There's a book called The Media Monopoly that details how media companies have consolidated to just a handful of mega corps and the book had to be republished 5 times since the 80s because every few years the number keeps shrinking dramatically. The author later released a brand new book called The New Media Monopoly which is essentially the 7th edition of the original book and at this point we're in a fucked up late stage version of the problem he originally detailed.
From the Wiki on the author:
In 2000 Bagdikian stated, "Every edition has been considered by some to be alarmist and every edition ends up being too conservative." In this latest version, Bagdikian wrote that the number of corporations controlling most of the media decreased to five: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. He argued, "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."
Just like how many people stopped being supportive of labor unions, a lot of dummies out there have this misplaced belief that as soon as any problem goes away, we no longer need to uphold the things that solved those problems in the first place.
Of course that's not at all how the world works. Bad actors are constantly looking for gaps in our defenses. They're never going to fully go away because there is an ever present 25-30% of humanity that frankly sucks.
It requires a continuous collective effort to stave these despicable motherfuckers off.
i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it....
Some people call VR dystopian, but it's got great potential too.
During COVID while I was living alone and we were under lockdown...
I used a Quest to watch movies in a virtual theater with a bunch of people from around the world. I remember being in a theater watching an absolutely ridiculous Nicolas Cage movie laughing my ass off with a bunch of dudes from Australia. Another time I watched a cricket game with some people who explained the rules to me and kinda gave me some play by play on what was happening.
I've also attended a few support group meetings in VR for coping with loss that had quite a lot of attendants. The meeting was run by a licensed group therapist and we took turns sharing and then reflecting on each others stories. It was frankly amazing.
I also played mini golf with friends of mine as well as had a couple meetings over a round of mini golf with the other guy on my design team during lockdown. Honestly the best virtual meetings I ever had.
All of the above were very social and very positive experience. I didn't feel far away from people, I felt connected to them.
Same way a smartphone can be a useful tool that enhances your life or a screen you stare at for hours consuming bullshit TikTok videos. You're in control of what you make of it. You can also stick to a dumb phone and not participate at all.
100%. There's a reason there aren't other standalone sets this good or better. It's very, very hard. The tech just isn't there to do a lot better than this without the price being even more insane. I'm really curious to see how the tech progresses. Some of the hurdles are incredibly complex.
This is one of the crazier teardown videos I've ever seen for any device. It's just jam packed with stuff. The engineering involved is ridiculous, regardless of what you think about the device's validity or of Apple.
Yeah Meta is taking the very different angle of wanting to get their stuff in as many houses as possible, right away. I believe various Quests have basically been sold at a loss for at least part of their retail life. They're targeting about as low of a price point as they can.
And when they did go for a more premium high pricepoint product (The Quest Pro), it seems to have been a disappointment and an overall flop. I've seen a number of people say the Quest 3 is about as the Pro good for average use. Its main differentiator seems to be face tracking.
All this said, I won't be buying this iteration of the AVP. I think it's really cool tech, but I'll stick with the Quest 2 for now. The AVP is basically a dev kit as far as I'm concerned. And it's way more money than I can justify.
I'll be honest I think their watch and AirPods both look kinda dumb, but they seem to be quite popular. And I distinctly remember that when both came out people were taking shots at how they looked, myself included.
This was in Altspace VR which unfortunately got axed by Microsoft IIRC, but on there you kinda looked like a less shitty version of one of those Nintendo avatars customized however you wanted.
The craziest anybody looked on there would be to have like rainbow or blue hair or something along those lines. It was pretty tame compared to like the furry anime cat sex doll looking things some people run around in VR Chat with. It also wasn't overrun with screaming children which I think is VR Chat's biggest overall problem.
Anyway, that support group thing I think has since moved to another platform, I forget which.
Disney+ started getting strict about password sharing in Canada last year, and now it’s expanding the restriction to the US. According to The Verge, the streaming service has been sending out emails to its subscribers in the country, notifying them about a change in its terms of service. Its service agreement now states that...
I think the next thing they're gonna do is go after people who sub for a month and then unsub. Probably by charging a good bit more for month-to-month than paying annually.
The storm continued to pose new hazards, with the National Weather Service issuing a rare tornado warning for San Diego County. The warning was cancelled shortly after it was issued, with forecasters explaining that the storm no longer appeared capable of producing a twister even if it briefly turned some San Diego streets into...
I’m pretty sick of my content addiction, like watching youtube or netflix all the time. I would rather be spending my time otherwise so figured fun things are the best to start. Do you have tips for fun things to do? Or how I could search for them?...
Yeah I’m just not sure how much I believe this thing is worth the investment at all and the fact that it’s 100km just proves these guys were like “uhhh, let’s make it BIG NUMBER KM LONG.”
I think there’s likely quite a lot of other worthier expenditures in science research than this indulgent toy.
Not a gotcha question, but what things did the LHC discover that have real practical applications right now other than validating some hypothesis? Because I’ve looked into it before and turned up nothing so I’m wondering what I’m missing.
Graber is “optimistic about human potential, even though I’m realistic about human nature.” When Bluesky launched last year, it filled a gap that was desperately needed by people who were looking for alternatives to X, as it seemed like the ship formerly known as Twitter was possibly sinking. (Against all odds, it hasn’t...
For my particular niche (illustration) it has a way better concentration of active (and also importantly) high quality actual working professional artists on it than mastodon.
The art scene on mastodon is pretty meh and the largest art centric instance is run by unstable authoritarians that are some of the biggest sources of drama on mastodon.
New York Spends Biden Cash on Highways Over Public Transit (nysfocus.com)
Finally NY is adding the lanes necessary to reduce congestion!
The FTC isn’t too happy with Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard layoffs (www.polygon.com)
Smaug-72B-v0.1: The New Open-Source LLM Roaring to the Top of the Leaderboard (huggingface.co)
Abacus.ai:...
Mexico overtakes China as the leading source of goods imported to US (abcnews.go.com)
For the first time in more than two decades, Mexico last year surpassed China as the leading source of goods imported to the United States
Italy’s far-right government submits plan to decriminalise abuse of office (www.theguardian.com)
Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?
i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it....
Disney+ has started cracking down on password sharing in the US (www.engadget.com)
Disney+ started getting strict about password sharing in Canada last year, and now it’s expanding the restriction to the US. According to The Verge, the streaming service has been sending out emails to its subscribers in the country, notifying them about a change in its terms of service. Its service agreement now states that...
Los Angeles records 475 mudslides during historic storm that has drenched Southern California (apnews.com)
The storm continued to pose new hazards, with the National Weather Service issuing a rare tornado warning for San Diego County. The warning was cancelled shortly after it was issued, with forecasters explaining that the storm no longer appeared capable of producing a twister even if it briefly turned some San Diego streets into...
libertarian learns public ownership makes everyone more free (slrpnk.net)
Tesla is the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year (qz.com)
Do you all have any tips on activities to do yourself, instead of consuming content all the time?
I’m pretty sick of my content addiction, like watching youtube or netflix all the time. I would rather be spending my time otherwise so figured fun things are the best to start. Do you have tips for fun things to do? Or how I could search for them?...
Giant successor to Hadron Collider could uncover secrets of 95% of the universe (news.sky.com)
Bluesky is finally open to everyone. But will anyone come? We ask its CEO. (www.businessinsider.nl)
Graber is “optimistic about human potential, even though I’m realistic about human nature.” When Bluesky launched last year, it filled a gap that was desperately needed by people who were looking for alternatives to X, as it seemed like the ship formerly known as Twitter was possibly sinking. (Against all odds, it hasn’t...
Microsoft revives aggressive Windows 11 upgrade campaign with intrusive popups for Windows 10 users (www.techspot.com)
What Major Social Media Platforms Would You Like To See Federated Alternatives To That Don't Exist Yet? (lemmy.ml)
Pretty much in the title. Maybe you wouldn’t even use it, but would like to simply see it exist for the sake of having a federated alternative....