deweydecibel @ deweydecibel @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I know some artists don't mind it, but I just can't hear the word "creatives" as anything other than silicon valley speak for the source of the content they sell. It feels dehumanizing.

Particularly in this case, it's Adobe, so you can just call them artists, designers, photographers, etc.

Or, ya know, just users.

Because the investors/stockholders in the tech industry started tightening the belt and demanding profitability from these huge tech companies. What's happening at Google is happening everywhere: the avenues for extracting more profit from their apps or services are being scoured and taken advantage of. Prices going up, advertising increasing, free features removed, etc. Different strategies all around, but the pattern is clear.

YouTube has never been profitable, but Google was ok with letting the rest of the profits from its other divisions subsidize YouTube's losses so it could remain free. They did that to choke the market; no other company could handle the sheer scale of it while offering it for free. As long as Google ran YouTube for free with relatively few ads, no competition could ever possibly come to exist.

But because the shareholders are demanding profit now, and because Google itself is struggling on multiple fronts, the time to force YouTube into a profitable enterprise has come at last.

And this is what it looks like.

As for risking competition, at this point, I don't think they care anymore. Competition in the web service and software space seems to be a thing of the past. Users are intransigent, algorithms favor the oldest and most popular services, and content creators seem to be incapable of separating themselves from their abusive platforms.

I also have a theory that Google is using YouTube as a way of rallying all platforms and services to combat ad blockers more fiercely. If they can beat them on YouTube, other sites will dig their heels in. There's a long-term strategy here to nuke ad blocking permanently. That's what that web environment integrity shit was about, and you better believe that will be back with a new name.

Funny that she thinks it ruins it in the first place. I wouldn't have even noticed if she hadn't drawn attention to it.

Now, I say that, but I've also done this exact thing before.

That's kind of what I'm thinking too.

Legitimately, the degree to which proton advertises, the sheer amount of blog spam and such, made me very, very resistant to it. I really don't care how private it all is or how well it works, I have spent enough time on the internet and engaged with enough small tech company services to recognize a fierce push for growth, and experience has taught me to avoid a for-profit company that sells to you that hard. One day the growth will stop, and the cannibalizing begins.

But a move to a non-profit model is, at least theoretically, a move in the right direction. I'm more willing to engage.

I still don't trust that they won't change their mind down the road, but it's a start.

And the point about OpenAI is moot because being non-profit doesn't make the actual purpose of the company any less shitty. Especially when Microsoft was feeding it money for the purpose of harvesting what they would create. They still had shitty motives and created a tool that is very ethically "questionable" at best, and that was true from the very beginning.The fact their ethics team was gutted the moment they tried to exercise their purpose tells you everything.

The non-profit company created a tool that will be used primarily by for-profit companies and hurt individuals. The moniker barely applies.

Not a sequel, just a homage. And Batman Forever was the same.

When Tim Burton wanted to make Batman movies, he made them in his own style, borrowing here and there from the comics, but generally just doing his own Tim Burton thing.

When Schumacher took over, his primary reference point for Batman was the '60s show, and his movies reflect that. There was restraint and balancing going on with Batman Forever, put when it was a box office hit, Schumacher took that as an invitation to go all in on the camp with BaR.

I will defend Batman Forever with my dying breath.

It was just the right amount of pretentious, gothic, and campy. If you go in expecting a serious modern Batman movie, you're in for a bad time. As long as you go in expecting an absurd homage to the equally silly 60s show, mixed with a more modern self serious take, all of it straight-faced, you can enjoy it just fine. It's tonal whiplash but it's fun.

You got Jim Carrey in his prime, Tommy Lee Jones going full ham, both of them devouring every last inch of scenery. You got Nicole Kidman awakening something in every prepubescent boy, and a few girls too (and that's where we get the People's Joker from).

It also had the balls to give us a genuine attempt at Robin. Something the movies have been too chickenshit to do for nearly 30 years.

Now Batman and Robin...that's where they took it too far. The balance was way off, way too cartoonish, with nothing to counterbalance it. It's so painfully and obviously a toy commercial, in every way.

a detailed list of TPN violations

Eh, that's actually kind of a selling point. I've got no interest in an OS on my personal PC that focuses on being made more friendly to the MPA.

The security will definitely also take a very profitable shape. I.e. further locking the OS away from the user, more black box software, etc.

Very common tactic for many of these sites. They're either paid by Microsoft or they're just run-of-the-mill Microsoft boot lickers.

If you search for how to disable or bypass something in Windows, these SEO'd junk articles pop up and trick you into reading them. It's usually a long preamble full of arguments for why you really shouldn't try to disable or bypass the thing, because Microsoft's shit doesn't actually stink, and they know better than you. Then at the bottom they put the generic instructions that may not even work anymore, that you've likely already read.

Yes, that's true. But I'm kind of going off the assumption anybody that actually wants to use a local account is somebody who knows better than to use the Home edition. Without group policy and a couple of the other configurable points, I'm not sure how viable it even is to use Home anymore if you want Microsoft off your back.

YouTube is a modern miracle of engineering -- no other platform on the planet hosts the scale of video it does, indefinitely, with instant access, for free

Because Google chokes the market. There could be plenty of other competitors if Google charged for it like other companies would. Google subsidized YouTube with the rest of their company's profits, not to provide us a free platform because they're so nice, but to prevent competition. As long as YouTube was free, no other companies would be able to keep up with the costs, therefore no one else would enter the market.

If this shit is so expensive, and they want money, they can gate the content like every other streaming service, and then deal with the competition that would swell up.

The problem is that user generated content still takes time. Which means money. Also, people don't want vlogs with a drywall background anymore and the number of creators who can get away with simple prop free skits are double digit, at best. So making the videos also cost money.

That's why I don't use Sponsorblock: it hurts the wrong people.

But I'll still block the ads because to hell with Google and their monopoly. I'm only interested in supporting the artists directly, Google can get fucked.

I don't give a shit if it's reasonable anymore.

Google has done enough terrible things over the years, ruined enough services, some of them paid services, continually harmed content creators with their trash algorithm, refused to defend them from bogus copyright strikes, refused to provide meaningful support to anybody but advertisers, all the while hosting hate on their platform, for profit. So I don't give a damn what's fair to them.

They won't get a penny from me ever again. I'll continue to find every way of accessing any content on that platform that I choose, without ads, and without paying them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ethics or reason. It is entirely, 100%, because fuck Google.

Fuck their ad network, fuck manifest 3, fuck their "integrity" checking, fuck all of this. I'd rather see it all burn to the ground than help them turn the internet into cable tv.

By default you DO need a connection to create or sign in to an account to complete the install process as it's currently presented

You don't "need" it, they lie to you and imply it's a requirement, but it isn't needed. It'll download updates, and finish the install just fine with local account.

It's a junk article, likely written by AI in part or entirely. Paragraphs and paragraphs of nothing just to reference a support article they found, all the while subtly implying a Windows account is a really good thing to use and everyone should use it.

Thr FN part is notable if you have a recent computer. A lot of laptops and keyboards ship out with media keys as the default on the top row now, and you must hold the FN key to use F10. Lot of people don't realize this and think Shift+F10 isn't working.

Possibly an easier option: you can let it connect to the internet, and then when it tells you to set up a Microsoft account, click on "Other sign in options" (or whatever it says beneath the text box). Then select "Domain Join instead". It'll let you use a local account, expecting you to join it to a domain later, then you just...don't join it to a domain.

Always be sure to use something like O&O ShutUp10 or Winaero Tweaker after you reach the desktop, so you can shut off all the bullshit, otherwise it will keep harassing you to make an account. I think you need to uninstall OneDrive too, to stop it hijacking the address bar in file explorer with constant nagging to set it up

Are you talking about the Support article, or this WindowsCentral article?

Because I would say that's true of both.

This article is heavily inflated/extended with pablum that could come straight from Copilot, and frankly, it seems more concerned with listing the benefits of a Microsoft account than reporting on the support article.

It's AI junk all the way down.

That would be pretty outrageous given that those sponsorships are direct income for the content creators, and Google has no say in it. That feature would be Google directly harming every single content creator to increase their own profits, while the creators get absolutely nothing.

And then Google sues the AI provider to stop them from doing that.

AI is not our tool, it is a corporate tool, for corporate profits, that they deign to let us dabble with, but only when it suits them.

Do I trust them? Sure, I guess, when it comes to privacy from other entities.

Do I trust that I will have privacy from Apple? Hell no. What does "local" even mean on an iCloud connected iOS device anymore? Because there's nothing on that phone Apple can't access remotely if they want to, and if any of the AI cache is backed up on iCloud, that's not local anymore.

Do I trust them with the data they're absolutely gathering? No, but I don't trust anyone with it. But I also think that data would be relatively safer with Apple than their competitors.

If Apple announced Recall? Apple wouldn't announce Recall, that's the whole point. Apple wouldn't be so brazen and stupid to push a tool that is so obviously invasive and so poorly implemented. Apple earned its trust by not making those mistakes.

But if they did decide to say fuck it and implement something like Recall, of course people would trust them. That's what trust means: consumers take them at their word. But if it's as bad as Microsoft's Recall, Apple would burn all that trust when people found out.

People don't believe Microsoft because they have long since burned any trust and good will for most of their consumers. They have proven time and time again they don't give a shit about users' wants or needs, and users have felt that. So when they announce Recall, they have no earned trust. No one believes their assurances. There's no good faith to cushion this. And it turns out everyone was right not to grant them that trust.

Does that mean I'd ever use an Apple device? Hell no. I value my privacy, but I value it on my terms, not Apple's, and I will never use a device that creates privacy through taking power from the user.