OpenStars

Surely you mean that you totally believe that these totally real creatures have "nothing whatsoever" to do with any kind of... um... surveillance capacity, government or otherwise, r-r-right, RIGHT!?

I mean... that depends on what metric you are going by, I suppose.

Not by personal happiness, or by health outcomes, or "freedom", or safety, or education, or (non-military) technology, or ... well the list gets rather extensive.

To be fair, the USA did used to lead the world, e.g. being first if not to space then to the moon, and we sequenced the human genome, and computers were invented here, and there's Hollywood serving up movies and culture all over the world, etc., so I am not knocking any of the past achievements. Notably, after WWII we did get a bit of an "uneven" start compared to countries like the UK that were bombed by Germany whereas the USA emerged fairly unscathed, and yet we took that headstart and really went for it! We indeed were the most successful country in the world - unquestioned by almost anyone.

However, lately... well, "the economy" is still booming, but most average people are going to die significantly sooner than their parents generation did, possibly by a terrorist event such as a school shooting that we have nothing whatsoever to try to stop, health outcomes are abysmal, and many millennials and especially Gen-Zers strongly doubt that they will ever be able to afford a home, seeing how homes have become "investments" rather than places to live in, colleges costs have quintupled, most jobs today for younger people are "temporary" positions in the gig economy, etc. etc. etc.

You do bring up a good point: compared to the rest of the world we still do have it pretty good, in some ways. It is just that compared to how we ourselves used to have it e.g. 50 years ago, we are doing significantly worse, relatively speaking.

Look at almost any list, e.g. the top 10 scientific discoveries, or engineering accomplishments, and America barely makes those lists anymore. Other nations with drive & heart like India or China are sacrificing so that they can outpace us. That's fine I guess, they needed their turn:-). But at some point we should ourselves: what exactly makes us "successful"... these days?

You might think that I am one of those that hates America, but I do not think of myself that way, it is just that I am questioning our place and how it has changed over the years. Though perhaps I am simply paying attention to the wrong sources, so if you want to send me something to read or watch that answers that, I would like to learn. So far though, everything that I have learned lately ends up just depressing me b/c it at least appears to be a decay, and not just morally.

My thoughts about Netflix are the same: I am less than happy about the content - which is beyond their control - but very happy with the apps that they offer that is totally within their control.

@Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world and @rockerface@lemm.ee

We are beings of electric patterns, with our thoughts riding our brains the way the brain rides the body, and it begs us to wonder then: what rides us in like manner - memes & TV commercials? :-P

What could go wrong with creating a treasure trove of data that AI miners would do anything to get their hands on?

Tbf Netflix barely managed to accomplish it either, at the start, so it must have been an extremely difficult task. Internet speeds, and more importantly reliability, were huge obstacles, but far more so were the labyrinthine rules and regulations of dealing with the content providers, which are still the top obstacles to people enjoying watching television entertainment today.

This video about it basically launched John Olivier's career in his at-the-time new show Last Week Tonight. If you don't want to watch it all, fast-forward to 4:08 and look at that graph, showing how Netflix was taken hostage from the ISPs for a few months until they caved and paid the additional premiums demanded (as he called it, a "mob shakedown") - though you really may enjoy watching the rest of it after that! (warning to any capitalists that watch it: you might not be by the time you get to the end...:-P)

So... I think I disagree with your language: it wasn't just that they "didn't" so much as they simply "couldn't" manage to get it done, maybe b/c they were not willing to be shitty enough? :-P

I have never seen those others but damn, that... does not sound good:-|.

I've practically never had a connection issue with Netflix:-). Among the shit-ton of evil companies out there, they are themselves no shining angels but... they don't seem nearly as bad as the rest of them imho.

Netflix has consistently been right on the line between barely acceptable vs. just not. Unfortunately, it's hands-down the best (legal) streaming service available. Extremely unfortunately for us all:-(.

I am so fucking confused right now. This article tries to talk about it, and even throws out the exact phrase "grandfathered into", but it fails imho b/c after reading it I am more confused than I was before. Maybe there was a typo in it or something, or maybe the old plan was called "Basic", instead of the new plan "Standard"... or something, but in any case unless you already had that plan from previously you cannot get onto it now. Nor do I have it, despite not having changed my plan in quite some time...

TLDR: somewhere/somehow/someway things are changing, but whether that means anything or what precisely it means is not clear, plus that itself may change too as time goes on.

Tbf, Netflix did start auto-playing crap but then walked back on that. They do that continually - pushing the boundaries past what people are willing to take, then a few months later dialing it WAY down, but still forward from where it started. Although more recently they did get it to a nice place imho - if you have a friend with a subscription, check it out and you may be pleasantly surprised. I am not saying that it makes up for the loss of content that they used to have, or that it is a fully good experience, but it is a LOT better than it was there for awhile (so: not that you would consider ever going back, but at least you would know:-).

Tbf, Netflix - along with Blockbuster - really was one of the pioneers in offering streaming services, when nobody else would. And it is not their fault that ISPs decided to throttle them, essentially holding their entire business hostage until they ponied up more dough, and now the content providers are doing the same. Also, most of the time they tend to grandfather people into older plans, so whatever the price is they usually (tbf, not always) tend to honor for many years in the future.

I am perpetually a year or less away from cancelling my own subscription b/c of how they continually skirt the line of pushing forward to do things like adding in "advertisements", but then walking back to make them more bearable before they start losing customers like me in droves. So I am not exactly a full-on "fan" of Netflix, just trying to offer a balanced perspective.

They also did put in the work to make a SUPERB player, plus invested heavily in making apps for physical devices. It was only this year that I finally stopped being able to play Netflix on my 9-year-old TV, and even that has a heavy chance of being more the fault of the device itself (I mostly don't care b/c my Chromecast still works just fine). Plus I still can do things like e.g. go workout in a gym while watching a pre-downloaded Netflix video without needing to use any of my mobile data, all that needing virtually no setup at all, unlike e.g. piracy that would require paying for a VPN and investigation into what mobile apps are available, plus constant monitoring to see if they remain trustworthy (so many famous examples of apps that got taken over from the inside by a malicious update).

Even so I may still leave it in a year or two, regardless of whether it is their fault or not, b/c I am not sure that I am getting anywhere close to the "value" for the amount that they are charging, anymore:-(. Seeing shows come out like Stranger Things gave me some hope, but then watching that same show enshittify itself immediately for the sake of chasing after profits to the exclusion of all else quickly killed it.

Though in that case I will need to research some alternatives...

In that case, what are we?

Meat suits hung onto skeleton hangers, obvi.

Or even more foundationally, proteins doing things with fatty membranes.

Basically piles of highly organized goo.