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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • Oh I didn’t even mean trust as in maliciousness, and not even as in “do they know their shit” but do they have the time and money to do things right? And also do I have time to read and learn what all this is supposed to mean?

    And the inconvenience with VPNs alone… What I really want is a kind of universal addon or browser project that just “cleans up most websites”. So many websites have bad behavior now and anti-features. I just want to read an article not get a slide in or blinky thing. Internet is becoming unusable even before the dead internet thing. Ironically for such a “website cleanup” you’d probably want advanced AI so Mozilla is probably on the right track.





  • Well in this case they used his likeness and brand to appear more legitimate and make money. So I’d argue this is trademark (even if not registered) so a legitimate complaint.

    I don’t believe in “copyright” for a voice. See for example impersonators. But in this case it’s a deliberate deception which is pretty simple.

    I don’t believe in intellectual property at all and think it is a form of theft, to deprive others from common knowledge or information just to seek rent. In case of patents I equate it even to aiding in genocide, since most advances in more energy efficiency use are patented and exploited for profit and slowing down adaptation. Without exhaustive attempts to try other systems to pay creators, copyright law is a moral abomination. That is a philosophical or ethical argument, not a legal one.


  • IMDB used to be independent and have a pretty amazing forum for movies. Like people would have lots of debate and discussion and insight. I loved going there after watching a movie. It was sort of “secondary literature” and nothing like this existed before. Then they just decided to delete countless contributions and shut it down. Instead of paying for moderation for the few trolls.

    Of course there are plenty of other movie forums, some even copies the old posts and there is r/movies, but it’s much more fractured now. There are certain network effects for social media that need to reach a critical size.




  • Not just tech, all over the product spectrum. They started by selling books.

    A large problem is payment system and accounts. I hate going to a new shop and create a new account, a new password, bla bla bla. I hate it. And wiring with online banking is still a pain the ass, you have to enter some password into your shitty phone keyboard and then wait for an SMS… paypal and amazon payment make shopping convenient.

    So part of the problem is banks who have been sleeping on the job for decades. At least here in Europe. You finally can wire money so it arrives immediately from your bank account at a shop! (without having to waste some tax on a payment provider either). But 2 factor authentication is still a pita. Where is my online bank with easy to use FIDO2?

    There are now alternative popping up because amazon has become so enshittified (high prices for many smaller items and reviews etc). And of course I’m a fan of aliexpress but shipping from China is stupid too.

    We definitely need to avoid a monopoly by a corporation like amazon.


  • The problem is that electronics make you dependent on a expensive, long and fragile and closed source technology. This is the opposite of liberation. Except for prosthesis of course.

    Ideally we’d rather have 3D printed sensory and internal organs to augment ourselves. Things that don’t wear out but can repair themselves and grow to become truly part of our body. Augments that last a lifetime and ideally extend our lifetime.

    The ultimate would be a type of biocomputer that we directly control with our brain and that can alter our body. Which is science fiction of course, but imagine meditating to reconfigure your body in some internal space, like changing your sex from male to female and then slowly growing towards that over a few months. That is far off obviously, but it marks the goal we should move towards. Not electronics or mechanics as a foreign object, but biological systems that become part of us.