Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The User Always Loses

thenation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 156 posts

Re: The User Always Loses

#131

Post by swiley »

superkuh wrote: post #7

So don't be a user. Self host and federate. The internet of the 90s is still alive if you step outside the walled gardens. And when you use other's services, like, say, reading an article hosted at 'thenation.com', a site which attempts to block you from reading unless you run their javascript and CSS, use a browser with tools that allow you to toggle things like JS and CSS to read it anyway. Then re-share the articl…

And if you can’t self host: that’s a good indication you’ve bought into the wrong technology and someone is trying to extract value from you.

Re: The User Always Loses

#132

Post by swiley »

tqi wrote: post #20
superkuh wrote: post #7

So don't be a user. Self host and federate. The internet of the 90s is still alive if you step outside the walled gardens. And when you use other's services, like, say, reading an article hosted at 'thenation.com', a site which attempts to block you from reading unless you run their javascript and CSS, use a browser with tools that allow you to toggle things like JS and CSS to read it anyway. Then re-share the articl…

But for many of the core criticisms of large tech platforms like Facebook/Google/Twitter self hosting and federation doesn't really address the problems (fake news, fomenting extremism or conspiracy theory, harassment, discrimination) so much as make it so that there is not a single entity to villify.

Centralized platforms haven’t addressed those either (in many cases they’ve exacerbated them!)

Re: The User Always Loses

#133

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

ppod wrote: post #62

>When users are scapegoated, Silicon Valley is left off the hook Is this really the dominant narrative? Are there lots of thinkpieces going around about how fair and kind Silicon Valley is, if only it weren't for all those mean people using their services? Maybe it is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said, but when comparing the early internet to the current internet, we cannot let the users off the hook! The fu…

Pre-Covid you could have flown 1st-, or Bizniz-class to have that.

Re: The User Always Loses

#134

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

katsume3 wrote: post #23

I find it ironic that this article talks about the user losing out to aggressive (and intrusive) advertising on the web, but presents me with an un-closeable modal window[0] asking me to subscribe to their blog. Note: I have JS disabled by default, and had to temporarily enable JS to view the article, but it's still intrusive and annoying for users. [0] https://imgur.com/a/SQSHh0i

Erase the /tnamp/ at the end of the URL and try without https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages ?

Re: The User Always Loses

#135

Post by chris-orgmenta »

chris-orgmenta wrote: post #26
DataWorker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are counting 2 year olds in the denominator. IRC and Usenet were the internet. If you used a computer you used these. But yes, computers were less common then, especially amongst two year olds.

Sure, I also pretended that IRC users were all US based... I could have taken a figure of 3b. instead of 3m. Also was careful to state "stats are lazy and blunt"

*300m

Re: The User Always Loses

#136

Post by chipotle_coyote »

aaronax wrote: post #39
true_religion wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an advertisement when it’s the same property that you are in? That’s like HBO advertising the next episode of a show you are watching.

Yes, though it does become a fuzzy line. I believe it would not be advertising to display the next episode of a series, or even auto play it. But it would be advertising to display a different series or film. For a fuzzier one, how about a newspaper providing links to their other stories at the bottom of an article that you have read? Typically I gain nothing by ingesting more of a particular publication's writing, s…

I don't really mind links to other articles at the bottom of the article that I'm reading. I mean, yes, it's a kind of advertising, but it's not intrinsically intrusive. If a site brings up a modal popup while I'm scrolling an article saying "OMG ENTER YOUR EMAIL HERE TO GET NOTIFIED WHENEVER WE WRITE ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING [or click this tiny text that says "no" in the most passive-aggressive phrasing we could think of]", that's a different issue.

(I kind of wonder if internet advertising would be a lot less hated if it had developed with a culture of restraint rather than maximum in-your-faceness, although to be fair, I'm not sure how that could ever have happened.)

Re: The User Always Loses

#137

Post by wappa »

Animats wrote: post #118
bleepblorp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem here is excessive governmental tolerance of monopolies and the lack of an adequate regulatory/legal regime to protect end-users from harms caused by vendor-lock in. All of the companies you mention have near-monopolies in their respective sectors. Hundreds of years of economic history show that monopolies are extremely harmful to their customers. Autodesk is only able to get away with what it does be…

Autodesk is only able to get away with what it does because regulators allowed it to buy out its competitors. Further, the extreme technical difficulty of reverse-engineering complex file formats--including legal obstacles such as enforceable shrink-wrap contracts against reverse engineering, the DMCA ban on reverse engineering, and patent issues--means that it's virtually impossible for competing, interoperable, pro…

FreeCAD likely helps Autodesk's position - when freecad is so crap, you will likely just pay for autocad/or/other than even looking at alternatives, because you have been already so frustrated.

Re: The User Always Loses

#138

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

bergstromm466 wrote: post #120
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are also tangible disbenefits - like having your home destroyed by climate change, or having your democracy hollowed out, having to live with the risk of bankruptcy if you get ill. These all seem like things wealth protects from, which helps explain why founders and all other humans will tend to want to accumulate it.

> These all seem like things wealth protects from This sounds to me like Silicon Valley solutionism. Getting rich only works for some time in a world with widespread crop failures and the many other effects of global heating. [1] When that happens I'd say it's only a matter of time before the pitchforks and guillotines come out... “I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes f…

Could be that vast crop failures in the US end up being a problem some day but the problem seems somewhat remote. Anyway, nobody claimed wealth protects from all possible bad things. That doesn't really do anything to diminish its attractiveness for preventing the things it does prevent.

Re: The User Always Loses

#139

Post by Animats »

wappa wrote: post #137
Animats wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autodesk is only able to get away with what it does because regulators allowed it to buy out its competitors. Further, the extreme technical difficulty of reverse-engineering complex file formats--including legal obstacles such as enforceable shrink-wrap contracts against reverse engineering, the DMCA ban on reverse engineering, and patent issues--means that it's virtually impossible for competing, interoperable, pro…

FreeCAD likely helps Autodesk's position - when freecad is so crap, you will likely just pay for autocad/or/other than even looking at alternatives, because you have been already so frustrated.

Having used FreeCAD, I agree.

Constructive solid geometry is hard, but it's all math. User interfaces for 3D CAD are very hard. Open source is terrible at hard user interfaces. Hence, no really good free 3D CAD.

Re: The User Always Loses

#140

Post by rossdavidh »

At one time, a minority of people were on the internet, often with their own blogs, but most people were just watching TV.

Now, most people are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other massively high-traffic websites, while a minority of people are on the rest of the internet, often with their own blogs.

It's not as different as it looks, it's just that the TV networks got displaced by the few high-traffic websites. It's apocalyptic for for-profit TV, radio, and newspaper companies, who have been mostly circling the drain as FAANG gobbles up their ad revenue. But the impact on "the internet" is not as different as it looks, it's just that "the internet" now needs a new name, like maybe "the low-traffic-website internet" but shorter (tltwi, pronounced "tilt-we"), because the Old Media are now co-hosted on the same infrastructure.

Most people didn't get on the internet prior to AOL. Most people don't leave the high-traffic-sites internet now. It's not like there aren't any blogs left. It's not as different as it looks.

Post reply on HN