Damn I didn’t even know. That’s pretty dumb on their part as they could have been a bigger competitor. I’m sure they made the decision before Spotify took off as hard as it did.

Everyone always gave me shit for sticking with Pandora. It can basically do all the shit that Spotify can these days albeit a little different. You can even make your own playlists and listen offline if you have premium. It has a more limited library but it’s barely noticeable except maybe once or twice a year I can’t find a song I wanna listen to. It’s simpler and cheaper than Spotify with most of the same features. My favorite part is that I can literally pick any song I want and it will just continue playing after it’s over with similar songs. I’ve discovered so much music I would have never tried if it hadn’t shown up. And so far it hasn’t been overrun by AI slop like Spotify. Sure they pay artists less compared to competitors but at least they aren’t just straight up trying to replace them.

I’m not saying Pandora is objectively better. I’m just saying Spotify is falling into the world of enshittification and there are many alternatives out there. You could even just buy music and support artists directly like we used to.

I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered “yeah, but where do they get their money?” I always figured it was just a way to take people’s data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let’s be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It’s basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.

Isn’t a subscription on a free platform just donating with extra steps? Either way it’s optional but with one of the options you get perks. I’m not discounting the obviously shady things they are doing, I’m just pointing out that they’re basically the same thing from the perspective of the consumer but you get bonus shit.

Just playing devil’s advocate here, but they have to make money somehow, right? It’s either this or advertisements. And I fucking hate advertisements. I say the only way they could truly drop the ball is if they opt for both subscriptions and advertisements. The only other option is donations. And I honestly can’t see that as a viable strategy for something like Bluesky.

I don’t upload YouTube videos so I’m unsure about the logistics of settings for videos. Do you get these options on videos already uploaded or is this only an option when first uploaded? Is this for the whole channel or video specific? Just curious how it works. Regardless if they ever decide to turn it on by default that would mean YouTubers would have to go through hundreds of videos and turn it off individually unless it’s a channel wide setting kinda thing.

Edit: Just noticed it’s under channel settings so I guess that’s a good thing. If it was video specific that would be just plain evil. I guess I shouldn’t give them ideas…

This seems very counter productive for the kind of business they run. If everything from videos and thumbnails to comment sections are AI generated, everyone will just start sticking to the people they are subscribed to and never read the comments. All this would do is promote less engagement with the actual platform.

I mean, remember when the Grindr servers crashed at the republican national convention or some shit because of the overflow of traffic?

Has NZXT always been this shady? I bought a PC from them like 5 years ago and it’s been going strong since the start. I’m sure as hell never buying one again, that’s for sure.

Except the photo they have of him with his face visible isn’t even the same guy. Doesn’t even have the same clothes or backpack. So unless this dude is proficient at changing his clothes and ditching a backpack all while riding an electric scooter down the street in New York, then they have the wrong guy in that photo.

Like I said, making exceptions is always a bad idea. It’s how these fuck heads even get away with it. But at the same time I can’t agree with exceptions even if I agree with the reason behind it.

Exactly. :)

Yeah, that’s kinda my point. The system is fucked beyond repair specifically because these people running the companies get exceptions. These people have basically let thousands of people die for the sake of money. So like I said before, murder is murder and should be treated as such.

If he gets caught, then I’d say yes. Murder should be treated as murder regardless of what the reason is. Making exceptions is never a good idea.

I just hope he doesn’t get caught.

I always forget that ZeniMax even exists, honestly. They’re all just Bethesda to me. In my mind I just picture them as “big Bethesda” and “little Bethesda.” Regardless, they were all bought by Microsoft so it was probably Microsoft that fucked over Arkane. So it’s kind of a moot point anyways.

I feel you. All my gaming friends buy the newest CoD and assassin’s creed games on release every time and then spend the first few weeks just complaining about the games. And I’m like, let’s go play our multiplayer Stardew Valley save that we have hundreds of hours in and actually have fun playing, my guys.

Look, I hate Ubisoft as much as the next guy, but this shit always pisses me off. I guarantee that the reason most of these games fail or go in a bad direction is because of the parent company making poor decisions and then punishing the studios as a scape goat. Microsoft closed Arkane Studios after the disaster that was Redfall when most of the poor choices came from Bethesda and Microsoft. Arkane didn’t even want to make the game in the first place, but they still got shut down and they all lost their jobs.

Fuck AAA game companies. The only clout they have is making decent games in the past when they were smaller. The only time most of these companies made any decent games (not all, but most) was when they were the indie devs competing against the big boys.

Does anyone have any recommendations for apps to view photos that are not Google?

If it weren’t for networking I would have never gone from being a line cook that barely graduated highschool to a CAD tech for a land surveying company. Had literally zero experience and was definitely not what I thought I’d be doing in five years when I was working the closing shift at restaurants every night until 2:00 AM.

As a regular enjoyer of vaping (used to be a pack a day smoker), this is great news. Fuck disposable vapes because theirs nothing “disposable” about them. Plastic, electronics, metals, and lithium batteries that people just fucking throw out their car windows like cigarette butts. That shit is gonna last for thousands of years. And y’all have seen those videos of people’s phones and vapes exploding in their pockets when there’s a puncture in the battery, right? Yeah let’s just throw that shit into landfills and out of car windows and find out what happens.