joplin's recent activity

  1. Comment on Hollywood crews vote to authorize a strike for better pay and working conditions in ~movies

    joplin
    Link Parent
    And then comes the gaslighting. Awesome. Thanks.

    And then comes the gaslighting. Awesome. Thanks.

  2. Comment on Hollywood crews vote to authorize a strike for better pay and working conditions in ~movies

    joplin
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I figured some would see it that way. I'd like to see these types of organizations take hold, but they are holding themselves back by being corrupt. I wanted to call it out in the hopes it...

    Yeah, I figured some would see it that way. I'd like to see these types of organizations take hold, but they are holding themselves back by being corrupt. I wanted to call it out in the hopes it could be remedied, but it's clear that the audience here is not receptive to that reality, so I will not speak of it again here. In fact, this whole website seems to be becoming intolerant of any thought that isn't extremely far left (which, frankly, I've considered myself for most of my life), so I'll probably just reduce my use.

  3. Comment on Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    I think it's because they don't directly sell their products to consumers. Their customers are other companies, so knowing that "big company X got screwed over by Oracle" doesn't get as many...

    I think it's because they don't directly sell their products to consumers. Their customers are other companies, so knowing that "big company X got screwed over by Oracle" doesn't get as many clicks as "Jane and Joe Schmoe got screwed over by Facebook when all they wanted to do was look at pictures of their grandkids".

    10 votes

  4. Comment on Hollywood crews vote to authorize a strike for better pay and working conditions in ~movies

    joplin
    Link Parent
    If you read the other post that I mention, it was about how unions in the US purport to be helping workers, but in fact use their power to bully individuals and organizations in ways unrelated to...

    If you read the other post that I mention, it was about how unions in the US purport to be helping workers, but in fact use their power to bully individuals and organizations in ways unrelated to helping workers. I was lamenting the fact that I want to support better conditions for workers, but have yet to find an organization in the US working towards that that isn't also corrupt.

  5. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~news

    joplin
    Link
    This "new report" reads like a press release from the group that's claiming they solved the case. They mention some supposedly compelling evidence, but don't actually show it. Given the nature of...

    This "new report" reads like a press release from the group that's claiming they solved the case. They mention some supposedly compelling evidence, but don't actually show it. Given the nature of this particular case, I'm going to withhold judgement until someone qualified has confirmed what they claim.

    14 votes

  6. Comment on What’s driving the huge US rent spike? in ~finance

    joplin
    Link Parent
    How is that possible? If the market didn't value that work, why would they be paying for it? Why wouldn't someone else come along and offer the same work for less money? I imagine it's because...

    But they get paid far in excess of the value of that work.

    How is that possible? If the market didn't value that work, why would they be paying for it? Why wouldn't someone else come along and offer the same work for less money? I imagine it's because part of the work that you missed is the work that went into getting the capital to purchase the house in the first place.

    This is like the old story of hiring a designer to make a new logo. The CEO asks the designer to make a new logo. They whip something out in 5 minutes. The CEO asks why the company paid so much for only 5 minutes of work? The designer replies that company didn't. They paid for 30 years of gaining experience plus 5 minutes of work. If they wanted to pay for only 5 minutes of work, they could have hired a struggling student.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on What’s driving the huge US rent spike? in ~finance

    joplin
    Link Parent
    Nobody's claiming it's difficult or challenging. Is that a requirement for ownership? My point is that none of the people involved in "providing a house" (by the GP's definition) would provide it...

    Nobody's claiming it's difficult or challenging. Is that a requirement for ownership?

    My point is that none of the people involved in "providing a house" (by the GP's definition) would provide it if it weren't for the person paying, so to say that the owner of the house doesn't "provide" it is nonsensical.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What’s driving the huge US rent spike? in ~finance

    joplin
    Link Parent
    I don't understand what you mean. The people who designs it are architects. But a design is not a house. You need materials to make it out of. (And I'm pretty sure you can download free designs...

    The people who design and build the house, and the people who maintain it.

    I don't understand what you mean.

    The people who designs it are architects. But a design is not a house. You need materials to make it out of. (And I'm pretty sure you can download free designs for houses off the internet. At the least, you could probably look up some designs at your local library.)

    The people who construct the house are generally construction workers of some sort. They do not provide or pay for the materials, they just put them together. The people who maintain the house are paid by the owner to maintain it. They do not do it out of the goodness of their hearts and they also did not pay for or provide the materials to make it.

    The owner paid for the materials and they were provided by usually a lumber yard, a brick making company, etc. But they only provided them because the owner paid for them.

    All of these people contributed to the house together, but none of it would have happened if the owner hadn't compensated them all to make it happen. Who would compensate the architects, construction workers, lumber yard, and brick makers if people didn't provide money to build houses?

    10 votes

  9. Comment on What’s driving the huge US rent spike? in ~finance

    joplin
    Link Parent
    Wait, what? Who "provides housing" if not the owner of the house?

    They act as middlemen between people who need housing and maintenance, and people who provide housing and maintainence

    Wait, what? Who "provides housing" if not the owner of the house?

    8 votes

  10. Comment on Hollywood crews vote to authorize a strike for better pay and working conditions in ~movies

    joplin
    Link
    Oh boy. So this gets at what I was talking about with unions using their power to bully people in the thread on McDonalds in Denmark. I have a friend who is a writer/director/producer in...

    Oh boy. So this gets at what I was talking about with unions using their power to bully people in the thread on McDonalds in Denmark.

    I have a friend who is a writer/director/producer in Hollywood. She's not famous or anything, just an independent filmmaker. She put her life savings into making a feature film. She pounded the pavement and did a lot of hard work to get investors to invest in her film. It has a few moderately well known actors in it, but no Brad Pitts or Angelina Jolies or anything. It's not some Marvel movie with a budget in the billions.

    She insisted on using union workers because she believes in workers rights. She shows up for filming one day and the union rep tells they owe an addition 6 figures to work. She's confused and shows some documentation that everything's been paid up per their contract. He tells her, essentially, that's too bad. If you want all these people to do your filming, you need to pay us this additional money. She threatens to sue, but they tell her go ahead, because if she does, nobody in town will ever work with her again because they'll make sure everyone knows her name. She was eventually able to get some additional money from some investors, but she can't ever tell anyone what happened or she'll be out of a job.

    I don't know whether it was this same union in the article, but it gets back to what I was saying about unions here in the US being fairly corrupt. I'd love to see the system work better, but when they're actively shaking down the people who are trying to help them, it makes it pretty hard.

    (Full Disclosure: I invested a small amount of money (a few thousand dollars) in this project. I was not involved with these particular negotiations, and didn't hear about them until a few years after the incident happened.)

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I ended up purchasing Paprika Recipe Manager specifically to deal with this issue. It has a built-in browser (at least on iOS) where you can enter a URL and it extracts the recipe without...

    Yeah, I ended up purchasing Paprika Recipe Manager specifically to deal with this issue. It has a built-in browser (at least on iOS) where you can enter a URL and it extracts the recipe without you having to deal with paragraphs of unrelated text, pop-overs asking you to subscribe, etc. It's glorious. I will never go to a recipe page without it again.

    8 votes

  12. Comment on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are all down in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    I mean, if you're not willing to put in a little effort to help them along, why should they put in the effort to change to a different messenger app?

    I mean, if you're not willing to put in a little effort to help them along, why should they put in the effort to change to a different messenger app?

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    Oh man, that is both hilarious and awful! Yeah, it seems like a form of evolution. As consumers become more savvy and search engines learn to detect gaming of their metrics, they change. So the...

    Oh man, that is both hilarious and awful!

    I feel like I'm encountering increasing amounts of this -- like the internet is getting more and more polluted with these garbage sites that look exactly like what I want only because they're machine generated for every different topic under the sun.

    Yeah, it seems like a form of evolution. As consumers become more savvy and search engines learn to detect gaming of their metrics, they change. So the sites then change to compensate, etc. It's like we need some sort of Captcha before websites are allowed to be indexed by search engines or something. They should have to prove they're legitimate sites written by actual humans before we allow them to be presented to end users.

    5 votes

  14. Comment on Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    I have a subscription to AppleNews which has a lot of good sources (once you block crap like NewsWeek and People), but even some of them seem to have this problem.

    I have a subscription to AppleNews which has a lot of good sources (once you block crap like NewsWeek and People), but even some of them seem to have this problem.

    1 vote

  15. Comment on Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    That's certainly what it feels like! I guess once they get their click, they've achieved their objective so it doesn't matter if the content is any good.

    That's certainly what it feels like! I guess once they get their click, they've achieved their objective so it doesn't matter if the content is any good.

    3 votes

  16. Comment on Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read in ~tech

    joplin
    Link Parent
    I mostly do, but I like to read one-off articles that I find on places like Tildes or Hackernews because they often are about subjects I wouldn't get elsewhere. This one will probably be reported...

    I mostly do, but I like to read one-off articles that I find on places like Tildes or Hackernews because they often are about subjects I wouldn't get elsewhere. This one will probably be reported on by more reputable sources, but I didn't think to look at the website it was linking to. I just clicked on it.

    That said, I specifically avoid the New York Times because just about every other article linked to from other sites seems to be to them. I don't want to get all of my news from a single source. (Also, I really dislike their business. Even though their paywall doesn't affect me, the way they treat their paying users is abhorrent, requiring them to make a phone call to cancel their subscription, and just generally making it impossible to get through to them.)

    2 votes

  17. Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read

    ~tech Ask
    I've recently experienced something multiple times and wanted to see if others are seeing this. I'm seeing various news articles where the first few paragraphs basically say the exact some...

    I've recently experienced something multiple times and wanted to see if others are seeing this. I'm seeing various news articles where the first few paragraphs basically say the exact some information over and over again 3 or 4 times in slightly different ways. My most recent experience was this article about some hackers selling information on billions of Facebook users.

    The article starts off with the title "Personal Information of More Than 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Sold on Hacker Forum". Straightforward and to the point. Next we get this paragraph in bold:

    The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users is being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally.

    Next is a bullet list of the highlights of the incident:

    Highlights:

    • Data scrapers are selling sensitive personal data on 1.5 billion Facebook users.
    • Data contains users’: name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID.
    • Data appears to be authentic.
    • Personal data obtained through web scraping.
    • Data can be utilized for phishing and account takeover attacks.
    • Sold data claimed to be new from 2021.

    This rehashes the number (1.5 billion) and place (Facebook), but does contain new information like what was leaked, and some unsubstantiated claims about whether it's authentic and how it was obtained.

    The next paragraph repeats the 1.5 billion number a fourth time, and repeats that the data is available on a hacker forum. Two paragraphs later, we get another list of bullet points which are identical to the 2nd bullet point above; namely that the info contains:

    According to the forum poster, the data provided contains the following personal information of Facebook users:

    • Name
    • Email
    • Location
    • Gender
    • Phone number
    • User ID

    At this point I stop reading because I mistakenly think that I'm re-reading the same paragraph over and over again. It's an incredibly unpleasant experience.

    Is anyone else seeing this? I've been seeing this not just on smaller sites like the one linked here, but on major news sites like CNBC and CNN, too. I know that news sites are having their budgets slashed, etc., but I literally can't read articles like this. I mean my brain just won't let me complete them because it thinks it's caught in a loop or something. It's hard to describe.

    18 votes

  18. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    joplin
    Link
    I don't watch a ton of TikTok videos, but I've never seen one that didn't have whatever the narrator was saying printed over it. Even songs have the words. I realize that's not searchable and you...

    I don't watch a ton of TikTok videos, but I've never seen one that didn't have whatever the narrator was saying printed over it. Even songs have the words. I realize that's not searchable and you can't use screen readers with it. But it makes me wonder if OCR would be a better route?

    2 votes

  19. Comment on US phone companies must now block carriers that didn’t meet FCC robocall deadline in ~tech

    joplin
    Link
    This is interesting, but it's mixed bag. It's better than nothing, though: ... ...

    This is interesting, but it's mixed bag. It's better than nothing, though:

    In a new milestone for the US government's anti-robocall efforts, phone companies are now prohibited from accepting calls from providers that did not comply with a Federal Communications Commission deadline that passed this week.

    ...

    STIR/SHAKEN is now widely deployed on IP networks because large phone companies were required to implement it by June 30 this year, but it isn't a cure-all. Because of technology limitations, there was no requirement to implement STIR/SHAKEN on older TDM-based networks used with copper landlines, for instance. The FCC has said that "providers using older forms of network technology [must] either upgrade their networks to IP or actively work to develop a caller ID authentication solution that is operational on non-IP networks."

    ...

    There are just too many loopholes and ways to bypass this system. First of all, smaller providers currently aren't being required to implement this new system. And so if you're robocalling, you're probably going to be moving to a smaller carrier. Another issue is there are certain providers who are providing US phone service, but for people located overseas. Those so-called "gateway providers" currently aren't required to participate in the system, either. So if a call is coming from outside the United States, and a lot of people think that most robocalls are, it's not going to have this identifying token attached to it.

    5 votes