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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • This literally happened to Jeeps a month ago.

    “It should also be noted that ads are part of your contractual agreement with SiriusXM, but we are working on the frequency,” replied a Jeep Cares representative. “Thank you for your patience.”

    A Stellantis spokesperson told Fortune in a statement that “a temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”

    Fool me once, Stellantis…


  • While I honestly agree with the theme, the difference is that Meta wasn’t looking to share them with others, at least not in their original form.

    I can download terabytes of content to train my AI (hypothetically) and I don’t think anyone but my ISP (and not because of IP issues, more for being a disproportionate consumer of their resources) would notice me, including and whatever industry I was using content from. It’s the sharing that incurs the real damages.

    Admittedly, Generative AIs are basically going to “share” the content (with someone, likely for a fee) as well but not in its original form.



  • They should be held accountable.

    I would like everyone to be held accountable. How does letting Trump win help the country? Is he going to hold them accountable for anything you’ve listed?

    This sweeping under the rug because of “blue no matter who” mentality shares more similarity with right wing extremities than with normal people.

    Keeping openly fascist tyrants out of power isn’t sweeping it under the rug.

    You act like preventing neoliberal dems from winning an election will “teach them a lesson” or “hold them accountable”. It won’t. Every time a Republican wins an election it pushes democrats further to the right in an attempt to be the reasonable centrists. Look at the last several decades and tell me that isn’t what happened. Corporate Democrats don’t get more brave and try to capture the leftist’s vote, they cower and try to claw more independents as the Republicans push more to the right.

    The answer isn’t to not vote or vote third party. The answer is to get involved and fucking make them more left. Be the third party and start local, protest, make your voice heard.


  • Fundraisers and charities, when you have a lot money, are rarely acts of charity. They tend to be PR campaigns and power plays.

    Honestly, even when the acts have good intentions, they are often quite damaging. The involvement of the wealthy in charity is very similar to their involvement in politics. Their wealth buys influence and gives them a disproportionate say that allows them to ignore and overrule the will of the people and sometimes even reality.

    For example, look into the impact of Bill Gates’s “acts of charity” in the education space. He poured money into charter programs that negatively impacted public education. Later studies showed that his programs were not particularly effective.

    Let’s say, hypothetically, that a very rich person is convinced by some charlatan that they found the a means to produce free energy. The wealthy person throws tons of money at the idea. How many talented people will be taken from other legit programs because the paycheck at Bullshit Energy Nonprofit is better? These rich people are successful and think they know bestr. Their money ensures they get treated like experts because money makes things happen whether or not those things are helpful.


  • Market socialism can be distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because most models of market socialism propose complete and self-regulating systems, unlike the mixed economy. While social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies, and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.

    I mind if you are simultaneously linking to a Wikipedia article defining it as being completely self regulated, lacking any form of social welfare.

    Capitalism’s problem is that, ultimately, it’s “compete” or die because you need to work to afford to live. I’m not necessarily advocating for the nationalization of all industries or a command economy. There can be competition, but the playing field needs to be leveled first. Workers owning the enterprise as a collective is a step in the right direction but that still leaves the door open for “B2B” exploitation when an enterprise’s failure can mean its workers now cannot afford to live.





  • My point is that people like Trump aren’t looking to help the weak. Trump is looking to exploit them. The only “problems” be wants to fix are barriers to more easily exploit them.

    By blaming the minorities, he creates a scapegoat for his base and others to blame for their problems. This distracts them from the fact that him and people like him are the cause of their problems.

    Sure, some of them are racist but I honestly think most of them are just hurt, angry, scared, ignorant, and desperate. If they had more exposure to minorities most of them would change their beliefs.



  • I think what people are feeling is what has been often described as enshitification. The definition of that term as given by its creator doesn’t match the context in which I see it increasingly used. However, I think that the phenomenon that people often use it to describe is what is killing consumer confidence.

    If the economy is actually serving consumers, then those at the top are making less profits. This is unacceptable. They have to keep making money. They have to keep increasing how much money they make. They have to keep increasing the rate at which they increase the money they make. If they’re not, then they are stagnating according to investors. This is incompatible with the survival of normal people. Growth cannot be infinite.

    So the companies consolidate and find corners to cut and we absolutely feel it even if it doesn’t show in the numbers. They find new and creative ways to create “shrinkflation”. They don’t have to literally shrink the product - that’s too obvious. They can instead alter the formula, find cheaper low quality components, squeeze their workers harder or outsource labor, stand behind their products just a little less by updating wording to sound the same but technically promise less, add a little friction to their warranty process, hedge against inevitable future failure with no class action clauses or forced arbitration in their terms…

    It feels like every company is doing something like that these days… and if they aren’t, they are being abused or bought by a company that is.

    How can confidence then not be down?



  • As someone who is trying to teach themselves a few new things this year by diving to projects using them… I seriously, seriously feel you. It honestly makes me question whether I should just abandon each project I start, both professional and personal.

    All the relevant hits are from years and/or 2+ versions of whatever ago or forum posts with dead links to an alleged solution.

    I feel like in the past I could just dive into something and search my way through it. Now I feel like that era is over and I question whether it’s me, my niche project idea, the disappearing community, or just the search engines.


  • Sadly, old Google doesn’t work either thanks to the efforts of SEO and the AI generated garbage.

    The problem with search is that the motives of those being searched aren’t to provide you with the most helpful answer. The motives are to get you to visit their website then stay/click/buy as much as possible. They’ll tailor their content to match whatever algorithm the engine is using.

    That’s why Google’s new plan is to collect all of the information ahead of time and skip the “visit other websites” step. Then you can stay/click/buy on their website as much as possible.

    Seriously though. Just skip all this nonsense, you selfish piece of shit, and open your wallet so the hungry corpos can feast on its contents - they have poor, innocent, starving shareholders to feed… you monster.