Majestic

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Apple TV: No ads. Been around for over a decade.

Google TV: homescreen ads for a decade+ and even pushed onto Nvidia shield owners who originally may have bought the devices because Nvidia made a premium customized version without ads until they got tired of that and put ads in.

Apple has problems but ads aren’t a big one.

Neither big company is your friend. They both exploit workers and are both bad.

It’s just Google tends to be better at cutting edge bad like enabling genocide with their products and stuffing ads down the throats of people while Apple tries to maintain a crunchier appearance and vibe and is fine reaping 30% App Store fees on all transactions and making side loading very hard.

Apple rips you off on low storage and high costs to upgrade compared to Google/Samsung it’s definitely true.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

We couldn't see this within a year of it happening why? Why exactly?

But now that they've had plenty of time to edit, cut, splice, or AI together a bunch of footage of an empty hallway in front of a cell with timestamps on it suddenly we have proof that isn't that definitive but would have been more convincing if released within months to a year of his death.

I'm calling it that this is just footage of a hallway with no view into the cell, footage that could have been edited together from footage from previous days or later days, it may or may not show guards walking up and down. At most it'll have time-stamps hard-coded into the video stream but anyone with access to the facility could record video from that angle after the fact and add in their own hard time-stamps that match those used by the systems in place at the time. It would be possible pre-AI to do this kind of manipulation and fakery with a single experienced Hollywood film editor but AI could definitely be used to make it more convincing especially if you're trying to insert a now dead guard into the picture.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

It's impossible to de-google or meaningfully remove unwanted stuff from Smart TVs while keeping them usable for streaming purposes.

What you want to do is factory reset, don't connect to the internet, go into settings and turn off whatever you can, and then use a streaming box.

Yes it's an additional cost but it's BETTER. The processors and memory in those TVs are lousy, the apps are often sluggish, the experience is simply not great. Frankly the hardware was built not to be usable for you, they are data collection platforms that include minimal low quality streaming experiences in order to collect data. No software is going to fix that.

Want something that "just works" and supports all the major streamers? Get an Apple TV 4k. It's pretty private but importantly no ads, clean interface, powerful hardware. Is it maximally private? No. But it is easy.

Want to put in effort? You can get either a Dune-HD box (some have dual-OS without reboot where one is Netflix certified to get you full resolution while passing DRM checks while another is unlocked bootloader which you can install all kinds of things like Plex and Kodi on) or get some other Android streaming device of your choice (Walmart's Onn brand 4k devices used to be very good and cheap though you might need to check as I heard rumors the latest devices can't be unlocked).

You'll have a better experience on more powerful hardware and will never want to go back to the bad on-board TV experience.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Wait until you find out they offer apps with ties to:

  • FBI
  • US military
  • CIA
  • NSA
  • The most awful fascist ghouls on podcasts and youtube
  • The "israeli" state and its war criminal institutions.

Curious then you pick on vague ties to China to fearmonger.

I mean FFS Microsoft and Google are actively abetting the most documented genocide in a century. Where is the outrage from these garbage people over that? Where's the push to help boycott and pressure them to stop assisting the slaughter? Children are being killed right now in Gaza with the help of these American companies and where are the stories encouraging people to stop using them?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is ridiculous. I like the way it's set up now. They tried "simpler" before and I hated it and turned it off. Along with the news they're supposedly getting rid of tags for bookmarks (I have so many bookmarks without tags they'd be useless) I'm just feeling so much despair for the web right now.

Also disabling showing HTTPS in the address bar as part of the URL is another negative change catering to what they believe is the lowest common denominator. Consider for a moment that browsers still support multiple protocols besides hypertext transfer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Because she knows there will be another stronger case in the future that she won't have to recuse from and that case will therefore be much more air-tight when she votes to allow it. No one will be able to attempt to undermine the ruling by claiming it was invalid on the basis of someone voting who should not.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Never cared for pocket and always disabled it as spyware. Fake spot will be missed though.

This is an ill omen however. They’re cutting back dramatically in anticipation of their Google funding being lost forever and perhaps as some suggest in anticipation of enshitifying. These were both sold originally as additional revenue streams for Mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

IMO focus on purchasing physical content from creators or distributors who NEED to get paid.

It's one thing to foolishly throw money at these big companies for blurays of an already very successful series while they're throwing their old libraries in the trash or 'the vault' or just shoveling most of their money towards low quality reality garbage.

It's another to buy a Criterion or BFI or Vinegar Syndrome bluray of something out of print that they need to recoup the costs of restoring and scanning.

If someone buys a bluray of an MCU movie they are a chump, firstly for liking that stuff, secondly for giving Disney more money for it when those things already earn piles of cash in theaters and that alone would be enough to keep them paying salaries and producing that stuff.

Spend money on independent film-makers/releases, on restorations, on series you like on the verge of cancellation.

Sadly I think the conclusion is already written, physical media's days are numbered, the big companies are going to shut down the overwhelming majority of bluray and dvd production within 5-10 years is my feeling because why sell you for $20-$30 a copy of something when they can get your rent in the form of streaming monthly payments for the rest of your natural life?

And best of all with the rent they can push ads which further increase their revenue. That bluray is a one-time payment, ads for watching the movie on streaming are a continual revenue stream. I predict that they will either have completely killed off ad-free tiers of streaming to push most of their audience into an even bigger and more valuable ad pool to sell to advertisers OR the prices of the ad-free tiers will grow dramatically away from the ad-supported tiers. Right now it's a few bucks a month, I suspect within 10 years it will be 170-300% the cost of the ad-supported version.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Use secure erase function which is built into the SATA and other specs, it applies a voltage spike to clear the cells of all held charges thus wiping them. This happens near instantly, it'll be a process that will signal it's finished within a minute and takes much less time than that.

If you want to be extra paranoid I suppose you could follow that up by encrypting the entire (empty) drive and then doing it again though I'm not sure this has any benefit however it's the closest to forcing the cells to be used again and then cleared again. However this does not guarantee that exhausted and worn out areas are flash are not potentially spared both. It's unlikely for large amounts of data to be recovered from this unless your drive is failing or has been completely worn out but it's also why if you ever store sensitive data on an SSD it's preferable to do so in an encrypted form (such as encrypting the whole disk or partition).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

If I had to guess it's mainly .world accounts (and maybe feddit given their strongly pro-genocide stance). They think because Trump is scary and doing more bad things at home than Biden that Biden -- the man who holds a large amount of responsibility for him being elected again (by stubbornly running again when he wasn't fit then dropping out at the last moment) somehow deserves some respect for some reason. That and/or for them genocide just isn't a line that once crossed makes someone bad. Little hitlerites the lot of them.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

My guess is they're preparing for the Google search money to vanish and cutting costs wherever they can however small and hosting their own code repo was one thing to go.

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