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Youtube deletes and strikes Linus Tech Tips video for teaching people how to live without Google. Ft. Louis Rossman
  • Yeah, people defend Linus and other faces like MKBHD for one huge reason: Parasocial relationships.

    Just look at all the conversation happening in this thread with people defending the figure of Linus (and others). Influencers, even tech influencers, make money because they can monetize those people.

    And Linus appeals primarily to the folks who like thinking of themselves as the tech person in the family or at the office, but really they are no more technical than slotting a stick of RAM into a case on average.

  • EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone
  • So the argument boils down to it being due to bad parents rather than evil technology, yes?

    That's not the main arguments being used to ban these devices and advocate for more radical plans. Removing access to these doesn't make someone a good parent. Kids turn to other methods.

    And to an earlier point in another comment: guess which cohort has explosive growth in smoking at the moment? Not people our age. Teens and young adults of legal age. Gen Z, in particular, is a huge market for that industry now. Cigars and pipes in particular. Vapes are counted separately but are wildly popular.

    Banning the sale of highly regulated goods where the state is the official and only legal seller of said good in many states is one thing. We are talking about the internet here, though. And cell phones. And computers. And tablets. May as well put TVs and connected devices on the list, and definitely console platforms.

  • EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone
  • That's the real problem, kids being able to spend unlimited time unsupervised because they have horrible absent parents. Parents shouldnt let their kids have unrestricted time like that. That is one reason why kids suffer in school not because of phones; because their parents aren't involved to guide them in making good choices and forcing good habits.

    So we take away the phones as the luddites demand. What fills the gap? Definitely not independent learning. Most definitely not suddenly mindful and present parents.

    There is a lot of fear mongering and blaming, but no actual effort to fix it. Banning or removing doesn't fix it. There is a reason that, when absent parents for latchkey kids were huge problems, they didn't simply decree gangs illegal and pat themselves on the back. Communities offered alternatives. But no alternative is being offered here. All the woes are shifted onto the unholy smartphone and internet.

    Ya know why predators can find success online? Because shit parents don't parent. A better use of resources would be forcing the parents to sacrifice their phones contingent on spending time with their kids, right?

  • EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone
  • No, you don't get. Or didn't live it. Or are being purposely obtuse.

    None of those qualifiers were attached to those things at the time the applicable fear mongering luddites were vilifying them. What we have right now are 21st century Tipper Gores. People engaging in moral public freakouts over tangentially related things which affirm a much larger fear of the whole (technology in this case). You see it also with how people violently and emotionally react to "AI."

    Remember when D&D would turn you into a Satanist who'd go on to sexually abused children, maybe even engage in ritualist murder? Remember when similar was said for merely listening to even the radio edits of Marilyn Manson?

    People pearl clutch over hypotheticals. Parents who engage with their kids and set healthy boundaries which are enforced don't often run into these problems. Hell, the arguments people make about tech right now could also apply as reasons not to let them play outside. Never know where a predator is lurking. I mean, we actually do: in your church and in your house. The two most statistically likely places for children to be preyed upon.

    But let's blame the internet. Apple makes it trivial to lock things down and monitor it all. No kid is able to outsmsrt those restrictions because adults can't either.

    No, what's happening is yet another hype cycle. The entire reason all these schools are banning devices this year is due to a marketing effort from Haidt's publisher. They put copies of his book into the hands of higher ranking faculty with purchasing authority for their districts. And they talk with each other. What a brilliant way to weaponize ignorance and make a buck doing so.

    And it magically doesn't make bad parents into even mediocre ones. Who or what will they blame next? Definitely not the person looking back at them in the mirror every morning.

  • Game engines used in the 2024 GMTK game jam
  • True, however game jams are often used to learn/reinforce learning for new tech, right? I question how much of it is the sunk cost of having to learn a new… well… everything.

    I’d be very interested to see a breakdown by game characteristics. Genre, but particularly 2d vs 3d. I think Godot is well known for 2d, less so for 3d.

  • What a week
  • Probably the people—accurately—pointing out that Mozilla has also adopted Manifest V3 along with Google. Google is doing it to curtail (“kill”) ad blockers. Mozilla is also now in the advertising game, and secretly began a telemetry program which is opt-out only. And, given how we shouldn’t trust orgs with financial motive, very well could opt you back in with future updates exactly as Microsoft does.

    Plus, their current CEO has a history, and Mozilla as a whole faces dicey times ahead if their Daddy Google is forced to stop buying exclusivity deals by the U.S. government.

    So take your pick I guess.

  • Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
  • There’s also credible reports that Reddit is testing an even sneakier method. They will hide the “deleted” comments when you are logged in and looking for them in your history. But other people can still see them; Reddit just understands you are a hostile actor in their eyes so they pull manipulation games like with shadow banning.

  • Some subreddits could be paywalled, hints Reddit CEO
  • Fark still exists with that small monthly payment to support the site model. Drew, the owner, regularly meets up with folks, too. And if you’re a subscriber he must buy you a beer if you ask him per the “terms” of service.

    A nice, relatively small, community. That’s what Reddit used to be. Your post really resonated with me.

  • Which will you choose?
  • my experience is such that people don't get these sweeping bans for having opinions. They get them for acting like sociopathic aggressive individuals.

    And based on what I'm seeing when I check folks' profiles reiterating the same story... Yep it checks out more often than not. There's no discourse on the internet when it consists of calling people slurs in a weird barrage of insults. Those are the people who get banned here or there.

  • The KOSA Internet Censorship Bill Just Passed The Senate—It's Our Last Chance To Stop It
  • How do you mean “the other side?” EFF has a high factuality/credibility but is marked as left of center in bias.

    EFF, like ACLU, are mostly orgs that stick to their expertise. Look at entities rated as “Very High.” The climate science orgs don’t and shouldn’t give time entertaining the deranged conspiracy theories of science deniers, nor should EFF focus on advancing rhe worldviews of entities looking to limit speech on the internet. It would be like demanding AA set aside time at meetings to discuss the merits of getting black out drunk once in a while.

    Sure, many sides exist. But mere existence doesn’t make them equal.

  • Republican attacks on Kamala Harris to get ‘as ugly and bigoted as they can’
  • I have family that are similar. I wouldn’t classify them as racist, but they straddle that line with opinions. I’ve never seen or heard them classify an entire group of people or act discriminatory in person. It is more along the lines of “everyone is equal and nobody should get special treatment” regarding things like affirmative action or the more extreme DEI practices of some companies.

    My experience is such that these people can be reached if we keep the lines of communication open rather than do the easy thing of cutting them off. I’ve been able to use their own logic and verbiage (especially verbiage) against them but one can’t go in guns blazing. To change minds, it must feel like their idea. Turn the heat up slowly and introduce doubt and ideas.

    My big take away, with people like I described above, is that they are reacting to the more extreme people who would feel right at home in the racist far right if things were just a tad different. Cultural warriors and grievance politics leaders are cancerous regardless of which side of the spectrum they occupy because their goal remains the same: divide the normal people and turn us against each other.

    And judging by what happens in my extended family and how it is breaking down on political lines… it is sadly working.

  • Locked
    Please, for the love of God, VOTE!
  • Tell me, how culpable were thr old SPD members that fled Germany immediately prior to the Enabling Act? The politicians who skipped town rather than vote to stop Hitler. I mean, they didn't explicitly vote for Hitler to become dictator. But they had the ability to prevent lr delay it and didn't.

    At some point the rational and adult thing is to recognize that inaction is a defacto vote for the worst scenario you can imagine because you didn't attempt to stop it. If you see a car hit a little girl, and then flee, are you in the free and clear ethically and morally for just driving right by only to hear she later died because no one else tried to help?

  • Locked
    Please, for the love of God, VOTE!
  • Biden is a genocidal dictator?

    And people insist that the far left isn't blue Maga and then I witness crazy similarities like this be normal here.

    Like it or not, a vote against Biden (or no vote at all) is tacitly supporting the Republican takeover and implenetation of project 2025, regression and perseuction of LGBTQ and immigrants in our societies, and wild escalation in the middle east as Trump and Republicans have promised to do vis a vis Gaza.

    Folks, yall gotta deradicalize a bit. Put another way, what does it say about you that you'd rather allow a person like Trump, who wants to implement a final solution type deal, than a person like Biden who isn't so crazy and even walking back? You don't have to love these people. But if you could do so right now, and HAD to do so, would you vote to a hurt 1,000 gazans or millions of them? That's the choice you MUST make in November. Even sitting it out is a choice.

  • Locked
    Please, for the love of God, VOTE!
  • You could say similar about our leftist history. How many countries did we instigate revolutions in to overthrow even somewhat democratic governments?

    Radicals will rationalize anything including putting Trump back into office.

  • Firefox saw an increase in users (~50% in Germany and ~30% in France) following Apple’s default browser changes in the EU.
  • They hook you into an ecosystem. That's it, thats the game. I don't think it has too much to do with insecurity. Group chats and video chats with people outside of imessage is awful. Group chats lose a lot of features because SMS was all there was for a long time. Standard (not Google-ified) RCS is still too bare at the moment so I don't think the looming rcs fixes that aspect of it.

  • Veterans Burn Their Uniforms at Vigil for US Airman Aaron Bushnell
  • Not really. I mean, this person who everyone here is hailing as a hero has a long and documented history of making even worse jokes about his fellow soldiers dying.

    If it's good for the goose it's good for the gander.

  • V/H/S 85 is now streaming on Shudder! Let’s discuss!
    bloody-disgusting.com Rewind Back to the 1980s: 'V/H/S/85' Is Now Streaming on Shudder!

    The V/H/S franchise returns with brand new installment V/H/S/85, and we're thrilled to let you know that this twisted trip back to the 1980s is now

    Rewind Back to the 1980s: 'V/H/S/85' Is Now Streaming on Shudder!

    This comment is spoiler-free, but my replies may not be.

    V/H/S 85 is the sixth entry to the series. Overall, I felt it started off strong and ended a little weak. I think the standout segments are definitely No Wake/Ambrosia (the first segment, which finishes later) and Dreamkiller.

    The man behind Dreamkiller is also responsible for Sinister, and it shows with the “home movie” style of found footage video.

    The frame story had me interested at first but wasn’t fully developed.

    I really enjoyed how they jumped around with stories, though. Instead of always having the entirety of a segment play out linearly, a couple segments just end/glitch and another one starts before we eventually cut back to something else. Sort of like how television jumps around to keep things moving. I feel that worked well here because it let the directors skip a lot of unnecessary build up or exposition that we see in the other VHS series entries.

    Anyone here see it? Have a favorite segment? Where does this one fall on your list?

    I think VHS 94 is still top of my list (unpopular, I know).

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