Akir's recent activity

  1. Comment on Amazon’s promotion of ‘Melania’ has critics questioning its motives (Amazon has spent 35M on marketing on top of its 40M budget) in ~movies

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I assume it just got downgraded because the page says 6 for me.

    I assume it just got downgraded because the page says 6 for me.

  2. Comment on What's something you've moved on from? in ~talk

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I used to be someone who ate a big portion of meat at every meal. But somehow I don’t miss it today, and I haven’t for quite a while. My husband, unfortunately, did not go veg with me, and he...

    I used to be someone who ate a big portion of meat at every meal. But somehow I don’t miss it today, and I haven’t for quite a while.

    My husband, unfortunately, did not go veg with me, and he regularly eats meat. I haven’t told him this, but I find it really unattractive when he eats meat-heavy meals. Last night he had fried chicken and watching him with those bones going in and out of his mouth with the cartilage and muscle fibers sticking out was just plain gross. I still love him more than anything though.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on What's something you've moved on from? in ~talk

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I think the thing that actively drives me away from tech the most these days is the realization that most companies just want to sell me the same shit I already own, but with whatever tech fad is...

    I think the thing that actively drives me away from tech the most these days is the realization that most companies just want to sell me the same shit I already own, but with whatever tech fad is currently in place. For instance, a while ago the thing was selling kitchen appliances with Bluetooth radios to make them “smart” - usually by combining them with a smartphone app that has some sort of subscription. This year they are doing the same thing but it includes some sort of AI component.

    This wouldn’t be quite as bad if this were the 80s and they actually had to put a lot of effort into engineering these solutions, but today’s technologies have become trivial to implement. We are living in the post-arduino world, where even I could implement most of the things that these devices are doing. Combine this with so-called “tech journalism” which is filled to the brim with sycophants who will love everything they come across. If it’s a fantasy product that will never hit the consumer market, the journalists will believe that it will, and if it’s a demonstration shows that it’s terrible, well, that just means that it “has potential” and they’ll have a working one “soon”.

    Don’t even get me started on companies who are trying to rebrand themselves as “tech companies” as a transparent money grab.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Matt Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the 'plot three or four times in the dialogue' because viewers are on 'their phones while they're watching' in ~movies

    Akir
    Link Parent
    They do have good stuff from time to time. The problem is the signal to noise ratio combined with the general discoverability of those good shows. Sometimes I will get recommended them but I’ll...

    They do have good stuff from time to time. The problem is the signal to noise ratio combined with the general discoverability of those good shows. Sometimes I will get recommended them but I’ll also be recommended a bunch of slop shows that I don’t care about.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on Matt Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the 'plot three or four times in the dialogue' because viewers are on 'their phones while they're watching' in ~movies

    Akir
    Link Parent
    In retrospect maybe we should have seen their recommendation algorithm as the first sign of their penchant for ruthless optimization and the removal of that algorithm as a sign of the end.

    In retrospect maybe we should have seen their recommendation algorithm as the first sign of their penchant for ruthless optimization and the removal of that algorithm as a sign of the end.

    10 votes

  6. Comment on Do you have American healthcare? Do you pay for a gym membership? Perhaps you can pay less and get more! in ~health

    Akir
    Link
    Unfortunately Kaiser in my region only offers a discounted rate on ClassPass, which gives you access to classes instead of gyms. It’s more expensive for less access. I’m very happy with my Planet...

    Unfortunately Kaiser in my region only offers a discounted rate on ClassPass, which gives you access to classes instead of gyms. It’s more expensive for less access.

    I’m very happy with my Planet Fitness Black Card membership. It lets me go to any PF location in the world and perhaps more importantly they have a “spa” which features hydro massage beds, massage chairs, red light therapy, and even tanning (which I will never use). The massage really helps with my recovery and has become an instrumental part of my routine.

    I get all of that for $25 a month and cancelling is just a matter of telling the people at the front desk that I want to cancel. They have a bad reputation online but in my experience the gym is fairly nice and most of the complaints don’t seem to carry water. All of my complaints are fairly minor and for the most of them revolve around some annoying members, which every gym will have.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Matt Damon says Netflix wants movies to restate the 'plot three or four times in the dialogue' because viewers are on 'their phones while they're watching' in ~movies

    Akir
    Link
    Honestly, I’m kind of amazed that people are still watching Netflix at this point. Everything they have been making for the past few years - at least since the pandemic - has been bland and...

    Honestly, I’m kind of amazed that people are still watching Netflix at this point. Everything they have been making for the past few years - at least since the pandemic - has been bland and boring. At this point in time the only shows I have been interested in are the handful of Anime they’ve got exclusive rights to and the occasional Knives Out movie. I did also watch the finale for Stranger Things, and it actually had an episode that wasn’t bad. But then it had an ending so stupid that it actually made me angry. It turns out that the good episode was from when they brought in Frank Darabont.

    29 votes

  8. Comment on RCS — SMS via the internet — is good, but it doesn't matter in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I’m not going to bother explaining why your privacy is important but I will say that I have to assume that you’re living somewhere in Europe, because American privacy laws are essentially...

    I’m not going to bother explaining why your privacy is important but I will say that I have to assume that you’re living somewhere in Europe, because American privacy laws are essentially nonexistent, especially outside of the state of California.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on RCS — SMS via the internet — is good, but it doesn't matter in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Honestly I find it preferable to being forced into creating an account with Meta.

    Honestly I find it preferable to being forced into creating an account with Meta.

    9 votes

  10. Comment on Amazon is closing its Fresh grocery, Go convenience stores in the US in ~finance

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Amazon Fresh stores, to me, were a really weird place to go. It was the only grocery store owned by a big corporation that didn’t care about hiding the fact that they were run by soulless number...

    Amazon Fresh stores, to me, were a really weird place to go. It was the only grocery store owned by a big corporation that didn’t care about hiding the fact that they were run by soulless number crunchers. The last time I went out there the dozen or so people I saw in the aisle there were maybe two or three customers. The rest were people either stocking the shelves or picking for orders.

    I don’t have good memories of Whole Foods Market, and I don’t even remember if I’d been in one before Amazon bought it, but it seems pretty clear to me that the management is basically turning them into Amazon fulfillment centers just like their Amazon Fresh stores were. So this move seems less of a failure of a concept and more of a universalization of business operations.

    3 votes

  11. Comment on RCS — SMS via the internet — is good, but it doesn't matter in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    It’s pointless to blame the issues on Apple. My point is not that Apple does a bad job, but the entire system fails us because there is literally zero alternatives because RCS is a closed system...

    It’s pointless to blame the issues on Apple. My point is not that Apple does a bad job, but the entire system fails us because there is literally zero alternatives because RCS is a closed system that is pay-to-play. RCS may not be a monolith like WhatsApp or WeChat or whatever but it’s still essentially a cartel forcing us into a less than ideal situation.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on RCS — SMS via the internet — is good, but it doesn't matter in ~tech

    Akir
    Link
    Personally I find that RCS on iOS is very annoying. I have precisely one person whom I regularly exchange text messages with, my husband, and about 5-10% of the time RCS messages fail to send....

    Personally I find that RCS on iOS is very annoying. I have precisely one person whom I regularly exchange text messages with, my husband, and about 5-10% of the time RCS messages fail to send. I'll get a notification that it failed to send and I'll manually resend it and it will work. Why is Google and the carriers trying to work with a system that is so unreliable? You can't even say that this is a problem with carrier interoperability because we are both on the same carrier.

    I'd much prefer that everyone moved to open systems rather than ones that are controlled by giant corporations who exist primarily to extract money from you. We have Signal, we have Matrix, and we've had XMPP for decades now.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Where to buy mp3s legally? in ~music

    Akir
    Link Parent
    I don’t know how they are now, but all of the music I bought from Amazon in the past was pretty terrible quality. These day I see offering music downloads in only MP3 to be a bad sign. Pretty much...

    I don’t know how they are now, but all of the music I bought from Amazon in the past was pretty terrible quality.

    These day I see offering music downloads in only MP3 to be a bad sign. Pretty much every outlet these days are dealing with either lossless or at least more advanced audio encoding formats.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on German chain Aldi bets big on cheaper groceries as US shoppers feel squeezed in ~finance

    Akir
    Link Parent
    Aldi is actually one of the reasons why I'm convinced that major grocers are making their money exploiting the population who live around them rather than competing for their business. All of...

    Aldi is actually one of the reasons why I'm convinced that major grocers are making their money exploiting the population who live around them rather than competing for their business. All of those mergers cannot have been a good thing.

    Eggs are almost certainly a loss leader for them, though. That's why they have signs saying you can only buy so many at a time.

    18 votes

  15. Comment on German chain Aldi bets big on cheaper groceries as US shoppers feel squeezed in ~finance

  16. Comment on Actual underrated films of the 2020s so far in ~movies

    Akir
    Link
    The only movie I can think of is The Life of Chuck. It didn’t really get a wide theatrical release and I can understand that it’s not exactly a mass appeal kind of film, but I really enjoyed the...

    The only movie I can think of is The Life of Chuck. It didn’t really get a wide theatrical release and I can understand that it’s not exactly a mass appeal kind of film, but I really enjoyed the filmmaking and the simplicity of the message. Plus it has an extended song and dance sequence that succeeds in feeling spontaneous while also having thematic meaning. A+, would recommend.

    Can’t think of a single other film, though. This decade hasn’t been a good one for the medium.

    8 votes

  17. Comment on Make everything okay in ~life

    Akir
    Link Parent
    It says to check your settings for objective reality, which I think is the problem. Objective reality doesn’t exist!

    It says to check your settings for objective reality, which I think is the problem. Objective reality doesn’t exist!

    4 votes

  18. Comment on When buttons were the hottest new thing in radio in ~tech

    Akir
    Link Parent
    They were also built like that because some of them were actually there to physically move parts of the player. Specifically the play button was linked to the magnetic head assembly - the part...

    They were also built like that because some of them were actually there to physically move parts of the player. Specifically the play button was linked to the magnetic head assembly - the part that turns magnetism into audio - to make it physically reach into the housing to touch the tape. That’s why you had to press both the play and record buttons if you wanted to record audio to a tape.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Akir
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Why didn’t anyone tell me I was responding to the wrong comment? This comment was about Jujitsu Kaisen here….

    I was talking about the movie, specifically. The guy went from “some guy” to “some guy who has a sword and a nuclear bomb” to someone who can improvise a deus ex machina.

    If season 2 becomes more subtle it might be a good thing. But as things are I’m kind of annoyed that all of the character development seems to be one step away from being entirely off screen.

    Why didn’t anyone tell me I was responding to the wrong comment? This comment was about Jujitsu Kaisen here….

    1 vote

  20. Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    Akir
    Link
    As part of my “homework” given to me by my husband I just watched Jujutsu Kaisen Zero. God, I didn’t know that it was possible to make a Shonen battle anime movie so boring. Protag-kun has a...

    As part of my “homework” given to me by my husband I just watched Jujutsu Kaisen Zero. God, I didn’t know that it was possible to make a Shonen battle anime movie so boring. Protag-kun has a completely nonsensical personality and his power-up moment literally comes from out of nowhere. You get the sense that he should have gotten there from training since they do show him going through some, but he does godlike things out of nowhere that completely break my understanding of how sorcery works in this world. I thought that abilities were supposed to be innate qualities determined by birth, yet he somehow manifests cursed speech.

    Maybe the movie explains why protag-kun wasn’t in the first season (which I just finished), but I was so bored toward the end that I literally fell asleep two hours earlier than bedtime.

    I mentioned in a past topic that I was only watching the series for the animation, but I feel that the action was actually slightly worse than the series has been. The quality of the individual frames - at least the ones that linger - seem to have gone way up, so they probably spent a lot of time to make it more “movie-worthy”, but I personally think it had the opposite effect.

    Sadly, since I told my husband about the animation being the only reason why I watched the show, he told me that I have to watch season 2 as that is, in his words, the season where they really start to abuse and overwork the animators. Yay?

    3 votes