Smartphone sales are so bad even the holidays couldn’t help, says IDC

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-28T02:49:10+00:00

Not at all interested in joining the Apple ecosystem, and Android phones are like renting in the ghetto. Phones running Android lose all support two months after you buy them, just like how your landlord could not give two shakes of a crap about fixing things until the city sends them a letter threatening to condemn the building.

There are things I willingly spend money on; the smartphone upgrade treadmill is not one of them.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-26T17:13:26+00:00

More people need to understand that free and open source software is like an illegal alien in the corporate world. By that I mean that it is seen by corporations as cheap labor/product to be exploited, and nothing more. For example: "I expect you to clean my bathrooms and/or do manual labor in a field, and I don't want to pay you a reasonable wage or provide medical benefits." The above sentence being analogous to how business sees open source software.

Again, Linux and the entire FOSS ecosystem is nothing more than free product for business to exploit from their perspective. Another example of this is how many online TV services will refuse to work if you are on a laptop running Linux, even while all their servers either run Linux or FreeBSD and they sell locked-down, ewaste consumer appliances like tablets, game consoles and streaming sticks that rely on and run... you guessed it... Linux or BSD by the millions.

The GPL is the only mechanism of defense that the public has against the interests of big business; no wonder they slander it so much.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-14T21:19:52+00:00

I had this idea in my head that the US could continue to supply Russia and friends with software, but simultaneously geoblock them from all critical security updates for the software.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-14T15:09:44+00:00

Over the past ten years, but especially the last 5, online services and websites have become WAY more user-hostile, going so far as to force you to sign up and log in merely to browse, search, or read content.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-13T00:03:41+00:00

The first time someone changed the name of their project or product to comply with ridiculous demands like this, they got the ball rolling, and now, the madness will never end.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-01-04T03:07:32+00:00

I will only buy used video cards now, AMD and NVidia can eat me.

I figure that eventually though, they will require you to link your video card to an email address and possibly a phone number, to block second-hand usage. Consumers were stupid enough to allow this to happen with video games and it's only a question of how long before it comes to hardware.

Also I literally just gave away my old 970 and 770 cards; hopefully that stunts sales some more. Some gamer with modest requirements can use them; they were pretty pathetic for Blender, which is more what I'm into today.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-31T07:06:37+00:00

Some very rich and powerful people have spent 40 years (probably longer, that's only how long I've been on this Earth), corrupting and rigging everything against common people so that you can't actually own anything anymore. You didn't really think that they would let that all be undermined by this bill, did you? With opposition from everyone from video game makers to smart phone makers, this bill simply did not have a chance. And even if it did, it was full of exceptions to protect the business interests of anyone who cared to make anything resembling a reasonable donation to the powers that be. Or expressed another way, this bill had as much chance as a tub of ice cream at a weight watcher's convention.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-30T16:35:40+00:00

Welcome to America, where one political party does not even pretend to give a damn about consumers, or really, anything other than themselves and their corporate masters, while the opposing political party pretends that they're on your side to earn votes, only to screw you over at the last possible minute.

Also I bet Samdung, Crapple and Microshaft paid a lot of money to get these changes made. Every dollar that you give to these three, makes any sort of RTR regulations less and less likely.

One thing it really makes me appreciate though is the PC market, where components are generally cheap and mostly easy to repair or replace, especially so with desktops. Don't get me wrong though, they certainly want to turn the PC into ultra-locked down consumer trash like a video game console or smartphone where you can't even get to your data if something goes wrong; this is what TPM, Pluton and friends are all about. But for now, motherboards, etc are cheap. Especially now that there is competition in the CPU market again.

Motherboard manufacturers have been trying to drive the cost of motherboards up into the stratosphere with AM5, but we just flip them the middle finger and stay on Zen 3, because Zen 3 is more than good enough already. And AM5 is such a roaring success that they had to slash the prices not even two months after introduction. lol

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-29T19:20:52+00:00

"Lifetime" is the biggest marketing con-job ever. Right up there next to "Unlimited".

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-29T17:31:40+00:00

Always heart-warming to see more people deciding they've had enough of the modern trend where companies get to arbitrarily revoke access to stuff which was paid for, after taking the customer's money. It's why I quit buying video games, full stop. All of them want to shove some online service up my ass just to play single player now, sometimes five of them!

Honestly I'm amazed how the public has allowed it to get to the point where someone else on the other side of the planet can disable/break your stuff any time they want.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-28T04:36:17+00:00

Wow, a headphone jack? Most phones don't have those anymore. I'm not one of those guys who thinks that ditching the headphone jack was an innovative or smart thing for manufacturers to do, in fact it is one more reason for me to not buy new phones anymore.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-24T06:01:34+00:00

The trouble with the cloud, and this really is completely unfixable due to the nature of the beast, is that it represents one single, centralized and juicy target for hackers.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-23T04:56:22+00:00

Confirming this; more and more websites are being redesigned to provide near-zero functionality to visitors who do not have or want an account, and it's creepy as fuck. Also another reason for me to spend less time online. Deviantart being the biggest example that currently springs to mind.

I guess if clued-in people like myself refuse to use a malicious operating system or web browser that has anti-features embedded in it like globally unique identifiers or advertising IDs, then they have to find some other way to track us.

Luckily many of these websites can still be registered for with a disposable email address...

Making people register to post content (mostly) makes sense for accountability's sake, but making people register merely to view/read content which is already on the site is another example of tech companies "grabbing me by the &^%$#", as a former president would say, and I am really not a fan of, or amused by that particular modern business trend.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-13T18:09:08+00:00

Not all software.

Blender is amazing. And it used to be terrible. Development shows no signs of slowing or regressing; if anything, it is building more momentum. All of the big companies are helping the development and at the same time, none of them have control over it, so they can't do stuff like implement surveillance capitalism.

One of my favorite things to do is listen to music and make stuff in Blender. Still can't believe Blender literally almost died 20 years ago when the original company that made it folded. Then there was a campaign to free the code, and then it took a wile, before development massively accelerated. I bet the other big companies in the 3D software market are salty every day that they didn't just buy Blender out back when it was struggling, simply to shelve it and shut it down.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-10T20:44:57+00:00

America is going to allow Microsoft to swallow up the entire US video game industry. But fortunately today, most of the good games are made elsewhere anyway.

Someone else explained why Microsoft will not buy Konami or Sega; those companies are involved in other markets than just video games, and Microsoft indeed only wants to buy as many game studios as possible to use as an anticompetitive cludge.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-09T18:24:12+00:00

Playing The Nameless Mod. There's a part where you have to hire a pilot to take you to the last location in the game. The game itself is all about experimentation and exploration. So what'd I do? That's right, I killed the pilot, just to see what would happen. Would the game even let me do that? Would it force me to restart?

The reaction was hilarious. My character wound up having to fly the helicopter himself to the next area of the game (done in cinematics, not actually controlled by the gamer). And instead of a safe landing, the helicopter crash-lands (because the player character is not a trained pilot), and the result is that you start the final, hardest chapter of the game with no equipment whatsoever and minimal health.

This game is all about consequences for player behavior; stealing from the shops catches up with the player later, as does how you treat other characters. It isn't just about how you respond to them in dialog, but if you e.g. agree to help them and screw them over.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-09T18:03:36+00:00

It's crazy that I'm obligated to put a never-ending stream of experimental injections into my body, and I still don't get my pre-2020 life back. And now, they want to bring back the old mask mandates that apply to everyone who isn't either a celebrity or a politician.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-12-09T18:00:40+00:00

Wow, the US government did something right for once!

Now if they could have only split Microsoft up after the antitrust lawsuit, then Microsoft wouldn't have the power to be gobbling more and more of the games industry by the day.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-23T14:11:48+00:00

If this is true, it doesn't bode well for people who already have these things; because Amazon will have to pursue a more aggressive/profit focused business strategy.

If you want to see a current-day example of what I'm talking about, look at the current state of the Windows platform or cable TV or video games or well, anything controlled by a huge corporation. Ads everywhere, your machine doing stuff behind your back that you don't approve of like fetching and installing third party apps by itself, etc etc.

I've got an idea, extra monthly subscription fees to do things like set timers, reminders, etc etc.

Those questions aren't monetizable.

You underestimate corporate America and the power of psychology and marketing.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-14T18:03:54+00:00

No, "big tech" absolutely loves Linux. It powers their clouds and all their IoT gear and most of their locked down consumer appliances they manufacture. What they hate, is the idea of passing the freedoms down to the end users that they themselves enjoy while building their products. That's why the boot loader on the Samdung phone is permanently locked, that's why online video delivery services will work on Chrome OS or Android but not Ubuntu, etc etc.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-12T19:42:37+00:00

I'd be surprised if Apple is still providing security updates for a machine that old. If they are now, then they probably won't be for long.

However since it has Radeon graphics it should run Linux like a champ. Nvidia works with Linux too, but the problem is that Nvidia drops support for their older chips after a wile, making them incompatible with modern kernels. You wouldn't have that problem with Radeon because support for that GPU is built into the kernel itself.

So if you are at all experienced with or interested in Linux, I would say yes, if you aren't, I would say no.

Also make sure the memory is not soldered and is user upgradeable.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-10T00:16:05+00:00

You really have to marvel at how badly they fucked this whole thing up. From all of the divisive politics, to the relentless pushing of injections that don't even stop us from getting sick or spreading the virus even if we have had all five of them! Just ask the officials themselves who have come down with the virus despite being vaccinated and boosted to the moon and back.

And if I've had four injections and I don't want anymore, people, (the ones who have had five or more), have been programmed to turn on me. I didn't take drugs or go to parties, but now I fully know and understand how invasive, unpleasant and unwelcome pier pressure is.

As far as Covid policy, the only thing they've actually accomplished, and are continuing to accomplish, is the transfer of all wealth from those at the bottom, up to a select handful of guys at the top. By 2030, this select few will control all wealth in the country and everyone else will live in rented refrigerator boxes because the rest of society simply won't be able to afford anything else anymore.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-09T16:06:33+00:00

Reddit is moderated by, and full of corporate drones. It's an inevitability when any platform goes mainstream.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-11-07T16:03:08+00:00

Not bad, but a DIY solution (Nvme drive in a compact enclosure) is still better. You can plug it in and out of the computer via USB ten times a day without fear of wearing out the connector on your precious drive due to excess mating cycles. Because when the connector on the enclosure wears out you simply ditch the $20-30 enclosure and get another one. On the other hand if you wear the port out on one of these integrated solutions, it's presumably a soldering/repair job. Also, when a newer USB standard comes out, you can likewise simply ditch your current Nvme enclosure and get a new one, for a cheap and effective speed upgrade.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-27T17:07:50+00:00

They'll cough up five minutes of their profits to the government (maybe) and admit no wrong-doing.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-24T17:54:48+00:00

I'm assuming these won't be powered by AI, that will come later. The first generation will probably be controlled by humans.

But I've played video games where the AI of the security guards completely lost it's mind and started slaughtering all the unarmed NPC civilians in an area, when I, the player, was the only one who was being naughty. Basically the security guards in the game existed only to attack the player if they did something bad like stealing things or breaking into restricted areas of the map or attacking innocent characters, all of which I was doing. (immersive sim games are awesome.) But, instead of attacking me, the guards wiped out all the unarmed NPCs in the area. Crazy glitch! Especially because the unarmed characters couldn't have attacked anyone. I think what must have happened in the game, is that one of the security guards found one of the unconscious NPCs I knocked out and somehow attributed it to the civilian team, and all hell broke loose.

Ideally, we would not be stupid enough to potentially allow scenarios (armed and dangerous, buggy/rogue AI) like the above to play out in the real world.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-19T03:48:18+00:00

As ineffective as these seem to be at actually preventing people from getting sick or spreading the virus (am I allowed to point that out here?), the marketing of them is totally fucking nuts. It's like nothing I have seen before.

They have programmed people so well, that I am either a pincushion or an anti-vaxer. It's literally binary. For example if I've had four injections already, and nearly everyone I know who has also had the boosters, has already gotten sick, so I really don't want anymore, I'm now an anti-vaxer.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-18T19:55:09+00:00

They couldn't even make SGX work reliably, (i.e. do what it was supposed to do), and in that particular instance they most certainly cared about getting security right, because of licensing/contracts with the music and film industry association of America (MafIAA).

So yeah. I pretty much agree with you here.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-17T18:11:50+00:00

Ain't it funny how these companies do not use flawed/faulty encryption when it comes to protecting their stuff (like Xbox games), but when it comes to protecting consumer data, security is an afterthought, at most?

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-10-11T20:32:05+00:00

(South Park voice) "I haven't seen a precipitous drop in PC sales like that since Windows 8!"

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-09-28T00:56:00+00:00

Regarding making these changes "for user safety":

I trust an open source browser extension by a well-known author who has a proven track record of behaving and delivering a quality product about ten thousand times more than I would ever trust scripts from random ads online which tell me how to make my penis five times longer.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-09-27T18:11:57+00:00

Arguably Skynet began forming back in the days of Windows XP, where you could plug a new machine into the network and it would get infected by autonomous worms just by sitting at the desktop.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-09-27T18:07:42+00:00

Windows will never die. Microsoft could literally put unskippable, unstoppable commercials (with audio) for Pepsi and video games on desktops of the masses tomorrow, and users still would not switch away from that relationship. Eventually Microsoft will, too. If you want to see what the Windows desktop will look like in ten years, look at Xbox now.

~ Posted by a Linux user.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-09-13T13:31:44+00:00

Please don't spin this as just "people don't want to see ads, boo-hoo". Content filtering extensions are used for a whole lot more than simply blocking ads, in a world where web designers are shoveling more and more unwelcome and obnoxious shit down the pipe by the day. For example dialogs that are embedded in the webpage where you are forced to interact with them before continuing, Javascript that records all your mouse movements, trackers, etc etc.

Smart people know that the objective here is to transform the Internet into TV or radio, where the client gets exactly what is sent to them from the server, no more no less, and has zero control of it or how it works whatsoever, except perhaps for the option to turn it off.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-09-01T14:45:55+00:00

Yeah I was trying to explain to my friend, who thinks this is a great idea, how it will cause the power grid to collapse. The problem is that California has spent decades engineering an energy and water shortage to raise prices and make poor people suffer more (remember rolling blackouts 20 years ago?), especially during summer time, and when you introduce lots of EVs, which will draw crazy amounts of amps into the equation, the results speak for themselves.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-23T18:29:05+00:00

It's not that bad. I can still buy unlocked phones online and use them with the carrier.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T20:25:20+00:00

Yes it definitely feels like some people (a group whose products start with a G) are doing their very best to tear apart and ruin any semblance of a cohesive desktop experience on Linux. Basically they have an enlightened vision for how everything should behave, and they don't care about anyone or anything else. Sometimes it feels as though they go the opposite way from the rest of the community and remove options to revert things to the way we want them to be, purely out of spite and contempt. This is especially a problem because they control not only their own desktop environment, but e.g. the open/save dialogs of other applications as well.

I think that if I wasn't as skilled and stubborn as I am, I would have given up a wile ago. I also believe that the more mainstream Linux becomes, the worse the problem will get.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T20:02:20+00:00

Wow, only 18 out of 25 of them? Big data and corporate America be like "We can do better!"

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T18:09:12+00:00

They definitely should have been required to list this "feature" on the box. Also, having a grace period would have been nice.

"Parts of this printer are wearing out, get it serviced soon. 30 printable pages left

vs.

"A critical, non-user serviceable part of this printer has expired unexpectedly, and this machine will not print anymore until repaired by a professional. We know your term paper is due today, but that sounds like a you problem."

But do remember that we are talking about the industry where they make multi-function units refuse to scan because there is no ink...

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T18:00:51+00:00

If governments cared literally at all about the environment, they would make it illegal to sell consumer products by the metric tun that have glued in batteries to stop users from replacing them.

Remember that.

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T17:56:36+00:00

It's really sad but the only surefire way to avoid having your computing devices transformed into a privacy invading ad slinging nightmare by corporate America, is to use Linux.

I use Linux, it's not perfect and I understand why a lot of people don't like it. I wish we had more choices...

Myocarditis-Man · 2022-08-18T17:51:52+00:00

Still better than Reddit, where pointing out what is literally in the news everywhere (that vaccinated officials are still getting Covid) gets comments silently censored. Basically Reddit has become too mainstream, and has mutated into a place where nothing that doesn't kiss corporate/big pharma's ass is quietly suppressed.

Also, New Reddit (the design) nuff said. Okay, I'll elaberate. Every time I load a page with new Reddit, it feels like the computer is a fat guy struggling to climb the stairs.

Myocarditis-Man