splatter9859

Wait. So; just because you've studied with someone makes your opinion correct? Damn. I wish I would have known that long ago! In both my education tracts of medicine and CS, I've studied with some pretty great minds and I could have been passing off my opinion as fact for decades now.

I wish I would have received that memo. </sarcasm>

Whole business model is literally based off of reselling access to other people's content. No value add. Just grift.

This. Scribd has absolutely no goodwill here. Can't say I feel sorry for them in the slightest.

The victims, absolutely. However; the organization not one damn iota. Perhaps if they sucked less, but they do not, so I do not.

You seem to have some strong feels about this subject a bit disproportional to what the comment entails. I fail to see how someone sharing their opinion on HN equates to them having an "insignificant existence".

I get the frustration, but perhaps changing the target somewhat might be in order here, no?

I nearly spit out coffee reading this. Amazing use of vocabulary; especially "... oh great spirit of the internet".

I sometimes jokingly explain to certain people not immersed in tech that sometimes saying the "magic words" (commands) from the "codex" (script) in the right sequence with a lot of hand waving allow "magic" (applications/web apps/etc.) to happen.

It generally brightens a patients day and makes things relatable to those non-technical, children, the elderly, or the like.

TLDR: thanks for the chuckle.

This.

I get (sometimes) frustrated with people that don't work in the tech industry over this concept, and having them rationalize that their usage is heavily subsidized by the distributor of the model.

The costs in compute, electricity, cooling, etc. per token is much higher than most people (I feel) who work in the industry realize. Which, cognitively makes sense: they just want the 'magic 8-ball' to give them a tasty dinner recipe that meets their specifications, for example, and don't care how the 'sausage' is made.

However, economies generally equalize with supply and demand, and this (most likely) will become cheaper as the technology progresses and optimization passes/new algorithms are discovered.

Welcome to life in the 2020s. Enshittification knows no bounds and cannot be contained.

"Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to the Collective." -- Borg Collective, Star Trek TNG

I used NextDNS for years and moved over to ControlD this year due to NextDNS literally not innovating at all and having no customer suppport. I've been much happier.

Exactly. I'm somewhat surprised someone's give-a-damn wasn't broken enough to do a cursory filter. Not like it isn't plainly obvious in other statistics, however.

As odd as this sounds, and as odd as the world gets, I still find a small comfort in the fact that there is enough stability in this world that I can count on one thing: someone always accusing a blog post on HN as being AI generated.

Never fails.

The OCD part of me can now go about my day.

They never have and feel they are above reproach. Anytime Altman opens his mouth that's apparent. It's for the good of humanity dontcha know. LOL

Exactly! How dare you have access to their stolen content in the midst of them doing the same.

As someone who holds a degree in Medicine besides his degree in Computer Science and works in medical devices, can I just please emphasise that QA should exist in this industry and is well deserved?

Sorry. No 'blue screens' or stack traces in my pacemaker or insulin pump, please.

Is he even capable of telling the truth?

I live and work in the DMV. I get it. Doesn't change my point.

As an American taxpayer who has a twenty-five year decade long career in IT this concerns me. Doesn't surprise me in the least but concerns me. Yet you see this waste and take to HN instead of reporting the waste and abuse via channels such as whistleblowers?

I'm glad you're good at what you do, but to me, and this attitude of "I know this is an issue but I'm still gonna waste taxpayer funds as part of my job and perl-clutch on HN" is concerning.

Outside of your paycheck contributions and otherwise, that isn't your money friend.

With Trump at the helm, yes. However; with that being said, the rot and decay has been festering long before Trump came into power.

The issue is that most average Americans don't know how far they have fallen. One day, a great very many of them will wake up to the fact that the illusion of American supremacy was, just like most things in America, nothing more than a marketing ploy and a national "pep rally" -- nothing more.

That's when the resentment will set in. That's when the anger will set in.

Until then, most Americans have tuned out the news and are sleepwalking into whatever dystopian fascist-techno nightmare our billionaire overlord class has prepared for us.

Yep.

Everything about his body language screams, "I'm doing something slimy and I know it, but here, listen to these words spoken authoritatively whilst I wave my hands around and forget about it."

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

MacOS has its warts and 'unpolish' as well, as it also gets viruses despite what Apple may want you to believe.

I get that and it makes sense. What distinguishing features does it have that keeps you coming back to Brave that, say, Edge or Chrome or even Firefox doesn't bring? I ask because most of the items you listed could be accomplished in other browsers with extensions.

Just trying to find the secret sauce that keeps people coming back specifically to Brave.

I really appreciate you engaging and listing your reasons! Thank you for sharing your viewpoint and why you enjoy Brave.

I need someone to explain to me, at length, at some point in my life the value proposition of Brave and what it brings to the table that other browsers do not.

For example, most of the key differentiators of Brave could be accomplished similarly in Firebox with a litany of extensions -- such as UBlock Origin as just one example -- or Privacy Badger if you'd like to be less 'heavy handed'.

The only other differentiator I see is the use of cryptocurrency as a way of compensating users for watching ads and the use of a crypto wallet; which if your not interested in such functionality is meaningless.

Yet I see very educated, competent, and intellegent people I've known for years be advocates and at some points "zealots" over the browser.

I would love to understand this. I'm honestly open to discussing this in good faith as I would like to understand the benefit here, and if I am somehow missing something will be the first to admit I was ignorant.

Funny. In my five+ decades on this planet, I seem to find the right more apt and eager to employ 'thuggish authoritarian attempts' -- akin to my time growing up in East Germany. But now being in America for over a decade it's really not much different.

Same tune. Same song. Different cast and scenery.

WhatsApp I can buy due to the communication factor, but Instagram you're really going to have to sell me on fitting into the category of 'critical for daily functioning'.

Instagram. Critical to life. Naah.

100% this. I'd love to have some of these features in eyewear, but there is no way in hell I purchase anything like this from Meta.

Less those bastards get of anything I control (data, finances, time) the better.

Which is, of course, flat out unacceptable on many levels.

However; it seems to me some of these institutions could band together and pool resources both legal, financial, and otherwise to give something of a stronger defense than one alone.

Rock and a hard place certainly.

But there has to be something that can be done, albeit even in the United States broken systems of law, both constitutional and otherwise, to fight off this assault. Anything other than bending the knee and enabling further assaults on higher-education and/or the US democracy.

Sad to see such a great and distinguished institution 'bend the knee' to the Pumpkin Spice Palpatine in this manner.

UC Berkeley used to have such fight in it.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing that.

I'll keep the small "i" in mind as well. :)

Wow. Illumos / Solaris is still kicking, eh?

Really too bad Solaris didn’t stick around and was so horribly mismanaged by Sun.

Solaris and Vax/VMS is where I started my career decades ago, and still brings back memories.

Preach.

This has got to be the most user-blind self-imposed preference in a modern operating system outside of Microsoft's BS.

If you're going to use an OSS operating system, the control of what is placed on the system should be inherently with the user. If the developer has a question if a new package should be added or is required, throw a prompt and ask -- with a default to not use application containers and the default packaging system.

Really not hard.

Never usually is with Musk and his platforms. Both X and Tesla's software stack clearly show this readily. He has other purposes in mind.