societal purpose, motivating inventors to share their inventions. But the modern approach of "be a megacorporation and hold all rights for many generations" isn't that, at all. The most trifling of features, like identifying similar marks in a compression algorithm, are suddenly forbidden to use, in the name of protecting the profits of companies that don't bother to build any of it.
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  76. That number appears to be one of those easily quotable myths. There's an article on it from the Drum, though it's largely inconclusive; the main indication is just that the number was made up rhetoric, as far as it can be traced. More telling is the part where the advertising agency representatives don't want to give a real number. Remember, they're selling the ads, not whatever the ads are for. Also notable, that article remarked on an ad every 3 minutes as being a frightening, overblown and scary proposition. Cable TV, Tiktok and Youtube easily surpass that. 😮
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  77.  @Mano-us7ct  They don't sell "personal information", just personally identifiable information. Ancient weasel language. The "non-personal" information typically includes when you're home and where you live (it's just "metadata"...).
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  78. ​ @Lugh314  As I recall, that phrase went "adequately explained". Every single department coming around in turn to hit the same target - and each unable to explain why - isn't.
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  79.  @--_--IMP--_--  It's a solid question. One example would be all those times they refuse to play back what's been paid for and predownloaded, striking in particular when it's harmful (as you're unable to connect and performed steps to access that specific content). This instance may have been averted but it's still their routine behaviour. And all those times, you're under suspicion, surveillance and punishment for daring to pay them for their services.
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  80. Lexmark at least advertise standard protocols and that they can keep printing with empty cartridges.
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  81. Nope. They're discontinuing the models where that was the only option. They're not offering to fix the sabotage for already purchased ones, even at the owner's expense.
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  82. If you think this is too long, there are closing statements from 35:04. Prior to that are direct counters to the ad the title referred to, after that is some important lessons.
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  83.  @FalkonNightsdale  Basically the process, except it doesn't even have to be you who paid. This can be done maliciously and probably has been.
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  84. He's not complaining about the lanes, he's complaining about the obstacles disabling them.
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  85. Yes.
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  86.  @XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX  That is untrue. Your fingerprinting doesn't have to be anywhere near subtle; e.g. it could be a tolerant match of a blurhash. We're not talking about an exact integrity check, just "could this be the video we've seen". Youtube's main content is chunked dash, not continuously reencoded streams. Sure, they could waste tremendous power on reencoding everything on demand, but that's not the current status. The simplest thing to do is just collect a DHT of youtube video ID to dash contents, only holding dash lists that have the correct length. Live streams are more complex, though.
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  87. May I recommend the Mitchell & Webb sketch Needlessly ambiguous terms?
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  88.  @Cheepchipsable  You're forgetting in your analogy the part where the bus driver randomly goes back in the bus to demand to see your ticket, but only if you bought one. Ensuring the bus arrives slower no matter how many rode for free, including zero, and never hassling them the same way.
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  89.  @rossmanngroup  At the point it's illegal to place a home near a workplace, and more space has to be paved to house cars than either, and you're regularly fearing for your life trying to use roads without one, I'd say they are making you use cars. Particularly when they block and destroy public transit. Granted, it's not the same they every time and each one is acting for their own benefit, but the effects remain.
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  90.  @emulationemperor8924  Whether that propping up is unfair competition practice is a separate matter. The sale of dangerous goods should be penalized with unit fines that adjust to match. Scamming enough people to outweigh the fines for when they're caught should not be an option.
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  91. Today the experience of scrolling a bit further gets you to the fake search entries that have nothing to do with what you asked for but proclaim they know where you live. And the things that were based on your entry use substitutions and rarely match either.
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  92. Some extremists are extremely worth listening to. For instance, RMS holds the position that software should all be fully user respecting, which he branded as "free software". I think, like the patent system, there could be a more moderate position; e.g. video games could have a window of time when they're not freely reproducible, for rewarding the developers, much like the patent system was intended. Some corporations like Disney and Nintendo hold views at the opposite extreme, that the populace should not have the choice to even maintain their purchased games, let alone share them.
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  93. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you get it fixed soon.
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  94. I'd guess the reviewers have no incentive to check the video properly, so the whole purpose of the review process is spoiled by paying them for the wrong thing (e.g. processing many cases or giving firm replies, even if wrong).
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  95. There are absolutely advertisers running away from this platform. It's likely the adpocalypse with demonetization of videos "not suitable for advertisers" was a knee jerk reaction to early warnings. When that didn't improve things, Youtube doubled down and decided to cater to the remaining advertisers - where the largest group seems to be scammers, and less worried about ethics. What we're seeing is optimization for poor metrics, over and over again. They spend effort on claiming my mom isn't my family, but aggressively hide away options to report ads that are literal fraud.
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  96.  @LukasJosai  I wasn't looking for RGB at all, but specifically warm and cold white, preferably with high CRI. Turns out the budget option was picking up a heap of Philips starter kits on clearance from a grocery store. They're called "white ambiance".
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  97. What for? Like all privacy settings, it only downgrades your experience, doesn't reduce their tracking.
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  98. Bloody annoying is what it is.
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  99.  @CoolKoon  It's more an example of an abuse this clause is enabling (via "tivoization", where firmware is locked in) than something copyright law should ever have been involved with.
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  100.  @CoolKoon  Ah, that's a suggestion of a different law, preemptive/prescriptive as opposed to this one that's outlawing cures. I understand the view now, but I think that would be hard to get through comparing e.g. how the tobacco industry still exists.
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  101. New pretentious Apple clone normal. Manufacturers like GPD meanwhile put multiple M.2 slots in.
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  102. ​​ @GENKI_INU No other extra chips for ONFi or eMMC. Often ridiculously slow compared to nvme though. This seems to be nvme in a single package.
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  103. DMCA was designed to sanctify "protection" measures (in real world, corporate sabotage to prevent use, whether legitimate or not). That aspect is only applicable if there's something copyrighted for those measures to "protect" (break). The API covers variables that are neither copyrightable nor belonging to Mazda. Even the DMCA has specific exemptions for exactly these two: Protection of Personally Identifying Information (meaning Mazda has no right to the variables) and Reverse Engineering (covering not only decoding the network API but also the apps if necessary, for the purposes of interoperability, in this case with Home Assistant).
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  104.  @Nexalian_Gamer  We certainly know DRM is always a code word for sabotage, but the printer supplies nonsense has never had any "rights" involved; they have no claim to the misleading euphemism in the first place. They just violate their customers.
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  105.  @6AxisSage  The YouTube app on Android is... revealing. It hangs the Android operating system at a level nothing should be able to. Even switching away from it doesn't help.
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  106. That's what the app is for. Particularly when the service was already a web page, like Discord, Youtube, Reddit etc.
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  107. That's the case for cars in general. This thing has a smaller niche.
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  108.  @jb5631  S5, all the same features and water resistant, 8.1mm (and that thickness difference vs your modern sample is all the raised bezel to protect the screen). That's pretty much the turning point. Last I checked the only sane model Samsung had on offer was XCover. GSMArena lists the S3 as 8.6mm.
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  109. "Smart" means a lot of different things. On phones, it seems to mean you can install new programs, though some think it means the phone is lacking buttons. Neither of those were new concepts when "smartphone" began being marketed. On other devices, it tends to mean too dumb to have their own controls, requiring management through separate computers, such as those "smart" phones.
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  110. No, it's a lot worse than not doing anything. Their system is designed to randomly and irreversibly punish real users while having no effect on the spambots.
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  111.  @Mallchad  That was never the purpose; that's just why the "copy protection" moniker was nonsense. The purpose is to receive multiple payments, and the method is extortion.
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  112.  @domino4843  "They read the document" just as much as you've taken a walk on the third moon of Vulcan.
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  113. 9:45 "We have not had an opportunity to explain..." We are expected to disregard the months they ignored their customers.
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  114. Ah, the summarized anarchist manifesto.
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  115. It seemed a lot worse than that last time I examined it. The certification is "I represent someone who holds a copyright", not that the claim in question even relates to that copyright, let alone a violation.
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  116. I think people should take a moment to consider why Reddit is pushing this hard to make you use their app. What's buried in it that's worth that much to them? Remember, that's also why the website nags you to use the app. It's certainly not anything for your convenience, it's solidly in the category of worse than the website as the user experience goes.
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  117. I do deal with "cyber" security at times, and I just have to point out the classic adage: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. In the case of Google, Facebook, etc, they'll happily get everyone because that's simply how they operate. Cast a wide enough net and you'll catch something of value to someone. It's known as "big data", and if it's not at CERN you can bet there's a lot of non-consensual personal information involved.
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  118. The Samsung Galaxy XCover series (most recently released 2022) still has audio jack, replaceable battery, expandable storage and water resistance. I don't know why people go for downgraded glass-backed models (slippery, heavier, more fragile).
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  119.  @taLLdavid33  That's just because "smart" is marketing speak for "other stuff required". You can install apps, and they use that as an excuse to embed worse options.
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  120. Reminds me of an air filtering system. It was advertised such that the only thing they guaranteed was that it would make noise. Addendum: Now I think about it, that's not true. They also guaranteed it wouldn't filter better than a certain limit.
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  121. Remember, this applies to every EULA or ToS document that states the terms may change at any time at the sole initiative of one party.
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  122. ​ @RicardoSantos-oz3uj I'd argue the problem is "think of the children" is nearly always a convenient shortcut to prevent thinking.
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  123.  @AccuphaseMan  This certainly makes it clear you don't know Greta at all. Why'd you come out of your echo chamber to preach here anyway? You're not going to be convincing when you don't know the first thing of your subject matter.
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  124. So they demand other businesses immediately disassemble devices and steal parts that were never theirs. In other words, if the device is repaired, immediately break it. Hard to imagine a more anti-repair policy.
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  125. That sounds the same, not worse.
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  126. Most villains aren't comic book style... but some actually are. They tend to congregate in industries like oil, tobacco, and conspiracy theory cults. The scientology cult is a remarkable example, with their leader literally publishing the game plan as a book before setting it in motion.
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  127. The specific reason they haven't is that the printer's main purpose is to motivate you to buy supplies from them. If it self destructs, you might consider replacing it with a less hostile brand.
    2
  128.  @belstar1128  Is Skype also blatant spyware?
    2
  129. IAB was founded off the deep end. They've never been interested in moving towards sanity; that would be counter to their entire purpose.
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  130. Welcome to the DRM world, where being a paying customer just makes you more of a target for abuse.
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  131.  @ClokworkGremlin  Not only that. The scanner function should be isolated from anything important (beyond maybe the camera it needs to do its job). It should absolutely not be built into e.g. the messaging app that manages your cryptographic keys, or the vendor tools of a vendor that decided the owner shouldn't be informed what's privileged or linked together.
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  132. Premium does pay the channels you watch, notably better than the ads ever did, but the lion's share goes to youtube. I have the impression the portion available to pay creators is no more than 15%. According to Wikipedia, there's Flattr support for YouTube. I should test that. PS: They've crippled Flattr to desktop Chrome only.
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  133.  @ThatZenoGuy  They literally do it without reason because the system they put in place to do it has no reasoning; it's not designed to identify any rule being broken. Their reasons for instating and never fixing the system are distinct, and mostly center on a policy of not doing the right thing if there is a lazier option. They absolutely operate with malice sometimes, but this is more sloth and avarice.
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  134. Not just will, this has already happened. Example via Breitbart: Roald Dahl eBooks Automatically Updated to Woke Censored Versions Works by Ian Fleming and R. L. Stine have also been reported similarly altered.
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  135. Don't know, but it's certainly EFF territory. Though I don't know if they care about their purpose anymore, considering their enthusiastic witch hunt on RMS ran entirely counter to that.
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  136. Day fines are very useful, but they have to be relative too. This sounds like they're applying a corporate chain sized fine to a pensioner. The purpose is to encourage timely response in fixing the issue. Fines should be high enough to outweigh any benefits of ignoring them, and low enough to not destroy viability. This is similar to how the death penalty is counterproductive; you get people for whom the threat is getting caught, and any escalation is preferable. On the second point, that certainly isn't his violation in that case; it could only make sense to hold him responsible for unreasonable delay in the cleanup, but whoever made the mess is responsible for the costs of the cleanup to begin with. At least in a somewhat sane society...
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  137. They've been caught hijacking links for profit.
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  138. I remember when Macs came with Open Firmware, which made them programmable even without any OS.
    2
  139. ​ @Disatiere  Actually, Youtube autonormalizes so it's 100% on youtube.
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  140. ​ @timbo303 Not with a stock firmware. At best you may have the option to disable it, but not for all apps, e.g. One UI Home can't be disabled.
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  141.  @alexturnbackthearmy1907  Yes, survivorship bias. You describe particular ICE cars holding value exceptionally well. How large a portion of ICE cars overall are those? How many EVs should you expect made the same mark, given the same ratio? This is similar to thinking old music was all great - because we've forgotten most of what wasn't.
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  142. That rule is exploitable, leading to weaponized incompetence. Malicious parties will design systems to appear incompetently designed specifically to mess with you. That the same system could have been produced through sheer incompetence provides plausible deniability. While PDF forms are unreliable, when the fields are there it's obvious they should be inspected, and it's dishonest to slap a person's name on the response if the person wasn't seeing the submitted material.
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  143. This is some anti-competition bullshit, obviously. If they don't want to see their car sold again as it fails to meet the owner's needs, they should simply buy it back.
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  144.  @sultanofsick  Consider talking to a conspiracy theorist. They've honed their feelings to an overriding conviction, quite unrelated to truth, and rely on it to excuse hostile behaviours, like accusing almost everyone they meet of being frauds. Can we not express regret at their driving force (though doing so to them is unlikely to help)? Of course, this comparison makes it all the more offensive when this phrase is applied in the most insincere way (essentially "I'm sorry you feel that I shouldn't have harmed you as I have and intend to").
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  145.  @Mallchad  Yep, that's the sympathetic story. Unfortunately it wasn't always consistent with reality. For instance, turns out a lot of "piracy" (and isn't that a lovely spin) is consumers trying to get what they'd already paid for but lost access to, frequently because of these measures. E.g. I had a large video game installed but it required insertion of disc 1 to play, which snapped in half due to poor packaging. Another common reason is publishers literally refusing to sell, including going on a witch hunt if you reveal you know a TV programme was produced in wide screen and ask why the only version on offer is cropped.
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  146. Realize, this is routine for them. Their brand is big and they rely on a fresh influx of marks, burning bridges as they go.
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  147. I have a dream to inspire people to do something about litter when they encounter it, even if just a bit at a time. For now I mostly just go out and pick now and then. Some people seem to appreciate that.
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  148.  @ribzer57  There's value in showing the public alternatives that don't actively fight against the owner. That old adage about voting with your feet or wallet requires there to be a market of such options. A recommendation of something you've actually tried (warts and all, this setup wasn't straightforward) is a helpful starting point.
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  149. What's your issue? He's honestly hopeful he brought you something useful.
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  150. I also once paid for YouTube Premium and stopped because of their hostility. For starters, I requested the function to pay instead of getting ads years before they even introduced Red; and when they did, they decided to refuse me that service for another year or so just because of where I live (Sweden). Before offering it, they more than quadrupled the amount of ads, and they've kept going since. Well, I tried once they let me. Turns out, not only didn't I consistently get the ads removed, they told my mother she wasn't my family, based on a hidden requirement and hidden measurements. They never told me, the person paying. So one thing they'd have to do is publicly apologize for actively treating their paying customers worse than their ad-suffering viewers. Google spyware don't get to tell me who my family is. It's offensive and likely illegal that they spy in the first place, and using it to target and abuse customers is perverse. Another thing they'd have to do is actually fight fraud. Currently they're fighting the people trying to remove spam from the comment sections, not the spammers. And their ad system is at least 70% fraud too, without even the flagging option. Flagging comments doesn't get them removed, and it's not even possible to flag ads. One more thing. It would be nice if they actually took viewers into account at all before breaking things, e.g. dislike statistics and stereoscopic video. There are swathes of videos out there that were once correctly tagged for 3D viewing (and a mechanism to add the tags if they were missing) but youtube simply broke them.
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  151. Haven't heard of this brand, but soounds like they're doing what Digital Homicide did; garbage production escalating to corporate suicide.
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  152. This reminds me of another pyramid scheme company. They started out with the name Eve, but rebranded themselves Dough. They were pretty loud about their model, which relied on getting new prepaid orders in to fund production of the devices they already owed. Now they sell a monitor brand called Spectrum (let me reiterate: the brand, not the product). Of course, the usual model of selling the idea to "venture capitalists" also involves accruing a bunch of debt before making a thing.
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  153. ​ @khalilmohammadmirza4070  I'd be more sympathetic if their changes didn't involve actively pushing fraud (e.g. not delivering their premium service, tons of scam ad campaigns that are near impossible to report) and making their core service continually worse.
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  154. Sadly, the news to me is that someone got a clue why youtube messed with their posting. Also, checking five seconds of audio may not be enough, because the reviewer is seeded; compare e.g. laurel/yanny or the talking piano, and consider the reviewer will have a foreign accent to boot. When they go in expecting an "n-word", they may be unable to hear bigger, trigger or figure. Worse, the injection of the bad word is negative bias on the captioning bot, and this parody of a review process is reinforcing it rather than fixing it.
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  155. Ads and tracking do not need to be bundle deals at all. They're both disturbing, but you can easily have either without the other. I suspect ads related to the content topic are far more successful than ones targeting the user.
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  156. This happened to users who purchased products. Exactly as with the FT2232 and CH340 drivers; it's an attack aimed at end users. That in itself makes it worse than collective punishment, which is largely and rightly illegal.
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  157. That's far from the only laws they break. No doubt Samsung have a little "to the extent permitted by law" cop-out clause somewhere in the nonsense, which by the way is as illegal as shrink wrap "license agreement".
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  158. Content on reddit is bait and it's not provided by reddit but "redditors" (people inside the echo chamber). It's blatant that the company is exploiting all sides aggressively; for instance, you can often get links from google which lead to a page that refuses to show what was indexed but instructs you to install an app. That's a phishing campaign.
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  159. Not the only thing. They also make the ads more and more aggressive; this is why the ads scream at you the first seconds. The irritated targets will find a way to leave, so they try to exploit the reaction time.
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  160. Sorry, but this really bugs me. Stop blithely accepting corporate rebranding. These aren't "subscription based business models", they are extortion schemes. A subscription model might be e.g. getting a new pair of glasses twice a year. An extortion model involves them breaking something of yours if you don't comply. It's not a difficult thing to tell apart. Similarly, I've never seen a microtransaction. Micro means small, and specifically the ISO prefix means 0.000001. If I had the time, I'd set up a simple rating site listing what level of lie this marketing is, because it's so easily quantifiable. Deviously, tools like that airbag do make sense as a subscription model, to replace chemical or pressure components that may grow stale, leak or deteriorate. Compare life vests and signal guns. Another obvious example would be lithium ion batteries. A component that will need replacement in just a few years should be serviceable. This is now used as a wedge to trick people into accepting extortion schemes on top.
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  161. The DRM business is about moving money from publishers to fraudsters by having both accuse the consumers paying for it all. Clearly entire industries can exist without actually working.
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  162.  @gotafarmyet4691  Or no reason at all. That's the thing about automating deletion; they chose to make sure it can't tell anyone why so they can refuse to fix it.
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  163. ​ @test-rj2vl Bare women? Doesn't matter one bit. Direct fraud attempts, like about half of youtube's ads today? Those should be treated as the attempted crime they are.
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  164. Simon's Cat in "Cat Man Do" is only mildly exaggerated: https://youtu.be/w0ffwDYo00Q
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  165. ​​ @speedytruck  As long as Firefox keeps automatically installing binaries designed specifically to be out of my control (e.g. when you visit Dropbox), I wouldn't be so keen on unspecified and uninspected updates from their end particularly in a privacy context.
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  166.  @kelly4187  Looks like Nebula is the main option now? There's a bewildering array of different but not differentiated services.
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  167. NewPipe has downloading. The only way where it isn't strictly better than Youtube's app is that it can't post comments. It also supports Peertube.
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  168. A huge problem with copyright law is that it's designed for exploiters, not sharers. Only the license granters, i.e. copyright holders, can sue over violations (this is why e.g. FSF ask you to sign over contributions), and then they can often only sue for damages, which are astronomical when dishonestly calculated by record companies but negligible here because the law goes "what would they have had to pay for it". The actual harmed parties, e.g. people who can't use their devices despite them relying on software that was supposed to respect user freedom, have no recourse. This is very closely related to right to repair.
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  169. Yeah, Microsoft converting Windows to a tracking ad platform is one of the more user hostile things in recent days. I recommend free software like Debian; while they have their growing pains, it's a culture based on cooperation rather than exploitation. (Lots of bickering around too, but some genuine problem solving.)
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  170. Savoir-faire Linux. You're welcome.
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  171. ​ @pauls5745  You seem to have several reference errors. DMCA is not an organization, and you refer to accused pages, not offending ones.
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  172. It can work great, as long as the cat agrees. For instance, dad knew a cat who would not only use the toilet but flush it when he was done; but you couldn't teach him to close the fridge after himself. He just didn't see the point.
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  173. Advertisers are primary offenders in many categories; data collection, actively lying to people, profiling people, and insane accusations. However, we must recognize these wrongs are perpetrated by other parties too, many of which hide behind others; e.g. the "data brokers" that are reselling contact information stolen via other collectors. Don't just block the ads, block the tracking, including in legislature. Remember, Google (who own Youtube here) never consider reductions in tracking. For Youtube, video streaming hasn't been their primary service for ages; it is bait.
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  174. How much are you offering? He is a paid liar in the first place, so you'll have to outbid his other options.
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  175. So exactly like how Lego motors will twitch when overloaded.
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  176.  @mjc0961  Which DRM free physical media are you talking about? Compact casettes? The "DRM" (used to be called "copy protection", another misleading marketing term - it always was sabotage) peddlers are so eager to sabotage media it's ubiquitous. Just because it's pathetic and defeated (like in DVD) is no reason to pay for it.
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  177. FFUpdater has quite a list, but I'm not sure which might be reliable. F-Droid has been flagging Mull for security concerns worryingly.
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  178. Some people will turn around and pay later, too. E.g. I used FastLynx as a kid, when I couldn't even get a credit card. I purchased it as an adult.
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  179. ​ @Tugela60  It is absolutely and fundamentally sabotage, independent of what Orqa have rights to or not. There are companies that specialize in this sort of sabotage, like Denuvo and FlexLM. But two wrongs don't make a right, and normalizing wrong doesn't make it right either. Remember the victims here are end users, not party to either scheme (whether white-washed as an "agreement" or snuck in).
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  180. Those look like downgrades from S5 to me.
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  181.  @a4000t  Still weird how these tales always omit that recklessly impatiently driven cars are the danger.
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  182. It's one thing that Bambu are incompetent at security (deliberately so where they refuse to patch). It's another they choose to make their efforts anti-consumer. They used to have a decent reputation, now I doubt they ever will again.
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  183. The fucking locked door to the car already happens*. Rental companies have locked cars *in use and actively and knowingly prevented emergency service. The particular tale I recall was remarkably insane, involving a baby stuck in a remotely locked car with the mother outside, and that car blocking access for a separate ambulance emergency.
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  184. That rage part of your brain might never have been to your advantage. Look up the effects of toxoplasmosis; the rage and lack of fear is very useful for the parasite toxoplasma gondii to make rodents get eaten by cats, its preferred host.
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  185. I can recall a purchase I made based on a relevant ad. I purchased the mod mat from Gamers' Nexus. This has nothing to do with the IAB, as the advertisement was not a sold one but a first party segment (skippable, unlike e.g. the propaganda in DVDs). It's vastly different from the sold ad spots which try to hold me captive, immediately scream at me, usually lie throughout and bear no relevance. I was already interested in getting an antistatic work surface, though I didn't know earlier GN made them. The ad showed and described the product. In contrast, I recently made the decision I'm not getting an LG OLED TV after all, because of their subscription plans. I want to own my devices. I also want to maintain them, like replacing the battery before it explodes.
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  186. I'd say it's significant that Amazon are profiting off the scams and deleting reports of the issues.
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  187. Note that the egregious overreach from Adobe isn't the new part - only the attention.
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  188. We already have the next 3 generations of transfer protocols - USB 3.1, Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, up to 40Gbps - using the USB Type C connector. However, nothing stops anyone from making a USB 2 speed device with a type C connector, so you'll absolutely have Apple claiming this just forces them to make thicker devices for no benefit, just because they choose not to support even USB 3.0's 5Gbps. Side note, the USB 3.1 specification summarized USB speeds as ~32MB/s for USB 2, 450MB/s for USB 3. That 60 number is not a possibility in the protocol and the link rates are before overheads such as 8b10b encoding.
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  189. Technically correct, but that disguise is a type of fraud.
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  190. Yes, HP is among the companies that purchased automated telephone systems specifically to piss customers off. They just want to be a bit more explicit about it now.
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  191. That's entirely movie FUD. You're not less liable just because you lie about it. It only means you have to get sued before justice is an option.
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  192. Best as I can tell, because they want you to accept scams. Most of the report options are purely fake, so the only reason they wouldn't include the category is to pretend it doesn't exist.
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  193. "Security check" more accurately described as "manufacturer sabotage". How about we not allow those?
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  194. There is no cloud. It's at best someone else's computer. Just as "smart" means incomplete (usually lacking basic controls), "cloud" means incomplete and inaccessible.
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  195. Likely not on a device that's already been hit. They did specify the sabotage was boot loader level, so before any user accessible menus to fix it.
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  196. Short of it: Yes, it's bad. Lenovo take money and spend it on harming customers. For instance, their computers refuse to work if you put a different brand wifi board in. This isn't because they lack drivers or anything, it's just some preemptive sabotage.
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  197. I don't think you're cray. I think you're suffering from sanity, and doing a better job than Wonko the Sane at healing the world. Rest in peace, Douglas Adams.
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  198. It still works for me; I had to disable it to dismiss a popup, but could turn it back on after that. The symptom was that the video would keep pausing itself.
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  199. I literally tried to pay them, long before they introduced premium. They proceeded to refuse me the service for about two years after creating it, then when at last I could pay they didn't deliver, but elected to insult my family. Meanwhile they escalated the abuse section by an order of magnitude. The problem is not payment.
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  200.  @davidgoodnow269  That spying on you is typically rightly illegal, regardless of what fantasies they dump in their "EULA". Just because you can make a profit doesn't make every venture acceptable.
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  201. Maybe the solution to poor profit margins isn't spending more money on making the product worse.
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  202.  @jackmclane1826  The product is worse; it has added failure modes. I understand the anti customer perspective exists, where this failure mode is intended to extort the customer, but a product broken by sabotage is still a broken product. Defective by design.
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  203. By instating a government that considers people and does a full reversal of DMCA and its ilk, making DRM illegal rather than holy. DRM means any customer, witting or not, is paying to be abused.
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  204. In this case, I think Lenovo may well have been doing it longer than Apple. And it was always hostile behaviour.
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  205. Much of the really cool stuff from them went into Intel (networking) and AMD (e.g. Slot A). Their history is fascinating, including outperforming IBM in miniaturisation and efficiency and naming the PDP to evade restrictions. Oh, and the DEC Bitsy is the archetype for our modern handheld computers (later marketed as iPAQ), a variation of the Itsy, an ARM-powered microserver.
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  206. ASUS extorting their own customers by creating problems none of them wanted. In short, business as usual. Can we change what's usual please?
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  207. The sheer number of models listed on their website is a huge red flag for me. It doesn't look like product development but a misdirection scheme.
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  208. That's the threshold between an electric assist bicycle and an electric moped. Both are sensible tools.
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  209. Do they? By their prevalence, it seems they're used to drive clicks on the report menu...
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  210. Is this a good place to recommend Lawful Masses with Leonard French? It typically features happy doggos near the end of the videos. :)
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  211. I'm an extremist! I hold the extreme opinion that accusations do not imply (in the logical sense, i.e. prove) guilt, and that punishment, if used, should be scalable to relevance. For instance, I believe copying a music recording is less serious than murder, and fictional tales are less serious than direct abuse of people, even if drawn as pictures. Another of my questionable beliefs is that ideas for legislation should be weighed more by their societal effects than the income of the organisation that proposed them. I find it sad how the word "moderate" has been coopted in politics, by the way. Far less extreme is my opinion that Youtube ostensibly letting fraudsters (the biggest ad category here) set the rules is a bad idea. Always remember, the first target of marketers is the ad buyers. Their goal is profit for themselves, not their "clients". That's a con game itself, with the "DRM" business providing an egregious example (making products worse to allay induced fears, with only one winner - and that's not the publishers or authors).
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  212. I live in Stockholm, where it's hard to find a spot with fewer than three regularly maintained trash cans in plain sight. Despite this, people somehow pick one to totally overfill, and litter habitually, particularly smokers. I believe this cycle can be broken. Most people can learn to use bathrooms in just a few years, after all. But we still need to clean up after the ones who haven't learned, and set a decent example. It would be less of a burden if more contributed. Make a habit of leaving places just a little better.
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  213. Imagine if an ink cartridge came with the original style antivirus - to just overwrite and disable the built in malware.
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  214.  @frustrateduser9933  I believe the case I was thinking about involved Peter Bergman, at least that case was widely publicized (possibly starting with Östran). At the time he had some vision, using a computer with great magnification (Synskadades Riksförbund and Aftonbladet referred to him as blind). Radiotjänst i Kiruna did everything they could to be unreasonable, including immediately shouting they wouldn't be paying anything back after being specifically instructed that was their duty by the supreme court. I personally found it most remarkable when they specifically published a statement claiming their interpretation was what decided what the law said, not the intent or product of the lawmaking process. The core of the case was that they'd decided to unilaterally claim every computer was a TV receiver, specifically so they could extort more money. They claimed public service had become more expensive to produce and income was dropping while their public accounting disagreed. The law stated that a TV receiver was a device built for the purpose (e.g. a computer with a TV card), and had a specific definition of TV transmissions which excluded any Internet streaming service. In the end their campaign really highlighted that SVT's broadcasting license didn't actually cover Internet streaming. Another fun revelation was that RIKAB employed their own court that never ruled against them or even acknowledged arguments; they only existed to force people to go to court at least twice, and if you did win the case (in the second court) to show you had no TV, nothing stopped RIKAB from again deciding you did anyway the next day. I'm a little uncertain why they employed squealers to point out people as having TVs when they didn't have any burden of proof anyhow, but those were both incompetent and deceitful. We ended up with a reform where the public service is now paid for by plain taxation per individual. Not necessarily more fair, but less actively corrupt.
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  215. Data recovery is making the data accessible again. The route there is typically making a device sufficiently operational to access it; repairing the necessary parts of the broken device is the most natural way to do it.
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  216. Last time I went to a Samsung store to buy a Samsung accessory they didn't have it, and told me to my face "nobody asks for those" when I asked. Who came up with this strategy to deny not just customers' desires but their existence?
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  217. Apple don't want to make your life more difficult. They want it very simple: You pay Apple, and then you do that again. They don't want you to consider stuff like whose fault it is when the device you bought from them explodes.
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  218. Fun followup assuming this is true: How many other parties have been sent his particular "blank" form, with all those personal details?
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  219. Russia does not appear to be doing much better today.
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  220. Youtube's automated captions are available on this video now, though I can't vouch for their accuracy.
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  221. XKCD 937
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  222. I think it's more similar to pre-IDE days on PC, where you had to enter the drive geometry in the setup, as there was no autodetection. Furthermore, the setup program was not built into the BIOS. Yes, this is working backwards decades past the Open Firmware systems that allowed to swap hardware between different architectures such as PowerPC Macs and Sun SPARCs, a heritage Linux now uses to compensate for the mess of custom ARM systems.
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  223.  @stephenramos2824  Teleprinters date from 1887. OP was off by a century.
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  224. They locked us out from PSN. The system still sort of works. Obviously coercion at best, but SOP for Sony. Now there are some PS3 titles that won't run, requiring me to destroy a rare computer for their pleasure.
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  225.  @andreivaughn1468  Titles released after the never-ending April Fool's day, and the Other OS capable PS3 with an installed OS (and full hardware PS2 emulator). And to top it off, they wouldn't return the disk space, either. This machine was purchased for its Linux capability; they wish to retroactively destroy a key selling point. This isn't the first feature they've ripped out of Playstation series devices, either. They used to be able to play SACD, for instance. They're also doing the victim blaming routine, telling me their aggression is someone else's fault.
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  226.  @av3ng3r-49  Eve, now Dough, branders of the Spectrum monitors, were rather explicit about this being their MO.
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  227. The workaround of plugging it in is precisely what you'd expect a user to do when it doesn't power on, so it's a mild inconvenience. Compared to having to unplug the battery (inside the screwed shut case), as happens on my GPD Win 2 when it's been connected to the wrong charger (including the right charger with an Apple display adapter between, thanks Apple, power undelivered), I'd say this is a pretty minor flaw. Publishing the rework instructions is a good move. Combining restrictive purchasing regions with no upstream service of this issue... not so great.
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  228. Call a spade a spade. The reason electric vehicles are harder to repair is manufacturer sabotage. And that should absolutely be illegal. And that dongle is precisely the same thing; you might see it as analog to the key, but the lock is there to keep you out, not whoever steals the software. They get it cracked.
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  229. Frankly, that sounds like you've fallen into the false binary trap. May I recommend CGP Grey's "This video will make you angry"?
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  230. It's absolutely not just the legal department. YouTube has two guiding principles: Make everything automatic, so staff cannot fix anything that goes wrong (and everything does, automatically). Make sure advertisers pay. That's it; viewers and uploaders alike are nothing but tools for those goals.
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  231. ​ @phantomtr1  What report? You can't even flag the ads in their app. You can flag comments, which hides them momentarily (still there if you reload).
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  232. THIS is what the Free Software movement, as proposed and championed by the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, is about. Software running on the computer you own should be under your control. There may certainly be other restrictions on what you let it do, e.g. a moped may have a speed limit or a radio transmitter a transmit time limit, but those are about device actions, not user ability. This is the type of rights and freedoms that were quite literally taken for granted in the infancy of computing; the proprietary software model was championed by Microsoft and insanely escalated in video game consoles and "smartphones". Less restrictive smartphones predate both Apple and Android, by the way (derived from PDA systems like Pilot and Psion). People just didn't see giant advertising campaigns about it because they didn't have the captive revenue models.
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  233. I once walked into a Samsung store to try their keyboard accessory. They didn't have it and told me to my face "nobody asks for those". That's the big question; why are they trying to not sell?
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  234. XKCD 870 applies.
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  235. Because the manufacturer hosts both greedy and voyeuristic sociopaths. One camp wants to have all the data, the other wants to sell it, and use it to figure out how much worse they can make the product without warranty costing too much. The shorter the product lifetime the more sales the market supports.
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  236. This is what all forms of DRM always have been. Anti-functionality, at the expense of legitimate owners and customers.
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  237. IIRC, EU only adopted the micro-USB requirement after China did. And Apple was given carte blanche to produce even more e-waste by just bundling an adapter for people to lose.
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  238.  @DSP16569  USB-3.1 actually allows 900mA, 500mA is from earlier versions. But you should perhaps look at the Battery Charging specification instead, which permits 1.5A.
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  239. Places like Louis' repair shop are first party repair - you order a repair and they perform it. Authorized places are typically third party, sending your device off to some other party (possibly the manufacturer, more commonly an insurance company's repair shop).
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  240. It's a good point for sure, but I remember buying a top of the line ASUS monitor and being refused service because they had an nvidia component in it. And that was full of advertisements of ASUS VIP service.
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  241.  @rkvkydqf  Proof of that guilt doesn't seem to have hurt anyone significantly so far. Speaking of Microsoft, remember how Windows 95 would transfer files more slowly from Windows 95 than Windows NT based on just the identifier, as demonstrated by Samba? That's a more likely analog for people who get different results based on User-Agent strings.
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  242. As The Onion remarked to the Supreme Court in an amicus brief, it's becoming hard to satirize the world when it's so often more insane than we can imagine.
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  243. Those opt outs are almost never easy. They're usually hidden away and disguised. The vast majority of those "requests" come from people who absolutely refuse to consider the option of not exploiting you; often for crooks ("data brokers"), nearly as often for absolutely no gain. They have no sound reason to track you; they just consider you a target of opportunity. Don't we all love being target practice over any other relation?
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  244.  @alexturnbackthearmy1907  That comparison sounds fraught from both survivorship bias and the law of small numbers.
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  245.  @alexturnbackthearmy1907  That's not an answer to any of those questions, merely an assertion that EVs cannot last. You went from trying to motivate your opinion with poor statistics to not trying to motivate it at all, but making the broadest claim possible of the future. I don't know to what degree the F150 you mentioned as an exceptional case contradicts your other claims, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't had the opportunity to last for decades yet.
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  246.  @McTroyd  I don't think it's specific to him. I expect the repair program's overarching strategy is minimal service for maximum inconvenience. They don't need this data collection, they don't need to sabotage lid sensors. They merely choose to make it hard.
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  247. I admit I bought a Samsung phone last time my phone died. Specifically, the only model they offered with a replaceable battery. A new Samsung battery for this model costs $26.24 retail with taxes. There's no excuse for the parts program not to offer them.
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  248. You just described EA's business model.
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  249. Well, congratulations! On YouTube, it's not faceless employees, it's automated bots! By design, they cannot and will not correct any errors or explain any rules.
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  250. Why assume an absence of malice just because there's incompetence involved? This process is difficult and its feedback unhelpful by design.
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  251. An important distinction. Louis the cat also runs a youtube channel, but it's more focused on paddling and walks.
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  252.  @kornaros96  That just goes to show it's not even the adhesive that is the problem. It's that Samsung won't sell you a battery without gluing a screen to it first.
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  253. Very rarely an ad campaign produces something worthwhile. For instance, Honda's "The Cog". I'm not going to buy that car, nor will I go out of my way to select any Honda product, but the chain reaction was beautiful.
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  254. I have a Thinkpad that had the same type of problem. Power switch in the keyboard shorted out (yes, the famous sealed and spill-protected keyboard).
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  255.  @darekm6859  I can see why you think real friends are hard to come by and assume others don't have them.
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  256.  @hubertnnn  Stop trolling. Lying is not clever.
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  257.  @nickb3968  Ridiculous straw man rhetoric. You may want to evoke some slogan claiming "regulation bad", but it's only a category of tool. For instance, there's a little regulation that says you should be able to pay your debts with money. Another forced black people to sit at the back of the bus. Another said you can't own people. Right and wrong aren't dictated by where the rules are written.
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  258.  @nickb3968  How long did it take you to compose that deranged and entirely misdirected rant? It wasn't time well spent.
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  259. Are you talking about the Motorola that sold phones where incoming calls didn't get stored in a call history? That Motorola taught me that there's no feature too basic for a manufacturer to skimp on.
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  260.  @shin-ishikiri-no  I copied the relevant sentence from Mozilla Support into the original post (2nd in this thread) for more clarity. Note this is just the most obvious part; I haven't gone searching for how much they're not talking about. A "CDM" is some sort of DRM plugin.
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  261. ... And, yet again, Youtube shadowbans me for editing a message. Can't have clarifications or references! There were more details in Mozilla's support pages; note that the feature is at least documented as behaving differently on Linux and Windows.
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  262. You have a skewed image of US politics, it seems. "Sexual item" rates worse than "sexual harassment", which in turn rates worse than terrorism (biological or not). Yep, shaping up as yet another case of law being broken because law is insane. (Yes, I'm aware US isn't uniform. Consider this tongue in cheek, though I'm not telling whose cheek nor which kind.)
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  263. It's interesting how many sites think a full page coverup preventing any use of their site is totally critical and a better option than just not storing meaningless identifiers on every visitor's computers. They just think tracking has to be done, and precisely that clumsily, no matter what.
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  264. This certainly marks the difference between plain poor design and designed to actively fight against usability. The latter is what all DRM is; you get to pay for your stuff to not work.
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  265.  @ribzer57  He didn't buy this printer; it was sent to him by the manufacturer, which is why he tagged it as a sponsored video.
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  266.  @ribzer57  Sorry, I was missing some context. Yeah, they might be able to use that. As you say, it could save the expense of getting another piece of equipment. It might be worth replacing it simply to be rid of the brand; that's a personal value judgment and possible message. It could also be of interest to have just one brand of printer driver (wouldn't it be lovely if one was actually nice?). There's also value in keeping things from becoming waste. Plenty of reasons on either side, many of which are subjective.
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  267. I for one would prefer to buy hardware not specifically sabotaged to fight against me as owner and the actual purpose of the device.
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  268. Supply flexibility. If you only need e.g. standard ONFI Flash, no controllers, it's easier to make storage modules by demand or opportunity. Of course, that didn't require making the controller need separate configuration.
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  269.  @mjc0961  "Smart" devices remove controls like that to "encourage" installing the spyware app. And then they claim that's both convenient and pretty.
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  270.  @deenot4878  You sound like the sort of person who gets upset about someone wishing you a good night.
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  271. ​ @justme5384  We'll just hope that VMware and the firmware vendor of your servers didn't choose to do this sort of thing to you.
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  272. Guess what the most effective advertising model around is? Shareware. Basically "the first hit is free", usually a portion of the program is free and you request payment for the rest. You may have heard of it as demos. Apps don't need ads and never have. Secondly, there are absolutely a lot of things shared freely. Sadly, Youtube's model isn't of the teasing kind, it's of the extortion kind; they're degrading what they already provided instead of offering more.
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  273. This is worse than not giving options; they've actively destroyed those options, a specifically anti-competition (and markedly anti-customer) sabotage.
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  274. PS3 was pretty nice, except the times they launched "updates" specifically to destroy the features I bought it for. Sony is absolutely nobody's friend.
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  275. Ryan George has left a helpful walkthrough of the Amazon shopping experience here on YouTube, titled "What Shopping On Amazon Feels Like".
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  276. It's not because it's 720p the stream looked like crap. It's because Netflix specifically choose to make it crap, by compressing it to lower bit rates than a DVD (and with lower encoding effort). 720p on its own would look rather fuzzy, not blocky. Just another way they actively choose to screw their customers over. Every company touching DRM is sending you a clear signal; if you try to make a deal with them, they will screw you over and accuse you first.
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  277. Another detail is how the shadow banning system works. Youtube don't delete comments when one account posts 60 copies of the same message in reply to every top level comment. They do delete my comments without warning if I edit to include a source reference.
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