Some IT guy, IDK.

  • 4 Posts
  • 1.81K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Honestly, I didn’t expect that Epic would be okay with this.

    It’s nice to see, and bluntly, after a game has gone through all the different stages of buying and owning, why not make it free? Makes it that much easier for nostalgia nerds to have awesome LAN parties.

    I don’t think this makes up for the long list of consumer hostile things that Epic has done, but it doesn’t hurt.

    The next thing I’d like to see is to have games open sourced when stuff like this happens and the game is well into obsolescence. At least someone can pick up the mantle that studios don’t want to have anything to do with, when it comes to making the game compatible with newer operating systems, or alternative operating systems (like Linux, though I think UT supported Linux), or so that it can be built for new architectures like Apple’s new arm based silicon.

    There’s no profit in the game anymore, so just let people have it so they can fix what you don’t care about anymore.





  • Those have been researched and tested for decades and the tech still hasn’t caught on. They just don’t put out enough power to be useful for much more than a clock circuit (not even enough to power a full watch, just keep the time).

    I have serious doubts they’re going to suddenly become viable anytime soon.

    Any useful energy production from nuclear is basically just making steam to run turbines. Same with coal but you know.






  • Thank you for leaving the explanation in, I’m not versed in what horrors await the US populous with project 2025 for two main reasons:

    1. I’m not American
    2. I like being happy sometimes

    So this fills in a gap for me, and at the same time makes me sad and angry about how many people voted for this garbage.

    Either way, I appreciate you. Have a good day.


  • I’d bet that channel “members” don’t get ads for that channel regardless of premium status.

    IMO, Google made premium, almost nobody bought it. So they went after adblockers, hoping that people would get premium to get rid of the ads. People most just Adblock harder.

    While this is happening, one exec is peering over the fence at twitch. Where they only way to get away from ads without a pretty good Adblock, is to subscribe to the individual creator.

    So they make “memberships” to channels a thing.

    Almost nobody buys that either. So they go… What if, even if someone is premium, we give them ads, unless they’re a channel member.

    Genius.

    Paying to block ads per creator/channel/whatever, is a special level of bullshit that twitch has always had.

    The system is working as expected. The companies are trying to find the best way to extract the most value from you using their platform.



  • That’s certainly a possibility.

    I would argue that we’re both right depending on what the widget is.

    (Assuming the price is changed to be proportional and appropriate for the product) Something like a grocery item is more prone to my thought, and something that has generational differences, such as a laptop or something, will likely follow your theory more closely.

    I think a lot of this will still be tied to price elasticity. If the price is very elastic then the former system would be more likely. Drop the price so you can push more units (and overall, profit goes up), where things that are far less elastic, say, an iPhone, would tend to simply continue to increase like the latter system you describe.

    At the end of the day, both are horrid, terrible, and very very common. So I’ll finish by saying: no matter what happens, people are going to be getting massively fucked, and corporations will post record profits yet again.

    Fuck corporations.


  • I learned all about this in “thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman. He talks about system 1 and system 2, where system 1 is your kind of knee-jerk reaction to a thing (thinking fast), and system 2 is the contemplative and careful consideration of a thing (thinking slow).

    I would argue that some people overly leverage system 1 (thinking fast) because it’s generally easier, and takes less time and mental effort to do. Those that either can’t, or are unwilling to engage system 2 in their day to day activities, will 100% fall for these kinds of misleading prices, since system 1 is cutting so many corners so that it can be fast and efficient (mostly on how much energy is used), that it skips a lot of the cognitive steps and goes right to the (often incorrect) conclusion. That $19.99 is $19 (or $10 in some cases).

    In the book, they discuss that system 1 often gives the wrong information that is later rejected by system 2 when further consideration is given to a particular input/stimulus.

    If someone isn’t engaging system 2 as a check to ensure system 1 isn’t lying to them, then shit like $19.99 seems cheaper than $20. It doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny, but they’re not targeting thoughtful people with these practices. For thoughtful people, there’s functionally no difference between $19.99 and $20.

    Yes, the difference is one cent, but given that one cent is so worthless in today’s society, to the point that Canada stopped making one cent coins (and other countries have done so as well), there’s functionally no difference between the prices.

    One cent is only worth anything if it is combined with many other cents. The sum of those pennies becomes valuable when you conglomerate enough of them.



  • The science is about how you initially react to the number. Your brain will see $19, and immediately you’ll think it’s $19. Only upon further inspection and processing through your cognition, you recognise that its $19.99, which is basically $20.

    It’s that initial reaction they want, to grab your attention. Anyone who is going through life without leveraging their higher thinking will fall for this shit. Anyone who thinks, at all, won’t.

    Unfortunately, there’s a nontrivial number of people who fall into that first category. People who were never taught to think. They just do.


  • The owners of the legislature don’t want that, so it won’t get done.

    The government doesn’t work for you, it works at the behest of those that have long since paid for the “elected” representatives.

    Those people own companies that profit from all the misleading prices and adverts. They don’t have any interest in changing that.