nicetriangle

There’s a book called The Media Monopoly that details how media companies have consolidated to just a handful of mega corps and the book had to be republished 5 times since the 80s because every few years the number keeps shrinking dramatically. The author later released a brand new book called The New Media Monopoly which is essentially the 7th edition of the original book and at this point we’re in a fucked up late stage version of the problem he originally detailed.

From the Wiki on the author:

In 2000 Bagdikian stated, “Every edition has been considered by some to be alarmist and every edition ends up being too conservative.” In this latest version, Bagdikian wrote that the number of corporations controlling most of the media decreased to five: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. He argued, “This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history.”

The Onion is a bit too accurate sometimes.

The actual fuck did they think was gonna happen? Literally everyone saw this coming except the FTC somehow I guess.

Ok but will this run on my TI-83? It’s a + model.

I think the next thing they’re gonna do is go after people who sub for a month and then unsub. Probably by charging a good bit more for month-to-month than paying annually.

Password crackdown aside, I don’t really get the appeal of the service unless you have kids or an abnormally large boner for Star Wars and MCU

Please elaborate.

Yeah for sure they both have their pros and cons, I’ve used both extensively. This just happens to be something that would particularly fucking infuriate me and I’m glad I don’t have to deal with it on my daily driver.

Sorta feels like someone kicking the door into your house and tacking up billboards on your walls or something.

Say what you will about Apple but I don’t have to put up with this insane shit at least on their computers. I really wonder how long they hold out on this stuff.

Pretty interesting. I’m gonna take a wild guess that most of the low level (green) jamming is just plain old electromagnetic interference?

Really curious to know what’s going on over Poland. Found this article talking about it. Seems to think Russia is responsible which I suppose isn’t a surprise.

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/01/as-baltics-see-spike-in-gps-jamming-nato-must-respond/

They really have just given up on being a good search engine at this point huh?

Appreciate the insight, thanks

Huh good to know. Thanks for the details!

Really? I’ve heard it kinda sucks these days. I used to use it years back though and am a big Firefox supporter.

Yeah ditto, been working fine for me

I am surprised how many people don’t see where it’s going and hand wave away the issue. It’s going to become a lot more advanced than it already is in just a few years. This is an entirely different situation than we’ve ever experienced.

In the US it’s basically the everything store with fairly competitive pricing and very fast shipping. It’s very convenient if nothing else.

Prime video just isn’t all that good and it sounds like ads are coming and shipping is still free over like $25.

Only reason to have prime is if you also have their credit card and order a decent amount of stuff there and/or shop at whole foods a lot for the 5% back. Otherwise it does add up at all.

Based on the amount of screen time zoomers are reporting (saw some article about it recently and it was insane), I think there’s a boatload of people who are glued to devices and not being present.

I’m a good bit older than that and I’ve definitely been making an effort to get off my phone. I took all the social apps off about 3-4 months ago and it’s been a big improvement. Gonna keep finding ways to unplug. I need to stop posting here during the day so much honestly. I’d probably get a lot more work done.

Agreed on that, it’s a weird dichotomy. I think in a way the internet as a whole has had that effect on people.

Connections in real life don’t feel a deep as I remember them being in the past and its so often you see a group of people out to dinner or drinks together staring at their phones. Meanwhile I have a lot of pretty decent connections online with people I’ve never met in person or maybe only once or twice.

Aluminum is cool but they really should have considered plastic or something and also scrapped that outer screen. The tradeoffs in both weight, cost, and battery life make no sense at all.