October 23Oct 23 Listened to the rest. Here is a quote from Doctorow towards the end of the podcast in response to whether he is optimistic or pessimistic about fixing enshitification. “So here's a way out of that trap. And it's to throw away pessimism and throw away optimism, which are both fatalism, right? Pessimism, the belief things are going to get worse no matter what we do. Optimism, the belief things are going to get better no matter what we do. What we do matters, right? We are steering history. And what we call that belief is hope. And hope is the belief that even though you can't see your way from here to the end state that you want to achieve, that if you ascend the gradient towards that future, that as you ascend it, you will attain new vantage points from which will be revealed to you terrain that was invisible when you were at that lower spot. And that that will be your next step.”
October 24Oct 24 3 hours ago, Incredulity said: Listened to the rest. Here is a quote from Doctorow towards the end of the podcast in response to whether he is optimistic or pessimistic about fixing enshitification. “So here's a way out of that trap. And it's to throw away pessimism and throw away optimism, which are both fatalism, right? Pessimism, the belief things are going to get worse no matter what we do. Optimism, the belief things are going to get better no matter what we do. What we do matters, right? We are steering history. And what we call that belief is hope. And hope is the belief that even though you can't see your way from here to the end state that you want to achieve, that if you ascend the gradient towards that future, that as you ascend it, you will attain new vantage points from which will be revealed to you terrain that was invisible when you were at that lower spot. And that that will be your next step.” Bunch of hippy dippy mumbo jumbo bullshit. Translated: If you stay alive and don't die you will gain new experiences. Those experiences will allow you to see the world in different ways than before. Great insight by that guy. Edited October 24Oct 24 by Fudge Nuggets
October 24Oct 24 2 hours ago, HenryJames said: I mean sure but if you have a company issued device like a laptop pretty sure they can already figure out is said laptop was on office wifi (besides cameras, badging in or our and a myriad of other ways to figure out who is physically there if they want to). Seems like a worthless feature so it’s perfect for this thread but not sure it’s gonna move the needle much on employees being tracked.
October 24Oct 24 14 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said: I mean sure but if you have a company issued device like a laptop pretty sure they can already figure out is said laptop was on office wifi (besides cameras, badging in or our and a myriad of other ways to figure out who is physically there if they want to). Seems like a worthless feature so it’s perfect for this thread but not sure it’s gonna move the needle much on employees being tracked. Yeah, this is already something that can be done if you are on a company laptop Microsoft Teams isn't accomplishing anything new. With that said, Teams is ass, my dude.
October 24Oct 24 1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said: Bunch of hippy dippy mumbo jumbo bullshit. Translated: If you stay alive and don't die you will gain new experiences. Those experiences will allow you to see the world in different ways than before. Great insight by that guy.
October 24Oct 24 On 10/15/2025 at 7:11 AM, HenryJames said: Stopped at the McDonald's in San Marcos a few weeks ago, and there was a Door Dash guy there picking up stuff. Was his hair perfect?
October 24Oct 24 7 hours ago, Surly Bevo said: I mean sure but if you have a company issued device like a laptop pretty sure they can already figure out is said laptop was on office wifi (besides cameras, badging in or our and a myriad of other ways to figure out who is physically there if they want to). Seems like a worthless feature so it’s perfect for this thread but not sure it’s gonna move the needle much on employees being tracked. 6 hours ago, F250 said: Yeah, this is already something that can be done if you are on a company laptop Microsoft Teams isn't accomplishing anything new. With that said, Teams is ass, my dude. Or heaven forbid a manager actually walk down the hall and see if their people are present.
October 24Oct 24 1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said: Or heaven forbid a manager actually walk down the hall and see if their people are present. The manager is working from home.
October 24Oct 24 19 minutes ago, Deej said: The manager is working from home. I mean, duh. It's so the manager, working from home, can ensure the drones are in the office, where they belong.
October 24Oct 24 The good news is that given how screwed up the Windows 11 takeover is becoming, I have much less time to spend worrying about politics.
October 24Oct 24 1 hour ago, AnTiM said: The good news is that given how screwed up the Windows 11 takeover is becoming, I have much less time to spend worrying about politics. thats good, you're in Daily Texan... not that anyone could tell.
October 24Oct 24 2 hours ago, Iceman said: what if you're on VPN, Mr Teams Tracker? It can probably cross reference with GPS / Location Services. This is MSFT responding to the corporate market. RTO is a big deal, and once Amazon started requiring 5 days a week in office that freed up many others like AT&T to do the same. If you work for a shitty company that tracks you, get out.
October 24Oct 24 I don't get tracked, at least there have never been conversations related to it. I work on the road at various locations throughout the year. If I ain't on the road, I work from home. If we ain't where we are supposed to be, shit gets fucked up, so there's that piece of not wondering if you are essential, as well. I never have to worry about that stuff because there's gonna be a lot slower runners before that bear gets to me. I've also had fuckers try to manage me from the office before, until I tell them where to look on their tracking reports for supporting evidence/ counter-points- then they quietly hang up. Before I started this gig, I drove about 40k miles per year and got reimbursed by DOT rate. For the final 3 years or so, they gave us a motus ap that tracked our ipad. All I had to do was take it with me wherever I went for work. When it came to the end of the month, I entered my closing odometer 1 time, and it created a one pager for 4 weeks of mileage to electronically attach to our expense report. Some of the guys balked at it and continued to spend all kinds of time filling out the old forms. I was like, "You motherfuckers are so scared of that shit, but it is one of the single best time-savers they ever gave us." I've also used GPS tracking on our company assets to defend employees against accusation of wrongdoing. People get real fucking quiet when you show them your driver was 25 miles from where they accused... Last 2 paragraphs are just saying not all tracking is bad. It can be leveraged for positive outcomes as well. That depends upon the users, which does tie into Buzzrock's final sentence. I'd just posit that the tools aren't inherently bad. Shitty people absolutely can be.
October 24Oct 24 8 hours ago, Incredulity said: thats good, you're in Daily Texan... not that anyone could tell. So sweet of you to notice...
October 26Oct 26 On 10/23/2025 at 8:10 PM, HenryJames said: There isn't a chat app alive that Microsoft can't kill. Skype, Kaizala, MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger Amazingly MS can always find a way to make these apps worse. Teams used to be bad but somewhat usable. Now it is just flat awful. A feature like this won't put the dagger in it, but it won't help. Slack is amazing (built on IRC) and if Microsoft bought it, they would find a way to destroy it too.
October 26Oct 26 If you don’t think your company could track you you’re not paying attention. I don’t use any of it but my company HR has a ton of tools and data available to me if I want it. I just don’t give a shit to worry about anything except my people getting their work done. I think my biggest fear now is the dumber ones trying to use AI to write engineering reports or letters, which either they or I seal. I am really nervous about something slipping by with a hallucination in it.
October 26Oct 26 1 hour ago, Hefeweizen said: I think my biggest fear now is the dumber ones trying to use AI to write engineering reports or letters, which either they or I seal. I am really nervous about something slipping by with a hallucination in it. So you’re saying you sign/seal things without checking/reading them?
October 26Oct 26 I was looking for horror movies to watch on Paramount Plus, and after three trailers it wanted me to watch two minutes of ads just to watch another trailer.
October 26Oct 26 52 minutes ago, Captain Ron said: So you’re saying you sign/seal things without checking/reading them? No, I’m aware of my responsibility. After an initial review you don’t expect changes to things you didn’t mark. There’s no guarantee if someone is using AI to write that it won’t be different. So yes, if a seventy page report has four or five revisions now I’m going to have to reread every word. Because if there’s one thing AI is known for is a different response each time due to their model.
October 26Oct 26 3 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said: No, I’m aware of my responsibility. After an initial review you don’t expect changes to things you didn’t mark. There’s no guarantee if someone is using AI to write that it won’t be different. So yes, if a seventy page report has four or five revisions now I’m going to have to reread every word. Because if there’s one thing AI is known for is a different response each time due to their model. Yes. You read every draft.
October 26Oct 26 Yes. You read every draft. Correct. Engineer, lawyer, doesn’t matter. It’s your deal/bar card. If you’re signing it, you read it. At least the final draft that you sign.
October 26Oct 26 2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said: Correct. Engineer, lawyer, doesn’t matter. It’s your deal/bar card. If you’re signing it, you read it. At least the final draft that you sign. For me on development programs I am the final compliance check. So yeah, you fuck up the review the program fails and people don't get the help they need. Have seen it many times.
October 26Oct 26 Any easy way to ferret out AI bullshit is to paste it into a text editor. All the bullshit characters will show up.
October 26Oct 26 1 hour ago, MissingInAction said: Any easy way to ferret out AI bullshit is to paste it into a text editor. All the bullshit characters will show up. Seems like something that AI could do
October 26Oct 26 2 hours ago, Buzzrock said: I was looking for horror movies to watch on Paramount Plus, and after three trailers it wanted me to watch two minutes of ads just to watch another trailer. Sounds like the plot to a horror movie.
October 26Oct 26 On 10/23/2025 at 11:10 PM, F250 said: Yeah, this is already something that can be done if you are on a company laptop Microsoft Teams isn't accomplishing anything new. With that said, Teams is ass, my dude. I like SLACK pretty much.
October 27Oct 27 20 hours ago, Buzzrock said: I was looking for horror movies to watch on Paramount Plus, and after three trailers it wanted me to watch two minutes of ads just to watch another trailer. yeah, I'd would have immediately deleted
October 27Oct 27 21 hours ago, Hefeweizen said: If you don’t think your company could track you you’re not paying attention. I don’t use any of it but my company HR has a ton of tools and data available to me if I want it. I just don’t give a shit to worry about anything except my people getting their work done. I think my biggest fear now is the dumber ones trying to use AI to write engineering reports or letters, which either they or I seal. I am really nervous about something slipping by with a hallucination in it. My company tracks as a KPI our use of various (there are actually quite a few) AI applications we use. Engaging with them is compliance. It's definitely becoming a "measure what matters" metric for executives and the end result is allegedly to help employees be more productive and save time and energy on low skill, high manual tasks, but let's see.
October 27Oct 27 8 minutes ago, Vegas64 said: It's definitely becoming a "measure what matters" metric for executives and the end result is allegedly to help employees be more productive and save time and energy on low skill, high manual tasks, but let's see. AI is best suited for tasks where "good enough is good enough". Low-stakes small tasks like changing column headers in a CSV to be camel case instead of lower case, or building a small data scraper method for a web crawler, etc etc. But it's best thought of as another tool in the toolbox, not as THE tool in the box.
October 27Oct 27 Focusing so much on efficiency is definitely a major driver of enshittification. Why have a customer service rep deal with one customer at a time when they can deal with three via a chat interface? Why make one good item when we can make 100 good-enough items in the same time with the same resources? And in just a general gripe: man the mobile the browsing experience sucks. So many pop ups and ads. But I’m not sure it was ever good, and therefore maybe hasn’t been enshittened. But it certainly hasn’t been improved.
October 28Oct 28 7 hours ago, Buzzrock said: And in just a general gripe: man the mobile the browsing experience sucks. So many pop ups and ads. But I’m not sure it was ever good, and therefore maybe hasn’t been enshittened. But it certainly hasn’t been improved. Run an ad blocker.
October 28Oct 28 2 hours ago, Buzzrock said: On the phone? I run Adguard on my phone and have enough family licenses (like 9 lifetime licenses for $120) to cover my wife and sister's family too. It works for basically every web based ad, and most apps too.
October 28Oct 28 27 minutes ago, Buzzrock said: Last time I looked into those they didn’t work. Clearly I need to revisit. It's hit and miss, some free apps/games my wife (on iOS) plays look night and day when it's off/on, and others have no effect. Web browsing is better with no exceptions On android it seems to be broadly effective Edited October 28Oct 28 by Captainant
October 28Oct 28 1 hour ago, Buzzrock said: Last time I looked into those they didn’t work. Clearly I need to revisit. I also run an ad blocker on my internal network as well. The mobile version is more for when I’m away from home, but still works just fine. I’ve been using ABP on mobile for a long time, since they allowed extensions.
October 28Oct 28 Amazon is doing a massive layoff this week. I'm sure that will help things run more efficiently there.
October 28Oct 28 1 hour ago, kevwun said: Amazon is doing a massive layoff this week. I'm sure that will help things run more efficiently there. Poor Bezos must really be hurting.
October 28Oct 28 2 hours ago, kevwun said: Amazon is doing a massive layoff this week. I'm sure that will help things run more efficiently there. Expect others to follow suit.
October 29Oct 29 10 hours ago, kevwun said: Amazon is doing a massive layoff this week. I'm sure that will help things run more efficiently there.
October 29Oct 29 I go to Costco. I want to renew my membership. I haven't been a member for a few years because I lived in a Costco-free zone but now there is Costco. I just want the basic membership. That's all I want. I don't want to be upsold, I don't want the super deluxe special extra, I just want the basic membership. They take me to woman behind a desk who proceeds to tell me on and on about the benefits of their business class membership. I keep saying I don't want it. She keeps saying but there's this and that and I keep saying I don't want it. This goes on and I'm starting to get exasperated. Finally, FINALLY, she relents. This was about two months ago, and I've shopped at that Costco twice now. So I went to a different Costco with my brother, one that's 1500 miles from my Costco. It's his Costco. I see an expensive item, a drone, and I've read about it and been wanting to buy it, so I did. But the drone is not actually there: I have to get a card and give it to the lady and she goes and fetches it from the armory and brings it to another woman, the woman over there. After I pay, they tell me to go to the woman over there to get my drone. I do, and she starts trying to upsell me on their business class membership, telling me I've already spent X amount at Costo since I joined up a couple of months ago --- and she was able to see on her computer the amount that I had spent on two occasions at MY Costco --- "and along with this 700-hundred dollar drone it would have almost paid for itself already ..." And I'm going "HOLY FUCK, COSTCO ... LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. I JUST WANT TO SHOP IN PEACE, GET MY CARTON OF 27 KIWIS AND MY DRONE AND GO HOME." Fuck me. Shopping is such an ordeal now. Rant over. Edited October 29Oct 29 by Horn Under a Bad Sign
October 29Oct 29 Yesteday a diseased monkey was loose on IH 59 in Louisiana. Authorities advised shooting, then make a rue. Edited October 29Oct 29 by deter Error
October 29Oct 29 10 hours ago, HenryJames said: Hilarious, also TechPod was talking about robots in the house a few weeks back. They were in agreement that humanoid style robots are going to stay sci-fi for the foreseeable future. Having more roomba style robots that do one task well is the cheaper and more efficient path. The headaches of a giant robot wandering around and breaking stuff then falling on your dog and killing it are much more realistic than a robot maid that you can fuck.
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