231–240 of 307 posts
Just recently I was setting up Windows 10. One of the first things it asked for is an email account or you can create one. Ugh. I remember the days when you didn't need an email account to setup an OS. Also Windows 10 has many nagging notifications if you are not logged in to Microsoft services.
I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deals. My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains). An increasing amount of apps are sending “offers” I never requested via push notifications on my phone. My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.
This is what pisses me off from the tech industry and makes me want to save enough to retire and quit for good or open a non-tech business. When I dreamed about joining the industry a decade ago I saw all these new companies offering useful & innovative products/services that actually solved real problems and legitimately made people's lives better. I wanted to be part of this world and get in on the action, making h…
When your customers are using your product as part of their job, your incentive is (often) clear: make them more efficient at their job, which means make your product faster and easier to use. The vendor and the customer are aligned.
In the b2c world your goal is often “engagement”. Get the customer to spend as much time as possible in the app. Get them to use your app more than other apps. In a way you have to make your app less useful (to the customer) to make it more valuable to the vendor.
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> HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way How does that work? AFAIK there is always a root authority.
Keys can be exchanged without root authority. Root authority is only required for identifying that website owner is who he claims to be.
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> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus Mine doesn't, because I don't plug it into the intertoobs. (I use a Roku box.)
My Roku shows ads on its home screen. Do you have an older model? Even my Roku remote control has ads: the Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and Sling shortcut buttons that can’t be reprogrammed.
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Maintaining browsers has become a significant undertaking, so complex that only well-funded corporate interests can afford to keep one patched and up-to-date with the latest web standards. It surpassed operating system complexity. It surpassed pretty much everything else too. So we can forget about it ever being truly "free" (and free from ads) unless we simplify the web somehow. I also don't think we're going to go…
Back to gopher. Use native compiled apps and APIs for everything else. I’m serious. Probably shave a few gigawatts off the grid killing off electron apps.
A lot of the web is really just distraction and ad peddling crap
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I typically respect Apple products, but they also shove ads in the settings app...
Does “Sign up for iCloud” count as an ad? It’s a core (albeit optional) feature, included with the product the user has bought. The same could be said of Fitness+, or any of their other services. Yes, it’s “advertising”, but sits pretty inoffensively on the spectrum.
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The problem is we don’t pay for the operating system anymore.
Aren't retailers still paying for licenses? Or there's some easier way to get keys as a business? I noticed even shops that sell refurbished computers will shove Windows 10 into them, I always thought it was around 10-20 bucks for a license, so that later they can charge us 90-100 for a computer with windows...
I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deals. My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains). An increasing amount of apps are sending “offers” I never requested via push notifications on my phone. My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.
But what can we do? Ads provide employment for tens of millions of people and fund literally billions of hours of content watched a year. Even if you agree most is trash, it's also allowed some really high quality stuff to flourish while being able to stay relatively independent. It's strongly tied to economic growth, and thus everybody's pensions are tied up in the success of advertising. It seems illogical it makes…
Currently the status quo is that tech people like me just exclude themselves from it. We can block ads very effectively, download video content with the ads removed etc. I see so few ads now that it really surprises me when I do get one.
It works for me but it's not a solution for society as a whole. We can already see adblockers becoming less effective as more people adopt them and ads are being served in different ways by companies like AdDefend.
But personally I don't mind the status quo, it works for me. Fixing the problems of society as a whole is not my problem.