The Enshittification Hall of Shame 221
In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."
Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."
Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."
Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."
Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.
Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."
Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."
Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."
Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."
Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."
Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."
Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.
Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."
Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."
Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."
Tesla owner (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tesla owner (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tesla owner (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I were out yesterday for a nice outdoor patio lunch in our small city and a Cybertruck pulled up to the red light by the restaurant. When the light turned green, it did not move. It sat there. About 5 minutes go by and the owner finally gets out, on the phone.
He got back in several times, got out, fidgeted with something around the front of the thing, got back in, out, in, out again, on the phone, voice getting louder. Eventually a cop pulled up behind and told him to move it. The owner could not. About 15 minutes later a tow truck showed up, and the driver refused to hook it up and left. Another tow truck showed up about 10 minutes later and pulled it up on the flatbed.
The thing apparently just decided to stop, for no apparent reason. Maybe the owner forgot to pay his Cybertruck Subscription? Who knows..
Re:Tesla owner (Score:5, Funny)
Please, you don't have to make up stories, anonymously, here of all places, when nobody here is interested in such a thing. I am of course talking about your "wife."
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I don't care if you got down-modded: I laughed.
Re: Tesla owner (Score:3)
Are you talking about VW, Ford, or Tesla?
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Re:Tesla owner (Score:5, Insightful)
People with more money than sense in other words. From the moment the cybertruck was unveiled it should have been obvious it would be a turd in every way imaginable. An ugly, overbearing, dangerous (to occupants, pedestrians & other road users), overpriced, underperforming wankpanzer. A terrible EV and a terrible truck. And after the fact we learn it is unreliable, and uninsurable too. Anyone who believed Elon Musk or his lies deserved everything they got with this lemon.
No wonder the waiting list went from a five year wait to zero when customers saw what they were letting themselves in for.
Re: Tesla owner (Score:4, Funny)
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I can't claim credit for that but it's best name I've seen coined for this shitty vehicle.
Re: Tesla owner (Score:5, Informative)
See also "Swasticars".
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Honestly, "Wankerpanzer" flows off the tongue better.
Re:Tesla owner (Score:5, Insightful)
Cars?
Their cars are good, I'll admit it, but so is the competition. The new cars coming out like the Ioniq are just as good as Teslas, but for lack of a better word, more normal. They are just regular cars, but electric, whereas tesla cars still have quirks. Those quirks appeal to a certain fanclub types, but a lot of people who just want a normal car and not an environmental or political statement, who aren't really amused by things like pop-out handles, are going to go for these other cars that work just as well, charge just as well, have just as much range, where you can't even tell if they are electric or not. Teslas are now lacking features, such as complete lack of vehicle-to-grid, which is becoming an expected feature. Their 400V architecture is now old compared to newer 800V cars, meanwhile their Superchargers, which were previously the best, can't even charge the most modern cars now, and a lot of the Supercharger fleet is old V1-2 superchargers that aren't even fast by modern standards. We went from everything looking bad compared to the Supercharger, to the supercharger looking bad compared to anything else. Yes, they have a lot of superchargers deployed because they had a head start, but it's starting to look like the head start was all Tesla had.
Trucks?
The Cybertruck is completely outclassed. The Lightning is better in every way by far, and the new Silverado is setting a new standard, not even to mention Rivian. The cybertruck is a joke. The cybertruck was obsolete basically when it came out. And where is their new, v2 truck? The one to compete with the Silverado and Lightning? Nowhere to be found. It's really looking bad for them.
Minivans?
They have nothing. They let Volksagon release the Id.Buzz, the first mass-market full-size E-minivan, into the North American market with absolutely no competition. What the fuck? And they don't look like they even have anything in the pipeline to play in that space.
Semis?
Tesla is a joke here. Watch the Electric Trucker youtube video where he visits the truck trade show. Every manufacturer, Volvo, Scania, Iverco, Mercedes, all of them have electric semis you can buy RIGHT NOW, which have been running in real trucking for years, which have 750,000 mile battery warranties, and charge using CCS at 350kW and up. When the guy makes his way to the Tesla booth, there's a tesla semi there but it's just a mock-up. It's not even a real truck. Meanwhile the youtuber's own company is placing orders for dozens of Mercedes brand electric trucks right now.
Self-driving?
Waymo is deploying cars all over the country and running commercial taxi operations, right now.
The future arrived, and Tesla has nothing. It's like they could operate as long as the technology was in the future. Once it actually arrived, they instantly got passed by. There's nothing new in their product line and their products they do have are starting to look dated. It's like they have been doing nothing for the last 5 years but play politics.
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The future arrived, and Tesla has nothing. It's like they could operate as long as the technology was in the future. Once it actually arrived, they instantly got passed by.
That's because their CEO has been too busy buying and ruining Twitter and coopting the U.S. government to pay attention to running the company.
Not only Tesla driver UI wise (Score:4, Insightful)
Tesla led the way, but now most new cars apart from real bottom of the range ones have some shitty touchscreen with formally easily within reach buttons now shoved on there so its hard or impossible to do on the move - eg BMWs climate controls - or if you're really unlucky buried N menus down like most in car enternainment systems. In my old car I pressed 1 button to change the radio channel - now I have to go 2 levels down, flick through a list of stations and THEN press select it. Sure, I can really do that at 70mph!
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Not sure how to ask this without it sounding hostile, so I'll just ask. Why did you buy a car like that?
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I love my Tesla. But I have now broken my strict no-stickers-on-cars rule which I'd adhered to for 30+ years and started emblazoning it with messages about how I feel about First Alien Elon. It will be my only Tesla. Assuming the tariff and annexation nonsense is over by then, it will be replaced by a Rivian in a couple of years.
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I'd take a Polestar any day and they look so much better.
Re:Tesla owner (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Tesla owner (Score:2)
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Re: Tesla owner (Score:3)
Re:Tesla owner (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the Model 3 and Y are good cars in some ways and poor in others. The software is great (barring lack of Android / Carplay), the storage and interior space is great. Driving experience is okay. But the lack of physical controls, especially in the latest incarnation is a major nuisance and safety concern. I would not recommend anyone buy a Tesla when they clearly an put owner's inconvenience and safety below saving a buck or two on stalks.
Also "best" means different things to different people. There are many EVs arriving from manufacturers in all form factors and price points. Especially in Europe. People don't have to drop €45000+ on a Tesla any more for a decent EV and the choice will only increase over time. For some people best means affordable, or form factor (e.g. hatch, mini), or physical controls, or driving from the seat of pants feel, or luxury. Or just a car made by a company whose owner isn't a Nazi.
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I found the Model 3 to be very low and awkward to get in and out of. It's like something out of the 1980s in terms of ride height. I guess they did that to make it more efficient, but other taller and more comfortable cars have surpassed it.
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Still the best EV you can buy.
I rode in the front seat of a Model 3 many years ago and was impressed, mostly by the space-age feel and mind-numbing acceleration. Recently I rode in the back seat and noticed some things from a different perspective.
The steering wheel is smaller, which I've read is for better performance when driving on a racetrack. The rearview mirror is smaller, which is better for ... I don't know. The rear seat sits higher so that my 5'7" frame almost touches the ceiling. I was less impressed with this latest ride.
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Look I will crap on Musk and his companies all day long, over anything ... if it's legitimate (and there are a lot of legitimate things to crap on).
But saying "sports cars have small back seats" is hardly an indictment of the Tesla.
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Have fun at the clinic.
I'd argue that smart TVs have always been shit (Score:3)
Re:I'd argue that smart TVs have always been shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, but smart TVs use to be crap because the CPUs and GPUs were inadequate to make a fast spiffy UI. AKA “shit because they couldn’t make it not shit”. Smart TVs are shit now because something other than the user experience is the goal, so “continue watching” is buried below “things we think (hope!) you would like” and “sign up for a new streaming service so we can get our cut of your monthly bleeding!”.
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All my smart TVs are kept dump. They don't get my Wifi SSID / pass.
I prefer connecting a nice AlmaLinux mini PC to it. Fast enough UI, standard and compatible browsers, no data collection.
Re:I'd argue that smart TVs have always been shit (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this argument is that 5G and mesh networks are going to render your willingness to let your "smart" home devices spy on you and phone home irrelevant.
New cars already come with built-in SIM cards of their own. The next generation of networking technologies is probably going to make it cheap and ubiquitous for other devices to be independently online as well.
This is the part where the market has clearly failed and regulation is supposed to step in to protect the ordinary citizen, right?
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Linus Tech Tips just did an episode where they tried painting an apartment with RF blocking paint. They previously tested the paint in laboratory conditions to check that it actually works. Unfortunately they screwed up the installation, but it did still manage to block 4G/5G data connections. There was some attenuation to 2.4GHz WiFi, but nothing in the 5GHz range unfortunately.
Of course you can't use 5G on your phone either...
Seriously though, if there was some reliable way to block RF between about 1GHz
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The problem with this argument is that 5G and mesh networks are going to render your willingness to let your "smart" home devices spy on you and phone home irrelevant.
Most buyers of these TVs are going to connect them to their WiFI. Putting in the hardware and paying for 5G service for all the TVs, including those that would be connected to WiFI is a waste of money.
You and I are protected against this by the actions of the many, who will willingly accept the enshittification.
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My tv connected to the internet exactly once for an update. Then it was never allowed again. Letting it update was my last step before returning it since it was unusable as is.
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I lived mine when it was new.
It just had a built in Chromecast when it was new.
Then 8 months later the did major "upgrade" and it was full of nonsense and less reliable.
Re: I'd argue that smart TVs have always been shit (Score:2)
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Streaming boxes are pretty tiny. I have a wall mounted TV that I just used some velcro to attach an NVidia shield to the back of. The outlet behind it has two receptacles in it anyways so power is not an issue. Plus many TVs have dedicated USB power ports for streaming boxes these days. Add a 2' HDMI cable and you are done. Completely invisible from the front.
Re:I'd argue that smart TVs have always been shit (Score:4, Interesting)
The Technology Connections guy reported that he bought a cheap TCL smart TV and simply didn't connect it to the internet, declined all licence agreements, and it worked fine as a dumb TV.
I don't know if other brands are the same but it's worth a try. If it doesn't work properly you can always return it, as the EULA tells you to do in the event that you don't agree to it.
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I just got a Hisense Roku TV and experienced the same. It has never been connected to the Internet and it works fine.
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Slow, clunky UIs, pre-installed apps, lots of tracking. That's nothing new, that Samba tracking has been on Sony TVs even before they became "smart". That's one of the reasons I still got a non-smart-TV from Sony five years ago - hope it lasts a long time.
I agree with the rest of the list, though.
And this is why I've always preferred "dumb" TV's. I use Roku sticks for streaming. But now it's getting increasingly hard to buy TV's without the "smart" stuff. When I recently went shopping for a replacement for a sub-30 inch screen set, I had only a handful of choices that were MORE expensive that the Smart TV's. And you can forget buying one over 50 inches that isn't pre-crammed with stuff.
Firewall Logs for Roku TVs (Score:5, Informative)
I have a router at home that has AdGuard built into it. 80% of the blocked connection logs are the Roku TVs trying to phone home. Luckily AdGuard is very good at blocking Roku TVs from phoning home.
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They can have my 32" Samsung dumb TV when they pry it from my cold dead hands...
Amazon Echo too. (Score:2)
It became progressively worse in the past few years and it is barely usable even as a voice controlled light switch anymore.
All online was shittified (Score:3)
I've stumbled across a few e-books that use a non-standard code-page or font. It displays correctly in a PDF viewer but when I copy, the letters and digits are there and the punctuation is 'scrambled'. Similarly, if I want to search for punctuation I have to remember that:
"[" is really "@",
"]" is really "D",
"/" is really "ê",
"{" is really "8",
"}" is really "<"
Microsoft is the biggest offender but the list hides the reality that all of the big cloud services have enshittified their online products. I remember Google Play Store applet received so many bad reviews that Google deleted its own product listing. Facebook has gradually hidden, then deleted data's privacy-control settings.
Planet of Shame (Score:4, Interesting)
We need to get our collective shit together because otherwise it will keep enshitifiying everything, not just the online world.
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wages are outpacing price increases.
Eggs aside, grocery prices are still insanely inflated. Cartel-like price fixing from the few major companies involved, carried over from the pandemic. Fast food companies too.
It's not the actual cost of food, though. It's now cheaper around me to eat a lunch special at a restaurant than to go through a drive-through. Even with a tip.
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That's not a problem with PDF, of course. It's obfuscation being used as content protection. A substitution cipher with a rearranged font to match.
That's life! (Score:2)
Modern life, that is:
It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed
I'm privileged to be able to miss the worst of the 'daily life' examples of enshittification. I don't stream music, movies, or TV. I don't do social media, except for Slashdot. I spend too much time on YouTube, but browser extensions eliminate the ads and keep the UI tolerable. I use Linux, so beyond my wife's work experiences with Windows, the drama generated by that sad excuse for an OS doesn't affect me directly. All that said, the fact of pervasive enshittification makes me angry, i
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Formula 1 (Score:3)
Not sure I agree. The advent of free youtube highlight reels has brought me back into the sport, and I think this is a really good way to watch it. I watch all the gran prix and qualifying now by just watching the highlights in one sitting. I used to watch a lot of the full races, but honestly, (a) I just don't have time these days (b) it's really not that interesting most of the time.
F1 is more about how the season develops at a driver/car/team level. Then there can be particular moments in a race, or drama during accidents or pitstops. But most of the time during races it's just cars following at 2 second intervals to 'manage tyres and fuel', with a few lead cars being obscenely quicker than everyone else. But this has always been the case with F1 because it is a development series. Outside of a handful of seasons, the racing is mostly won in hidden tech development long before the cars are on the track. If we are lucky, the leading team might have inter-team battles, and every now and again, another team will challenge the lead team for best car for a little bit. It's really a soap opera sport.
If I could easily pay-per-view a few of the races (e.g. Monza, Spa) then I'd likely do that, but when I think back to my youthful days watching races seasons, it was largely because I had lots of free time and nothing better to do.
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One of the nice things about Formula E is that everyone has the same car.
The only motorsport I actually watch these days is Gran Turismo 7, specifically a guy called SuperGT on YouTube. He does videos of interesting races, there is plenty of variety and his narration is informative and insightful. One of the nice things about GT7 is that for online races everyone has the choice of the same cars, so it's down to drive skill and sometimes strategy if things like pit-stops and managing tyre wear are involved.
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Outside of a handful of seasons, the racing is mostly won in hidden tech development long before the cars are on the track
Well, NASCAR has tried to address this by having its restrictor plate races where all the cars go exactly the same speed, and results in giant packs of cars going around the track together...NASCAR races are much longer, seemingly endless, so there is an aspect of endurance that the driver and team have to achieve...so I'm not sure what the solution is to make it more interesting. One option people have posed is to reverse the starting lineup based on points earned so far in the season, so the best drivers
You Forgot America (Score:5, Insightful)
The ultimate enshittification.
Re:You Forgot America (Score:5, Insightful)
We were way further past racism in the 80s than we are now. Then, shortly after we elected a black President, we regressed. Or, some people regressed, rather.
The emergence of new technology used to be exciting. Home computers, home video, newer TVs and appliances. But now, there's a overarching foreboding with the advancement of tech. It's no longer about adding value and convenience to people's lives, but data collection and thought manipulation.
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"...what the fuck happened?"
Ronald Reagan and the religious right happened. A political party humiliated by Nixon's corruption happened.
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Re:You Forgot America (Score:4, Informative)
Your post makes me sad, but I'm forced to agree. I grew up in 80s and 90s America -- what a great time. I love my country, but... what the fuck happened?
The root of the answer is economic, The Productivity Pay Gap [epi.org].
People are always for their own self preservation first. If you want them to help others, be tolerant of others, or generally work on making a better society they have to feel like their own self preservation is not being threatened. Over time the disconnect in that graph has grown, leading to more and more people worried about their own preservation. Unable to afford housing, food, transportation, they start to worry only about themselves and start to get mad when "those people" get some leg up that they don't get.
Re:You Forgot America (Score:4, Interesting)
We were way further past racism in the 80s than we are now.
We were not. The racists were just quieter, so we could pretend they weren't just as racist (if not moreso, as time goes by the elder nazis die off.) There were cross burnings in Oregon [paleofuture.com] on a semi-regular basis in the 80s. Even the part of California I live in is racist AF. I've blocked a shitton of locals (established accounts which were associated with other established accounts) on faceboot for extremely blatant racism, and on multiple occasions I walked in on my prior boss telling a racist joke about Mexicans, which is what kind of hispanic I am.
Pretending racism went away was an American tradition as hallowed as pretending we had democracy [substack.com]. It started with the vote only for landed white males and this has essentially become more true over time [bbc.com] instead of less.
Lying to ourselves made us feel better, but it prevented positive change. It did not, however, prevent further enshittification of our union.
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alas even ... (Score:2)
PDFs for job search (Score:3)
With millions of people looking for work right now, Adobe has a golden opportunity to make PDFs relevant and useful again. AIT bots are about as bad at reading PDFs as trying to copy paste info out of them. They do a terrible job and you end up re-entering 90% of your info anyway. Any page layout formatting that makes it easier for humans to read just make this worse.
With almost no effort, Adobe could add meta tagging to PDFs to separate the content layer from the formatting later. Store your tagged info inside of the PDF for computers to read with 0 AI guesswork. Name, contact info, job 1 title, job 1 Company, job one job description, etc. You could make the actual resume look like whatever you want, and shitty systems like Workday could fill in your application in 2 seconds with no edits needed.
And only Adobe has the industry weight to go to applicant tracker systems like workday and force them to use their standard. If some random company tries this, the 100 different AIT systems will never standardize. BUT I don't think Adobe will ever do this, because they literally don't care about their cash cow that brings in a little money without actually improving the product at all.
Re: PDFs for job search (Score:2)
Tell me you know nothing about where PDFs come from without... well, you know the rest.
Adobe owns the PDF standard but provides it free for everyone to implement. This means that while Adobe makes very fine tools that can create tagged PDFs like what you are describing, it takes time and effort to get it right, and they are not shy about charging their customers for the privilege of using these tools. The tools are excellent but the prices are high.
On the other hand, Joe Bob' Haus Of Software can throw toge
Meetup.com (Score:2)
Used to be a passable way to meet new people and connect in a variety of communities.
Then they massively raised the prices for organizers, so most quit using it.
Then a few months ago they started charging memberships for features that used to be free.
All while making no improvements to the platform.
Now it's mostly just online new age self-help and real estate investing sales, with the occasional sports groups. Sad. And especially sad that a viable alternative hasn't really arisen yet. Perhaps a ./ reader
The enflattification of GUIs (Score:5, Interesting)
GUIs used to have buttons that were raised, so you know they were buttons, text entry boxes that were indented, so you knew you could type there, and the rest was flat because you could not interact with it.
Now some arty cunts have made the whole GUI flat, so the user has no idea what can be clicked or where text can be entered.
( Not mentioning the shitty Windows Dialogs where you cannot select the text of the message, to look it up, because that was always shit. )
Re:The enflattification of GUIs (Score:5, Informative)
No window borders as the default on Windows was a huge enshittification. Watching my elderly mother trying to make sense of a mass of intersecting rectangles while trying to do something with an email attachment was soul destroying.
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Scrollbars had width. And Buttons for scrolling only a line. Good scrollbars even three buttons.
We had no Switches without clear labeling what's on and off. We had checkboxes that could already be seen by contrast, even on a monochrome screen, if they are checked. Have a look how the stupid switches need to use color to show their state, because they have no labels left and right of the switch.
Re:The enflattification of GUIs (Score:4, Interesting)
I just use Linux for my smart tv. (Score:2)
Products are like politicians (Score:2)
You get what you choose and/or pay for.
Re:Products are like politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you really choose politicians?
In most cases you have 2 terrible options which boils down to parties which are controlled by money, not by you the voting public.
Are you telling me that more than 50% of the US population chose Trump?
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European here, we have more than two choices and less than a "for or against" culture.
On voting in the USA, seems to me that no one of the general public votes for the president in reality as the only ones who actualy vote are those in a skewed electoral college. I don't know if it can be called republican but it's certainly not a democracy there.
Was ARS copying or are they the ditor (Score:2)
Cars? (Score:2)
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<shows self out>
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I want 1997's Alta Vista back! (Score:2)
Postscript (Score:3)
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Yes, you would assume that a writer could come up with a term that;s less, well, shitty.
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Enshittification is a description of /. editors, the /. service, and the regular pushing of grifters like Cory Doctorow.
The observation it alleges to refer to is merely a feature of capitalism that has been well understood longer than we've been alive.
Can there be anything more pathetic than an author reduced to claiming he invented a word and for years attempting to monetize it?
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Till now.
Re: Wikipedia has enshittified. (Score:2)
I noticed this quite some time ago. Their bias against China is pretty blatant, the last time I looked, with several long-debunked images being used front-and-centre.
At one time, I used to donate, but not for some years.
Re:Wikipedia has enshittified. (Score:4, Insightful)
LOL. that is a degree of stupidness that would not have appeared on /. once upon a time. Encyclopedias exist to be an objective authority, they do not commit "appeal to authority" fallacies. Encyclopedias do not exist to "provide a balanced view", you idiot.
"I'm proud to be banned from Wikipedia, as it means i think normally"
No, it's doesn't mean that. It means you are an asshole. But the idea that you think "normally" is the problem.
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I think what the parent is referring to is that you're required to back up edits with reference to authoritative sources, but the allowed authoritative sources are, perhaps, not.
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It's part of the problem. Do not underestimate the SuperKendalls, peons who lie for sport. SuperKendalls believe in tribalism above all else, they enable elites to exploit them and gain the power you have identified. Elites are a fraction of a percent but SuperKendalls are everywhere. What's the greater problem, one Melonia Musk or the 75 million tribalists that enable him?
We live in a democracy, it is only the people that can ultimately solve the problem. SuperKendalls are to blame, corrupt billionair
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We live in a democracy, it is only the people that can ultimately solve the problem. SuperKendalls are to blame, corrupt billionaires are merely the consequence.
Insert clasped hands meme here. The SuperKendalls are created and/or emboldened by propaganda from the corrupt billionaires; the corrupt billionaires are enabled and protected by the SuperKendalls. And so the march of prosperity theology continues.
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I love searching on Netflix. "Hey you searched on Doctor Who, so here are some recommendations which are conspicuously NOT Doctor Who".
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At least it was probably shows that are similar. I watched the movie Leo with the kids. Adam Sandler is a voice actor in it. Later, I got a category recommendation of something like "Because of your interest in Adam" and showed a list of shows with Adam in the title and then a few with other actors named Adam. A couple further down the list did have Adam Sandler as well.
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and showed a list of shows with Adam in the title and then a few with other actors named Adam.
We have a technical term for this in the programming business: an algorithm written by a shitty programmer.
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And where the hell are they getting "woke" from anyway? Netflix is by far the most un-"woke" streaming channel. Most of its movies are male-lead violent action things. The "Comedy specials" are basically "Huh-huh trans people am I right?" (and in addition to one comedy special actually advocating the murder of trans people, are spectacularly unfunny.) Even the rare examples that aren't generally have a rant about "cancel culture" or some other bullshit - Fluffy's even claimed to be "cancelled" because he wa
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Wrong. Most of these companies lose money for an unacceptable amount of time to provide any meaningful return on equity. Stock prices are the exit strategy, and that is inflated really by a loose network of cronies, which is anything but "free".
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If the market had any benevolent actors, the malevolent ones wouldn't prevail. Unfortunately, the greed required to have the resources to dominate the market don't usually happen with the former of the two.
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It's not enshittification if the free market decided this is what's best, right?
The "free market" idea doesn't work if everyone is selling the same bland average consumable. I'd love to spend my money on certain kinds of food, clothing, hardware etc., but apparently nobody out there wants my money.
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Circle to Search on Android works for this as well. Badly named feature, since you don't need to search. But at least you don't actually have to snap a screenshot and remember to delete it.