RunawayFixer

The worst build laptop that I've ever held in my hands was from MSI. Cooling problems that made the fans work almost permanently at full blast (even after repasting by the shop), underperforming for the specs, a chassis with too much flex and a broken screen hinge after slightly more than 2 years (just out of warranty). When I looked up the screen hinge problem, it turned out to be an old recurring problem that MSI never bothered to fix when releasing new models, like they couldn't be arsed to give a fuck.

This laptop was bought in about 2017 or 2018 after which I put MSI on the do not buy list. It's possible that they've improved their quality since then, but I doubt it, given that I can find the same complaints in forum posts from 2024:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/are-hinge-issues-still-a-thing.343279/page-5

LTT is entertainment, I wouldn't expect in depth reporting from them. They don't have that anal retentive attention to details/all angles that Gamer's Nexus or Louis Rossman have. If LTT made videos where they attack stuff that they think is wrong, then I'd expect them to go on their face more often than not. And attacking large companies with a poorly constructed case, would always come back to bite them in the ass.

Very few people can do the kind of repeated reporting that Gamer's Nexus and Louis Rossman do + stay in business. I can't blame LTT for sticking to what they're good at (superficial entertainment).

"That might make me look advertiser unfriendly!” Not what I was saying at all. I said that in the context of the time it might have made them look unnecessarily greedy to the public + provide free advertising + extra users for Honey.

I don't enjoy watching ltt anymore since a good few years, but I'm still going to come to their defence :)

They discussed dropping Honey on their forum in march 2022: "We ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links. Essentially, if someone clicked on a affiliate link (For example, one of ours below in the video description on YouTube), and then if they "use honey" and search for a deal, Honey will override that tracking link even if they don't find you a deal. ".

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1415146-weekly-sponsorship-suggestioncomplaint-thread-feb-28-2022/

When they defended themselves against the recent accusations, that they didn't make enough noise when dropping Honey in 2022, their defence was that they thought that only creators were disadvantaged (a few 100 people?). They claim to have been unaware that the users of Honey (the hundreds of thousands of LTT viewers) were being disadvantaged as well. They also seemed to be unaware that Honey's behaviour is likely illegal, at least LTT made no mention on the legality of it. https://therecenttimes.com/news/linustechtips-addresses-megalags-honey-allegations-defends-transparency Which checks out with their 2022 post.

If they had known that the users of Honey were being bamboozled as well, I'm sure that they would have made a video about it. But making a complaint video to basically say that an ex sponsor was stealing some of their marbles, might have given a bad look. + given more publicity to Honey, which LTT probably didn't want to happen.

I like knowing what the people in crazy town are currently believing, certainly because I have to interact with some of those people on occasion. For my own sanity I am unable to directly consume their media, so I appreciate it if someone else is reporting on popular misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 criminalises anyone who “invites support for a proscribed organisation” or “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive” of such a group. Those arrested under the section say the threshold is so low that individuals could be arrested with no intention of doing anything they are charged with.

https://www.declassifieduk.org/free-speech-threatened-as-journalists-treated-like-terrorists/

This law seems so broad, that it could be used to arrest anyone they want.

How does "expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive" work? If Hamas is in support of rescueing puppies and I am in support of rescueing puppies, does that make me a terrorist in the UK?

Trustpilot doesn't have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. Allowing review bombing can also harm their credibility. It's a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don't.

Trustpilot's method and/or communication could probably be better, but what Google is doing is the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss, Google is just silently removing all recent negative reviews. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors that they're temporarily not accepting reviews and that it's because of recent news.

Aggregate scores on all sites have become untrustworthy, they're just poor first indicators now, but reading user reviews is still very much worth it imo. It just takes way longer to figure out whether a product is good/bad than it did 10 years ago. Once ai llm catch up with writing credible texts, then that method will be toast as well and then we'll be really screwed when choosing a product.

And I kinda understand why they're blocking new reviews. Trustpilot doesn't have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. It's a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don't.

Trustpilot's method could be better (Fe: they could allow reviewbombs to happen and show 2 scores, with and without), but what Google is doing is probably the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors to go check the news.

I actually can't believe that I've been defending Trustpilot, they've always had a repuation of selectively removing reviews, but well, Google is now worse than them.

Honey in the chrome webstore: 4.7 stars. With no clear way to see written reviews, just the aggregated stars are visible.

Honey in the firefox add-ons store: 3.2 stars.

Honey in Trustpilot: 2.7 stars. Closed for new reviews since 4 days, but old reviews and history are still accessible.

Google manages to do worse than trustpilot. Google is once again confirming what a useless company they've become.

Against a dark background

I read a science fiction book from Iain M Banks over the holidays that was set in a rogue star system that was millions of light years away from the nearest galaxy. No matter how advanced that society could get, they would never be able to travel to the nearest star. They were doomed to isolation in their 1 star system basically. Compared to that, a mere 40 light-years at least gives the hope that it might one day be possible to travel there within a few life times (or less) of traveling.

I'm not disputing that this isn't triage, but I just wanted to clear something up about what triage is: Triage happens everyday in emergency rooms of hospitals. Just normal every day triage is sorting (= trier in french) the patients according to urgency of care and availability of resources. Someone bleeding out will be helped before someone with a broken bone for example.

I don't know if there is a separate term for the kind of emergency triage where some patients are left to die because of insufficient resources.

One of the benefits of living and working in a liberal society is that stuff like this can get publicly published, discussed and rejected if deemed bad. Under totalitarian regimes that public forum is absent, which is why some of the worst ideas/atrocities of the Soviet Union only came to light years after they had happened (instead of being rejected before they could happen). When it comes to human rights, liberalism > communism, and it's not even close.