winternett

I've found a lot of the traffic may be originating from resume sites..

The minute I unpublished my phone number from job recruiting sites, my spam calls declined by 60-70%. Apparently these career sites don't make enough money of job connections alone.

I now just ask for an email as a first point of contact from potential recruiters.

Meh, I'll just roll PROD back to our 4.7 image, then head down to the pub for a pint until this all blows over... Only 3 years of data will be missing... No biggie! LOL :P

The surveillance factor of LinkedIn is exactly what keeps me entirely off of it... I don't think I've ever gotten a job by using it, it's more like a spare online copy of my resume more than anything else...

It also keeps trying to create a new account automatically off of my gmail account that I can't close... Pretty much a waste of productivity for me to try to use it.

At one point earlier in my career (during the early 2000s), they flew me to Chicago, picked me up in a limo and gave me a tour of the office... I knew I didn't want to relocate (from the East Coast) and remote work wasn't an option back then, so I had nothing to lose... They asked me the question of "4 lightbulbs in a room down the hallway, with 3 light switches in the room I'm in" to tell which switch belonged to which bulb...

I went in totally unprepared for logical tests, and flubbed the perfect answer partially, but it was funny because I asked the guy if I was "doing an interview to be an electrician or a software developer?".

Since then I've been just fine, and to this day, I've never had to answer that question nor use that type of logic on any job... I reverse engineer & migrate major software apps all the time as a Solutions Architect & Development Director.

I've always found interviews that involve behavioral and cognitive tests to never be good for me as long-term jobs... Now I interview & hire people regularly without asking those types of questions at all because the questions can too easily be studied & rehearsed prior to interviews.

The same things are happening on Android too, no coincidence.

The jargon is getting more & more obtuse every year...

Also, a major feature of "vibe coding" now is the rough edges on UI design that don't make sense at all... It's pretty obvious that code bases aren't evolving because these systems can't handle complex prompts while retaining features from prior releases, and it seems like functional testing for releases has now become the kid who can't speak that fell down a well... Oh well.

McDonalds and Taco Bell tried to get rid of their "soft skills" (AKA customer service} and look how they're doing right now... Endless stores that all look & feel the same -- uncomfortable seats, no happy families around for longer than 10 minutes, longer drive-thru lines, and impersonal & impatient staff that avoids customers like the plague.

Evangelists will preach Ai because it's good for corporations that don't care about customer needs, but in the same sense, it may well be the catalyst for many to move out of cities to more human areas as it grows.

Businesses dictate the spread of Ai, and then foist it on customers because they think monopolies are sustainable, but the foundational rules always ring true -- Customer service & commitment are essential to the survival of a business. This tone deaf approach will eventually alienate many from companies that adopt it, and there aren't enough tech-inclined introverts to sustain profit in a world where Ai takes everyone's jobs. We don't ALWAYS want to talk to vending machines, human interaction is a need for many that Ai evangelists seem to think will simply go away.

I hope there are still some reasonable minded business leaders out there to swoop in and fix things after the ashes this era leaves along with all the VC carnage & political damage rendered on our economy.

Ai is great for math though... Maybe that should be the less-destructive focus.

If you read into Web.Com, yes, they are quickly becoming a monopoly on host companies. They do not disclose many of the hosting companies they now own.

If you can find a company that allows clients to install Let's Encrypt Certs on shared hosting, please let me know.

I'd be happy to hear about a traditional hosting company that allows clients to install lets Encrypt certs if you can name any...

Most of my clients don't have budgets big enough for cloud hosting.

Twitter has been toast for quite some time now, well before the Elon effect...

I think pretty much every social platform has transitioned into the same "edgelordy-ness" we dealt with on smaller community forums & IRC back in the day...

Nobody talks about it on platforms out of a fear of retribution, but a handful of people are not meant to have this much control over massive groups of people...

It always devolves into a scheme that only serves the top & only profit at the top.

Twitter was a very useful real-time information tool, that slowly degraded into a payola promo haven, just like FaceBook, Instagram, and now even TikTok...

The time for useful tools of that kind has surpassed us, as most people on these platforms lie about their botted & payola boosted audiences & views.

Social media simply got too big, there aren't even categorized topics one can subscribe to anymore without it all being blended into a random timeline of everyone's posts... That's the final trumpet call for it, something totally different will need to come along and take over until it too becomes overran monopolized as an emotional manipulation tool.

A far better way to promote skills & business is to paint your info on the side of your car now... Far more people will see it than your social account, without needing to pay a membership or for to boost each post. shrug

An Ai robot named BTC will hit an Ai robot named $1m on Battle Bots perhaps...

Totally plausible.

My advice... Take a time machine back to 2009-2012 & only invest %100.

Otherwise it's too late.

Many host providers (Those acquired by companies like Web.Com, allegedly) disable all ability to use outside certs since Google made encryption a requirement in Chrome Browser...

They do things like blocking containers & SSH to make installing free certs impossible.

They also have elevated the price of their own certs (that they can conveniently provide) to ridiculous prices in contrast to free certs their customers can't even use...

It would be a huge price-fixing scandal if Congress had any idea of how technology works.

If you're looking to build and maintain healthy vitamin D levels, D3 is generally the better supplement choice, according to health experts and studies. Consult your doctor to determine your needs and the best form for you, especially if you have a deficiency or dietary restrictions. -Google Gemini

I think it's important to clarify understandings for non-scientific/med community each time these types of technical discussions occur.

2, they must all build up and grind together in your crop before expulsion for proper results.

Wait, we're talking about birds right?

A lot of tools & companies created in the .Com era were copied, consumed, & bought by companies under the table... The eras were indeed different in many ways, but the way the "hype machine" was wound up late in the game (after cracks began to show) should not be forgotten... Lots of whales lost lots of money even when the ships were sinking because they stopped evaluating companies & the actual tech, and just bet on news reports... In terms of investment & the markets, all of the speculation has taken on a speculative & careless "lottery style" of investment now too...

Investors that have no idea of what the tech is really doing, nor even the huge copyright implications are flocking to invest based on agenda-laced news reports of Ai taking jobs, and for that very reason it's creating a huge set up. Ai is over-promised already, just like self checkouts at the supermarkets, everyone in EV self-driving cars , and speed cameras in preventing crimes were years ago..>

These things are made to drive company profit, and they do, even well after law suits are settled, so I guess that's why it keeps happening with funded mega-marketing campaigns.

Twitter came out of the Dot.Com era, so did many other tools we still use... Let's hope that they change Ai and social media to generate actual money and useability for non-corporate-backed (everyday non-millionaire+) humans without ever-increasing monthly subscriptions...

That's the only way it won't end up shelved as a meme generator, or just used as an expensive calculator. Ai's pretty good at math though.

Twitter ended up later going from one of the world's most valuable platforms to being a meme of itself for only $45 billion. Great job they did there.

As someone who's been on TikTok for years now, it's extremely fake, the algorithm is a total ruse, as most of what trends is based on seeing news stories repeated hundreds of times, and most other content has the same repetitive music behind it... Far too much repetition and subtle seminaries in trending content, down to the way videos are color graded to be honestly real & organic... I've had a few videos go viral, but most things that do go viral are memes, the minute you want to push out anything remotely serious or related to business, they want money to let it pass the visibility gate.

I won't miss it if it does get banned. It's stressed so many people out for no good reason, and sucked up millions of hours of free labor from unrecognized & unpaid creators that deserve better.

That doesn't mean that any Meta product is good for content creators mind you.

We simply wouldn't need as much bandwidth if storage on devices was improved on devices and we went back to a model of collecting our entertainment as data files. These files could be shipped on memory stick & SD cards. All streaming is being pushed so much for is the ability to rent data access (access that can be removed once monthly payments stop), and streaming is dramatically wasteful in terms of bandwidth & power resources... If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies, it's only gouging to drive consumers to downloadable file culture again, namely resources like torrenting.

Big business will eventually need to abandon this old "market domination" model because of consumer demand to own physical files if things work correctly. Millions of people streaming the same movies and music over and over again is very wasteful and not sustainable in the long run, as each monthly service is a different (continually increasing) bill, it will only serve to bring bootlegging operations back to popularity in the long run... As once you download & save a digital file, it doesn't really require that bandwidth again & again per device.

Subverting Net Neutrality is just another way companies will exert greed on consumers, but in the long run, consumers will always win when they withdraw from subscriptions and these companies begin to falter.

We should be paying $25 a month for Internet service by now, and $2 to permanently buy a movie, and perhaps $4 to buy an album on memory stick. That would be the fair future... Instead, they're charging each user $24 a month just for (very limited selection) Netflix alone, and each other service is doing the same... Companies stand to lose everything in this battle because of the huge infrastructure (up-front) investments they need to make in order to operate... Customers can go back to pirating Mp3s, Mp4s, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, and even Tape decks if need be. It's long overdue for the industry to check itself and do a reset... Bandwidth is not the real battle going on here, it's all economic.

It's quite obvious the CEO being paid reportedly around $300m a year is pocketing money that indie artists generate for the site. Most of these tech sites aren't really interested in delivering value into the communities they serve... Musicians need to wean themselves off of jumping into these types of old "gig economy" schemes, as they really don't provide any return on the huge amounts of time invested in building them up... :/

The same schemes for account promotions likely come from insiders too. As far as I've observed, the messages I get on pretty much every platform are too well organized to be outsiders, some even make it through spam filters. I'm so over social media to be honest... It's a haven for fake vanity points that really doesn't guarantee any sort of real life achievement.

The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all.

They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections.

We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.

All of these workarounds are temporary & flimsy --- They will not last long and will certainly not get better, as the rules put in place as well as the tech behind ad delivery are rapidly and constantly changing. We as users & consumers are being abused by these practices, and ads and monthly subscription models are being used as a weapon to get us to pay ridiculous (& arbitrarily increasing) prices for mostly unhelpful services and entertainment now more than ever that still include ads -- It's the beginning of madness & a new form of veiled consumer mass-fleecing. By accepting the ad infiltration and enrolling, we're only funding our own process of shooting ourselves in the foot. They're even getting as bold as to stop sales of physical media (DVDs and CDs) to not allow choices during the worst economy that could possibly exist for consumer opportunity.

The underlying problem is the abusive and untrustworthy way modern ads are being implemented into everything by big business & media companies. They're removing the ability to block ads, because they want to sell a new monthly subscription just to get less ads, and the price will go up until most people can't afford to be on the Internet at all... They're also secretly lobbying to prevent independents from running websites and apps in many ways too. This model was tested on Twitter, where it's gentrified the community now, and driven most past (free) users completely off the platform... Twitter is still highly unprofitable, so it's completely baffling to me as to why companies think this new ad-spam business model will actually work in the long run for their profit. We will also have no options for interaction or entertainment if the Internet goes out, save for a few people with physical media saved from a long time prior to the outage... It's Titanic-Level hubris to buy into this business model.

These ads create such an absolutely jarring experience in navigating sites now, I actually completely avoid implementing them on my sites and apps for that same reason, and to be honest, I never click on them no matter what. With the ways that social apps, and ad content is converging, the Internet, once highly useful for valid information, is now a hellscape of distraction, undesired content, and disinformation meant to drive political overload and consumerism. We need to start asking where the happy medium is in all of this. Not everything should be for-profit, and laced with ads, and the things that have ads can perhaps be less essential to serious need and function.

Microsoft embedding ads into it's OS and office apps is a perfect example of how the frenzy to capture pennies per click has turned on it's head. people are writing secure and private documentation on apps that are willing to place tracking and adware so easily into mission critical applications that it's eroding trust in products altogether. We should expect more from these very large and well profitable companies that are entrusted with mission critical services. Elon scuttling Twitter for his own personal gain was not a crime, but in many ways it was a failure of trust for the service, and I'm honestly still surprised how people are still paying for verification on the platform and buying Teslas to fund his nonsensical ego-maniacal escapades in elitism.

As a consumer economy, we need to shape up and start sending messages to these corporations to shape up and put customer service and respect back at the forefront of their operations at the risk of failure. This model of abusing customers until they pay is NOT in line with a democratic country, and apparently Congress is never going to get it's act together on tech regulation, so we need to vote in more savvy reps that will pay deep attention to tech fleecing and manipulation. Otherwise, by next year, we'll need to watch a video ad between reading each paragraph, and in 5 years we may damn well be required to watch a 3 minute ad before being able to exit our cars.

>Can anybody explain how this actually works?

Every answer moving forward now will contain embedded ads for Sephora, or something completely unrelated to your prompt...

That money will go into the pockets of a small group of people that claim they own shares in the company... Then the company will pull more people in who invest in it, and they'll all get profits based on continually rising monthly membership fees, for an app that stole content from social media posts and historical documents others have written without issuing credit nor compensating them.

And they'll likely drop support/updates for it quickly after release... These out of pocket devices are sunsetted faster than mobile phones, especially so because they require completely independent development teams that companies love to roll essential staff off of.

There have been so many attempts to make VR glasses that it's really not innovation at this point, it's just gimmicky throw-away pocket tech. Something far better to invent is a phone that can project on walls, or project a full-size keyboard onto a table for an easier writing experience.

Most of these companies are gutted by investors, and turned into profit machines... There are very few visionaries leading projects now, and huge hurdles with IP theft and related lawsuits that hold up most of the typical innovation, unless these companies come up with game changing ideas that focus less on pushing out ads, they're going to fail with micro-projects like this. VR glasses have been around for ages, none of what Zuckerberg demoed was revolutionary, gotta be honest about it.

Most of these methodologies came from the car making industry... I think if we realize that and compare making cars to the process of managing software, it's easy to adjust and manage aspects of efficiency & output.... The problem is that humans (the actual devs and process managers) are not often accounted for in the process now, as robots have taken over most of the aspects of car making, so while Agile may look ideal in many cases, the output if often not predictable when staff can quit, rebel and burn the factory down, join unions and demand more pay, or take vacations (for example).

I use Drupal... Although they issue way too many security & functional updates each year, it's been conveniently 100x less expensive to maintain than microservice architecture apps, and it's open source/PHP as a bonus.