Heat Death of the Internet
==========================
4 April 2024

You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a
third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up
yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you
saw in the window. When you download a second app the prices are
different again. You ring the restaurant directly and it says the
number is no longer in service. You go to the restaurant and order in
person. You mention that their website has the wrong number and the
woman behind the counter says they have to contact the company who
designed the site for changes, which will cost them, but most people
just order through an app anyway.

You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie on YouTube but
you first have to sit through an ad. Then you sit through a preview
for the trailer itself. Then you watch the trailer, which is
literally another ad. When it ends, it cues up a new trailer, with a
new ad at the start of it.

The first page of Google results are links to pages that have scraped
other pages for information from other pages that have been scraped
for information. All the sources seem to link back to one another.
There is no origin. The photos on the page look weird. The hands are
disfigured. There is no image credit.

Your coworker sends you a PowerPoint pack to support a presentation
you are giving to the executive committee, but you can't make heads
or tails of it. You call them over Zoom and they tell you they used
ChatGPT to write it. You point out that it is near-unreadable, and
they ask what specifically is wrong with it. You mention that, for
starters, there are too many words on each slide. They tell you
they'll take care of it. They send you a new pack within the hour
saying they asked ChatGPT to remove 30% of the text. It makes even
less sense. You tell them you'll just rewrite it yourself.

A billionaire got mad, bought your favourite social media site and
ran it into the ground. A different billionaire got mad, bought the
magazine site you liked to read on your lunchbreak and shut it down
completely. A third billionaire did what they do best, bought the app
you use for networking and sold it off for parts.

You want to watch a TV show from your youth so you check a streaming
service, but it is not there, so you check a second streaming service
but it is not there, so you check a third streaming service and it is
not there. You search for it on Blu-ray but it doesn't exist, so you
search for it on DVD but it is out of print. You find a seller on
eBay who has it, but the listing reads ambiguous as to whether it is
the real thing or a burnt copy. You message the seller and they reply
with an automated response thanking you for your interest.

You can't read the recipe on your phone because it prioritises the
ads on the page. You bring your laptop into the kitchen and whenever
you scroll down, you have to close a pop-up. You turn AdBlock on and
the page no longer loads, then AdBlock sends you an ad asking for
money.

The Airbnb charges you a $150 cleaning fee, but insists the place
needs to be left spotless. There will be a fee if the bedding hasn't
been stripped and the dishwasher hasn't been emptied.

Your Uber driver is lost because his app hasn't updated and keeps
telling him to turn down streets that no longer exist. You still give
him five stars.

Your mother sends you a link to a breaking story, but the article is
behind a paywall, so you switch to the website where you do pay for
news but there's no mention of it.

You buy a microwave and receive ads for microwaves. You buy a
mattress and receive ads for mattresses.

Strangers on social media assume you are American and get mad when
you correct them.

Your Gmail is approaching storage capacity.

Your smart TV needs new firmware.

Your phone schedules an update.

Your friend has a short story published online but you need to pay
for a subscription to the site in order to read it. You message them
and ask if you could get a copy. They say 'sure' and send you a PDF.
You read the story and like it. You are curious about one detail. You
message them for more information and they recommend checking out the
Wikipedia page. You read the Wikipedia entry and there is a lot of
useful information supplied by a community. One of the sources cited
is a non-fiction book. You go to your local library's website and
although they don't have the exact book, they do have others by the
same author. You place a hold on two of them, then go get your shoes
on.

Gregory Bennett is a writer and filmmaker from Wellington whose
accent comes from Invercargill. They hold a Masters in Creative
Writing from the IIML and currently work for a disability support
services provider in Melbourne, Australia.

From: <https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/>

Fascinating how different experiences and life choices can be! Let me
contrast this with some clips from my own life. Obviously this is based
on where I live in northern europe so of course my experience does not
apply equally to yours.

On Thu, 2 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:

> Heat Death of the Internet
> ==========================
> 4 April 2024
>
> You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a
> third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up
> yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you

For app only restaurants I don't go to them, because I don't have a
smartphone. I have my favourite restaurants and there I can either call
to order, or order through their web site from my laptop.

If app-only restaurants become too common, the market will makes sure
that phone+web order/delivery will capture the remaining niche.

> woman behind the counter says they have to contact the company who
> designed the site for changes, which will cost them, but most people
> just order through an app anyway.

I've experience a few of those, and never bothered. Eventually they
disappear.

> You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie on YouTube but
> you first have to sit through an ad. Then you sit through a preview
> for the trailer itself. Then you watch the trailer, which is
> literally another ad. When it ends, it cues up a new trailer, with a
> new ad at the start of it.

I block all ads, so never see ads on youtube. I often think about how
the world would be if everyone has adblockers installed. How would
google & co try and smash that, since their economy would be threatened?

As for videos, I frequent torrent sites, and yt-dlp enables me to
download videos from many streaming sites, including public tv-stations
who have online tv from all over the world.

> The first page of Google results are links to pages that have scraped
> other pages for information from other pages that have been scraped
> for information. All the sources seem to link back to one another.
> There is no origin. The photos on the page look weird. The hands are
> disfigured. There is no image credit.

I stopped using google. I use ddg.com and startpage.com. Adblockers in
the browser of course, but the occasional bad web site slips through. I
find that the most useful web sites are spread by word of mouth, and
less so, stumbled upon.

> Your coworker sends you a PowerPoint pack to support a presentation
> you are giving to the executive committee, but you can't make heads
> or tails of it. You call them over Zoom and they tell you they used
> ChatGPT to write it. You point out that it is near-unreadable, and
> they ask what specifically is wrong with it. You mention that, for
> starters, there are too many words on each slide. They tell you
> they'll take care of it. They send you a new pack within the hour
> saying they asked ChatGPT to remove 30% of the text. It makes even
> less sense. You tell them you'll just rewrite it yourself.

Fortunately never happened. I have heard horror stories of 2 people at a
company trading gpt texts each feeding the output of the other into gpt
responding.

I have used gpt for nonsense-documents like environmental and gender
plans which just need to be there to tick a government box, but are
never read or acted upon. I find that gpt excels as writing walls of
text that no one ever reads, but that the government requires
(sometimes) for public tenders.

> A billionaire got mad, bought your favourite social media site and
> ran it into the ground. A different billionaire got mad, bought the
> magazine site you liked to read on your lunchbreak and shut it down
> completely. A third billionaire did what they do best, bought the app
> you use for networking and sold it off for parts.

Don't have any social media except mastodon and usenet. Couldn't care
less that mad billionaires spend their dollars on. If people leave
social media I would actually see that as a net benefit for society.

> You want to watch a TV show from your youth so you check a streaming
> service, but it is not there, so you check a second streaming service
> but it is not there, so you check a third streaming service and it is
> not there. You search for it on Blu-ray but it doesn't exist, so you
> search for it on DVD but it is out of print. You find a seller on
> eBay who has it, but the listing reads ambiguous as to whether it is
> the real thing or a burnt copy. You message the seller and they reply
> with an automated response thanking you for your interest.

Here I find youtube and local public tv channels online to be good
sources. But this is an interesting point. Sometimes I think about if a
campaign to rescue old dvd:s and blueray:s would be successful? The idea
is to ask people to send me dvd:s and bluerays they no longer want and
build up a library. Where I live it is legal to lend out dvd:s as long
as its for private use and no money is involved. Imagine an Alexandria
of old dvd:s and bluerays which people could borrow, rip, and return.
Would anyone be interested?

> You can't read the recipe on your phone because it prioritises the
> ads on the page. You bring your laptop into the kitchen and whenever
> you scroll down, you have to close a pop-up. You turn AdBlock on and
> the page no longer loads, then AdBlock sends you an ad asking for
> money.

I read recipes from recipe books, alternatively I have textfiles or
scanned recipes on my laptop.

> The Airbnb charges you a $150 cleaning fee, but insists the place
> needs to be left spotless. There will be a fee if the bedding hasn't
> been stripped and the dishwasher hasn't been emptied.

Oh yes... I avoid the airbnb scam. It was great in the beginning but
somewhere they started to add a lot of extra fees, and the quality
dropped dramatically. Nowadays it's hotels only.

> Your Uber driver is lost because his app hasn't updated and keeps
> telling him to turn down streets that no longer exist. You still give
> him five stars.

Uber is probably my biggest pain. I don't have a smartphone so I have to
order taxis the old fashioned way, and that means I have to pay 2x-3x
the amount compared with Uber. Either someone I travel with has an app,
or I pay 2-3x and take it as the extra cost of my mental health and see
it as well invested money. ;) There are also services that enable you to
order a taxi online, through your web browser, but they are also more
expensive and not as common. It depends on the country.

> Your mother sends you a link to a breaking story, but the article is
> behind a paywall, so you switch to the website where you do pay for
> news but there's no mention of it.

I share a mainstream news subscription with other familymembers, so
there's no paywall and I mostly read the news in the form of a
downloadable pdf.

In addition I watch the free news of the government public television
and the TV-text pages.

Overall a goal I have is to minimize my news consumption down to zero,
because the older I get, the less I find that I care and I also find
that it does not affect my life positively.

> You buy a microwave and receive ads for microwaves. You buy a
> mattress and receive ads for mattresses.

Yes, this happens.

> Strangers on social media assume you are American and get mad when
> you correct them.

Never happens.

> Your Gmail is approaching storage capacity.

I pay for my email and download all, so never any capacity problems.

> Your smart TV needs new firmware.

I never upgrade and I don't have TV. My TV is basically a monitor for my
computer or my TV-computer in the form of a radxa zero running kodi.

> Your phone schedules an update.

No smart phone, web based calendar only.

Sometimes I struggle to understand the every day of people who are not
working with technology and even young people who are brought up on
social media and slck/discord.

My life seems more calm, and less exposed to ads and generally more
peaceful than most people.

I wonder if people in general will rediscover old school technology, or
if things will become worse?

I kind of agree that all this stuff is self-inflicted pain.

Am 02.05.2024 schrieb D <nospam@example.net>:

> Fascinating how different experiences and life choices can be! Let me
> contrast this with some clips from my own life. Obviously this is
> based on where I live in northern europe so of course my experience
> does not apply equally to yours.
>
> On Thu, 2 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:
>
> > Heat Death of the Internet
> > ==========================
> > 4 April 2024
> >
> > You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download
> > a third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up
> > yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you
>
> For app only restaurants I don't go to them, because I don't have a
> smartphone.

I also don't have one and I like it. Although, I've never seen an
app-only restaurant. In which countries do they exist?

> > You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie on YouTube but
> > you first have to sit through an ad. Then you sit through a preview
> > for the trailer itself. Then you watch the trailer, which is
> > literally another ad. When it ends, it cues up a new trailer, with a
> > new ad at the start of it.
>
> I block all ads, so never see ads on youtube. I often think about how
> the world would be if everyone has adblockers installed. How would
> google & co try and smash that, since their economy would be
> threatened?

They would charge money for using their services.

> As for videos, I frequent torrent sites, and yt-dlp enables me to
> download videos from many streaming sites, including public
> tv-stations who have online tv from all over the world.

Another benefit here: No DRM!

> > Your coworker sends you a PowerPoint pack to support a presentation
> > you are giving to the executive committee, but you can't make heads
> > or tails of it. You call them over Zoom and they tell you they used
> > ChatGPT to write it. You point out that it is near-unreadable, and
> > they ask what specifically is wrong with it. You mention that, for
> > starters, there are too many words on each slide. They tell you
> > they'll take care of it. They send you a new pack within the hour
> > saying they asked ChatGPT to remove 30% of the text. It makes even
> > less sense. You tell them you'll just rewrite it yourself.
>
> Fortunately never happened. I have heard horror stories of 2 people
> at a company trading gpt texts each feeding the output of the other
> into gpt responding.

I can image how much bullshit that has been.

> I have used gpt for nonsense-documents like environmental and gender
> plans which just need to be there to tick a government box, but are
> never read or acted upon. I find that gpt excels as writing walls of
> text that no one ever reads, but that the government requires
> (sometimes) for public tenders.

Let software create bullshit for bullshit jobs. A rather good idea.
Might have been useful in school when I had to write interpretations
for stupid old German books.

> > A billionaire got mad, bought your favourite social media site and
> > ran it into the ground. A different billionaire got mad, bought the
> > magazine site you liked to read on your lunchbreak and shut it down
> > completely. A third billionaire did what they do best, bought the
> > app you use for networking and sold it off for parts.
>
> Don't have any social media except mastodon and usenet. Couldn't care
> less that mad billionaires spend their dollars on. If people leave
> social media I would actually see that as a net benefit for society.

It is a huge benefit what happened to Twitter. Some bullshitters left
it - no loss. :-)

> In addition I watch the free news of the government public television
> and the TV-text pages.

Rather interesting that TV text still exists.

> Overall a goal I have is to minimize my news consumption down to zero,
> because the older I get, the less I find that I care and I also find
> that it does not affect my life positively.

Many people do that.

> > Your Gmail is approaching storage capacity.
>
> I pay for my email and download all, so never any capacity problems.

I operate my own mail server, so I can add disks when needed.

> I wonder if people in general will rediscover old school technology,
> or if things will become worse?

The latter.

On 2024-05-02, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> Fascinating how different experiences and life choices can be! Let me
> contrast this with some clips from my own life. Obviously this is based
> on where I live in northern europe so of course my experience does not
> apply equally to yours.
>
> My life seems more calm, and less exposed to ads and generally more
> peaceful than most people.

I didn't write this article. It did occur to me that the kind of usage
mentioned in the article is very different from the kind of usage i saw
when i first got online. It is much more focused on consumption, which
is also the name of a disease. I grok many of your points, and learned
some of them the hard way. I used to calendar on a smartphone, and now
i use a pocket calendar with a pencil. I recall a statement that being
content or happy is a radical act. It erodes the motivators for buying
more stuff. If you intellectually analyze mass media messaging, it can
come across like "You are a boring, sexless & unattractive loser. Your
life is a mess. It would be a shame if your friends knew how miserable
your existence is. Fortunately, our product will fix everything. Only
available for a limited time, so run do not walk."

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>some of them the hard way. I used to calendar on a smartphone, and now

I have an Android device with a pre-installed app titled "Calendar".
This device has no internet connection. Recently, I wanted to start
the calendar to get the day of the week of a certain date
- but it refused to do anything without an internet connection!

Well, I also have Python on that device, so I should have written:

import datetime

datetime.datetime.strptime( '2024-05-02', '%Y-%m-%d' ).strftime( '%A' )

.

On 02.05.2024 um 14:46 Uhr Stefan Ram wrote:

> I have an Android device with a pre-installed app titled "Calendar".
> This device has no internet connection. Recently, I wanted to start
> the calendar to get the day of the week of a certain date
> - but it refused to do anything without an internet connection!

That's one of the reasons I don't have an Android device anymore and I
don't want one again.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1714653990muell@cartoonies.org

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:
>>
>> You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a
>> third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up
>> yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you
>
> For app only restaurants I don't go to them, because I don't have a
> smartphone. I have my favourite restaurants and there I can either call
> to order, or order through their web site from my laptop.

I've never ordered from a restaurant online, I expect it's a big
city thing (in Australia, at least). I just searched for a local
place that does pizzas some nights and they don't even have a
website (there's a Facebook page, of course). I went to a fish and
chip place in a city a few years ago that was cash-only.

>> You want to watch a TV show from your youth so you check a streaming
>> service, but it is not there, so you check a second streaming service
>> but it is not there, so you check a third streaming service and it is
>> not there. You search for it on Blu-ray but it doesn't exist, so you
>> search for it on DVD but it is out of print. You find a seller on
>> eBay who has it, but the listing reads ambiguous as to whether it is
>> the real thing or a burnt copy. You message the seller and they reply
>> with an automated response thanking you for your interest.
>
> Here I find youtube and local public tv channels online to be good
> sources. But this is an interesting point. Sometimes I think about if a
> campaign to rescue old dvd:s and blueray:s would be successful? The idea
> is to ask people to send me dvd:s and bluerays they no longer want and
> build up a library. Where I live it is legal to lend out dvd:s as long
> as its for private use and no money is involved. Imagine an Alexandria
> of old dvd:s and bluerays which people could borrow, rip, and return.
> Would anyone be interested?

Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

Am 03.05.2024 schrieb not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev):

> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.

CDs and DVDs also become unreadable after some years, especially when
light reaches them.

Marco Moock wrote:

>CDs and DVDs also become unreadable after some years, especially when
>light reaches them.

Not "especially", but "only when". My oldest CDs and DVDs date back from
the late 90s and can still be read (I am currently transferring them to
HDD for easier access), but of course I only used good blanks (Taiyo
Yuden, etc) and a Plextor burner. So the expectations (mere
speculations) which predicted a quite short lifespan of a couple of
years for burned CDs/DVDs imho turned out to be too pessimistic.

-jw-
--
And now for something completely different...

On Thu, 2 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:

> On 2024-05-02, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> Fascinating how different experiences and life choices can be! Let me
>> contrast this with some clips from my own life. Obviously this is based
>> on where I live in northern europe so of course my experience does not
>> apply equally to yours.
>>
>> My life seems more calm, and less exposed to ads and generally more
>> peaceful than most people.
>
> I didn't write this article. It did occur to me that the kind of usage
> mentioned in the article is very different from the kind of usage i saw
> when i first got online. It is much more focused on consumption, which
> is also the name of a disease. I grok many of your points, and learned

Ahh... consumption. My biggest sources of consumption is books and once in
a while good restaurants. My wife forces me to travel, that's another
drain that I'd happily drop, but what does one not do to achieve peace at
home. ;)

> some of them the hard way. I used to calendar on a smartphone, and now
> i use a pocket calendar with a pencil. I recall a statement that being

I actually thought about that, tried it once, but it didn't stick.
Strangely enough, my wife is 100% pocket calendar with a pencil, and so
was my mother. Maybe I should give it another try.

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:
>>>
>>> You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a
>>> third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up
>>> yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you
>>
>> For app only restaurants I don't go to them, because I don't have a
>> smartphone. I have my favourite restaurants and there I can either call
>> to order, or order through their web site from my laptop.
>
> I've never ordered from a restaurant online, I expect it's a big
> city thing (in Australia, at least). I just searched for a local
> place that does pizzas some nights and they don't even have a
> website (there's a Facebook page, of course). I went to a fish and
> chip place in a city a few years ago that was cash-only.

Maybe. I do have a plan, at some point in my life, to move to a smaller
city. Not yet, but maybe once I do, I might experience the same thing with
a bit of luck. ;)

>> Here I find youtube and local public tv channels online to be good
>> sources. But this is an interesting point. Sometimes I think about if a
>> campaign to rescue old dvd:s and blueray:s would be successful? The idea
>> is to ask people to send me dvd:s and bluerays they no longer want and
>> build up a library. Where I live it is legal to lend out dvd:s as long
>> as its for private use and no money is involved. Imagine an Alexandria
>> of old dvd:s and bluerays which people could borrow, rip, and return.
>> Would anyone be interested?
>
> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.

You do have a point about scratches. When it comes to CD:s I know an
audiophile who swears by them. Some love their LP:s, some their CD:s, and
I read that casettes are making a comeback.

To my ears (pun intended) it almost seems like it is no longer about the
audio, but instead some kind of nostalgic childhood feeling that
"overrides" the pure audio to persuade the person that _this is it_.

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Marco Moock wrote:

> Am 03.05.2024 schrieb not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev):
>
>> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
>> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
>> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
>> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
>> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
>> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
>> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
>> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
>> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
>> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
>> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.
>
> CDs and DVDs also become unreadable after some years, especially when
> light reaches them.

I think the oldest CD I ever tried to read, successfully, was about 15
years or so. I do wonder though, if my old pirated CD/DVD collection that
sits in a box somewhere would still be readable today after an additional
couple of decades on top of that?

Am 03.05.2024 schrieb Joerg Walther <joerg.walther@magenta.de>:

> Not "especially", but "only when". My oldest CDs and DVDs date back
> from the late 90s and can still be read (I am currently transferring
> them to HDD for easier access), but of course I only used good blanks
> (Taiyo Yuden, etc) and a Plextor burner. So the expectations (mere
> speculations) which predicted a quite short lifespan of a couple of
> years for burned CDs/DVDs imho turned out to be too pessimistic.

It also depends on the disks.
I used cheap ones from Aldi and they were not readable after some
years, although some light reached them.
I hate optical disks, too low memory density and I don't have drives
anymore. All sold.

On Thu, 2 May 2024, Marco Moock wrote:

>> For app only restaurants I don't go to them, because I don't have a
>> smartphone.
>
> I also don't have one and I like it. Although, I've never seen an
> app-only restaurant. In which countries do they exist?

I've experienced them in Japan, Lithuania and some other country I no
longer remember.

>> I block all ads, so never see ads on youtube. I often think about how
>> the world would be if everyone has adblockers installed. How would
>> google & co try and smash that, since their economy would be
>> threatened?
>
> They would charge money for using their services.

That would be the blunt solution, but the risk would be losing business
and influence. If they were to charge money tomorrow, I am convinced that
the nr of users would decrease. Would the revenues increase? Interesting
question! I do hope I will get to see the experiment myself!

>> Fortunately never happened. I have heard horror stories of 2 people
>> at a company trading gpt texts each feeding the output of the other
>> into gpt responding.
>
> I can image how much bullshit that has been.

Don't imagine it... it would risk upsetting your mind. ;)

>> I have used gpt for nonsense-documents like environmental and gender
>> plans which just need to be there to tick a government box, but are
>> never read or acted upon. I find that gpt excels as writing walls of
>> text that no one ever reads, but that the government requires
>> (sometimes) for public tenders.
>
> Let software create bullshit for bullshit jobs. A rather good idea.

Amen!

> Might have been useful in school when I had to write interpretations
> for stupid old German books.

I teach and the students apply it with mixed results to everything, making
sure they learn less and less every year. =/

>> Don't have any social media except mastodon and usenet. Couldn't care
>> less that mad billionaires spend their dollars on. If people leave
>> social media I would actually see that as a net benefit for society.
>
> It is a huge benefit what happened to Twitter. Some bullshitters left
> it - no loss. :-)

Agreed!

>> In addition I watch the free news of the government public television
>> and the TV-text pages.
>
> Rather interesting that TV text still exists.

Yes! All commercial TV-channels cancelled it but it still exists on the
public TV. They even have an internet gateway for it, so I wrote a script
that send me the days pages consolidated into the email for when I'm not
able to use the deliciously retro pages on the TV itself!

Come to think of it... the tv I am using must surely be one of the last
that has the built in functionality to use those pages. I wonder if my
regular 55" OLED monitor (TV) would be able to access the text pages? I'm
not so sure when I try to picture the remote control in my minds eye.

>> I pay for my email and download all, so never any capacity problems.
>
> I operate my own mail server, so I can add disks when needed.

I always wondered if I should run my own? In the end, for the sake of
speed and laziness, I found a good open source-based cloud provider
instead. For me that's a good middle ground, although I still sometimes
wonder if I should bite the bullet and setup the mail myself. It surely
can't be that hard.

>> I wonder if people in general will rediscover old school technology,
>> or if things will become worse?
>
> The latter.

Let's hope not, but some days I wonder.

Marco Moock <mm+usenet@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
> Am 03.05.2024 schrieb not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev):
>
>> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
>> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
>> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
>> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
>> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
>> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
>> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
>> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
>> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
>> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
>> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.
>
> CDs and DVDs also become unreadable after some years, especially when
> light reaches them.

Commercial CDs and DVDs should be pretty bullet-proof if you don't
do anything silly like try to use them and thereby accumulate
scratches. It's recordable CDs and DVDs that have an organic dye
which degrades over time, at a rate that varies semi-randomly
depending on manufacturer and storage conditions. Commercial discs
don't have that because the discs themselves are moulded from a
metal master disc (maybe the wong technical terminology) that has
the data recorded on it.

DVDs do apparantly have an extra protective layer that's not on
CDs, allowing the DVD polishing machines at rental stores some
material to wear away before they reach the data.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 May 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>> I've never ordered from a restaurant online, I expect it's a big
>> city thing (in Australia, at least). I just searched for a local
>> place that does pizzas some nights and they don't even have a
>> website (there's a Facebook page, of course). I went to a fish and
>> chip place in a city a few years ago that was cash-only.
>
> Maybe. I do have a plan, at some point in my life, to move to a smaller
> city. Not yet, but maybe once I do, I might experience the same thing with
> a bit of luck. ;)

I wouldn't expect the situation to last forever, probably just a lag
behind the trend that's set in the big cities.

>> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
>> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
>> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
>> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
>> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
>> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
>> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
>> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
>> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
>> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
>> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.
>
> You do have a point about scratches. When it comes to CD:s I know an
> audiophile who swears by them. Some love their LP:s, some their CD:s, and
> I read that casettes are making a comeback.

Though more than any of those I listen to broadcast radio, and
that's the one old audio technology that the general public doesn't
seem to get nostalgic about. The distinction between broadcast
radio and internet radio is being deliberately blurred by
broadcasters, but why would I pay an ISP to get content that's on
the air for free?

> To my ears (pun intended) it almost seems like it is no longer about the
> audio, but instead some kind of nostalgic childhood feeling that
> "overrides" the pure audio to persuade the person that _this is it_.

There was an accidentally insightful clip in a TV news report about
some vaguely-related music industry story that I saw a while ago
(again on broadcast TV, not the internet, somewhere between the ads
telling me to use the internet). A trendy-looking hipster type was
saying how he likes his vinyl because the music just sounds so much
clearer than on his ear phones! Presumably the ear phones are
Bluetooth ones connected to his phone, while I guess his record
player has at least normal speakers, and in a display of extreme
ignorance he attributes the difference in sound quality to the
playback medium rather than the speakers.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On Sat, 4 May 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 May 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> I've never ordered from a restaurant online, I expect it's a big
>>> city thing (in Australia, at least). I just searched for a local
>>> place that does pizzas some nights and they don't even have a
>>> website (there's a Facebook page, of course). I went to a fish and
>>> chip place in a city a few years ago that was cash-only.
>>
>> Maybe. I do have a plan, at some point in my life, to move to a smaller
>> city. Not yet, but maybe once I do, I might experience the same thing with
>> a bit of luck. ;)
>
> I wouldn't expect the situation to last forever, probably just a lag
> behind the trend that's set in the big cities.

Sadly true. But who knows? Maybe communities of tired old IT-workers will
form who are tired to death of technology after a lifetime of service to
the machine. ;)

>> You do have a point about scratches. When it comes to CD:s I know an
>> audiophile who swears by them. Some love their LP:s, some their CD:s, and
>> I read that casettes are making a comeback.
>
> Though more than any of those I listen to broadcast radio, and
> that's the one old audio technology that the general public doesn't
> seem to get nostalgic about. The distinction between broadcast
> radio and internet radio is being deliberately blurred by
> broadcasters, but why would I pay an ISP to get content that's on
> the air for free?

Ahh broadcast radio. My wife is a fan of it. I am a fan of some _selected_
BBC programs. Not a lot of them, and for my fix I do tend to go to the In
our time website and download them.

Marco Moock <mm+usenet@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
>Am 03.05.2024 schrieb not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev):
>
>> Scratched discs would be your enemy here. Old DVDs find their way
>> to second hand stores which sell them for very little money, but
>> usually a good percentage of them are scratched to unwatchability.
>> Renting DVDs always had more risk than renting VHS tapes due to
>> scratched discs, even though they usually had disc polishing
>> machines which they might use to some effect after you went back
>> to the store and complained. I don't think video DVDs and audio
>> CDs were fit for the purpose of replacing tape in the first place,
>> and the rapid adoption of streaming and P2P downloads is the cost
>> that the old media industry paid for that. Much to the benefit of
>> ISPs and the new internet media companies like Amazon and Google.
>
>CDs and DVDs also become unreadable after some years, especially when
>light reaches them.

You are thinking of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs which are dye images. Actual
pressed disks have physically deposited images which do not fade.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <66356c20@news.ausics.net>,
Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
>DVDs do apparantly have an extra protective layer that's not on
>CDs, allowing the DVD polishing machines at rental stores some
>material to wear away before they reach the data.

With CDs, the data layer is on one side of the disc. Polycarbonate is
molded into a disc with the pits and lands on one side, covered in a
reflective layer (usually aluminum IIRC), and then that is covered with a
protective lacquer.

With DVDs, the data layer(s) is/are in the middle of the disc. Single-layer
discs are made more or less the same way as CDs, but the disc is only about
half as thick. They're then bonded together with the data layers inside.

Blu-ray is structured similarly to DVD, but an anti-scratch coating is also
specified to be applied to the surface.

There's also a difference with recordable media. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs use
organic dyes that in some cases have proven to be somewhat less than stable.
Some cheaper BD-Rs (of the "LTH" variety) also use these dyes, but most of
them use an inorganic phase-change layer that should be more durable. I've
been using these to back up my home media server since 2012, and the oldest
discs (in what's now a collection of over 600, spread across three binders)
are still perfectly readable with no errors reported by dvdisaster. (Even
if there were errors, they'd be recoverable because I added 20% parity
information with dvdisaster when I burned them, but while I've had to
recover some files from the backup that were lost to my fat fingers, I've not
had to use the parity information to reconstruct a damaged disc.)

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
> There's also a difference with recordable media. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs use
> organic dyes that in some cases have proven to be somewhat less than stable.
> Some cheaper BD-Rs (of the "LTH" variety) also use these dyes, but most of
> them use an inorganic phase-change layer that should be more durable.

This paper notes a study that disagrees:
"A study looking at the stability of Blu-ray media has shown that
overall, BD-Rs (whether they are the dye or the non-dye type) have
rather poor stability compared to some CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs (Iraci
2018)."
https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html

Unfortunately "Iraci 2018" is behind a paywall.

They do give "BD-R (non-dye, gold metal layer)" 10-20 years in a
good storage environment, and curiously "BD-RE (erasable Blu-ray)"
gets 20 to 50 years.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
>Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
>> There's also a difference with recordable media. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs use
>> organic dyes that in some cases have proven to be somewhat less than stable.
>> Some cheaper BD-Rs (of the "LTH" variety) also use these dyes, but most of
>> them use an inorganic phase-change layer that should be more durable.
>
>This paper notes a study that disagrees:
>"A study looking at the stability of Blu-ray media has shown that
> overall, BD-Rs (whether they are the dye or the non-dye type) have
> rather poor stability compared to some CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs (Iraci
> 2018)."
> https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html

This doesn't disagree at all. It just says that BR-Ds are even WORSE
than typical DVD-Rs.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."