• 2 Posts
  • 51 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle



  • Greeting viewers by name? Not in my fucking house. AI should be a tool to rid humanity of undesirable work. Instead its replacing humanity in every field where humanity is the main event. Why the fuck would I ever want to listen to a fucking robot while I watch the Olympics, or anything for that matter?

    Buy dumb TVs. Make your next phone a Pixel and install Graphene OS. Ditch Windows/MacOS for Linux. Use ProtonMail. Run a Pi-Hole on your network. Do anything you can to take control of your digital footprint in any way.

    Don’t let corporations freely suck your data dry and exploit your life for profit while force feeding you their elaborate fakery. Its impossible to insulate yourself from it all but any step towards digital privacy is the right step to take.





  • We’ll agree to disagree I suppose. The alternatives don’t necessarily have to be FOSS either. A perfect example of a viable alternative to a predatory “industry standard” exists in the audio production world; REAPER.

    When I was in College, Pro Tools was the required software. Pro Tools at the time was a walled garden ecosystem, trapping anyone who sunk their hard earned cash into an environment rife with anti-consumer practices, hardware brand restrictions and invasive DRM.

    It cost me over $600 CAD at the time for a bundle containing a feature-limited copy of Pro Tools and a Digidesign MBox.

    Meanwhile, REAPER’s noncommercial license was $60. That $60 got you a full featured copy of the DAW with support for the next two full version upgrades (which turned out to be nearly a decade of updates). You could also use any hardware interfaces you desired without restriction.

    REAPER also has a free trial that is full-featured. No restrictions at all, even the trial length is unlimited. Why? Because they respect the consumer and trust that if you find value in the software you’ll support their work by paying for a copy. That purchase is one of the best I’ve ever made.

    In my experience, REAPER was equally as capable as Pro Tools or any other DAW on the market at the time. As of now I’d wager it’s the superior product.

    A world where consumers are respected currently exists, its just not in the hands of the corporate world. The best way to make a better future for everyone in the software world is to not put up with anti-consumer practices and engage with companies and developers that respect our time and hard earned cash instead of treating us like cattle.





  • This is a decent point. YouTube is cancer if you don’t police your algorithm. If you do (ie: vote on vids, use the “Not Interested” and “Don’t recommend channel” options) you get a very clean and personalized feed.

    You’ll know when YouTube makes changes to their algorithm as you’ll suddenly get some unwanted stuff. For example, when any football videos show up in my feed I know YT is making changes so I flag the unwanted stuff when it comes up and within a few flaggings its back to normal.

    If you open my YouTube home page its nothing but metal bands, production vids, guitar and drum vids as well as video games, racing, sim racing, science and some other long form content. Its hyper specific to my interests.

    I helped pull my buddy out of a bit of a ragebait spiral during covid just by showing him my feed and comparing it to his. He never fathomed the depths that YT would drag him to if he didn’t curate his algorithm.

    The algorithm can be cancer if you engage with cancer. If you pick your content like you pick your fruits at the grocery store you’ll have a much better time.