experbia

joined 1 year ago
[–] experbia 61 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

probably. this doesn't surprise me one bit.

If you have a smart TV, it probably runs an ARM-architecture Linux or Android (which amounts to a bunch of extra stuff piled onto Linux) to drive the logic and ui to support connecting to the internet and downloading and updating streaming apps and other smart TV crap.

most of the time they'll run some minimal stripped-down version of these operating systems to support only features needed for the TV and it's functions. buildroot is an open source project that specializes in producing hyper slim Linux OS installation images for devices like these.

if I had to guess, they had a USB full of shows plugged in and the smart tv's solution was to just boot up the linux version of VLC in a bare x session when the user hits play on "totally_not_pirated_smallville_s01e03.mkv" on their thumbdrive. not a terrible solution, honestly: VLC just plays anything.

The old kernel is because a lot of low level hardware has available drivers written for it that are intended to be loaded into old versions of the Linux kernel (at time of release perhaps) and are then just never updated lol, at least not for ARM. sometimes there are breaking changes with kernel apis and stuff as the kernel version increases over time, so the easier solution for someone trying to make a TV, over begging and/or paying the hardware developers to update their drivers, is to just run an old kernel version.

everything is a hack. nearly all these smart devices are just general-purpose computers with ancient (predictable, cheap) software and inescapable interfaces taped over the front, and a whole lot of digital duct tape on the back.

[–] experbia 28 points 9 months ago

"Menu prices will rise!"

nothing a bunch of ~~two-bit con artists~~ MBAs hate more than an informed ~~mark~~ customer.

The actual good businesses run by good people will not suffer by this. only those that relied on duping their customers.

[–] experbia 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

"fixed. whoops..."

[–] experbia 16 points 9 months ago

idk, helldivers going from insanely popular to universally reviled is gonna hurt future deals with Sony. why would any indie or medium sized dev risk doing business with Sony when Sony will randomly push the "destroy game and profitability and reputation" button? this will decrease the number of people willing to publish titles through Sony. "oh you went with Sony? you must want to kill your game lmao"

[–] experbia 22 points 9 months ago

his role in JJ made me realize what a damn good actor he is. I love his evil roles! he played petulant psychopath so well.

[–] experbia 6 points 9 months ago

I'm not even talking about those people or those scenarios.

you call them the extreme scenario, but they are the norm. this kind of scenario is the average reality for a massive number of Americans. it might not be "single parent with a flat tire", but there are thousands of ways people get stuck in a rut with only credit as a lifeline, and it's getting more and more common, and it's rarely something that could be foreseen or mitigated against. that's how our society is constructed now. desperation is the norm. it's profitable.

that is what this trend reveals. the ones who buy more than they need on credit they barely qualify for are the minority. the desperate are the majority.

you'd think you'd take some personal responsibility over your ignorance on the matter before loudly asserting that desperate people need to just pull up on their bootstraps harder and stop whining near you.

[–] experbia 5 points 9 months ago

same. an ad for a thing means the thing is shit. they have to try and trick you to get it instead of letting its quality organically speak for itself.

when things are actually good, you don't need an ad agency to tell you.

[–] experbia 5 points 9 months ago

I don't believe I'm immune to advertising but I don't think advertisers are willing to admit that it's just as easy to create negative brand associations as positive brand associations. when the only exposure you have to a product is frustrating and irritating and offensive, these feelings can bleed over when you see them on a shelf later.

after many years of trying to ignore advertising and pretending I'm not influenced by it, I've admitted I am, just like everyone else. so instead of resisting the effects, I try to turn the feeling of brand familiarity into a warning sign: if I'm drawn by familiarity to a particular product, I question why before I buy. if the answer isn't "a friend or i have used it and found it valuable/good", then i remind myself that it's not good enough on its own. they have to try and trick me into liking it, so it can't be that good. if it were good, they wouldn't have to drop dump trucks of cash into an ad agency to try and trick people into buying it. an ad for a thing means the thing is shit.

[–] experbia 10 points 9 months ago

I agree. and I happen to enjoy baking. arch was my first distro and after a whirlwind tour of other options at some point, has remained my daily driver os for the better part of a decade.

i don't suggest arch to just any newbies. I suggest it to the ones who are overtly interested in baking. I don't suggest it to people asking the best way to get tasty cookies, who are perhaps the majority, but not by as much as people seem to naturally suspect. sometimes I think some people giving answers don't remember or realize that there are many kinds of people interested in learning about Linux and therefore many right answers for a starting distro.

[–] experbia 3 points 10 months ago

the owner class says it has, so it has. they know better than us! get back to work, peasant, and I don't want to hear any whining about expenses. you won't make liars out of us!

/s

[–] experbia 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

this was always my take on this discussion as well.

i think this whole phenomena is more or less a communication misunderstanding and a matter of semantics. I believe that the people who report not being able to "see the apple" are people more inherently capable of more introspection and other metacognitive tasks. they identify correctly that the "mind's eye" is basically the brain imagining what sensations of vision a particular thing might elicit, the same way we might imagine the sensations of touching something fuzzy or imagine the sensations of tasting something bitter. I think very few minds can "project" visual imagination of an apple before the imaginer as thoroughly indistinguishabley as if you got real sensory input of an apple.

i think that people who claim to really see the apple are taking the imaginary sensation of vision as equivalent to the sensation of vision generated from real sensory input, and therefore presuming that it counts as actually seeing it. and those who claim not to see the apple are likely just noticing the difference and assuming they're lacking because the imaginary sensations and actual the sensory stimulus are clearly different things.

we have a word for when people actually see things they cannot ordinarily distinguish from reality, even if they're aware of them as such: hallucinations.

[–] experbia 5 points 10 months ago

People who are modifying Windows this deeply are not going to switch to Linux

I did. I was a heavy Windows customizer and deeply understand it as an operating system and target for application development. I left because, at some point, I realized the OS I (one way or another) paid for was treating me like a product instead of a user, and I resent that. I don't like the feeling of slowly losing grip on the OS as it slides into becoming adtech tooling for marketing interests instead of the thing that runs programs for me. Despite my entrenched Windows knowledge, none of my primary personal computers run it anymore, including my gaming PC. Adaptation is a lot easier than most people expect, in my opinion.

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