(⁠ノ⁠ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

Some apps/front ends/instances track upvote/downvote totals. Haven’t run into any automated filters based on total karma yet, though.

Also worth mentioning that instance admins and some moderators can see specific users’ upvotes and downvotes.

There’s also a public mod log where instances display their moderator actions taken against whom for what reasons. Doesn’t quite stop moderator abuse but it makes it public.

Problem is that, in the post-truth world we are living in, there are large groups of people in online spaces who put feelings over facts. It doesn’t matter what you can prove, it only matters what you know, because other things they believe in like religion and conspiracies that define their isolated worldviews can’t be proven either.

Out of curiosity, do you know if any other historians/archaeoanthropologists who would make that same claim?

Not to say it’s wrong, but I can see how it would be tempting as a self-declared anti-capitalist to want to interpret the findings in a way that conforms to (and thereby confirms) my worldview.

C:/> rotated sideways kinda looks like a person with a lopsided pointy hat and large nose.

I never saw as many fences in my life as I did when I took a trip to the South. So many people in that “fuck you, got mine” mindset.

The US needs the sort of “right to roam” laws that other countries have.

The popular argument I’ve heard is that they have a vertical integration model which has been deemed monopolistic within other industries in the past.

The common example that would have been used is the old Hollywood studio system, when studios not only owned their lots where the movies were made, but they handled all of the distribution, owned most of the theaters where the films would premiere, owned their own film formats, and locked their big-name stars into contracts which had strict non-compete agreements.

It wasn’t impossible to be an independent theater owner and have the ability to choose what films you wanted to show, but it was very hard and required accepting a number of conditions:

• You will pay more for movies than the studio-owned theaters effectively do, which means your tickets need to be more expensive to pay your costs.
• You are subjected to “block booking”, where you can’t show only popular movies, you are also forced to buy a studio’s less popular films as bundles and give them appropriate screen time or the studios won’t sell.
• You also need to buy a studio’s proprietary projection equipment, because it is made intentionally incompatible with the formats of other studios.

The studio system was eventually deemed monopolistic by the US Supreme Court in their ruling US v. Paramount, and that allowed independent theaters to thrive and for artists to switch to contract work without the strict non-compete agreements. But I have to say “the common example that would have been used,” because the conservative-stacked Supreme Court revisited their ruling in US v. Paramount that banned the vertical integration model in Hollywood and decided it was no longer needed, so studios are once again free to resume those old practices if they wish.

So in the case of Apple, the monopoly criticism applies to their vertical integration model which draws some parallels to the old Hollywood studio system that was once deemed monopolistic:

• Apple designs and produces their own devices.
• Apple produces their own operating systems, which are exclusive to those devices.
• Apple produces their own suite of core apps, which are given preferential treatment by their operating systems.
• Apple develops their own technology standards, which are not available to third parties without additional licensing fees (e.g. the Lightning connector, up until the EU forced them to start adopting USB-C).
• Apple hosts their own app store, which is the only app distribution method allowed on their mobile platforms.
• Apple requires third-party apps to agree to their store’s terms to be published on the platform, which prohibits any pricing model in which Apple does not get a cut.

For third-party app developers, it means that even if you have your own revenue model beyond Apple’s involvement, you are not allowed to extend that to your iOS app without giving Apple their cut, which is why you see so many apps now just declaring that they are “for subscribers” without allowing you to subscribe in the app or giving instructions for where to subscribe. And it’s not possible to publish an app on iOS without going through Apple’s store and agreeing to their business model because Apple does not allow third-party app stores and heavily restricts sideloading.

Because Apple also gives preferential treatment to their own apps, it is hard to be “as good” as their own offerings, and there will always be a risk of Apple deciding to make some new category of app for a use case that third-parties currently satisfy but may get shut out of.

Tchaikovsky YES.

TCHAIKOVSKY ALWAYS YES.

I guess it could be said that Edge has an unfair…edge?

Glad I deleted PayPal ages ago.

You’re fine if someone else pees on your pants.

I guess ask the Romans about half of those.

The last time I saw a TIL about this sort of thing though it turned out that “Aluminum” was the original but some academics thought “Aluminium” sounded fancier. My understanding is that it relates to the oxide names, which in the case of aluminum is alumina, after which the -a is swapped for the -um, similar to how magnesium oxide is magnesia. But I’m too lazy to fact check.

Also Molybdenum exists too, so it’s not like Aluminum would be the one exception that is just -um and not -ium.

That’s what you think. He thrives on British English, so every time MS Word autocorrects colour to color or aluminium to aluminum, he is further sustained.

I feel like we’ll be having the same conversation about YouTube Shorts in 10 years as we are having about YouTube Gaming today.

Which is to say none.

That being said, that 20-hour postmortem video on Skyrim feels right given how long I’d guess the playtime is on most people’s savegames.

Agreed

Not a battery but sure, that’s what I was suggesting.

So what other kind of battery would a pager be using that might explode if not lithium? Hydrogen cell?

Definitely any of the showerthoughts communities