We live in a capitalist dystopia

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
And to think, I was tempted to buy a new Saitek flight stick(my circa 2006 x52 is starting to act a little wonky). Might have to go with one of the competitors, or roll my own.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
To be clear, what I'm pretty sure we've been talking about here is that Logitech plans to start designing mice to demand you keep sending the company money or they'll brick your mouse. And offer nothing in return other than the hope that you're too dumb to say "screw that" and get your next mouse from some other company. I'm not sure how Microsoft and Apple can offer a "competing service" to this. I mean, they could just keep selling their own mice and NOT do this stupid and terrible thing, as I'm sure a number of other companies still intend to.
Yes, that's what we're talking about. And I agree with your statement, not just about how other companies will act, but how stupid it is.

The idea will be abandoned pretty quick, if ever implemented at all: because there's entirely too many people making mice for one stupid company to make this work. My thought is: if they DO roll this out; everyone else (like apple and microsoft.) will immediately jump to do the same because they're all the same flavour of stupid.

Once something is monetized; it's either completely abandoned by society at large, because **** that I'm not paying for something that was free till now, or it's too important and ingrained and people just kinda lose a little more hope and add it to the growing pile of monthly bills they don't want and didn't ask for.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
In a rare bit of good news, it's been ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on internet search.

Well, I say good news, but I'm not really sure what that's going to mean for them going forward. It sounds like they might be forced to cut off their arrangements with other companies where they pay to have Google made the default search provider. Unfortunately, (A) they started doing this so long ago that the statute of limitations is probably going to limit how much they can be fined for it, and (B) their only viable competitor in the browser space, Firefox, kind of needs that deal to even stay in business.

The bigger issue with Google is that there's very little they're currently doing that you can stop them from doing and thereby automatically reverse the damage that's been done. Chrome's dominance in the browser space came from years of nagging every single user of their services to download it; they stopped doing that years ago when it stopped being necessary. YouTube took over the online video space mainly by just being the only video site people wanted to use, and by being owned by a company rich enough to tank year after year of huge financial losses. And of course, Google's only serious competition in the search engine space died off ages ago. If people are forced to go through a menu of all two search engines that still exist and pick which one to default to, they're just going to choose Google anyway because everyone knows Bing sucks (whether it does or not) and resent the added inconvenience.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
I'd say split them up. Force YouTube, google search, chrome and Android into being separate companies. At least then it won't be possible for them to leverage one into stifling competition in the second of one of the others
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
I'm not sure how much that would help. It's not like Google is going to spin up its own competitor to YouTube; they literally already tried that in the 2000s and it failed miserably, and there's a reason none of the other big players in the tech industry have tried since. Android could be interesting, depending on how much you restrict the two from working together. I assume the newly-minted Android Corp would have to get custody of the Google Play store (which itself is the subject of an antitrust lawsuit that will be tried next month) in order to maintain continuity within the ecosystem, along with all of the default apps that aren't just mobile ports of Google's desktop apps. As for Chrome, I assume that would include Chromebook? Because that's the only way it's going to make any money. The browser is open source, so it would be easy for Google to just make a 1:1 clone with a different name.

The most blatant conflict of interest right now involves search and advertising. Google bought out Doubleclick, the biggest ad service on the internet, in what was almost certainly an antitrust violation in itself, giving them a near monopoly on online ads. Ideally they'd be forced to break that up so that Google AdSense and Doubleclick are back to being separate, entirely functional companies on their own, but I'm sure they've thoroughly melded together by now.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
By splitting YouTube from Google you wouldn't have the Google war chest to prevent up and coming competition from making any headway. I really think the Google/YouTube merger actually HURT competition in the user-generated video space. You had the already established YouTube being promoted by the already dominant Google search engine making it all that much harder for anyone else to encroach on that sector. Near monopolies in one sector should NEVER be allowed to buy near monopolies in another sector.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
In hindsight, that was a stupid way to deal with the phone monopoly, because all it did was make a bunch of smaller regional monopolies. We should have gone with the other option that was on the table, nationalizing the phone system.
 

Rhinox

too old for this
Citizen
While I don't disagree, that was a longshot to happening even back then. As is now, there is going to be no nationalization of anything here in America. Any politician that even brings such things up would be quickly branded and run out of office at the next election.

The simple fact is that Americans are not good at voting for their self interests. And we, collectively, are very good at falling for the dumbest propaganda.
 

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen


Disney World is arguing a man cannot sue it over the death of his wife because of terms he signed up to in a free trial of Disney+.

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney after his wife died in 2023 from a severe allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at the theme park.

However, Disney argues its terms of use, which Mr Piccolo agreed to when creating his Disney account in 2019, means they have to settle out of court.

What the actual ****

The entertainment company argues it cannot be taken to court because, in its terms of use, it says users agree to settle any disputes with the company via arbitration.

It says Mr Piccolo agreed to these terms of use when he signed up to a one month free trial of its streaming service, Disney+, in 2019.

That....what?!
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Yeah, it's easy to talk about how delusional the youth must be to want to give up on our whole political system and stage a communist revolution, but then I see news like that and I'm like... maybe we should give it a go after all? What do we really have to lose?
 

KidTDragon

Now with hi-res avatar!
Citizen
Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney after his wife died in 2023 from a severe allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at the theme park.

Disney will be represented by the law firm of Goku, Gohen, & Goten.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
Frankly, arbitration clauses should be abolished. I can think of very few instances where they are legitimately used. Most of the time they are only there to ensure anti-consumer practices can't be punished.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Well, that's the funny thing. This is the first time I've heard of a company claiming that an arbitration clause prohibits a court from even hearing a case. Every other time I've heard about one, it's worded something like "If you do sue us outside of a small claims court, we'll permanently ban your account." Which is also bullshit and shouldn't be allowed, but you know, they reserve the right to refuse service and all that.

Disney is absolutely overstepping their already-generous legal bounds. I'm pretty sure what they're trying to stop this guy from doing is protected as a constitutional level, and most judges would rule as such. If for no other reason than they probably don't appreciate a company trying to tell them what cases they can and can't hear.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
Dang. I wanted to see them get obliterated in court.

Now I just want to see them get obliterated.
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
Not only does this counter Starbucks’ generally “pro-green” identity, but…
If you’re hiring someone for the purpose of improving the performance of your company, financing a private jet to shuttle them a few times a week from California to Seattle doesn’t seem like an effective use of money, especially when the average worker is facing increasing price pressures and stagnant wages.
 

Rhinox

too old for this
Citizen
Yeah, this just isn't a good look. Aside from the fact that Zoom exists, this is extremely tone deaf when your workers can't get a living wage or unionize.
 


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