Daily reminder that unregulated capitalism hurts all of us.
Daily reminder that capitalism hurts all of us.
Capitalism isn’t about free markets, it’s about private property and profit extraction.
Agreed!
Nice to -for once- see someone else who recognizes that capitalism in itself isn’t a problem as long as it is very well regulated and doesn’t immediately go “Communism is the answer!”
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I’m sorry but your definition of capitalism is incorrect.
Leveraging money and power to extract resources and value without actually creation anything of value-i.e. Capitalism- is very, very bad.
Yeah, it’s something that capitalism as currently is (mostly in the US) allows, but that isn’t the basis of what capitalism is.
I fully agree with you that capitalism needs very strick limits to not be abusive, but it’s still a hundred times better than communism, something that too many people here propose as the
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Capitalism in itself is very much the problem. There is no positive aspect to the extraction of surplus value (“profit”), hoarding the vast majority of it into the hands of the wealthiest “private” property owners.
Free markets don’t have to be capitalist.
I always look at people who jump to “Communism is the answer” just have issues with properly articulating what they feel and just jump to a reactionary catch all comment.
I myself don’t like a lot of flaws with the core tenants of capitalism, so I often find myself saying reactionary shit like “capitalism bad” sometimes too.
I think this goes for a lot of discussion on economic models. There’s a lot of nuisance to it, and I think so many folks range somewhere between knowing nothing and knowing enough to be dangerous, but lack the energy, time, patience, or skill to really get it across online.
Often we see people posting about stuff so frequently because of a frustration with the current system, so unless it’s like a bad faith argument I mostly just tune it out, or go “hell yeah” in my little monkey brain depending on if it’s something I agree with slightly.
It’s not reactionary to say that capitalism is bad. Capitalism is literally terrible. Not commerce, capitalism. Buying and selling things isn’t wrong, but extracting and consolidating surplus labor from the working class is.
No, you’re right. I’m saying it’s reactionary to write only “Capitalism is bad”, and nothing else. Mostly because in terms of a discussion it makes it hard to keep talking about why capitalism is bad with such a broad statement. This is just the opinion of one dude on the internet who thinks of comments in a very specific way, and I get that others agree probably fine with broad comments of that style.
What worries me about it is that since for various reasons a lot of people just don’t have it in them to spare any thought on the question of how the economy works, they buy into rhetoric about economics being a fake conspiracy where supply and demand isn’t real and actually all economic problems are trivial and only require putting the bad guys in their place. The frustration is justified but stuff like rent control just doesn’t work and you can see why it doesn’t work if you’re willing to honestly think about it.
You say “Rent Control” doesn’t work, but having seen locations with rent control, and living in a place without it I fundamentally disagree with that statement.
In any economic model, housing is a basic need for humans. While rent control isn’t a solution, I don’t think it’s ever intended to be one. It is a stop gap, or a step implemented in a larger plan. It’s basically regulations for combating price fixing.
If you live in a place fraught with renoviction, the act of using a renovation as an excuse to evict people and charge more for the same thing, then the person who has been forced back into the market does not have to become homeless.
To another point, I don’t think rent control would prevent development of new housing either, as landlords aren’t the only folks who buy properties, even though it’s almost financially impossible to buy a house in certain inflated markets these days no matter who you are.
While rent control isn’t a solution, I don’t think it’s ever intended to be one
The rhetoric I see around it paints it as a solution, and there are people who say with full sincerity that supply and demand is capitalist propaganda.
renoviction, the act of using a renovation as an excuse to evict people and charge more for the same thing
This whole dynamic is only surface level. The excuse doesn’t matter; if the whole market can get those prices, it’s because of the number/means of people seeking housing vs the supply. It will happen with or without an excuse to smooth things over. There are plenty of very run-down places in high demand low supply areas that cost huge amounts without any such aesthetic justification.
I don’t think rent control would prevent development of new housing either, as landlords aren’t the only folks who buy properties, even though it’s almost financially impossible to buy a house in certain inflated markets these days no matter who you are.
It demonstrably has prevented and does prevent the development of new housing, among other market distortions, and afaik this is one of the few things economists broadly agree on. To your point, maybe it would be possible that over time, eventually, all rental apartments would be converted into condos etc. as a market response to rent control. But given the demand specifically for rentals (for which there is then artificially reduced incentive to meet), and the difficulty you mention for most people actually buying a home outright, it’s easy to see why in practice there will be an extended, possibly indefinite, period where housing supply will be suppressed by the policy. One reason it could end up indefinite is that homeowners as a voting class have an incentive to protect the value of their properties, and that often means passing regulations that in practice constrain housing supply. When most voters are renters, this is less of a problem.
The way I see it, looking at housing markets as being “inflated”, as if the prices were the result of some trick of greedly landlords, is completely wrong and missing the bigger picture. Real estate is a wealth asset, a store of wealth, and all of those are skyrocketing in dollar terms beyond official measures of inflation, as part of a process of wealth being transferred away from the majority of the population and the value/negotiating power of labor declining. If people only look at their personal situations and false ideas of what prices “should” be and what is subjectively “fair”, they miss this bigger picture and overlook solutions that could actually work.
Which, in the case of housing, is more housing.
Laziness or not giving a damn is a choice
Okay, sure. I agree that this is an unfair advantage. But like, I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for a while and the best thing about it is the ability to easily search other search engines. Their own actual search engine isn’t exactly great.
Mostly using it makes me realize how much time Google saves me by already having my location and search history. I still don’t trust them and it isn’t what it was a few years ago, but it’s the actual quality of their search that’s keeping them on top.
Also like, why does clicking a thumbnail in video search not take me to the video? Dumb.
DuckDuckGo CEO apparently is just another CEO. I’ve been an early adopter that’s been using their search engine long before there were apps or a browser.
What’s stopping people from using DDG isn’t switching to DDG, it’s getting absolutely dogshit results 90% of time. As an advanced user I know I can prefix my search with “!g phrase” to use Google instead of DDG. The sad fact is that despite the ad-ridden result page and tracking, Google is still lightyears ahead in providing relevant, and especially timely results for a user that is both tech-savvy and critical.
They need to improve their product, users will follow a good adfree search engine, that’s a given. Only a fraction of users will put up with degraded results in order to search without tracking.
I sincerely hope they will get their tech up to par. And that their browser on mobile reaches feature parity soon. (as a Z Fold user, DDG browser doesn’t have tabs. Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox does).
The new kid on the block needs humility and good tech, not shittalk. Fuck that CEO,. he’s undermining something very promising and important.
I often don’t find what I want in DDG; and I then try !g to look for it with Google… and Google doesn’t find it either.
In my experience it is very rare for Google to help me with a search that DDG failed with. As for the converse, I wouldn’t know - because I never search Google first. Why wouldn’t I? They’re evil.
That said, I will point out that I don’t use a google account, and I block most google-related cookies. I know that some people find Google gives better results due to its personalised results; and obviously I’m not ‘benefiting’ from that. So it is believable that you get better results from Google than I do, due to it knowing more about you, and thus guessing what you might want to see.
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I made the switch a week ago. For two days at work, I always used Google, DDG and ecosia(uses bing) at the same time to compare the results. They are the same most of the time for the first 10 to 20 results. There’s sometimes a blogpost that one engine shows that the other doesn’t, but that post never made a difference.
When DDG does not get me helpful results, I can still ask Google to help out.
ecosia(uses bing)
Ecosia is a fucking scam. They claim that “every search plants a tree”, except the monetary contribution towards their “tree-planting” stuff comes from clicking ads – therefore if you are a knowledgeable user who purposefully skips over ads (or just use an ad-blocker) then Ecosia makes exactly $0 off of your traffic.
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nope, they don’t get paid for merely displaying ads. as per their own blog, ONLY when you click on them.
I agree that DDG’s results suck, but so do Google’s.
They really are both just awful. I’ve yet to find a search engine as good as Google was 10-15 years ago.
I wonder how much of that is Google being worse and you making more complex searches because you’re older
You got me there, but only you didn’t at all and I just feel sorry for you. Great baseless conjecture though.
I wasn’t trying to “get” anyone. It’s genuine curiosity. Christ, dude. Send your toxic-ass Reddit attitude back to that shitty platform it belongs.
It was an absolutely unnecessary comment and in no way a relevant quesiton. Odds are I’m better versed in technology than you. Don’t act like you were reasonable and you’re the one being attacked now. You’re one of those people who thinks they have the right to say whatever crappy thing they want and then look all confused when you illicit whatever response you absolutely deserved. Then accuse the other person of exactly what you started. I’m not facilitating this childish banter any further. Have whatever day you deserve.
Man you really think I’m being wildly more hostile than I am. It was genuine curiousity. It was in no way unnecessary, it wasn’t attacking you in any way, it was prompting a conversation. If you think every response to you that’s only tangentially related to what you said is off topic, then I fear for anyone who even attempts to have any sort of conversation with you at all. That’s how conversations work.
Fifteen years ago my searches were limited to Minecraft and basic programming questions. Now they’re more like searching for specific research papers and other significantly more complex topics and I get much less useful results. Are they related? Who knows! It’s an interesting idea, though, which I was hoping to explore with someone who might be interested. But no, you decided to be whatever this is.
Fuck, dude, get your head out of your goddamn ass. Learn how to talk to people. Fuck.
I always see people saying Google provides better results, but to me it’s awful. I don’t even use DDGO anymore, but Google only shows ads and SEO optimized results that look AI generated. Is this common or am I just an isolated case?
Google results are garbage compared to 10 years ago, but they’re still miles ahead of ddg.
I’ve switched to DDG almost a year ago, and I never had issues with my search results. Quite the contrary, every time I tried using !g because I simply wasn’t finding an answer, the Google was ad-ridden bullshit full of promoted pages without relevance to what I was looking for.
I guess I’m just used to DDG quality of results, but I never felt like it’s as bad as you say.
That depends very heavily on what your searching for.
If you’re a programmer or similar, like the poster you’re replying to appears to be, then you absolutely will find DDG crap compared to Google.
I use DDG as my primary search engine, but if I have a tech question, I usually skip it and go straight to Google.
I work part-time as a game developer, and part time as a pentester, so I do search for technical questions quite a lot.
Hmm, now I wonder whether I’m just used to it. I haven’t used any other search engine in more than a year. I’ll have to compare the results more, but as far as I remember every time I couldn’t find what I needed on DDG and resorted to !g, the Google results were even worse.
DDG isn’t the only alternative to Google. I use Kagi and love it. The results IME are definitely better than Google’s.
I installed a custom launcher that’s close to the stock one on my Pixel 3 specifically to make it possible to remove the Google Search widget. Now I have a Firefox widget that points to DDG.
If any are interested, the launcher is Lawn Chair, and it can be installed via F-droid.
F-droid relesae is 4 years old, you can get August 2022 releases on github
For more convenience, the newest version is also available via the IzzyOnDroid repo, you can enable it with one tap in Drod-ify.
If you have a Pixel, why not go all in with https://grapheneos.org/?
I e been debating switching the graphene for weeks weeks now. But I just know I’m gonna end up installing Google play services on it and completely defeat the whole point of the OS. I’m probably gonna buy the pixel 8 when it comes out so once I have that I’ll put graphene on my current phone and see how I like it.
I’ve just switched to it literally yesterday, and while you will probably not avoid Play Services, being able to install it into a different profile that’s only limited to the few apps that need it is nice.
Also, just the fact that on Graphene Play Services do not have the special privileges as on any android phone, and are subjected to the same limitations as any other app (which are even stricter on Graphene) helps a lot. It also means that even if you end up just running the play services at all times, they can’t do as much as they can on other android phones, and the data they can access without your explicit permission is really limited. So, even that helps by a lot.
This is actually great to hear. I’ll probably still ending up holding off until I have a spare phone to test with just because wiping my phone and redoing everything just isn’t something I’m up for right now though. Thank you very much for the info.
Play Services is sandboxed on Graphene and is treated as a regular app, so you can actually disable most of its features, including network access.
that’s DuckDuckGo and “Names Database” CEO*, folks. PLEASE do not look to this man as a beacon for anything privacy-related, even when he says something true.
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Do you use DDG China™ or something? This all comes up when I search for it, no censorship
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Seriously? It’s a search tool. Does absolutely every piece of software you use have to be 100% aligned to your world view? This is getting weird.
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But you didn’t say you expect them to show you the foto. You said you wanted them to issue a statement or something. So the issue was not lack of functionality but not taking a stance. Now that I pointed out how silly it is you’re changing it to “it’s a poor service”. Nice…
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duckduckgo started censoring results and selling user data about a year ago now.
I’ve been using brave search ever since I heard about that.
Brave is malware made by a company run by a fucking bigot who used his millions to try to strip people of their human rights. They are not your friend
What does being a bigot have anything to do with developing a search engine or a browser? Mozilla has also gone woke, dwelling into politics instead of developing a browser.
gone woke
The fact that you unironically use the phrase “gone woke” means discussion with you is pointless.
Enjoy being blocked.
Can’t provide any actual arguments so you just block people you disagree with? Not like I expected much logic or sense from someone such as you.
I don’t believe the creator is actually a bigot. There’s been too many false bigotry accusations going around and now it’s a “boy who cried wolf” type situation
Brendan Eich literally spent millions of dollars to push for the passage of Prop 8 in California, which would have banned same-sex marriage.
That’s the literal definition of a bigot.
Again. There’s been way too many false bigotry accusations going around.
Big tech, namely google, has quite a few a reasons to smear the creator of brave in an attempt to get people to stop using it.
Not false. He admitted it and was forced to out of Mozilla because of it. It was a massive scandal.
Does he still think that way?
Why do you seem so invested in the fact that well-known bigots might not actually be bigots?
When people tell you who they are: believe them.
No one is throwing “fake” bigotry accusations at anyone. And if you believe they are, then you also are a bigot. Period.
Source on that?
But I mean, if you prefer anything Brave does, sure.
Brave browser CEO apologizes for automatically adding affiliate links to cryptocurrency URLs
You can disable the crypto stuff very easily.
Not the point. Crypto injection links shouldn’t be sneakily added into a “privacy” oriented browser.
However, you never provided any proof that DDG censors and sells user data. You’ve made big claims, but didn’t back them.
Maybe if they made DDG give better results, I wouldn’t use Google quite as much
DDG does have better results than Google. I’ve not used the latter for years and was surprised by the bad quality of results when I used it once accidentally last week.
No, I mean that DDG doesn’t provide summaries or skip to the section of video Tha answers your questions. Google has some great features
I am a regular DDG user but it depends what I’m searching for. I also use Qwant
Yeah brave has a bit of an upper hand on that front but I switched to ddg recently because of news on brave’s ceo being a not nice guy.
DuckDuckGo just sounds so stupid. I refuse to use it
I personally use DuckDuckGo, but if you’re just after avoiding handing your searches over to Google there are other more “palatably-named” alternatives like Startpage, OneSearch, Ecosia etc.
I assume you’re not using, and have never used, Google (a silly sounding, misspelled math term that sounds like a sound a baby would make), Bing (sillier yet), Yahoo (it sounds almost as ridiculous as “Google” and their early advertising only made it worse), Yandex (what is it, a cleaning product or a search engine?), Baidu (sounds like a name from a children’s show), Seznam (sounds like a sauce), Brave (literally the same name as a children’s movie), Searx (someone tried to be cool by replacing “ch” with “x”… c’mon), or Qwant (bless you!). I’m curious, though… which search engine do you use?
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The cleaning product sure lifts a lot of things out of the cracks 🏴☠️
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