Sorry, what part of “Let the Broligarchy do anything it wants!” didn’t y’all understand? /s

To quote someone from HN:

There is nothing special about the Troubled Engineer’s setup. It’s mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube. On Android, there is also NewPipe that offers “free Youtube Premium” (play in the background and download).

It’s really just uBlock Origin, a DNS blocker, and a few other small tweaks for YT. I use NewPipe on Android and Invidious instances. At this point I only see ads when setting up a VM and open the browser for the first time and forget I need to install uBO.

Ages ago - they tried to make it all these flairs and sparkles and whatever. Maybe it’s back lately?

The day they got rid of reddit gold and started cash grabbing hard was the day the writing was on the wall.

I expect this was in the terms of service, though

While I expect the same, there’s also just a reasonablility standard. If Meta and Google updated their TOS to say that users agreed to become human chattle slaves to mine cobalt and forfeit their rights, no court (…right, SCOTUS?..right?) would uphold that. A TOS is a contract, but it’s mostly for the protection of companies from liability. Takign active steps to brick someone’s device over the device not connecting to it’s C2 server (the company had zero evidence this was done intentionally and a router firewall misconfiguration could just have easily done the same thing), is IMO something that should result in a lawsuit.

IMO “Smart” refers to the lawyers that got paid to write a 900-page TOS that lets a company do whatever they want.

The fact that this isn’t considered outright fraud is disturbing. This person OWNS the device, yes? They’re not leasing it.

FFS, this should be illegal.

Came here to say the same thing.

How about I feign surprise? Does that work, EU?

Oh no.

…Anyway

Of course not! That’s crazy.

If all the regional neighbors also got dragged in then that would mean that when the US went into Iraq that Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia…

Oh, never mind.

The first one is like Mister, the second one is like “that, uh…”

Gotta save them for Venezuela and Nigeria! That oil ain’t gonna liberate itself!

As bullish as I am on Sodium-ion batteries, only very recently did researchers figure out how to boost the charge capacity, making any attempted commercial models in use so far nice, but not the final form where normies are buying them from Home Depot.

The Sehol car mentioned is a niche configuration of a common model, because the Li-ion model goes farther between charges. Other than the launch in 2023, and articles recycling the same info, find me 1 article that doesn’t use words like “could” or “will” or “might” about sales of this model? Same thing for the BYD Seagull with Na-ion batteries. It’s all greenwashing news where if you dig at it even slightly, you see how not real any of it is.

It’s closer than it was 5 years ago, but it’s still not a “revolution” by any means.

Oh, hey, what’s this article about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory that stupidity enabled Nazis?

Hur hur… Bonhoeffer. You’re mom’s a Bone Hoeffer.

I’ve been saying the same thing.

The 2008 housing bubble was predicated on cheap lending. It was all debt. It was massive amounts of toxic debt sold around Wall Street, like using Trump Coin or counterfeit cash used to buy a house.

The vast majority of what’s happening here is not debt. Sure, some, but very little. Even the OpenAI AMD stock swap thing is swapping a gamble on stocks worth real money, not debt.

IMO the first sub-bubble to pop will be all the time and effort wasted on “Startups” that are nothing more than a couple people acting as a wrapper for an AI agent. That’s not really going to impact the economy too much on its face, but suddenly a lot of people are going to go from being “entrepreneurs” to being truly unemployed.

Edit: Also, just saw this gem, and THIS is how you get a supercharged 2008 repeat, bank deregulation and $2.6 trillion in lending. Which is exactly how we got to 2008’s subprime lending.

Same, I used to have some Caliber extension that stripped DRM. Last used it 2-3 years ago and worked for Adobe DRM at least.

I like to go check out the book I want from the library, and when it gives me the Amazon DRM version I just go search for the epub version online and download that. IIRC, completely legal as I have legal access to the book…somehow.

Oh wow, that’s actually a big deal. You should be proud of that!

And seriously, they go from Net Neutrality filing to racing at full speed to a bot garden cesspool. Ugh.

There’s a robust reddit advertising ecosystem that exists. While much of that starts with standard “buy an ad that doesn’t scream that its an ad” stuff, things like doing an AMA or engaging with users or trying to co-opt user content are all in the mix.

Mods who can approve posts from advertising accounts, block or remove criticism, and even block posts from competitors can gatekeep messaging could, if they were dickbags, stand to make a decent amount of money for it if all the communications comes from sidechannels. /r/hailcorportate always sot of found the line between astroturf advertising and genuine brand worship by idiots, and it’s intentionally messy so it’s hard to tell what’s what.

Even buying and selling of old accounts is a thing. Buying and selling of upvotes from bot accounts, etc. The whole platform is manipulated unless it’s a small niche sub.

See? And now you can wear that “former” as a badge of honor.