I get these kinds of things all the time at work. I’m a writer, and someone once sent me a document to brief me on an article I had to write. One of the topics in the briefing mentioned a concept I’d never heard of (and the article was about a subject I actually know). I Googled the term, checked official sources … nothing, it just didn’t make sense. So I asked the person who wrote the briefing what it meant, and the response was: “I don’t know, I asked ChatGPT to write it for me LOL”.

As a technical writer, I always get a bit giddy when someone shows appreciation for good docs haha Thanks for sharing!

You make some good points and I see where you’re coming from, but I think that person used the term “survive” figuratively. Even so, when you say the world is not perfect you’re kind of oversimplifying the situation by making it seem like things are the way they are because of some unfortunate event no one can control, when in reality things are designed to be harder for people with less money, and I’ll try to use your own examples to show that.

Streaming: Remember when we only had Netflix and it had a full extensive catalog, no ads and was much more affordable? Then studios started splitting content just to make more profit, and now every year we pay more to get less content. Even basic plans with ads are going up. You mentioned pirating, but that’s not exactly easy or accessible for everyone, not to mention it’s a legal gray area (which is another discussion on its own).

Delivery: Sure, no one needs to order takeout, but even cooking at home is getting expensive, especially if you want to eat healthy. If you’re trying to save money you basically have to buy stuff loaded with sugar and fat or use shit ingredients, it’s like they’re trying to slowly kill us.

Living: let’s not pretend there’s not a housing crisis going on for a while, where people with money are buying up everything just to rent it back out to other people with money. Meanwhile everyone else is getting pushed to unsafe areas with poor living conditions.

(Also, just saying, that whole “fuck you” attitude of yours doesn’t really help with anything.)

It kinda sounds like you’re shaming people simply for spending their money on entertainment, food or better living conditions. That kind of take can come off like saying, “you’re poor, so you don’t deserve to enjoy anything.”

I get that there are alternatives like pirating, but that doesn’t really solve the bigger issue: we shouldn’t have to resort to that in the first place.

r/BirdsArentReal must be going nuts over this.

I feel like you’re missing the point. Showing a green dot still doesn’t solve the problem or make it ok, especially when this technology works in the background and can capture sound even while the device is in your pocket, like the article says.

I don’t think we should have to be on the lookout for a little dot showing up on the screen constantly. It shouldn’t even ask for microphone access unless it’s absolutely essential for the app’s main purpose. “Features” like this should always be off by default and buried deep in the settings. If people really wanted it (they don’t), they’d go in and turn it on themselves.

And yet, I feel like I struggle to find relevant content more on Mastodon than on Lemmy. Maybe I just still don’t know how to Mastodon.

I’m not a native speaker and I legit googled “what are casino 90° angels”, then I realized it was supposed to be “angles” and now I feel dumb lol

I’ll finally stop seeing its search bar constantly popping up on my parents’ browser toolbars!

I’ve been switching between Pokémon Legends: Arceus (I’m late to the party) and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

PL: Arceus was a bit disappointing. The concept is awesome, and when I first started playing, I thought it would be one of those games I wouldn’t be able to put down. But it got boring really fast. The world feels so empty, like I’m playing a beta test for an open-world Pokémon game.

I just started SMB Wonder, and at first, it felt a bit strange because it didn’t seem like a Mario game. But it grew on me quickly, and now I’m really enjoying it. The online co-op with random strangers works surprisingly well, though I wish they had explored it a bit more. I was also worried the game might be too easy, but the challenging stages showed up sooner than I expected. The Wonder Flower effect is really fun, and I’m always excited to see what it will do next.

Bold of you to say something nice about Windows here on Lemmy, of all places.

I miss having my library fully in mp3. I started using Deezer just for convenience, and I kept only the mp3 I have for rare songs and versions. Now every time Deezer kills a song in my playlists, I regret my decision, and I’m too lazy to rebuild my mp3 library. At least Deezer keeps the name of the song greyed out in the playlist, and if it finds another instance of the same song it’s easy to replace it.

In my company they legitimately try to convince us that our users love ads.

I conducted user research on one of our websites, which showed complaints about the amount of ad placements we have been throwing at them. The execs responded by telling me “but we are actually HELPING them, we’re showing them products that will improve their productivity and processes”. Then, they came up with ideas for new ways we can place MORE ads on top of the ones already there. I’m sure our users are loving it!

I use Deezer too. The only thing I miss is being able to bookmark my favorite radio stations. It’s so weird that we don’t have that yet!

Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for Google to kill its main product over profits. This is in every big company’s textbook.

Sometimes I think we could get to a point where nothing new is created. Like, if everyone is just using prompts and profiting from other people’s work without consent, and this is more lucrative than creating content yourself, what’s the point in creating new things?

I don’t know how to put this without sounding alarmist, but I fear we might be heading towards a halt in creativity. Trying to come up with something fresh will become less rewarding, so we’ll be feeding from the same source material over and over again.

Slightly unrelated question, but is there an easy way to delete all my Reddit posts and comments? I used the Nuke add-on in the past, but it doesn’t work anymore.

I wanna delete my Reddit account, but I’d prefer to erase my history before doing that.

Same thing with MS Teams, except it didn’t give me any messages. It just started opening all my links on Edge overnight. I was very confused when I double checked my OS settings and Edge wasn’t my default browser. I had to manually set Teams to use the same as my OS default instead of Edge.

This whole thing reeks of higher execs pushing stuff no one wants or needs, while a poor dev has to implement shit like this and cry in bed at night.

I don’t know about OP and other countries, but where I live it’s got to a point where companies are basically sharing everything on Instagram only. A lot of them don’t even have official websites, and those that do have websites don’t update them and leave them to rot and die.

Wanna know which concerts are coming up to your favorite venue? Instagram. Wanna see the full menu and prices for your favorite restaurant? Instagram. Wanna chat with a human and get a real reply? Sorry, they’ll only answer your DMs on Instagram.

It’s infuriating, so I keep an Instagram account just to follow those brands and know what’s up. I also follow some close friends, but I don’t interact with anyone and I don’t have any posts, they all think I’m weird in that sense, but I don’t care.

Google also doesn’t care. I kept seeing the same scammy ads and sensationalist articles on my news feed, over and over, even after reporting them several times.

The only solution was to blacklist those sources so they don’t show up on my feed. I feel bad for other people who might get scammed though.