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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • I think it’s mostly that it comes across more like religious proselytizing than “good advice”.

    Also, that “advice” is mixed in with just as much messaging about how fussy it can be and implications that you’ve got to basically be an enthusiast level user to make it work for you. Not that it necessarily is that way, but overall that’s the messaging I see from this community.

    As someone who tried Linux many years ago, disliked it, and went back to Windows, generally my take is that Windows is far from perfect, but it’s the best option for me, and I’m happy to try and ignore the Lemmy buzz around it…but that buzz just gets more and more annoying over time.




  • H&R Block forever earned themselves a place on my shit list a few years back when they plastered “free tax returns!” posters all over my area, got me to set an appointment, went into their office and waited over an hour past my appointment time, then brought me in, asked all the questions, established that I had a dead simple return…then informed me that their fee to do my taxes would be like $220.

    When I asked what happened to the “free tax blah blah” that was on every bus stop and billboard in the area, I got some convoluted explanation that basically said, “oh it’s free to walk in and sit down and have the consultation you just got, but any actual filing would be a minimum fee of $200”. The guy added that part of the reason he was running so late was having to explain all this to everyone else who came in today as well. Basically admitting it was all just a massive bait and switch.

    Walked out of there with my stuff and never looked back.

    For anyone who’s basically just working at one job and not planning to itemize, I feel like doing it yourself is really not significantly more difficult than going to an accountant. You still have to answer questions and supply documentation…so if you can read and understand what “enter the value from box 4 here” means, you can do everything the accountant is doing for you.


  • Super weird correlation, I admit, but in my city it’s been my experience that one odd trend I’ve observed has been that Tesla drivers do three things disproportionately more frequently than drivers of other vehicles:

    Lack of using a turn signal (which they arguably share with BMW drivers.

    Forcing their way into lane changes and/or cutting people off (often accompanied by a noted lack of signal).

    And flat out just plain running red lights. This last one is the most alarming and honestly the one I’ve noticed to be most closely linked to Tesla drivers. It’s so bad that even if I have a solid green when approaching a red light, if I can see a Tesla in approaching or crossing lanes, I’ll let off the gas and hover over the brakes, just in case they “pull a Tesla”. I’ve seen many of them pull up to a solid red, drift to a stop, then find a gap in the cross traffic that has a solid green and just dart across. I’ve seen them turn left on red without stopping. Seen them cause near accidents, all running red lights like they’re just a suggestion.





  • They do both.

    When I bought my car in 2015 it came with the free trial but I specifically did not sign up for a subscription. When the trial ran out they started hounding me and I basically struck a deal: I’ll get a year subscription but if and only if you invoice me. Mail me a bill in the mail and I will write you a check and mail it to you or make a one time payment on your site. No auto-enrollment.

    The first two years they did this no problem. The third year they put up a big fuss and told me that wasn’t something that was possible. I asked how it was possible for the past two years and he said I must have misunderstood. So I said okay, if that’s not possible then I guess I’m done with Sirius and hung up. A few days later I got another email and called in again and asked that rep for the invoice option and she said while it’s not commonly done, she’d make an exception for me.

    The year after that I tried three different reps and nobody would invoice me so I cancelled and haven’t signed up since. They still sent me mail and email for years, and somehow they fucked up their database and when my parents bought their car (same make, different model) now I’m getting all of their ad email from Sirius again, but they did stop (intentionally) emailing me after about two years of no contact.


  • Yeah it’s come full circle.

    Cable exists. You pay for content but still get ads because greed.

    Piracy gains traction. Technically illegal but usually unenforced. All content, no ads, kinda a pain, but clearly worth it to many.

    Streaming gains traction. Cheaper alternative to cable. On demand. No ads. Many pirates diminish or quit pirating content. Clearly most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for quality on demand content and no ads.

    Streaming really picks up steam as the mainstream starts cutting cable for ad free on demand content for less. Again, people are happy paying for what they see as good value.

    Greed creeps back in, content is fractured among many streaming services, making the cost basically a wash vs cable but still has advantages of on demand and no ads and the ability to share and juggle subscriptions.

    Greed continues, ads creep back in, “premium” streaming offered for higher fees to eliminate introduced ads. Content continues to diminish. People start turning back to piracy for the same reasons as they did 15-20 years ago. Services also start cracking down on sub sharing.

    Assuming greed continues, I predict we’ll see these services attempt to squeeze even more money from the loyal subscribers they have left as they restructure their subscription models to contracts. No longer will there be any paying month to month. But rather you’ll have to enter onto a 1 or 2 year contract to stream. I also predict that they’ll very carefully curate their selections so that new seasons are available to current subscribers, then once the season is complete, they go away for a year before coming back, just to get people to maintain subscriptions instead of juggling contracts by year.





  • I agree with your take.

    I was never a Trekkie, but my gf has been since she was a kid, so she’s been sharing the setting with me.

    I really, really liked the borg threat, but the Queen cheapens it for me significantly. Not so much that she exists, but that she’s literally the Nexus of the whole thing.

    My suspicion/prediction was that the borg would be undone by some sort of biotechnical exploit, likely either some sort of “virus” that would be assimilated and spread through the system, nullifying/destroying them or their abilities…or some kind of trojan horse, similar to the virus but something that would take federation and romulan cooperation to build something that was very desirable to the collective but with a built in vulnerability that would leave them open to a specific attack (maybe something like capturing a Borg and altering them in a way that used the Borg “learning” against them, by countering the advantages of things they assimilate and then learning at the same pace as the Borg, but in learning how to halt their progress)…or maybe some sort of star trek version of a DDOS where they were able to somehow overwhelm the Borg with things to assimilate, but that were “dumb machinery”…with a huge glut of these assimilations of mundane subjects, maybe it’d have the effect of reducing the average of the collective, making it more beatable. Basically adding lots of dead weight to “bring down the curve”.

    Or, of course, there was always the possibility of time warp or Q related nonsense, but IMHO that would have been even worse than what we got with the Queen. As popular as Q is, I never liked that addition to the setting.






  • This is the natural effect of the core structure of this platform.

    And it’s only going to get worse as the user base increases and instances start to defederate one another due to differences in acceptable content and conduct.

    I know saying anything the least bit critical of Lemmy means lots of downvotes, but the whole system seems far too prone to fragmentation and the repetition necessary to make up for it.

    The whole appeal of Reddit was that it was a one stop shop for key discussion on the topics you were interested in. No matter how many similar communities popped up there was usually one subreddit that was the spot for a topic, and other similar ones were only viable if they focused on a specific niche. Here, it’s completely possible that there might be 20 communities on exactly the same subject that have 90% of their content overlapping…and you have to be subscribed to all of them if you want the extra 10% of unique stuff they bring to the table.