So, here’s the crux of the problem.

The internet as it is now and as it has existed for the vast majority of its life is an ad supported system.

The ad money is drying up because of several things:

AI is taking away click throughs to websites meaning they don’t get ad click throughs or impressions. They run ads to keep the lights on and they are being starved of the engagement that ads pay for.

People have less spending power than they have ever had. Ads don’t mean anything if people can’t afford products.

There is a pivot to trying to get rich people to buy goods and services but even though they have most of the wealth they don’t need most goods and services. This means the best way to get them to spend money is to have them invest to grow that money.

Ad companies require people to buy the goods and services that they are advertising in order to continue to pay for ads and ad aggregation.

A large subset of the populace really does hate ads and also wants things for free. They do not want to be told that nothing is free and ads are how a lot of the internet makes money.

The alternative to ad supported internet is data supported internet but people really really hate data brokers and data brokers mainly sell or offer up the use of data to three groups. Other data brokers/ad aggregators, the government/military industrial complex, and criminals.

So naturally companies that used to sustain themselves on ad aggregation now do so by pursuing government contracts. Because the line must go up.

They really dropped the ball by just not being prepared for the time sensitivity of such a situation and clearly not having the technical skills or equipment to properly investigate it.

I have questions about why they didn’t subpoena the app maker for any data that they might have on images generated for a paid account.

I also have questions about the fact that if the kid who allegedly created the images had his tech investigated they didn’t charge him with deletion of evidence. Because I strongly suspect that either he or his parents deleted the evidence given that he claims they took his phone.

The school district should have called the police and not told anyone until the police had seized assets to verify that the claims were real and the evidence couldn’t be deleted to save face or protect the perpetrators.

They tried to treat this like regular bullying (which they are already bad at handling), and it’s very clear it’s not the same.

Immediately my thought was “oh, is it tea time?”

I’ll drink water in the middle of the night by the light of my phone screen like the forces that be intended.

You can still send live baby chicks.

I was thinking more along the lines of either obscuring system clock or changing it entirely as far as the apps or web browser can see. Say, making it so that it matches the time zone of your VPN.

I have a question about hiding system clock information from all browsers as well. Because this is a sanity check more and more apps and browsers are doing to disuade people from using a VPN.

I think you are on the right track with the idea that some work places (and industries) are more prone to use it, but I wonder what subset of the population work in those places/industries.

And I don’t care if farms are factory or not. I think most people could care less. What they want is convenience, environmental protections, regulations etc.

I think the people screaming about factory farms don’t know anything about farming and they think factory farms are forcing regular farmers out of business. What they don’t realize is the vast majority of regular farmers are well off. When you or I file for bankruptcy chances are we lose everything. A farm files for bankruptcy will more often than not continue operating.

It may depend on the iteration you had. I remember very clearly that the touch interface was pretty good for a resistive touch screen, but I found icons and the interface to be made for ants and that was back when I had better than 20/20 vision. I also do remember that apps were pretty sparse.

I think the interface was better than Palms interface and Blackberry’s but the iPhone in particular had a better easier to navigate UI, and android (even though they took a little bit to catch up), also generally had a better interface.

I feel like if you were a windows user it was fine. Other than that it just wasn’t that great. But they didn’t even try to compete once they got actual competition.

Edit: My experience with Windows phone was from the Windows phone 5 interface (back when it was similar to the desktop client before they did their tile touch iteration to make it more like windows 8).

So in fairness, it did get a little better but that was pretty much right before MS gave up on it entirely.

Windows phones were a good product with a UI problem. They could have changed up the UI and been fine. Instead they let Apple and Google and Huawei, LG, Motorola, and every other phone company eat their lunch. They gave up with a token resistance.

Lol. No before they come up with this dumb ass idea, and hell no, now that they’ve decided to go ahead with it.

The problem right now is they were sold and price such that they were less expensive than a high end gaming PC. Now they’re getting into the price of a gaming PC (with the recent increases) at a time when people have less disposable income. They were always for people who could afford their price point. Right now those same people likely can’t afford their price point (PS5 launch price was $500) and usually at this point in their life cycle they get discounted. Instead they have gone up in price at a time when people just don’t have the money for them. The game prices have been increasing as well (PS5 now retails at $100 more than launch price halfway through what’s assumed to be a 10 year life cycle).

These prices will likely continue to rise (because consoles are manufactured and sold on such thin profit margins) as the components to keep manufacturing them continue to get more expensive.

If/when the bubble pops we’ll see if they stay at high prices or get discounted but as of right now the article is correct. It’s hard to be relevant when you’re pricing your users out of buying your product because you’re being priced out on the component end.

This is the reason I didn’t try it with my surface.

Banning reddit mods was not something I had on my Bingo card. Damn.

Solutions have been floated in the comics community that would allow us to “tag” content by placing the author of the comic in the title so that people could filter out content they don’t want by using the filters Lemmy does have.

I understand why it wasn’t adopted but it would solve this problem as well as the problem of indexing and prevent reposts of the same content.

Either way, people are allowed to like things. They’re allowed to dislike things. But messing it up for everyone over the trivial and subjective idea that someone doesn’t like something that doesn’t hurt anyone is I think what a lot of the comments are calling out.

There are actualities where artists are doing real harm and those have valid criticism (looking at you JKR). But the dislike this artist often seems to get can be equated to the hate that Nickelback get. Like. I’m not presenting them as the best band to ever have lived. Not by a longshot. But they aren’t like… Terrible? And music taste is subjective so what are people dunking on them hardcore for?

That is to say it seems like hating pizza cake is trending and that’s why so many people have to tell you ~they’re vegan~ they hate her art.

Sorry to the vegans for the joke. Y’all are alright. I just don’t share your distaste for meat and milk.

I would have picked Katie Porter.

When you phrase your opinion as “I don’t like this so you shouldn’t get to enjoy it or see it” that’s a problem. In fact I think that’s THE problem that’s being called out here. Do you go into a restaurant and specifically call the cook out of the kitchen so you can announce to everyone that you think the food is bad? Because that’s what it seems like.

They are talking about “I don’t like this artist, but to each their own” comments. They aren’t even talking about valid criticism of the author (I see some actual valid criticism here that I’m fine with).

I am not even a pizza cake fan. I have no skin in this race. If I never saw another one of her comics again it would not matter to me at all.

Nebula. It’s got a paid sub though.

There’s also Peertube. I think both are worth checking out.

I don’t think highlighting that criminals are using AI to make their crimes more effective is “using it as AI hate”.

Parents (and the general public) do need to understand the dangers of new technology regardless of whether you like it or don’t.

Not by itself.

You have to understand that the original headline I saw said something to the effect that the EU was trying to enact a law to close the loophole of VPN’s for age verification workaround.

So while this headline is also problematic, the first headline was worse.