I've noticed this kind of thing a LOT lately. Evidently this book is out called Nudge that tells its readers to annoy the shit out of their customers until they 'install the app". Because evidently running in the background and draining your battery constantly harvesting your data and monitoring your location is more profitable than actually selling the service.

I booked air tickets on a website and it was deliberately irritating, pausing for a long time between screens, showing a QR code and saying, 'tired of waiting? our app is much faster!" Hell, even Youtube is unwatchable without a Google account and giving them your real name, address, phone number for 2FA, email, backup email to cross-check databases. And once you've done all that. the jack-in-the-box pops open and it's like, let's get your social, your tax return info for last year, last three places of employment, and then upload a photo of yourself holding your ID. And your selfie cam photo wasn't clear, our facial recognition can't read it. Nice try scammer, your application has been denied. We'll be keeping the info you already entered, though.

China is like this, an entirely real-name internet. You can't so much as order food delivery without all of this. Simply entering the country requires facial scan and fingerprints.

1984 was a warning, not a role model.

Savages? What? Excuse me? Racist much? Hey, could you give us your opinion on people from India? Or tasmanian aboriginies? Or the Jews? Enlighten us! Once upon a time you'd be at -1 flamebait. But I guess it's true if you don't kick out the natzees your bar becomes a natzee bar, too. And while you're at it tell us about slt right hero and Googler James Damore, too. Go read his famous anti diversity screed again, you'd love it.

Adsense payments dropped off a cliff. This is why so many websites are laying off staff. Google wants all traffic to stay on its site. Gemini AI (yes, the one that, when asked to draw Scottish people, drew only Blacks and then asked to draw a group of diverse people also drew only Blacks.

What do you need to click through to a website for? Those can contain dangerous information like warning people not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That disease is still out there and still dangerous. Get your boosters, everyone!

People want helpful AI that doesn't hallucinate, code crap code, tell you to eat glue or commit suicide.

No flying cars, no vacations to the moon, no energy too cheap to meter. But god damn, at least we'll have superheroes running (or flying) around and delivering public service messages.

What is this obsession with pedophilia? I'm really getting rather suspicious of MAGA. I suspect your average Catholic priest or Southern Baptist youth pastor thinks about nude children less than most MAGA individuals.

> It's a useless technology anyway

I hope this quote someday goes on to be as infamous as "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." but Slashdot probably isn't relevant enough for that any longer.

China IS bad! Tiananmen Square massacre. Enslavement of Tibet. Uighur genocide. Constantly threatening to invade Taiwan. One-party rule, just like in California. Check out the youtube channel Laowhy86, he gives constant updates of just how bad it is over there.

We don't want to be associated with a fascist regime when the wind changes.

I trust Windows Server 2003 more than I trust Windows 11. It's less stable, but Microsoft isn't in control of your machine.

Yeah, because the customers don't want anything else. Itch.io is great ... if you want random indie stuff. GOG seems to have no idea what to recommend and you either get games from 1992 or hentai VNs with a porn patch so they're not technically selling the porn, with little that's actually interesting.

As a person with an 800+ credit score, I can confirm that I can get credit anywhere I apply for it, at the best rates available, even though I pay off my credit card bills in full every month, and have no other debt.

Coming from a guy called Tony Isaac? Yep, username checks out.

(But yeah, I have much the same experience, though I do have a mortgage also)

The government was the originator of redlining, and it was quite openly about denying mortgages in minority areas. The redlining maps were created by the FHLBB and the HOLC, both New Deal government corporations. This was ended in 1968.

The Clinton changes were designed to increase loans to poor people. And they did. But this turned out to be a bad idea.

The Fair Isaac score was anything but fair. It predicts whether or not you will default on a loan in a given amount of time.

Yes, that's what it's supposed to do.

It is highly correlated with ethnic back grounds, parents income and where you lived. Does your spouce have the same last name as you, is your name in the top 100 names of the year you were born.

It may in fact be correlated with these things (because they're correlated with likelyhood of default), but it's not based on them. Some of those aren't even in the credit report the score is based on. Location isn't used in the FICO score.

I think the key was to get the government securitizers (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) to accept their new credit score. But they have people for that too. Possibly including blackjack dealers and hookers (or more likely "procurers").