Merem

Please re-read what I wrote. The sentence in question: "And, as explained, in German the discussed greetings are actually taken rather literally."

Not sure why you downvote me for explaining why the language used by an old woman is not indicative of how things are today (or have been for a while even). (Though, in her case, in kmarc's example, the usage of the longform makes sense regardless.) Apart from that, we discussed German terms, not American ones. And, as explained, in German the discussed greetings are actually taken rather literally. At least I believe giving some very small insight into a culture is actually useful but apparently you disagree.

Yes and no. It does come from the longform well-wishing but it has been a separate greeting for a decently long time which is reflected by the fact that "guten Morgen" became "Guten Morgen" in the spelling reform 25 years ago. (Though, they did allow both variants a decade later (as is the case with a lot of other words), "Guten Morgen" is still the recommended one.) So that means if you are wishing someone a good morning, you are wishing someone a good morning + greeting. If it is just a good morning, it really is just a good morning (for you) + greeting. I do use both variants but actually wishing someone well is more reserved for people I've been interacting with for a long time (like certain cashiers in a supermarket (if there is time) or employees of a bakery), really friendly strangers or special cases (like someone is being a dick and one is being sarcastic).

"After all, how could I genuinely wish a random German stranger a "Guten Morgen"..."

By being a nice person, just like how one would hold open a door for someone else? Though, that aside, when you say "Guten Morgen", you aren't wishing anything. It's just being polite while at the same time, you are saying something about yourself. For example, you could simply say "Morgen" which would mean you are in a hurry, or, depending on how you said it, that the morning isn't good at all. There are a lot of applications for "Guten Morgen". It all depends on how you say it and in which situation you do it. Anyway, it's not comparable to the questions in your posts as "Guten Morgen" can never be fake. Something like "Wie geht's?" (how are you?) would be more fitting, although it's rarely used as a greeting and more often than not, it would be meant seriously.

It can't learn my interests if I don't see any new videos though. As I wrote, it's just the same over and over and over again. Usually one would mix in something completely different...which it doesn't do. That applies to the content and the music. And it's not like I'm not interested in things. On the contrary, my interests touch a large variety of topics but I never get a book recommendation, classical music played on different instruments, sports etc etc.

Actually, it starts you off with your native language only at first IIRC. I increased it to seven different ones which didn't matter at all and then decreased it to three. And again, no difference.

I don't use any social media and all the "celebrity" stuff is generally not for me at all. So I can't really compare the experience to anything.

Though, I guess I can attribute the success to what the others said, despite its demerits:

- really low barrier of entry (mrkramer)

- organic feeling, as opposed to corporate-controlled/generated (alexgmcm)

The addictive nature of seeing what comes next likely also plays a role.

Is it? I took a look at it after someone mentioned some days ago that it's available on the web, no account required. Searching for videos is pretty terrible, so I did want to create an account for more possibilities but that wasn't possible on the desktop. Then I installed Bluestacks, installed Tiktok, created a dummy account and took a proper look that time. The "For You" stuff was rather useless, so I searched for some good music (from a specific genre) and liked some videos which resulted in me being recommended more music of that genre. OK. Now, obviously, I wanted to see something more than just footage from groups performing, so I looked for some easy-to-find things and liked those. Made no difference for the "For You" recommendations though. Eventually, 2-3 other topics trickled in and completely replaced the music footage (despite me often watching to the end). Then I found out that you can mark videos as "not interested" by holding down the mouse button...which basically completely killed two topics because I'm not intersted in stupid captions or annoying effects. And apparently you can't block effects....or captions...or hashtags. Heck, I selected that video language filter option from the very beginning but it doesn't apply to the "Discover" part of the app at all and doesn't even work with the "For You" stuff properly. Why can't I directly filter out certain things? I can do so with creators and music apparently, but not with hashtags, videos from specific countries, videos in a specific language etc. Then there is also the issue with "not interested" not working most of the time. Only after doing that to Vietnamese military parade videos four times has it appeared to work. When it comes to meme videos, Corona and politics, it doesn't work at all, no matter how often I select it. I'm also stuck watching the same kind of videos over and over and over again. One would think the app would recommend something else entirely after someone sweeps at least 90% of the time immediately. Ah, also, the categories-that-you-like selection is utterly pointless too apparently. The only one I selected from the very beginning was "gaming" and out of hundreds of videos, there was only one which was gaming-related. Since the search function is terrible, I can't search for multiple hashtags or very specific things like "bla-bla". And single-hashtag is pointless since at least 95% of the videos I'm not interested in + there is the overlap of words of course. If I'm looking for the MSX computer, then I'm getting different results of course because "MSX" is a more popular thing for X and Y. Something else that I've noticed is that, possibly because of demographics, most of the videos feature girls/women, even something typically male-dominated like farming/agriculture is like 50/50 while everything else seems to be 90+%.

Anyway, just some ranting because I don't think I can understand why this is so popular, despite being so unusable. Granted, at best I would use it as an appetizer for proper content (like after listening to a good tune, looking for the full song or hearing/seeing some interesting tidbit and looking for more information). If people that talk aren't involved, it also rather reminds me of flash loops from days (more or less) gone by, just with terrible captions as an addition.

Don't have a mobile phone, so I guess I would count towards those numbers. A shop branch I used to buy at had 3-D Secure for years but after asking nicely, they disabled that authentification for me. However, ever since they merged with the main website earlier this year, it's no longer possible. So theoretically, it would be impossible for me to buy anything anymore...if not for the fact that they now allow you to buy "points" via PayPal with which you can then buy products in the shop. It's more complicated, takes longer and has other disadvantages (such as not buying the products directly) but for now, it works. Other websites which don't have such a workaround will simply end up with an "abandonment".

Data from a lot of users? I mean, they inspect all audio/video communications in real-time[1] and save all your messages, pictures etc. It also helps a lot that basically no one cares about privacy anymore, so further growth seems secured.

[1] https://medium.com/tenable-techblog/lets-reverse-engineer-di...

"Right now it looks like Russian logic is that every free person in the world is a potential threat to Russia. Because threat is anything that you don't control."

Don't you mean "American logic"? If not, have you looked at a political and military map in the last couple of years, as well as paid attention to the changes?

Never heard of "Zigeuner" being considered a racial slur. I've usually heard it/hear it when it comes to certain people (actually, two varieties even - one tied to the "Zirkus" and the other one being a group of "Landstreicher" basically) but that's not tied to an ethnicity or whatever.

A more prominent example would be the word "Neger" where the media tells us it's a terrible word, insulting, racial slur etc etc, yet however, it is used by normal people in a conversation without any issues. It's funny how irrational media (and some crazies) get, ignoring all context, how something and with what intention something is said. There is always a stark contrast between that and actual real life. I, for one, like to eat my "Negerkuss".

That's not how it works though. The International Telecommunication Union's definition is relevant here. For instance, in 2010, it was: "[...]downstream speeds equal to, or greater than, 256 kbit/s...".[1]

There was also talk about increasing it to 2 Mbit/s some years ago.[2]

Not that that change would make a difference if you look at broadband accessibility for Germany here.[3]

Point is: What was written was a load of bollocks. There were no facts to back up the statement but people lapped it up anyway.

[1] https://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/material/TelecomICT_Indicators...

[2] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/committees/scv/Documents/T17-SC...

[3] https://www.bmvi.de/DE/Themen/Digitales/Breitbandausbau/Brei...

"[...]a lot of parts in highly developed countries like [...] Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection."

Huh? Where do you get that from? "A lot of parts", even? I've lived in one of the most rural areas with basically only villages and small towns (<10000 pop) around. When I lived in my village of 600, we got broadband access in 2005.

My local Amazon website customer service was also pretty good every time I had a need for it. On the other hand, the English customer support of Amazon.jp is just straight up terrible. Wanted to send back a damaged product which I had bought as new and which wasn't damaged during transportation. Sent an e-mail, asking for specific information regarding that return. Got reply lacking such information, asked again, different person answering, still unsatisfying answer...rinse and repeat. In the end, I had sent seven e-mails and got a reply from a different customer service representative every single time whose answers contradicted each other too even. Went with the reply that made the most sense and seemed the most right in the end and eventually got it returned (despite some wrong information still) and my money back.

Another thing regarding wrong information on their product pages: Reporting wrong product names/descriptions and providing sources via the website was pointless and they never fixed it. After the whole ordeal with the return, I took the opportunity to tell them directly. Was told to provide a source (URL to some official website for instance) since they need it to confirm that there is something wrong there. Gave them all the URLs which included product titles, product pictures etc but they replied that they can't "use" (whatever that means) the URL (despite saying I should link it) and I'm supposed to screenshot it, upload it and then provide a link to the upload (or send it directly I guess). Of course, after everything above and now this, I was already beyond fed up and just stopped bothering since I'm certainly not gonna do their work for them. That, in addition to a website that is just getting worse and worse and worse stopped me from buying there. No point in having a bad buying experience and also knowing that, if you ever have an issue, support is gonna be an experience that will make you want to flip any tables you see for at least a few hours.

I have done so for a pretty long time and no, such behavior is not common for non-dickish people. If anything, people in the countryside tend to be a lot more relaxed and the situation forinti describes sounds like some old grandma who thinks the youth these days can't do anything right.

Steam Workshop is also part of Valve's "walled garden" strategy. Say that you bought a game off GOG and looking for some specific mods. If they aren't on Nexus, Moddb or some other website but only on Steam Workshop (where too many are), you won't be able to get access to them. So you either enter Steam's garden where they will try everything to make sure you won't leave...or you are out of luck.

Do you know Clonk? Minecraft is basically that, just in 3D and with some added things like a procedurally-generated world and stuff like hunger. But crafting, "blocks", extracting materials, mobs, multiplayer, creating new items, mechanics, scenarios etc for the game and so on were already there, many years before Minecraft.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Clonk-En...

https://cc-archive.lwrl.de/shots/7.jpg (with Stippel pack)

Seems like it's really hard to come by screenshots these days. Things like the Stargate pack with working portals, Goa'uld etc were just great.

I tend to agree with him (well, for me 95-2004 is the golden era) for the reason that it's mostly "been there, done that" nowadays. In addition, you have a lot of bad business practices such as microtransactions, lootboxes, terrible DRM (Denuvo, Steam etc), release of unfinished products and you can't even buy the games physically anymore. Apart from some indie games, nothing really seems worth it. As someone who started playing PC games at the beginning of the 00s, I'm mostly playing ones released in the 90s and early 00s. The main issue with older games is typically the UI and controls. Apart from that, they feel a lot more "fresh" due to its content and often times experimentation. In contrast, a lot of games these days stick to the same things and at best combine two genres into one (roguelites for instance). Or they take old ideas and just build on top of it. Very rarely you get something like "Return of the Obra Dinn".

Looking at the picture in the article, how many 13-year-olds have wrinkles on their forehead? Certainly not many at all. So in this case, it's even really easy to see that she is not that age.

That section is pretty pointless, considering it's supposed to be the GDR (see flag). You would have to do research on what movie actually belongs there and which do not.

Justin.tv offered pro accounts for preferred data transfers, as it would lag just watching a stream at 360p at best (not that they had quality options back in the day). I know I paid for it, just so that I could watch illegal cough Simpsons streams.

Justin.tv/Twitch.tv wasn't first though. Livestream and Ustream, for instance, were relevant before Justin.tv. It's just that they messed up along the way and people always migrated to the next service. When people did so from Ustream to Justin.tv, the latter never really did and as such, people never really left. However, they had a competitor in the form of own3d.tv for a good amount of time....but own3d.tv lost the holding-the-breath battle, as I don't think they really had financial backing unlike Twitch.tv then. If any larger company had paid attention back then (around 2012), the international streaming space might have looked different.

Disabling third-party cookies hasn't really been that useful in a long time though.

"When third-party cookies are allowed, 101 domains can reconstruct over 50% of a user's history and 161 could recover over 40%. Even when these cookies are blocked, 44 domains could recover over 40% of a user's history."[1]

[1] Study back in 2014: https://securehomes.esat.kuleuven.be/~gacar/persistent/the_w...

Add to that web beacons, ads, like buttons, browser fingerprinting via HTTP header, javascript, canvas, plug-ins, add-ons or hardware, keystroke biometrics and gestures on smartphones. Of course, there are also several techniques for e-mail tracking as well as tracking of documents (word, .pdfs etc).

Some people just have too much time on their hands. And it doesn't help that media is spreading this, as it generates clicks which in turn generates money. As such, total non-issues will be made an issue.

The thing is, it's not even "mass" insanity. Working people who are busy with a family and such don't really post on social media, as they simply have no time. This creates a pretty large divide between the internet and real life. Though, I say this as someone not being part of the tech world which is more closely connected with social media.

Absolutely. Where I live, the city administration sent a survey to people, asking what projects to tackle, where to save money/increase income etc etc. One of the options in the "saving money" category was going open source. You can bet it was one of the things I chose and in the end, it ranked 3rd which is not bad. Will be interesting to see how the administration will vote on it.

Being in a country that was the last holdout for Firefox (majority usage) before it was also taken over by Chrome, I know that several others as well as I have issues with Mozilla. Personally, I've always used Firefox, without exception, and stayed with XUL, rather than switch to their new browser, as add-ons are the most important part of a browser for me. I don't care if one is half a second faster or not.

Not to mention that stuff like stupid redesigns of logos as well as the Pocket issue made me basically lose all trust in Mozilla. Privacy is a huge deal here after all. Those who switched regularly complain about design issues (apparently the desktop browser is becoming somewhat "mobile-like") and most recently the address bar problem which upset everyone except for one person who didn't care about that. (Meanwhile, I'm happy with my address bar being my address bar and my search bar (being just right of it) being my search bar.[1]) If you would ask the people still using Firefox here whether they would recommend it...they would most likely say "no" but then would go on that while it isn't good, the alternatives aren't either.

So the question of change in direction (which is obviously there) regarding Firefox begs the question which people they are actually targeting? It's certainly not your average Joe because Firefox will never be able to out-Google Google. They are also annoying the more advanced users who just want privacy as well as useful things (add-ons, proper baked-in features etc) with their shenanigans, so it can't be them either. The only people I see actually celebrating new releases all the time (regardless of negative changes) are the crowd on HN. So, to me, it seems like they are targeting some kind of tech bubble (no offense) while basically ignoring the users out there. This is, of course, also reflected in them continuously losing marketshare while all the back-patting is happening.

[1] https://abload.de/img/address-search3hjh4.png

Why "now"? I used to read the PC Games a decently long time ago and it was always "Sie". Same with the PC Action and Computer Bild Spiele. No clue about the Gamestar but those were basically the relevant PC gaming magazines.

"Sie" and first name was used at a smallish company (~50 employees) I worked at previously. It's just a combination of respect and familiarity. Additionally, several women really liked being called by their first name as it "made them feel less old".

Most definitely. Being relatively young, I don't think it's any different. In a work environment it's always "Sie", until one is offered "du". First name/family name depends on how companies/individuals handle it.

Apart from that, people handle it differently. "Sie" basically always for people older than you and some use "du" for others around your age (unless it's in a more professional setting). There is no difference between the countryside and cities.

That's pretty neat, I didn't know that. I have done it with some other stuff on the main website but never messed around with the chat before abandoning it for just using my IRC client to connect to it (has some advantages too like being able to scroll very far back, saving logs and the like but since they use a heavily hacked IRC server, it has disadvantages like not being able to see status messages (you won't be notified that a message you sent didn't arrive because the channel is in followers-only mode for instance)).

Huh? They are growing, not surving. It was the same thing back in the day. When we migrated from Ustream.tv to Justin.tv in 2010, gaming became their largest section and continued to grow ever since. So it made sense to spin it off, as the non-gaming content was mostly regarded as clutter and the illegal streams of Simpsons and the like that I mentioned in another comment were issues too.

Not sure why you address that line as the name is obviously not good and the "sounds nice" doesn't refer to any name.

I did write "basically no filters" and "no proper tag systems". So while they do technically have those, they are very limited in function and completely useless for me. The few tags they have is worse than the community feature they got rid of and filtering is extremely limited. For instance, I would like to exclude several categories like: "Just Chatting", "League of Legends", "Slots" etc etc but I can't do that. There used to be a Firefox addon that allowed you to do it but it no longer works for me. As for tags, how am I supposed to find streamers that don't use a facecam (I'm not a fan of those) or streams where some tournament is going on (I'm a big fan of competitions, regardless of genre even)? Other livestreaming websites have the option of custom tags and those are really useful. The filters don't allow much. I can't select a number of languages instead of just one. It's not possible to define a range of viewers of a stream (between 5 and 100 for instance) which would be useful, especially with the exclusion of entire categories/games as that would make discovering something new and interesting a lot easier.

That's good to know, although I watch on desktop exclusively.