• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Yeh people learn and it becomes normal which is fine. Ebay is as bizarre to me. Not hate, more a morbid fascination that things so maze-like to navigate can also be successful. Could be semi cultural as well. I’ve noticed this being the way in other US platforms with a similar legacy. I’ve also being (attempting to) subvert tracking for quite a while so maybe that’s working and its less useful as a result lol. I’m lucky in a sense that their corporation isn’t so strong where I live so theres more choice (ironically I may actually have less choice). Its annoying when they have the monopoly on a given product, but it’s also possible just to go without the shiny thing.


  • Thanks for this. I’ve only used Amazon a few times and was always baffled at the train wreck of its chaotic layout / ux. I had to buy something there once and it was such a process it was like being asked to leave the store before paying. Thought at the time it must be down to legacy and new features being showhorned around ancient web1.0 history, its success being its burden with customers having to learn how to use the thing. Price fixing scam is what I will think of it now, while continuing to avoid it.


  • I did also and was astounded. More EV brands and retail stores for them than for mobile phones and gadgets in the malls. I counted 14 brands in one mall. Like EVs are a fashion accessory. And I saw car designs for sale and on the steet that looked like what we usually see only as early concept art. not high tier of market either. It is an ultra-competitive race to the bottom , There must be several new factories and brands opening every week, and maybe the same or more shutting down. some of the bells and whistles being thrown in are pretty funny. Little robotic characters ala alexa for your car that sits on the dash with led face responding and moving to commands. half side doors being an LED screen for some reason (mainly to atrract potential buyers in the malls I thought) . The european, tesla and other US evs alongside were very very plain. Whether all of this is a good thing is another matter.







  • Yes it was good with much improvement of services and competition since. My memory of the various issues may be blurry now but their was alot of unhappiness back then with Telecom. Corporations will always trend toward monopoly unless regulated against. The telco duopoly we had for some time after the networks taxpayers paid for in the first place was privatised, were barely in competition and they had a vested interest in keeping it that way of course. Unbundling the copper network took too long, and telecom had an interest in fibre rollout being slow early on. It was a painful time and eye opening when travelling to ‘developing’ nations in the mid 2000s to experience high speed virtually open access to ‘broadband’ as it was called when we were still begging for better than adsl (or was it still dial up?) to ‘surf the net’ as a chorus technician lazily called it after finally getting my service going once when I was trying to get a small software business communicating with overseas customers.

    Was another entity Kordia? Or did that break from nzbc/tvnz/rnz ? I’ve lost track.

    Gladly things are pretty good with speeds and access for what I need now. I have empathy for my friends in colleagues in Aus and some other ‘developed’ nations.

    The google situation is massive and they need to be broken up, their mafia styled control of the ad auction and data harvesting industries needs to be cut down. They also have alot to answer for with how they’ve damaged our access to information which hopefully this will start to address. They’ve mutated the internet to fit their image in order to profit when the actual value of their product to their customers (advertisers) is highly questionable. Probably beyond the remit for this case , but a start. High hopes for the case, but stakes are huge for them and they’re powerful.





  • Thats been my thinking too. Degrade gov services so they struggle to provide what they’re meant to and the public blames the service itself, with the reactionary result being to defund further. ‘Drain the swamp’. No good will come from this and it will affect all parts of society including the wealthy - their wealth is built on the backs of the rest of us. Typical short term selfish thinking. But yes , the less advantaged will suffer first and these pricks will ignore with glee , or blame them for not ‘helping themselves like I did’.