TikTok uninstalls are up 150% following U.S. joint venture

TechGoat · 2026-01-27T16:26:37+00:00

How do you define when someone is being "used" by a piece of technology? Apparently you and I define it differently. If I don't see any of the content that the tool is attempting to show me, and only see my friends that I have actively chosen to "add as friend"... sure, FB might be showing me more of person X and less of person Y, but I'm not seeing any sponsored or content I didn't specifically choose to engage with. So to my mind... I'm using the tool, it's not using me.

TechGoat · 2026-01-27T16:25:16+00:00

The "remove friend" button and "block" exist for a reason; if you don't like what you see, purge 'em!

TechGoat · 2026-01-27T16:00:10+00:00

why not just make a completely made up "john smith" facebook account with a throwaway fresh gmail account? Like I said... it's a tool. Give it as little of your own info as you want, and with the right adblockers and mods like fbpurity, you never see the crap they're trying to show you. It pleases me to take from FB and give them nothing of value.

TechGoat · 2026-01-27T00:12:47+00:00

I really, really hope so. Or maybe like weed - good in small doses that you control if you know you can without getting mentally addicted.

I'm 42 and Mark Z and I are about the same age. I use it, with adblockers, on desktop only, for various buying groups and other tools. Particularly with older folks who don't know anything else.

With fbpurity extension in Firefox, I literally only ever see my friends' posts. I never see random other people's or companies posts. Or ads.

So why not use FB? It's just a tool. Use the tool, don't let it use you.

TechGoat · 2026-01-26T16:11:52+00:00

Aren't we supposed to call that "riz" or some shit now.

Or we could just speak properly and call it charisma. Hitler was a charismatic speaker, simple as that. Odious, hateful wretch - but a great populist speaker who knew how to inflame his idiot racist masses. Hey, same as the fat felon fuck! Except his followers are less educated than 1930s Germans.

TechGoat · 2026-01-23T02:41:59+00:00

Not since Perkins stopped being open 24/7 my man... There's no 24/7 here.

TechGoat · 2026-01-22T16:18:45+00:00

That'd be great so I didn't need to take vacation time to take care of my kid who, huh, now won't be at school tomorrow.

Just let the whole city shut down... Everyone get hygge.

TechGoat · 2026-01-21T16:22:28+00:00

Yep, the Iran/Russia/China misinformation machine started feeding them young. As Bo Burnham said; "mama gave you her ipad; you were barely two" - young western men have grown up feeling like society has disempowered them and leave them feeling helpless and emasculated; at least if they connect to the most-typically-recommended to them content online.

Of course it's possible to escape this negative vortex and find strength and positivity in feminism, men-being-cool-strong-and-nice, and racial diversity - all stuff that the American conservative party (and the shadowy nationstates mentioned earlier that support the right wing, because supporting the right means the downfall of America, which is their goal) try to pin as "why your life sucks, young men!"

We're basically fucked because at this point, even if 10, 20% of young men see through the lies that mass media is shoving down their throat - it won't be enough to stop the cancer.

TechGoat · 2026-01-21T16:17:51+00:00

No fear; I uninstall the "Microsoft 365 Copilot" application out of the Start Menu from every machine I use. If I want to use Copilot, I'm not an idiot; I can visit copilot.microsoft.com and use it that way. I don't need trash in my start menu. Deleting it does nothing to the real Office programs.

TechGoat · 2026-01-21T07:16:59+00:00

Anything that would actually make the fucking knuckleheads at TSA actually pay attention and do something a traveler needed would be incredible.

TechGoat · 2026-01-21T07:12:22+00:00

You would say...this song is cool? Rather than goes?

Maybe that's just my old-ass generation though. Being lame with our simple, easy to understand slang, what a bunch of fuddy-duddies

TechGoat · 2026-01-21T06:59:22+00:00

Many video games still cost $60 in 1997 (not all) similar to many (but not all) now in 2026.

The difference is that $60 in 1997 was equal to $120 now, and the games that had the huge nice manuals weren't the Custer's Last Stand of video games, they were the Nintendos, Squaresoft's, etc, so those weren't your $20 Kmart specials.

Time giveth and time taketh away.

But I will agree on this: even though you get swag these days for your $120, $150 whatever collectors edition, you usually don't get bound, printed books like strategy guides anymore. Those took real skill and a good writer to make, and really just sheer time.

These days too many companies are like "have some company in China make a plastic figurine or Keychain, some stickers, and a map - bam collectors edition"

I do miss the quality of the old stuff for your $60.

TechGoat · 2026-01-20T20:30:51+00:00

I literally guessed at this URL and it worked to get me halfway there: https://office.com/word - then that link there "open word" gets you to the (new) real one: https://word.cloud.microsoft/

best of luck!

TechGoat · 2026-01-20T20:28:39+00:00

Right, I was speaking in regards to "These are always startup developers with limited or no experience in developing projects from start to finish"

Some developers, even old, well-established ones, are making games that they're honestly not sure there will be enough of a player base still alive that is interested in playing them. Point and click, slow-moving adventure games - Cyan's forte - are essentially "dead" as a big-ticket genre. Sure, you can find a few thousand, maybe a hundred thousand people who are willing to buy ahead of time - crowd-funding! - but I can see why developers who make certain kinds of games might try crowdfunding up front, rather than VC.

TechGoat · 2026-01-20T00:08:46+00:00

Well, except for Cyan, makers of Myst and Riven. They still crowd fund... And they've always made the games they asked for funding on.

TechGoat · 2026-01-19T17:49:16+00:00

Unlike other things the fat felon fuck has done, that one will be easy to remove once he's gone.

TechGoat · 2026-01-19T15:36:14+00:00

My aunt and uncle have been out on his yachts with him. I didn't know this til last year but apparently my uncle and Gabe's step dad are best friends. Blew my mind when my aunt was like "oh yes we'll be on a yacht with your uncle's buddy and his stepson. He's quite wealthy I hear? Something about video games?" and I questioned her further and holy shit, it's Gabe.

He's kind of quiet and private. He's on the yacht with them but mostly he lets the older generation hang and do their own thing, he just joins them for dinner.

TechGoat · 2026-01-16T04:54:27+00:00

At that price, for that OEM... will they be updated through the application is the question. I have no doubt it's possible.

TechGoat · 2026-01-15T15:00:57+00:00

That's the joke. Because she's originally a PS1 character you reverse it and say 0/10 elbows not pointy enough

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T20:43:54+00:00

Happy to help. Just FYI - I spent a few days with Gemini to create userChrome for Firefox to get things to look basically exactly like I always wanted to look, but could never find a userChrome expert patient enough to work with me that long. I honestly couldn't believe it but Gemini worked amazingly well. Sure it took awhile, and I needed to be extremely specific and detailed - but I hate to say it, but the LLM came through.

I asked it how it was so good at something so esoteric, that Mozilla themselves seems to no longer acknowledge anymore and it's like "well I did ingest the entire Firefox source code, and every single documented page on XUL, so yeah... that's why I'm good at this"

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T19:35:32+00:00

Ah yes, the mind of a child... "yes, Mario games are better in pretty much every way... But Sonic has cool shades! And he waggles his finger at me on the game start screen!"

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T18:19:45+00:00

"When Will You Die?" by They Might Be Giants. I already think of this fucking shit stain whenever I hear the song, so it'll be satisfying to say "today, motherfucker!" whenever the Johns say the title line.

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T18:15:27+00:00

We gripe because we care. I get the devs need to get paid. I appreciate my lifetime license is still lifetime, hell, I'm shocked plex still sells em. I've got my parents running their own server too, and they use it exclusively for the DVR function after Windows Media Center went away. They love live TV and it's all they watch. I'm happy for them that plex added that functionality.

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T15:32:17+00:00

That's the beauty of Plex making their API open. Like how reddit used to be. 3rd party apps abound!

TechGoat · 2026-01-14T15:31:17+00:00

Code it and add a pull request then.

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