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You may be close but you are missing a big point. I would say 99 percent of the parts on these tractors can be replaced without any need to access the software tools we are talking about. If the on board system detects an error, the codes are displayed through a monitor on the machine. The documentation needed to understand that code is the biggest issue. That documentation is locked to the dealers which is the issue but that is just a pdf file like any tech manual for a car. But anyone who has been around these machines long enough and has the drive to dig into the issue can usually figure it out based off the short detail in the monitor.
The tricky part is the computer parts they are talking about. The computers off the shelf are a blank slate like the tech in the video said. Even when they are going down the manufacturing line. These computers then have custom software for each VIN to handle all the options the customer paid for and the performance specs for a specific model. So when you rip it off one machine to put it on another it won’t work. Because they don’t want people to track down machines that have the fancy automation software installed, rip off and steal the computer, then use it on another machine.
The only way to install this software is to have access to the service tool that can interface with the machine and then also have access to the Deere website where you can download that custom software file for that VIN. This is a gap that they are trying to close but the right to repair legislation exceeds that mandate and has extra wording that would allow users to modify these software packages to change performance or other things that can possibly damage the machine. That is what they are fighting. They are committed to solving the service issue but they want to be able to maintain their IP and the users safety at the same time.
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I fixed my first lcd back in like 2013. It was two capacitors at a cost of about $1.50. Samsung TV only about 2 yrs old. I was so happy because I was in the process of researching new TV's so I just went for it. Then I fixed my dad's bad capictor tv. Then I found one by a trashcan on a curb. I said wtf and fixed that one. Put an ad on Craigslist in the wanted section for LCDs with good screens but won't turn on. Fixed 4 or 5 more and sold those. Samsung TVs in particular were bad about blowing caps back then. I think the bad caps problem is not as common on TV's these days.
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What was the vehicle and part?
Every time I’ve tried to fix a Toyota I’ve ended up excited at how accessible, and simple the repair was. My Lexus was my first car I’ve ever had with brake callipers that simply pivot up out of the way conveniently.
I love them because it seems like they forced the designers to have to do repairs themselves, with their own design.
You want expensive hard to reach inaccessible parts causing catastrophic failures? You should have seen my BMW, made my Lexus look like a fisher price block set where you try and put the shaped blocks into the right hole.
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I had 2 other mechanics with me when we removed the intake, and they thought it was the dumbest shit they'd ever seen. Rubber coolant hose between the block and intake; just asking for a leak. It could've been ducted or piped. The heat shield protecting it failed long ago. It's a double jointed endeavor just to change spark plugs on this thing, can't wait for these electric cars. I'm happy fixing my analog systems until then.
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>It's wasn't the timing belt I have heartburn with, as they're not $10.
Depending on the car and the brand you end up buying, yeah, they can cost $10. It's still going with your point, a timing belt is an inexpensive component to an engine, but can cost $1000+ to replace. Redesigning an engine to make every inexpensive part on there easily accessible to a consumer is not practical at all. I am aware of some car manufacturers making it more difficult to change things, like a bulb, but no one's forcing you to buy that particular brand. You have a limitless amount of knowledge easily available to you through the internet to do your own research.
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I have a 60 inch flatscreen sitting up against the wall, my neighbors moved out and told me the backlight was out and they didn’t know how to fix it and told me I could take it if I wanted it... I snagged that bitch so fast, like... really? I looked it up and it’s $60 worth of parts and super easy to fix, and it’s a $700 tv still on amazon lol like ok I’ll take it
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Are you suggesting a customer should buy the chiltons+ on any vehicle before purchase? I'm pretty mechanically minded, and that sounds absurd for me, let alone your average consumer. I suspect auto manufacturers do in fact have a pact with dealers to make vehicles harder to work on, so they can corner the market on parts when nobody has a clue. For example, I tried to get my transmission flushed, because I'm not buying their "forever good oil." Toyota was the only service able to do it, and wanted me to sign a waiver on my warranty. I told them the Supreme Court disagrees under Magnuson V Moss, and they were hesitant, still wanted me to sign crap. I can't trust them to do anything if they're ignoring laws.
If we as consumers don't stand up, speak out against this behavior, you can expect more of it.
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>Are you suggesting a customer should buy the chiltons+ on any vehicle before purchase?
What are "chiltons+"? I'm suggesting you do research before purchasing a vehicle, or anything you buy where you're spending a good amount of money.
> For example, I tried to get my transmission flushed, because I'm not buying their "forever good oil." Toyota was the only service able to do it, and wanted me to sign a waiver on my warranty.
If there's no service interval on their "lifetime ATF" and you're still on the warranty, why are you even bothering to flush it during that time?
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On vehicles that drive on the road they do have to make it available. It just costs way too much. Part of that is that it is designed to support a dealership. One computer to work on everything from that manufacturer. Someone who is a professional mechanic usually only needs to know one or two things about any given job(like the torque specs here or there) I've never had a manual for my car or truck but I've done all my repairs. I've also repaired phones, computers and everything else. I can't remember the last time I had something repaired for me. But how repairable something is makes up a large part of my buying decisions.
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I've gotta say, how-to videos on YouTube are a godsend. Not just for tech stuff. As a homeowner? Holy shit, it's nice to be able to figure out how to make a simple fix to something like a toilet that needs a new flusher mechanism, when the thing won't stop running at two in the morning. Realizing that what you need is a $10 part from Home Depot and a five-minute replacement, rather than an emergency call to a plumber on a weekend is the best.
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Just Google the symptoms, or watch TampaTec on YouTube. I think he has a general troubleshooting video where he goes through the various issues and how to fix and test them. A lot of things are really cheap to fix if you want to solder stuff. Otherwise you just replace a board which is usually in the $50 range. Really easy to fix.
My problem was bad backlight which requires disassembling the entire TV. It's time consuming and you have to be careful not to break the actual screen.
If the actual screen is broken then the TV is pretty much unfixable from my understanding. The panel is 80% of the price of a new TV and can't easily be shipped outside of the TV because it is so fragile.
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Cars have steadily become more reliable. They have done so despite also becoming vastly more complex. And contrary to your beliefs, car manufacturers actually have a huge problem because parts from China start to become actually half decent while staying ridiculously cheap.
This isn't the 70s any more when an engine bay was huge because there was little more in it than the engine. You want good AC? Power everything? Intelligent engine management? A turbo for better fuel economy? Crumple zones and other safety mechanism? All that is going to result in a cramped engine bay. You have to make compromises. You can't make everything easily accessible. What's more important, having a part like the timing belt that you change maybe 3-4 times in the life of the car, or a knock sensor that you maybe replace once in the life of the car easily accessible? Or having something like the oil filter easily accessible? I'd say the priorities should be quite clear.
And all of this gets way worse once you involve hybrids or cars like the Audi RS3 with a 3.2 liter engine in an economy car made for engines half the size.
You just can't have a car that's modern and super easy to work on. Well, you can, with electric cars, but with combustion engines that time is just gone unless you maybe buy something like the Fiesta with the 1l 3 cylinder.
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Definitely sounds like bad backlight. Same as on my TV. The fix is long and requires taking the entire TV apart, but is definitely possible at home. Turn it on in a dark room and shine a flashlight on it. You should be able to see a faint image. Make sure there's something on the screen by pushing the menu button on the remote, or something else that you know will produce a picture. Look at TampaTec and other YouTube channels to see the process for replacement.
I got my LED strips from AliExpress. If you live in the US you are probably better off getting them from ShopJimmy or another US based online store. I'm in Canada and it would have cost me over $100 to have them shipped from the US even before possible duty charges. $50 all inclusive from AliExpress seemed like it was worth the risk.
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Yeah. That's the exact problem. Usually its just one or two sections that go, but the TV detects a problem and shuts all the backlights off. Probably one of the hardest things to fix that's actually worth it. Just time consuming more than anything though. Probably worth the risk of the $50 part if it saves you from having to buy a new TV. If you screw it up and break the TV then you are really only out the cost of the LED strips.
What I did was go through the entire procedure but I didn't replace the strips. Just tested them to see which ones I needed (ordered a whole set anyway). Then I reassembled and ensured that I didn't screw anything up and was working as before. Then I placed my order. This way I didn't waste the money if it turned out to be something I really couldn't handle. Also, it's worth testing the strips because if its just a single strip, then you can order the individual ones for $15. Mine had three bad ones so it seemed like a better idea to order the full set of twelve and have spares for when another one eventually goes.
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In the last year or so:
Replaced TV’s PCB (thanks YouTube!), good as new.
Dryer stopped drying - replaced the heating filament (thanks YouTube!), good as new.
iPhone 6 with smashed screen. Got my free upgrade and then went to iFixit to figure out how to fix that screen. Passed it on to MIL.
Each of these items would easily have been a few hundred bucks each to replace, but each repair was about £50-ish plus a few you tube vids.
I’m currently buying a new MacBook Pro and it annoys me that if anything, even relatively simple goes wrong I’m kinda screwed. My last one I did the upgrading of memory and storage. New one, it is what it is. No upgrade. Huh!
I have a fairly vintage stereo amp which I absolutely love, but it kept dying, because the fuses kept blowing. Going online and doing a bit of investigating, I finally discovered that the glass fuses that I was replacing every few months could be replaced with ceramic ones. Replaced all 3 fuses, from a pack of 10 and still, over a year later have 7 spares. It’s a bit sad that in the future if anything goes wrong with a piece of equipment the only option will be to send it back to the manufacturer.
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That all depends on how involved the repair is. A lot of things are easily repaired and should be fine under warranty. Also, the manufacturers should do a lot more to make their products last. Right now they only required a 12 month warranty, so as long as it lasts that long they don't care. A TV should have a life span of much longer than a year. There's a lot they could do to the design to make them easier to repair without making them much more bulky. They keep on telling use we want slimmer designs with less bezel but don't tell you it's coming at the cost of repairability.
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Hey. Good job.
I feel electronics repair is for this century what sewing was for the last.
It's an invaluable skill to be able to perform basic fault finding and component replacement. And as you've shown it's not rocket science.
Literally search the internet for your issue, then search "how to fix xyz in this TV". You can guarantee someone has done it and made tutorials or videos on it.
I love it so much. And I encourage anyone to try it. We throw out so many things that have the electronics equivalent of a pair of pants with a ripped seam, when all it needs is stitching back up and it's good for years to come.
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I had a lightning strike at my house. Insurance paid out on TVs and told me to do whatever I wanted with them. I cash value for all of them to replace them and fixed each of them for about $25 in parts each (new control boards). Each one took about 20 minutes or so to fix. I was STOKED! I go to recycling centers now looking for LED/LCD tvs that do not have broken screens and see if they will let me take them or buy them from them. They can usually be fixed pretty cheap. Resell those bad boys for 150-200 in profit each very easily.
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And then you won't buy another one in two years, from a company that already has razor thin margins if they're making money on their consumer electronics division at all. If the phone lasts twice as long, they'd have to charge twice as much, and I can't imagine anyone but you buying a $1600-$2000 phone with slightly inferior specs to the regular model that costs under $1k so they can keep it for 4-5 years instead of 2-3. Companies that aren't Samsung or Apple already barely break even or lose money on R&D, marketing, and payroll, so the only two companies that can afford to create repairable devices with longer lifecycles without drastically raising the price are also the only two whose devices people will buy for the brandname regardless of how good or bad they are.
Overall, I'm fully in support of right to repair, we should own our possessions rather than just rent the right to use them for a few years, but I just think the smartphone market is a bad example for right to repair. Even if you could keep them going for 5+ years, you wouldn't really want to. To fix that problem, you'd have to force web and app developers to optimize better, be more careful about which parts of which libraries they include, and keep supporting multiple versions of the same app with different levels of graphical effects and different feature sets. Bad web developers are going to keep loading the entirety of 3 different versions of React, Angular, jQuery, and video.js just to get a cross-compatible scrolling animation that would require maybe 25 lines of code to implement the right way as long as the newest devices can handle it. They'll just keep getting lazier the more powerful our phones get, and I don't believe that smartphone and mobile OS companies can or should have enough power over our economy and our lives to be able to do something about that. Appliances, TVs, lawnmowers, power tools, and cars, sure, there's no reason for those to ever go obsolete unless the manufacturer makes it happen, but the obsolescence of smartphones is natural. Back when Moto, LG, and Samsung phones had their screens or NAND deteriorate enough to make the phone very unpleasant to use after about a year or two, sure, but now a decent one can last for 3-4 years, which is about how long 95% of people would want to use a phone anyway.
It would be more wasteful and worse for the environment to waste materials on making phones with thicker bodies, more screws, and more segregated components, because all but a tiny minority of them would end up in the landfill at the same point in their lifecycle anyway. Besides, while smartphones are difficult to repair, it's still economical to: decently specced phones (that aren't loaded with Chinese government spyware at the chipset firmware level to subsidize the low price) start at ~$250 and go up to ~$800, there are luxury phones above that price point but they don't offer anything more except the badge and some minor exterior design changes. If you take it into a local shop, a battery replacement is $30-$80, a screen replacement is $150-$300, and a charging port repair is $20-50. If the phone breaks early enough in its lifecycle that it wasn't going to be thrown away soon anyway, then having a phone repaired is still a no-brainer over buying a new one. I've gotten a bulging battery fixed on nearly every phone, tablet or laptop I've ever owned, and never once has it been more than 1/4 the cost of a new one. Most people don't only because they don't know they can. The only devices that are truly impossible to repair are the Microsoft Surface series, which nobody buys anyway because they're not only hard to repair, but poorly built, badly supported, underspecced, and ludicrously overpriced besides. OEMs charge way more for the parts than they should, and those supplier cartels need to be broken up, but repairing still makes sense unless you're too poor to afford a new device either, in which case the throwaway culture point is sort of moot.
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I kind of don't agree on this one. What we need to make sure we do is ensure students have proper reading and reasoning skills so that they can teach themselves when the time comes. Sure, you could teach TV repair but 10 years down the line, TVs might be completely different, and they won't be able to fix it without learning something new anyway. They might have to fix their toaster or their oven or some other piece of technology that doesn't even exist yet.
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Not only do they not want you to ever change the trans oil, they don't make it easy at all. You require a self contained vacuum and pump to fill, so that the system stays pressurized. Alright, special tool, nothing new. "Sign this void warranty paperwork" is a clear sign that Toyota is shitting the bed to me.
What's so difficult to understand about this?
*search for "World Standard oil change transmission" and watch the sludge. They want your vehicle to fail so you can buy a new one.
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If you have ever worked around farmers you know exactly why John Deere wants to lock their shit down. They don't want Cletus using some Chinese aftermarket sensors on a tractor that plows the field via autopilot and have some shitty sensor cause it to plow through the fucking barn. Or have him bypassing critical safety and emissions equipment because he don't believe in the gubment nanies telling him what to do.
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well you kinda summed up the main reason. I can let ppl drive my tractor (I think? or with DRM tractors you can't let your neighbor mow his field? no clue but that would be shit(tier than it already sounds).
But I cannot legally go around sharing musical hits with friends or even family, well give them a copy anyways.
they're on different levels, guess cause it's a physical machine and costs [tariffed] steel and mostly automated labor to make (assembly line). therein lies the difference, to me anyways, between software/music etc and durable goods.
what's next? clothing with DRM? your expensive kapernick shoes gonna self destruct if you don't renew your membership? or they come take it like a leased car? all good questions that hopefully will never get answered.
one that always saddens me, and probably paved the road to shittown is Monsonto whom pretty much DRMed their bukkshit corn; another physical (though not so durable) good... they made it that way by design. [and now they have ungodly sums of money to falsify people's honest claims of cancer caused by Roundup]
/rant
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Hmm, hard to pin point exactly. Maybe IT as a whole in general? I was a service desk team lead for the corporation I work for roughly 5 years and rejected from being the manager twice (both people taken in my place lasted less than a year). Was on the verge of quitting until I was promoted to being a Network Engineer. That was several years ago. The first year I was ecstatic, but over time I realized the corporate politics never go away and I don't think I'll ever be at a point where I am completely satisfied.
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I'm not sure I follow. I fix my own iphone(s) all the time. It just voids the warranty, now I'm on my own to internally repair my own shit, which I'm ok with. I understand why Apple can void the warranty when I do that. From a logical standpoint it makes sense.
What am I missing? Am I technically and legally not allowed to go into and open my own phone that I own, or are people fighting for the right to chose to have Apple honor warranties when it's been handled by an untrained amateur?
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> I understand why Apple can void the warranty when I do that
Actually it's against the law for Apple to do this.
> Am I technically and legally not allowed to go into and open my own phone that I own
You're allowed to open your phone, but Apple is allowed to take measures to make their stuff as difficult to repair as possible. For example, replacing the home button on one of their newer phones is impossible without special Apple tools.
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Yeah fuck that, my wife went to replace the screen on her old iphome while under warranty. Good news, it's *only* $100 because you bought the warranty!
Excuse me, but no. Go fuck yourself apple. Every single iphone my wife has had (5, 5s, and now 7) has been a steaming pile of garbage with tons of issues (massive slowdowns with age, terrible battery life after a year, randomly shutting off all the time... The 5s also like to overheat randomly, which was cool).
Honestly if she weren't locked into the ecosystem I could probably convince her to switch to literally anything else.
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Voiding of the warranty is part of the issue; it flies in the face of existing laws when they claim that opening a product invalidates the warranty of a product. Unless the customer has done something that can be shown to make the product not perform as advertised (or expected), the seller is responsible for making the customer whole.
To restrict sale of a replacement part, like, say, a home button, and then software disabling the entire device if software detects that the the part is replaced by anyone other than the official supplier... Yeah, that needs to not happen anymore.
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>What am I missing? Am I technically and legally not allowed to go into and open my own phone that I own, or are people fighting for the right to chose to have Apple honor warranties when it's been handled by an untrained amateur?
"right to repair" actually means "force Apple to publish repair manuals and sell replacement parts".
Your right to do stuff with things that you own is not impeded in any way, and nobody is threatening it. There aren't new "anti-repair" laws being pushed. If you want to force companies to publish repair manuals and sell replacement parts, that is fine, just don't call it "right to repair". You already have the right to repair.
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It **can** void your warranty, and that needs to be made clear in these arguments.
Opening it does not, performing a successful repair does not.
Damage something in doing so? Warranty is gone, however it needs to be proven that what you did caused damage that is now being claimed warranty on.
OR the current argument with apple, they've stated that if it has a 3rd party screen they will still warrant it, but if it has a 3rd party battery, or charge socket, or camera, or (list every other part here), or if the bottom screws are stripped and cannot be removed, then its no longer covered.
Also If they break your 3rd party screen while repairing your phone they won't cover it.
And lastly, while legally companies cannot deny you warranty for opening your device, there's nothing to say they can't make it difficult as hell for you, take weeks longer and escalations to multiple higher managers etc before it's actually processed.
So there's a few things to keep in mind.
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The touch I'd sensor can be repaired. The issue is they break in the flex cable running too it.
Someone with microsoldering skills must take a new home button and transplant the old button onto the new flex cable and it will work again... Which sounds tough but it's easy enough for someone with the right gear and a steady hand.
Otherwise, you can simply put a new home button in it for.... 2 bucks or whatever they cost. Just the thumbprint scanner doesn't work.
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From a company stand point, though, how are they supposed to know what you did and didn’t do while the phone/device was open.
Using the computer example, what if when I opened the computer to replace the ram I shorted something. That’s incredibly difficult to tell and now the company has to cover my mistake?
I get the concept and I think we should be allowed to repair our own shit, but I disagree that a company should have to cover a device that was repaired by someone not manufacturer-authorized. Theres no way to control what someone does to their device.
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>Using the computer example, what if when I opened the computer to replace the ram I shorted something.
Then it's on the company to demonstrate customer fault. If there's a mobo short near the RAM that has no other apparent cause, then the company has a reasonable claim that the customer is at fault for the short since they know there was an at home RAM installation.
In most cases there are ways for the company to check these claims during the process of completing an RMA or sending out a tech. They have to be able to prove they're not at fault, so they have procedures developed to that end. Kinda like how phones have the water damage indicator thing.
>I disagree that a company should have to cover a device that was repaired by someone not manufacturer-authorized.
The company just has to prove that they aren't at fault, like I mentioned. The law referenced above doesn't force them to uphold warranty on products repaired by non-authorized dealers, it just forces them to demonstrate that they aren't at fault in the process of voiding a warranty.
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I understand your point of view and I appreciate the info, I just don’t agree. I think, more often than not, someone will mess something up while trying to repair it themselves and if I owned a company, I wouldn’t want to cover peoples’ repairs.
I feel like a lot of companies do employ the individual part warranty but only if you can guarantee their unrelated.
Like a battery needing replacement on an iphone with a non-apple screen.
The battery is still covered, just not the phone as a whole (because the screen isnt)
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?? It's the latter, but a lot of these people who make repairs aren't untrained amateurs. A lot of people who open shops have worked for Apple or other professional tech repair shops. I paid several hundred dollars for a phone. Then bought the warranty. Then I still pay for Apple Care. But if I drop my phone & crack or shatter my screen in a place where I literally CANNOT get to the Apple store or their Genius Bar can't see me for 2 days, but there's a kiosk or shop around the corner & I get it fixed... now my warranty is void and Apple Care is useless? That's ridiculous. It's like I'm being held hostage by them. Have I ever gotten my phone fixed at a shop or a kiosk that wasn't Apple? No. Would I like to? Yes. Will I? No. Why? Because if a major software or technical issue happens, yeah, I want to be able to get it taken care of with Apple. But a physical/mechanical issue? It's ridiculous for me not to have multiple options to get a quick repair done in a few minutes. Same with cars... am I supposed to go to the dealership every time I get a crack in my windshield? No.
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Why would I lie about it exactly?
But you're right, THAT COULD NEVER HAPPEN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE
"Apple refused to fix our imac pro!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_NRcy5mxU&t=652s
"The apple store genius bar broke my $5000 imac pro"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhJoRjpDIms
"Apple genius broke my MacBook"
And yes, I work in Tech, and pretty much every business I've worked for in the past 5 years have used Macbooks and iPhones, as well generally being filled with Apple fanatics who are into the design/UX. Personally I'd rather use a macbook over any other laptop for work.
Everything I've experienced and people I know have experienced points to apple repairs being shoddy and the genius bar being filled with morons - whether that's true on a larger scale, apparently not.
If that hurts your Apple fanboy heart, bad luck buddy.
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\> The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance.
​
From the mangnuson-moss Warranty Act Wikipedia page. Clearly attempting to fix your own device is "damage while in the possession of the consumer." No company should be obligated to replace a device you broke.
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> iPhone 7 and 8 users who have had their touchscreens replaced suddenly found their phones disabled.
I used to work in a mobile repair shop, we replaced lots of screens on 7 and 8 iPhones with no issues. So I'm wondering what circumstances caused what you speak of, how widespread it was, and how recently it was.
Also, if Apple were causing it it would be illegal, and it wouldnt make sense as in their own terms they state "a device with a 3rd party screen will still be covered under warranty, so long as replaced part did not cause the damage warranty is being claimed for" (paraphrasing, but same meaning).
So the only real explaination is dodgy parts or dodgy repairs. Either way I can all but guarantee you it wasn't Apple doing it.
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This was about 6 months ago, when Apple released iOS 11, and was fairly prevalent amongst iPhone 8s with replaced screens. Something similar happened about a year before, with iPhone 7s.
These were touchscreens that adhere to the interface spec, and were working immediately before the software update (not a defective part, and not a botched replacement). The workaround, in many cases, was to swap in the original broken Apple touchscreen, re-run the upgrade to iOS 11.3, and then swap in the 3rd party screen.
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> I may reconsider some of my more loosely-held views in response to finding out that they are overwhelmingly unpopular.
That's a very bad reason to change your views, IMO. If you have views that you feel nobody can challenge, don't change them just because others are uncomfortable with them. Example: I'm an advocate for pedophiles who don't molest. A lot of people don't like that, but fuck 'em :P
Of course, you've also got to be careful that your biases aren't getting in the way either. This is a delicate tightrope that has to be walked.
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Honestly, most people don't even care about cross play, we just want cross save. Most people on PC left their console clans behind. I would be more than willing to switch to PC knowing that A. I wouldn't have to grind out 3 characters again, and B. I could switch back to PS4 for the occasional raid.
Edit: Also, they can totally just grey stuff out you don't have a license for. Back when TTK launched in D1 there was an additional 10 dollar purchase you could make for class specific emotes. My wife bought this, I did not. When I logged in on her console I was given the emotes. I applied it and used it. When I moved back to my own console the emote was grayed out and unusable. The capability for locking things is definitely there. Whether or not they can cleanly merge databases, and whether or not Sony would allow it, are the two questions we have no answer to.
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Same boat. Got D2 with humble monthly. Got a character to 20 before deciding that no, there is no way I want to do that grind again.
It sucks so much. PC is so goddamn beautiful... 60+ fps, no frame drops (my PS4 occasionally hits 10-12 in some circumstances). But I would be leaving behind every single clan member I've played with for 4 years, AND I would be starting from scratch.
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Fortnite has Exclusive Skins as well and that still has crossplay. Destiny even already has mechinisms to prevent people from playing a strike if they're too underleved/don't have it unlocked/or don't have a curated loaded (a future feature that is planned for an event called "Arms Day")
The "Don't have it Unlocked" bit is important. If they don't have the exclusive strike, then that means they don't have it unlocked.
Simple.
 
^^^Fucking ^^^exclusives.
 
Edit: MMmmm... Made this comment and didn't read further. Hope you have a good day.
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D2 vanilla was not bad, just had a hard limit on the content available because there was no random rolls on guns and armor. And loot fell from the trees like apples so by like 2-3 weeks in you could pretty much be "done" with the game.
Compared to D1, this was a travesty. D1 had an almost "infinite" grind feel to it. There was always something to chase. Another exotic, a god roll legendary, etc. D2 vanilla had none of this.
Then came the first DLC, which added fuck all and didn't really fix everything and that is when most people completely wrote the game off. But I think its important to recognize that the base game wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't infinite. You get x amount of content and then after that it just felt like why bother? So for the hardcore D1 players, it was like a kick to the nuts when we realized there just isn't shit to do.
A few months ago Warmind dropped (2nd DLC) and breathed a lot of life back into the game. Random rolls weren't back, but they added multiple long challenging quest lines to get some of the best guns in the game, the new raid lair was properly challenging, strikes had some purpose again and most of all were fun thanks to random modifiers and strike specific loot making a return. And since most people skipped the 1st DLC, you had all of those guns to grind for as well and the grind this time didn't suck because strikes and patrols and pub events were actually kinda fun again.
Then they dropped the whispers of the worm mission randomly, and that is when we got a first glimpse at what they had in store for us coming forward. It brought back all the nostalgia of the first game. A post popped up on reddit where a guy found a random portal on one of the planets that only opened during a specific public event, and when you went through the portal it launched a new mission that had a 20 minute timer and the first half of the mission was one really long jumping/maneuvering puzzle. My first time going in I didn't even make it half way. So there was this mystery and life breathed back into the game, everyone was scrambling trying to get into this random mission with a strict timer and figure out what was at the end.
So after a 10-15 minute traipse through the jumping section (you can easily do it in less than 5~ after you know it) you get to a room filled with some insanely tough bad guys. And then there is another room. And another. And the final room has a shit load of bad guys and 3 bosses.
If you manage to kill those, you are awarded with the best exotic sniper (honestly IMO best exotic in the game) which had insanely high damage and if you land 3 crits (headshots) in a row, you get that ammo back. So you have the highest DPS sniper in the game, and it has infinite ammo if you're good, and its a callback to one of the fan favorite guns from D1.
And THEN you get access to the heroic version of this mission which had special modifiers each week and if you found all the 5 hidden chests + completed it on heroic you got about 1/3 progress on the exotic catalyst which when completed made the gun even stronger.
Couple this along with all the other new exotic missions that weren't a secret, PvP in a decent state of balance and 3 raids, things were looking up.
Then summer solstice event happens which added another whole suite of armor to grind out, coupled with the new prestige raid lairs dropping 400~ power (higher than previous max power) weapons and again there is just so much to do.
And now we had forsaken, the latest expansion drop 3-4 weeks ago which is honestly the biggest DLC destiny has ever had (even looking at D1) and personally I think the absolute best DLC period. It just added so much and fixed nearly everything that the community found to be wrong with the game over the previous year. Loadouts are extremely customizable, guns have random rolls so you have a reason to continue chasing specific things, armors have actually good perks exotics are actually exotic and don't just fall into your lap (although admittedly this is probably something that will change as many in the community dislike just how rare they are), PvP is quite literally the best it has been in any version of Destiny ever, there is a new PvEvP mode that is insanely fun and to top it all off there was two new locations to explore, the one you do while leveling, and then for the first time there is actually an entire public area designed for end game content, with challenges and stuff rotating weekly so each week you log in and it changes slowly getting more and more "taken".
The power grind is back, so you aren't max level and max power within a week or two of starting. In fact it is pretty likely that many players may not even reach max power level. There is once again that sense of awe when looking at someone with really good gear, knowing they worked their ass off for it.
Aaaand holy shit this is way longer than I anticipated so I'm gonna go ahead and stop.
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"Simple" as of the idea not implementation. The concept is as far reaching hard as people think. How its implemented is an entirely different story code wise. I was addressing in the simplest of ways what they would do to show it wasn't impossible. That their is an easy solution logically and how it would in it's most basic sense be done. I know the code is never that simple, I'm a computer scientist though my field is hardware, but the objective of the code in this case is.
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They have said in interviews recently (ones for Forsaken) that they are interested in it and talk about it often in the studio. So while it won't be nearly as easy as flipping a switch it can be done. Also, due to architectural and language differences on the consoles, parts of the API will always be specific for specific accounts due to how the apps based around the API have to interact.
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Wouldn't be hard they could steal the code that stops two exotics from being equipped or even the level requirement. Then create a class for PS exclusives and define the weapons that meet that class. Then if weapon is PS exclusive PSN is required. IF not lock weapon and display psn logo or something.
Besides that could be a selling point for Sony. You were killed by (PSN Exclusive weapon).
Edit would be happy with crosssave
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I think Fortnite's original crossplay matchmaking works just fine for this problem. Basically, if there's one PC player in the party, then the whole group gets matched up with PC lobbies. The console players in the group might be at slight disadvantage, but they know what they signed up for.
Epic recently switched to input-based matchmaking instead, but the one concern I have there is the FOV slider on PC. Someone using a controller on PC still has an advantage if they have a wider FOV than those on console.
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Me? Yes. I'll be the first to admit that the last 4 years have been like an abusive relationship at times, but it checks a lot of the boxes I want for a fun and challenging (when I want it to be) game. I've never felt like I've had to spend money outside of DLCs/Expansions, and even then that's just keeping up with the game, I don't see it as any different that paying for a sub.
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**Yes.** You and your friends on Xbox can now squad together.
You'll be able to add them to your Epic Friends List in-game or through Epic's website. You cannot add them to your PS4 Friends List.
When you're in the lobby, you can click on the empty slots in your squad to join/invite your Epic Friends. You can also do this directly from the Epic Friends List.
Your friends won't be able to join your PS4 party (and vice-versa for Xbox parties), but once they're in your squad, you can instead use in-game voice chat.
Your Epic Friends List is accessible in-game on the top right.
_____________
As a quick explanation... As far as I understand it, all of your personal Fortnite information (progress, skins, achievements, etc) are tied to your Epic Account. This is also how you can add/join friends. You're not adding their Xbox account to your friends list, you're adding their Epic account.
"But I'm on PS4/Xbox. I never made an Epic Account!"
I *believe* that an Epic Account is created behind the scenes when you first play Fortnite on console, so you *do* have one, you just aren't yet aware of it.
I'm not sure how that works in particular with things like duplicate names or which password they'd assign to the account.
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On your last point, i can confirm that everyone has an epic account. It gets created when they start game for the first time. You can sign in to it through xbox or psn and then set its own password. First time you launched game it asks if you want to make an account or just play. If you chose just play it still made an account and named it the same thing as your psn or xbl.
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If the email associated with your PSN is associated with an Epic account, it'll automatically sign in with that one. I know from personal experience that up until today, if I tried opening Fortnite on my PS4, I couldn't get past the title screen because my PSN email was already tied to an Xbox account.
If there's no matching account, then there's an on-screen prompt to sign in with an Epic account or create a new one.
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>...people fail to see factual information as being fact.
>
>...their new iphone xr has the same screen resolution as the iphone 4 and costs $750
If you're gonna complain about people failing to see factual information as being fact then you should probably not get your facts completely wrong two sentences later. The iPhone 4 screen resolution was 960x640. The XR is 1792x828. They both have the same PPI of 326 pixels per inch is what you probably meant to say. Solely focusing on screen resolution doesn't take into account color accuracy, white balance, color gamut and contrast, brightness, etc which all factor heavily into how good a screen looks. Are you also one of the people that thinks that a camera is automatically better if it has more megapixels?
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>"The short attention span we're creating in this millennium is actually very dangerous," said Soon-Shiong, the new owner of the Los Angeles Times. "It's the unintended consequences of social media."
It seems like part of his point is people eat up these sound bites without using any critical thinking or double-checking facts.
>He said people cannot differentiate from "fake news," "real news" or "opinion news" on Facebook.
There's a long history of questionable news practices, so "fake news" isn't that modern of an invention. It's that many people just don't care enough to take the time and verify what they read, or see whether these articles are just sponsored BS.
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And the biggest tragedy here is that it's NEVER BEEN EASIER for people to fact check.
[edit] I knew the misinformation argument would follow this comment. Yes, we have fast access to information. Yes, there is also easy access to misinformation. You're missing the point. Your phone isn't going to do the research and critically think FOR YOU, and at the end of the day, many people just want to be told what to think. It's never been easier to cross reference sources and pull information to do your own fact checking.
tl;dr: the ease of FINDING facts vs the ease of gathering information TO FACT CHECK are two different things, people.
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I actually have a hard time finding solid facts about recently published news articles. Googling just returns page after page of news sites saying roughly the same thing, with various levels of spin in one direction or another.
It's also never been easier for people to spread misinformation, knowingly or otherwise. The sheer volume of chaff you have to wade through to find anything of value is frustrating.
I'd love to hear any tips folks have.
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>There's a long history of questionable news practices, so "fake news" isn't that modern of an invention. It's that many people just don't care enough to take the time and verify what they read, or see whether these articles are just sponsored BS.
No, the difference is the idea of reputability and trust has been completely eroded. There was never a point in history where people both had the capability and the will to fact-check their news, but their news sources were by-and-large accurate because the reputation of being inaccurate was severely damaging. After all, who wants to read unreliable news?
What changed was that the right wing spent decades casting doubt on the veracity of all manner of news sources, playing up conspiracy theories and related bullshit about how the "mainstream" media is biased against them and outright lying, and they themselves are the only trustworthy source of information. *This* is specifically the problem: there is no combating fake news because those that believe it do so because they have completely lost trust in reputable news sources. And once that happens, confirmation bias takes precedence over reliability.
How do you counter a factoid that someone *wants* to believe when that person distrusts any and all outside sources of information? It's basically like arguing against religion.
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> How do you counter a factoid that someone wants to believe when that person distrusts any and all outside sources of information?
To paraphrase the parent comment, this isn't a modern problem. In the past there wasn't an abundance of news sources to disprove something so there was less emphasis on the distrusting portion but people have always been stubborn and prone to believing whatever convenient lie is in their face.
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Rotate keywords, read the content and search for new keywords, get inspired for new keywords and so on. Research is still way easier and quicker then 10 or 15 years ago, but then research was hard. Now it is just a matter of finding the right keywords. Back we'd have to dig through pdfs for specific topics or information was simply not available online.
In other words, you just proved the assumption with your comment about you having hard time finding facts "quickly".
That's the point of his accusation, people demand that checking facts is "easy" and doesn't consume time. Research remains time consumptive, but it's easier to find well developed facts and everything exists online.
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I would agree with that, but there's also never been so much "news". The flow of news it so constant. I feel like the "fake" headlines probably influence people more than anything. You scroll by them, you think, "That seems a bit off", but you don't have time to actually check facts on everything. I only ever find myself doing a serious fact check once every week or so. I see a lot more "news" every week that I'm sure isn't completely accurate.
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> I actually have a hard time finding solid facts about recently published news articles. Googling just returns page after page of news sites saying roughly the same thing, with various levels of spin in one direction or another.
Well for starters, if concerned about a certain politician:
Look at their voting records (on laws and bills) which are available publicly along with if they choose country over party or party over country (aheeeeem). It can't be this hard...
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Mistrust of science isn’t new either really, especially in highly religious cultures. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, all presenting accurate information and sound theories to explain it all, and yet their work was enormously controversial at their times, even to the point of being banned from being taught for years.
Humans are just lazy thinkers generally and are easy to sway as long as new information reinforces things we already believe. There’s so much information available, but brains aren’t ready to process it all, and most of it doesn’t impact day-to-day living. It’s not good, but it’s how we operate.
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Good articles link to the source of the original news article. Follow the links until you come to the news agency that first published it.
It usually has a lot more information on the matter than the news outlets that reposted/referenced it.
Just googling the news story will result in showing you a lot of crap, cause most news sites use plenty of SEO to get higher ranks.
So just try and follow the links to the original story is my best advice. They will usually have actual video/audio/transcript of whatever interview they did.
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I still would disagree, because the amount of misinformation among the information is also much larger, and the quality standards of many reputable publications seems to have fallen. While we are not just blindly believing a few sources of media that is the only ones we can have access to, one can easily get lost, misled and confused by all the, well, fake news competing for online space with the real news.
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> It seems like part of his point is people eat up these sound bites
Well yeah. He's a politician. Rhetoric is how they engage people. He wants a conversation in the public on this. Ignore the words and specific claims and look at the core message when these sorts of speeches or press releases happen.
>There's a long history of questionable news practices, so "fake news" isn't that modern of an invention.
It's never been more dangerous than now. That's new. This needs to be visible given the sheer size of the problem. I've asked my legislators to require social media sites put warnings on them similar to California's cancer warnings or on cigarette boxes. We need to get a handle on this.
>many people just don't care enough to take the time and verify what they read,
And that's not likely to change. The people who own social media sites are a big contributor of this problem. There's no accountability. Social media has led to people dying, being harassed, and a plethora of other anti social behavior. We hold police accountable, why not social media? Arguably they cause more damage.
Politicians who do this are reaching out to the public. They want feedback to inform them of what to push. Read between the lines: they're asking you "is this important enough to you that I need to address this with policy and new laws? The best way to do that is to be controversial. And here he succeeds. Write to him if you disagree, or agree! He won't hear you out here. Politicians chase votes for political office, not votes on social media.
Politicians are like parents. Quite often what they say isn't what they mean. Arguments over chores aren't really about chores most of the time. Its a bad attempt at getting their kids to take responsibility. To develop habits they will carry into adult life.
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I dunno, I find it pretty easy to find facts. The trick is, you have to actually look at facts. No one's going to tell you "When they said this, it was just their opinion, but when they said this, it was truth."
You learned the difference between fact and opinion, just use it. Disregard the part that isn't fact. If the article is about an event that you can watch for yourself, do it. When some media sites say that the un laughed at Donald trump, and some say they laughed with Donald trump, cut out the opinion
and know that the un laughed in the vicinity of Donald trump. To find out why, go to the source, watch the video and decide for yourself. Until then, just ignore the opinions and look at the facts.
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It's actually quite simple, the first indicator one should search for is: search a scientific source. There are so many articles quoting the supposed content of some "new studies" and quoting all kinds of numbers, but then never link to the actual scientific paper - with this little method you'd already filter a huge amount.
>quality standards of many reputable publications seems to have fallen.
Research is not meant compare news article from Fox with news article from BBC with news article from Bloomberg and so on. Research is getting behind the sources of where those content comes from.
The question that overall journalistic standards seem to have sunken is not part of this comment thread.
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If you disagree, you are wrong. Think about having to drive down to the library 20 years ago, index the book you want or magazine, find it, and read it, repeat. When's the last time you scowered through a library bookshelf to find information?
The flip side is, you never have to leave your house, in fact you have a smart phone with you that has access to all the information in the world. How is that not easier?
It might still not be easy but it is easier, you cannot disagree with that. If you do, you are objectively wrong in every way.
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Vice loves to do this shit.
They'll talk about how someone was wronged by police or some bullshit and this and that then randomly in the middle or end of a 12 minutes story try to gloss over the fact that the "victim" in question did something horrible to receive what he got.
The following is an example of the type of reporting vice normally does and the way they structure their storires. It is just an example of the style and not based off of an actual story.
"A 24 year old father of 6 was shot by police while walking home that day...."
10-15 minute narrative with crying family, interviews, government officials and so on goes here...
And finallyyyy, they'll let the people know why said person was shot but theyll be sneaky about it and make sure they're as quick and non-chalant as possible about relaying the cause or reason. Usually the reporter now speaks like an auctioneer for the following 5-15 seconds or so to let us know the following "minor" fact about the story:
"policeshotathimafterhegrabbedtheofficersgunansattemptedtoshoottheofficerwhilehighonmeth"
Then they'll continue like as if that wasn't a big deal all along maybe bring up how he was a great father or some bullshit right after to divert people's attention again as to why it happened and instead to drive their own narrative whether it be about the police, race, corruption or whatever even though it doesn't apply at all to the story they're covering and it was just a dude on meth who grabbed a cops gun and they took action nothing more...
Sad part is, tons of media outlets are now copying this style of reporting to get people riled up about whatever narrative they want to drive.
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Fact of the matter is that most people don't have time to be informed like that.
People work, commute, have families, social obligations. Sometimes the only news you get is a blip in passing orayne news on the radio while you commute. Local news doesn't really report in depth on anything as controversial as politics, and cable news is all spin, just pick your direction.
To sit there and do real research on something takes time and time is something a lot of Americans do not have.
The ones that do have a lot of free time are mostly teenagers, young adults in school or still living at home or the type of people who aren't the type to do that kind of research anyway, so it doesn't matter how easy it is.
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Can you give me an example where there would be no source available?
If an influential person said something than it most certainly is on tape, otherwise that shouldn't be deemed a trustworthy statement and thus no one should strengthen or weaken their opinion based on that article.
Like Trump making a joke out of himself in front of the whole world. If that would not be with any proof the simply don't build your opinion and believes on that.
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I so agree that it's never been easier to research a topic and find liars and fake newsers.
One example I provided is an analysis of someone's enormous comment with 16 different sources, posted on Reddit and initially rose to the top of the sub with a big numbers of upvotes. I spent maybe 2 or 3 hours reading each one of his articles in his post on fasting vs calorie restriction, searching through his sources and related links online, to find that about every single one of his sources was counter to his claims. I provided a rational rebuttal, despite starting out knowing nothing about the topics.
Nobody would have been able to do this research without the internet, without being an academic knowing where to look in a medical library.
[1] [Permalink to my comment about fasting](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecidingToBeBetter/comments/6tchbu/the_scientific_benefits_of_intermittent_fasting/dlk0uz6/)
[2] [Edit: Here is a copy of his irrational post to /r/fasting](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecidingToBeBetter/comments/6tchbu/the_scientific_benefits_of_intermittent_fasting/dlkbmdi/)
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but now more than ever i've never seen SO much in a day on social media. I feel like I don't even spend all that much time on social media (I glance at facebook for work purposes maybe once or twice a day, never scroll through my feed really, and I do check instagram quite frequently) and even just between that and reddit, I Feel like I see so much stuff that i don't think anyone has enough hours in a day to fact check all of those things
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I still get triggered seeing "opinion news." Opinion news is not really news. It's just someone's opinion written up in news format. And in THESE articles, there's A LOT of "poetry" that pretty much uses vocabulary and analogies to theatrical proportions. It's a mistake to try to guise these opinions as news and people are stupid for taking these opinions as news. But just that isn't the scope of fake news. You're right. People just don't fact check enough; even intelligent people. So much so that you're bound to let few bullshit news through your filter.
​
I remember that first week or two of pizzagate rumors coming out.
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You didn't address the point of misinformation. What if it is actually easier and less time consuming to go down to the library and grab the specific book I need, sometimes with the help of a librarian.
Whereas I might spend many more hours comparing source to source and verifying and getting credentials etc.. there did seem to be a higher level of 'quality' and trust to published pieces of Information before the internet gained the prominence it has.
I don't even disagree with you really I just think you are not as correct as you think and, although you didn't say and this is my opinion, how you said your message gave me a feeling of callous dismissal of the new problems faced with Information and it's integrity.
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Do libraries have every teenager's diary and every tabloid trying to peddle nonsense? Does the internet have trustworthy trained librarians which help you find the best source for the information you want?
The ease of access of information certainly is much greater. Including of wrong and misleading information, which is exactly where the problem lies. So we end up with family members spreading every hoax that was sent to them, because they don't know how to navigate all that nonsense.
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> NEVER BEEN EASIER for people to fact check.
This is going to be very temporary. When deep fakes become trivial to produce all video/audio recordings will become suspect and can be declared fake to push agendas. Reputation (does the NYT say this is true, or is it some random blogger?) is going to become incredibly important.
It's a matter of when, not if, you'll be able to download an app and create a video of some random public persona doing/saying whatever you want.
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Simultaneously, it's never been easier to hear what you want to hear, either.
The entire world's knowledge is literally in people's pockets, but those same people only want to believe that their worldview is correct. So, if I spread some nonsense to reinforce that worldview then \#1 I can reach them instantly and \#2 confirmation bias.
I remember after the election, there was a CNN panel and some lady said that millions of illegals voted because that's what the president told her and when challenged on where that news came from, someone else said to google it, you can find it on Facebook
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/804329657244012544/video/1
That's all it took. Someone saying something they wanted to hear, and then people spreading it on Facebook. Sad times, really.
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Your example is a great example of what research means. Humans are in growing number getting lazier and lazier with their willingness to invest mental resources and time.
 
- There are those who just read a headline and already take that as valuable asset to form their opinion, worst case.
- Then there are those who read the article to around at least a half and form conclusions based on that, the great majority. (I'm in marketing and design and there are a lot of tests regarding actual engagement ratios e.g. like how many people read how far in an article before they share those. The goal is to increase engagement ratio in hopes of increasing retention and sharing activity, hence we use heatmaps and clickmaps as also cursor records to see what users do. And general it comes down to only 30% read an article to the 80% mark whilst 80% stay above the fold, the initial text in the first view. Can read like [here](https://blog.bufferapp.com/55-visitors-read-articles-15-seconds-less-focus-attention-not-clicks) or [here about facebook comments to interaction, which says 70% comment based on headline and rapid conclusion and rarely even click](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8c493fde4829), or [this one](https://www.successagency.com/growth/2014/05/27/4-reasons-you-probably-wont-finish-this-article/))
- Then there are those that skim
- and the very small minority even reads an article to the end attentively.
Now, you have all those sub-groups of behavioral patterns which mostly don't even read content to the fullest, but already share or comment and definitely use the information to form their opinion. How many, or better, how little might the relative part be that then further investigates and tries to find the source?
Though, I admit I won't click on any link in the post of yours. I am a bodybuilder as well and I actually do IF just because it is convenient to not eat something till around 12. Calories restriction though is the most effective and efficient way.
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I had the astute opportunity and pleasure to be able to drink in bars prior to smart phones. The arguments and conversations we would have. The wagers and confidence that erupted from something so minuscule was like a whiskey soaked symphony. Calling in third parties, phoning that friend who knew every sports stat known to man and then stewing on it for about a week before reconvening on a Friday afternoon and proclaiming in a thunderous voice of victory that "YES!! IT WAS RANDY JOHNSON NOT CURT SCHILLING WHO HIT THAT FUCKING BIRD!!!". Obligatory "get off my lawn."
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You can try to find the primary source, too. It's initially more confusing these days because so much shit is aggregated, and what's not aggregated is still practically copy-and-pasted. But before the story or right after, you'll sometimes see a "via ___" that should be clickable. That should lead to at least one of the original stories that everyone else is copying.
If you need to go deeper than that to find out if something is true, the original story might attribute a quote or fact to something that's publicly verifiable, like via a C-SPAN video or a public press release. If the story uses anonymous sources, then it's probably going to be a dead-end for the public to verify. That doesn't mean it's fake, though.
Half of it is just reputation and trust. "Real" fake news is usually easy as hell to recognize, because it won't attribute anything that can be corroborated, and it will usually link back to some article posted on a no-name news site with a tricky or nonsense URL. Some of them do have decent domains now, but those are all pretty widely-recognized as fake news sites, so Googling the name should result in that info.
For the most part, it really does come down to reputable news sources. Once in a blue moon they might slip up and aggregate a story that was based on a fake story, but it really is pretty rare. And it would be corrected pretty quick.
The real trick is being able to differentiate between news and editorial. Editorials state opinions, news state facts. I think a lot of people on social media get riled up about opinion pieces, and dismiss them as fake news. It's understandable because there is so much editorializing these days.
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The problem isn't facts... it's the spin that gets put on them.
I saw a headline a couple years ago regarding solar industry jobs now DRASTICALLY outnumbering petroleum jobs- and wow- it even cited statistics and reliable sources. The problem is that the article- not the statistics- defined "solar industry jobs" to be the broadest possible spectrum of the solar industry or anything even tangentially related to it, and kept petroleum jobs (note it didn't include the word 'industry' over here) defined as 'working in a gas station' or similar.
Facts are facts... but news is absolutely manipulated on all political sides based on willful misinterpretation of statistics to back certain agendas.
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I believe part of this is because the media (because of our desires) rushes to tell you about stories prior to all the information being available. If they don’t do it, social will, so now people just take the part of the story that resonates strongly with them and ignore the remaining information that comes in about a story over the next few weeks or months. I can’t tell you how often I was told about this new evidence about the deep state in the FBI only to then hear them completely forget about the story once that individual testified and the facts or stories were told.
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Purely coincidental/serendipitous that I happened to pick an example of something you were involved in. No worries, I'm not invested in either affair, just have an affinity for truth and like finding things out. At the moment, I need to shed a few pounds so sporadically a bit of IF and CR. So long as I'm consuming less energy than I'm using, not really too bothered.
I'm sure getting a masters degree those years ago helped prepare me for being more critical in general. I wonder if those who pursued trades or non-degree fields, wouldn't have had the awareness, discipline or basic skills to ever critically evaluate a Facebook post at any level, regardless of how emotionally invested they are in it being true or false.
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Snopes continues to provide solid fact checking with multiple sourcing. There's some criticism over the spectrum they use for different degrees of "false" or "true" but rarely on the actual judgement of a claims veracity.
In other words some might think a false claim should say "*mostly* false" or a true claim saying "*mostly* true" but there's almost never a case of a false claim turning out to be true or vice-versa.
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I've done tons of research online and I can say that it is so much easier now to do *quality research*. This is the heart of the argument here. I went to college 20 years ago and there really was no substantive resource online for most of what I was looking for. If I did come across something it was usually something as reliable "Aunt Sally's Roman History."
But, even then, I could use resources online as a starting point for some inquiry dives at the library.
Now, there are a lot more reputable sources that place their content online. The resources that would normally be exclusive at the library are now (mostly) online. I can take a quick dive online and see that a book on google books has something. But maybe that page is blocked. Well, now I've saved myself hours of guessing about what books to look for and can request a targeted number of books.
Yes, you can use a librarian, or you can email any number of professors/authors in the world who have made themselves available with contact info online? This was not as widespread 20 years ago. I don't know why I'm spending so much time on this with you, but here we are sharing ideas online in a forum that's a lot easier than an AOL chatroom.
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Google "google scholar"; All peer reviewed articles.
Additionally, only trust "primary" sources. That is to say, only sources that are written/recorded by the person who was present at the event in question.
Look for another primary source that has a different viewpoint.
Look for more primary sources (if available) of people corroborating the story of the original primary sources.
We can never really know what happened without being in a moment ourselves, and even then, the truth is subjective. The key is to reject any opinion unless we have formulated an opinion of our own first.
Personally, I always try to take the side of the underrepresented viewpoint when having a conversation. Even if I may agree with the majority. I find this helps make me look more objectively at a subject, and encourages me to look up references.
I'll end with two quotes:
1."Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." -Mark Twain
2. "The best place to hide a body is the second page of Google search results" -Anonymous
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This is not an error, it is different types of user engagement goals. For marketers this should be clear for outsiders most certainly not that clear.
The y-axis is #viewers, x-axis scroll heatmap data. The additional tags cram the information that "the majority of viewers watch 100% of content type: video/images" and "the majority only read to the 60% mark of content: text". This additional information is not necessary and could be displayed in a different chart for easier comprehension, but it's aimed for professionals, so, not that big of a deal. 120% is going below the article content, the chart is based on heatmap data - so it actually doesn't tell one how much the viewer read, just how far he scrolled.
So, you are not in the audience for these niche articles, but that's not an error and not that frustrating for people like me who read data case-studies like this in hundreds.
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It was always bad, but people were less willing to spot the 20% of false content in any given news story when the other 80% is true.
Currently the main driver for fact-checking is partisanship, most of the time people only bother to check an article if they disagree with the underlying premise. Media Matters and the MRC have openly partisan agendas but do a good job in debunking errors or misleading statements
This is why the first thing I check when reading any given article is the comment section. They're mostly garbage but if there's ANY flaw in the article someone will be sure to point it out.
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Ok, let me try to clarify my point. It takes time because there is a lot more garbage information to go through to find the facts, which makes it a hassle and difficult for some people. Yes, searching is "easy", all you do is google, great. Does everyone want to spend 5 to 20 (or more?) minutes googling stuff to get to the actual facts? Probably not, people have lives. We can argue semantics all day, but the point is it's not as simple.
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Which is why the best course of action is to read multiple perspectives, full well knowing the author's bias and agenda, and determine what the overlapping truths are. Even 100% factual accounts can paint a highly misleading picture by virtue of *which facts* they choose to present. The odds of a crime getting national attention multiply when the victim is a photogenic white women, brown women don't go missing you see. And you will only hear about someone on the internet getting death threats when the target is a woman. With each passing decade Americans believe that society is getting more dangerous, when in reality crime rates have been declining for decades.
This applies even to non-political reporting. In a free market, everything you read is in itself a product. Information is cheap but needs to be condensed and arranged in a way to be easily digestible and leaving the audience *feeling informed*, which is not the same as actually being informed.
Even the author's beliefs are less relevant than *what the audience wants to believe*. Articles about medicine, which should be un-biased, are skewed to appeal to the readers self-esteem and confirm stereotypes in ways you don't even notice. Because only 1% of readers are going to bother confirming anything a mainstream outlets has to say about a medical study
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/06/is_the_cult_of_self-esteem_rui.html
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/09/finding_existential_solace_in.html
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It's also never been easier for one person to pull the strings on what millions of people hear, see, think and believe.
If you had a printing press at the hands of a liar, what was printing was being distributed to a small geographic area. There would be enough people calling bullshit for people to question it, and if you were caught peddling bullshit you were out of business. Now someone accuses a mouse of farting and the world knows about it before lunch.
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I really like your post. It's contains a lot of stuff I think about on the regular. It's hard though, that your answer to the problem is:
> Which is why the best course of action is to read multiple perspectives
Which...is probably the best answer, but even still if I know the author / company's bias, it's still difficult to find the truth. I can read multiple perspectives all day long, and then do I settle with the one \*I\* like the most? Do I settle with the one \*I think\* makes the most sense to me? I would just end up getting caught up in my own bias once again.
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I'm gonna go in a different direction and say this isn't the issue. Or at least, it's not the biggest part of the issue.
People don't read the article. We react based on headlines and comments. Not content. Not facts.
People could surely be taught to know the difference between an opinion piece and a news article, but what does it matter if those people don't even open the link they're reacting to?
What it comes down to, is we as a society need to become less reactionary. We need to stop ourselves from succumbing to hysteria because we read 5 words. I can't tell you how many times I've participated in conversations about recent events/things people saw in their newsfeed and someone said something completely contrary to details stated in said articles. Or when someone starts commenting about bias despite an article clearly dedicating multiple paragraphs to account for the other side of the story, even offering quotes from sources representing that side of the story.
I have no idea how we do that. How we teach people to stop and say, "maybe I shouldn't form an opinion on this until I learn more/ more information becomes available" -but we need to.
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I would almost agree. They do have a more progressive bias because most of England has a more progressive slant on many issues (climate change is universally accepted there, abortion, gay rights, etc are all accepted issues by almost everyone and considered debates of the past) whereas here they are not. But, just because they have similar opinions to the American left does not mean they are in connection or endorsing one party, it’s just a different culture with different debates.
Oh, and I was ONLY talking about the BBC not the guardian or others. I agree the others are not objective. But they are also not considered “the world leader in news” which, with a title like that, carries enormous responsibility. Something I think the BBC makes good on.
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>Does everyone want to spend 5 to 20 (or more?) minutes googling stuff to get to the actual facts? Probably not, people have lives
Did you just admit that you are the type this Billionaire is addressing? "People have lives" to argue a lack of time to invest to validate the facts they build their world-view and believes on is a pretty sad argument to bring forth here.
To not let you in the dark, because you seem to think 20minutes investing to falsify a set of information that makeup the fabric of your believe-system -
20 minutes research is nothing, neither 15 years ago nor today. If you want to foster a strong opinion then research. 20 minutes man, that is barely one average medium post.
The content noise is circumventable with the right search terms/phrases, that's what rotating keywords and unearthing keyphrases is about. Advanced search parameters do the rest.
The grander issue here is that people have more tools at hand to spread their uninformed opinions and do not fear to use those. To prevent issues that occur due to this (Trump, Brexit) there should be an afford made to teach people to "invest time" and to educate them how to research as that obviously is a lacking skill.
 
I am also not really sure what your solution is. What do you want? Someone else to come up with an ultimate tool to cut through content noise? A governmental control mechanism to moderate content?Are you one of those that really want to be deprivated of your rights in favor of a government controlling the pieces of information you are allowed to see?
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Usually just go straight to the citations to the Scientific articles. However, this is the most frustrating part for me. You can't even trust scientific articles anymore. There are so many conflicting studies and there have been cases of people fudging the numbers, changing metrics and you pretty much need a degree in something that does research to cut through that crap. So in essence, its just a huge pain in the ass and you need to understand Stats and research to really get to the truth.
It's just so frustrating to get to the truth these days.
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Fake news isn't modern. But you are living in a dream state if you think the AMOUNT of fake news people are getting overloaded and targeted with is the same.
It very easy to reinforce whatever half baked bullshit any one believes TODAY. You don't have to create fake news, you just have to give them a like/upvote/retweet/view/click etc. The Russians don't even need to create news these days. Just find a kook and encourage him.
Such architecture that instantly reinforces peoples beliefs at population scale never existed before.
Access to information and education are two different things.
Education happens only in the right environment without distraction and trained teachers. News media and social media in their present form are NOT suited to produce education. Which is why they fail to tackle fake news despite the tons of time and effort devoted to fact checking, standup routines calling out crap, suave talking heads etc etc. All of them are doing very well for themselves but society is not seeing any great outcomes.
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Hey man (or girl), believe it or not some people don't have time or energy for shit. After a long day some people just want to check the news and see what's up without having to deal with checking "the source of the source of the...", but it sometimes is a hassle. I have no clue how it was 15 years ago, nor do I care. This is not what I'm talking about at all anyways, I was just clarifying my point on why I think it's not "as easy" to fact check things.
> I am also not really sure what your solution is. What do you want?
Uh, nothing? I'm just talking here to some random people lol, I'm not here to propose solutions. But I'm sure we can all agree it would be nice to be able to not have to deal with the "unintended consequences of social media", as the article says.
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> Hey man (or girl), believe it or not some people don't have time or energy for shit.
Everybody got time to check the arguments they have which make up their believes. People just dont "want to" because it is strenuous, annoying and so much easier to live when you just believe your ideas of the world are correct instead of knowing that they are.
> I was just clarifying my point on why I think it's not "as easy" to fact check things.
It's btw crucial to use the correct terms, for some reason you are very loose with that. The statement made was: "never been easier for people to fact check". The statement is not "it's as easy to fact as" nor was it "it's easy to fact check". These are not irrelevant semantics these are the crucial foundation of the argument that today it has been easier then in the past to find informations, to research background and to check the facts that make up your believe system.
>But I'm sure we can all agree it would be nice to be able to not have to deal with the "unintended consequences of social media", as the article says.
As the logical alternative would be censorship and arbitrary moderation, I can't really agree. It's on the obligation of the viewer to check what he believes and not on the platform that provides the content, nor on the person who deliberately manipulate and distort their content. I mean, morally, yes it is definitely and should be a fundamental trait of journalists of "all kinds", but it never has been. Newspapers have always distorted the articles to represent their views. Spiderman and the Daily Bugle is a pretty blatant portrayal of that.
The burden is on the reader, on the consumer, not on anyone else.
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