Ladies and gentlemen… FROM the company that brought us “Cadillac CUE” (all-capacitive-buttons information controls)…

…Something nobody wants!

Grocery stores are always trying new things hoping it’ll be the next big thing, but usually it doesn’t catch on.

When I was a kid back in the 1980s and '90s, they would add a small digital calculator to the handle of the shopping cart to help people figure out how much they were spending. It wasn’t useful to people, so it disappeared.

Then they used to have the live lobster tank back in the deli. Turns out, most people don’t want to buy live lobster at a budget grocery store in a working class neighborhood.

Then around 2000, stores started expanding significantly to become a One-Stop shop. Bragging that you could buy a pair of shoes and fresh produce all in one place. It sounded kind of stupid, but it caught on in a huge way! Walmart have been the best at implementing this model, but others like Fred Meyer did it first.

Then they started to implement the curbside pickup. Which was totally dead and nobody used it in an absolute failure… Until the pandemic hit, and a bunch of people tried it, and realized they liked it.

So the next thing? Sounds like goofing around with AI in their app. Will it be useful? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

the smell of summer

Precious memories!

Unlimited venture capital money for 20 years have allowed social media companies to basically do whatever they want without listening to their user base. It was good when they were trying to grow the user base. But now that they are trying to squeeze every dollar out, we’re seeing the dark side.

Contrast this with old school media. They are mature and must turn a profit through their advertising. And they are absolutely terrified. Every TV show involves consultants who obsess over tiny details that could make the difference of half a ratings point. They know that if they scare the audience away, they go out of business.

Eventually the tech companies will reach the same level of maturity, but we’re not there yet.

YouTube has an ace up its sleeve:

It shares revenue 50-50 (roughly) with creators. And considering the server costs and promotional benefit, that 50% cut is very fairly priced.

Facebook, Twitter/X, Reddit, etc. never shared revenue with creators. And that makes them easily replaceable. But Google wisely made YouTube and video creators financially reliant on one another. And that makes it difficult for something like PeerTube to pop up in a way Mastadon has.

That’s good to know. I almost thought of buying a couple (I always back up with pairs) to replace a couple of aging spinning disk portables.

Guess I will wait.

In fairness, a lot of these people jumped ship on Jan 7.

Yes, too late to be called “ethical.” But still far better than the maniacs who, even now, are still aboard the bad ship Donald.

They told me that when laptops came out. Heck, I even used a laptop exclusively through most of the 00s.

Chromebooks would kill desktops. Then iPads. And smartphones. And cloud computing.

And yet by 2014, I was back to building a desktop PC. And had 3 since. Desktops will always have a small market share because they are the only machine that works for serious work (video editing, etc.)

Will I embrace Microsofts cloud computing? Only if it is cheaper price per power than owning my own equipment. Something tablets, phones, laptops, and cloud computing have all failed to do.

Desktop users are "value* users. And I’m skeptical what MS offers will offer good value to cheapos like me.

I see your point. And you don’t deserve to be down voted, as it’s reasonable.

I do think he’s pricing it a bit steep for what the market can bear. Maybe not. I hope he gets as much as possible. I just know that I am priced out and will continue to use Connect.

As much fun as Sync is (and while I appreciate creators want to get paid)…

We’re talking like $15-30(!). That’s steep for a phone app. All this money stuff is pushing me back to Connect and Jerboa.

I wish Sync well. But I think I’m done with it already.

In turn, my parents are gradually escaping.

My dad was a Never Trumper who we gently led out. And Jan 6th made him an “independent” (he votes for Democrats now). My mom is a loyal Republican (somehow)… but agrees Trump is an arrogant piece of garbage and not the horse to bet on.

Allegorical Christianity

In that, yeah, western pluralism is derived from a “Rhode Island” interpretation of tolerance from Jesus Christ’s teachings in the New Testament. But waa the guy diety? Nah.

Was raised LDS/Mormon for the first three decades of my life. But gradually burned out of it as the church became more demanding and greedy – and slowly evolved away from “Rhode Island” tolerance Christianity into a near- LGBTQ hate group. The church decided to die on that hill, and I left. I believe Jesus teaches me to be kind, understanding, and tolerant.

The LDS/Mormon church is basically obsessed over anti-LGBTQ acceptance and tithing (money). If it were on the Nasdaq, the church would rival Lockheed Martin in market cap. Yet they are hella stingy helping the poor and still demand even the church’s poorest members to pay their “widow’s mite” of 10 percent. It’s downright immoral.

Good riddance. I could always tell how inefficient those bulbs were, simply from trying to touch them to change the bulb. All that heat is wasted energy.

Plus there’s a lot of neat things we can do with the new LED bulbs, including adding Wi-Fi circuits to make them smart bulbs. And the price of those LED bulbs is dropped so much, I don’t even really worry about the price difference anymore.

I was a “Fox News”-viewing turd in high school, too.

Conservativism mirrored what my parents viewed at the time. Seemed edgy. And offered simple solutions to all of life’s problems.

Then I grew up. Five years later, I was voting for Barack Obama and terrified of Sarah Palin.

“I owe my soul to the company store” song comes to mind.

Grew up in an old union mining town that had some pretty violent strikes in the 1910s and 20s. Didn’t realize it was still going on other places into the 1940s.

Set local minimum wage law to median rent prices. And watch landlords/NIMBYS and employers fight each other. That’s the only way to dig out way out of this mess.

He even looks like Walter White

You’re bringing back nightmares from grad school. The “online” homework problems… Shudder.

No kidding. I remember when I bought my new car in 2011, having Bluetooth was like #3 on my list.

In the end, I bought a great Honda without it. But that was only after I figured out a way to add it aftermarket.

For any car buyer under the age of 50, AA/ACP will be a top item. But we live in a weird world where most of the customers are under 60, but we’re broke. So everything is marketed to Boomers, even though they are a minority.

Weird times.

What is Reddit…

… Baby, don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! No more!

More adults are alive now than adults who died.

Most of humanity didn’t survive to adulthood.