MudMan

Well, then you don’t need a phone review, do you?

Which is fine. Most people don’t need a phone at any given time. You go check reviews for phones when you need one and when you care about the differences between them. If you just need a phone-ass phone you can just go to your carrier and grab whatever is packed-in, no need to check reviews for that, most phones just fine work out of the box these days.

See, this is the exact process I am trying to describe. I’m sure that made sense in your head, and I’m sure if you think about it for a second you’ll realize that Target will very happily set up an affiliate link, just as Amazon does. And, of course, a whole bunch of the SEO listicles are the SEO hooks of bigger traditional review sites, including RTINGS, IGN or whatever. For the sake of argument, punching in “best bluetooth speaker” on DDG returns SEO listicles from Tom’s Guide, Wired, RTINGS, the New York Times, CNET and The Verge, in that order.

Which is not to say it’s not annoying, affiliate links and SEO have done terrible things to how practical reviews on websites are presented and parceled out. But that’s not to say they aren’t done honestly or lack validity on the sites that do it right, which are also the more successful ones.

I am… unfamiliar with the ecosystem of print newspaper appliance reviews, but I can tell you that having sloppy or obsequious reviews isn’t generally a sign of having taken a bribe or even having any direct influence from the manufacturer. Reviewing things is hard, by definition you are not in the same position as the people who will buy the thing later. It can be difficult to make that shift and appreciate value, particularly when it comes to tech where reviewers are often assessing the cool factor of whatever is new on the market while users just need a tool for everyday life.

Also, good reviews and hostile reviews aren’t the same thing. This depends a lot on what is being reviewed, and it’s not to say extremely protective reviews are bad themselves. This is more true in media reviews than on tech reviews, but even on tech reviews, some of my favorite people working generally provide fairly positive reviews, or very neutral spec reviews with relatively little judgement. Very often I don’t need to be protected from harm, I just need a savvy overview of a thing before I pull the trigger.

But also, let’s be clear, don’t book product placement that looks like a review. And if you do, make it a full on ad and make sure it’s presented as a sponsorship, although even when big names do that while trying to stay honest, or because they genuinely like the thing I don’t particularly like it.

It really isn’t, which is why it’s news when something like that comes out. People sometimes confuse being cynical with knowing how things work.

That said, this one is confusing, because it really does seem like Google is blurring the lines here between an ad spot or a product placement spot and pre-release samples for tech influencers intending to review them.

Honestly, cynicism aside, The Verge does a good job of breaking it down, including clarifying that they are under no such stipulations for their own review, so I’d recommend just reading the article in full.

This article (haven’t watched the video yet) makes me feel ancient.

Like, it’s clearly written by someone who didn’t live through the CRT era. It seems to be repeating things they heard but didn’t understand and, frustratingly, that includes not mentioning what the actual rating of the monitor is in KHz, which is really the only thing that matters.

I’m old and my knees hurt. That’s the only point I’m making here.

Hm. So are we all the way there to Win 11 not being installable in fully offline machines, or…? Because niche as that application is, it does sound like the start of a use case for a natively compatible Windows alternative from a third party (say, a FreeWin to go with FreeDOS). I know there are or have been some attempts, but… yeah, long term that seems like it would prompt more focus on something like that.

I suppose it’s more likely that compatibility layers in other OSs would get there first and more practically, but still. Maybe it’s time to move Windows applications from an ecosystem to a standard.

People are absolutely entitled to other people’s work, it’s called “public services”.

I get what you mean, but the absolute way that trope is stated always rubs me the wrong way.

The ridiculousness of this is that out-of-print game libraries are already freely available online for no effort. Pirating games of the late 90s and early 2000s is trivial. This is yet another case where a legitimate use of software (academic research, preservation) is made more difficult than just simple emulation by broken DRM and copyright rules.

Call me crazy, but if libraries and academics are legally prevented from preserving art while alleged “illegal piracy” is forced to do the bulk of game categorization, research and preservation I’d say your copyright system has thoroughly failed at its intended purpose.

That doesn’t seem to be the argument being made, though. It’s not “I need to emulate to do my job as an academic”, it’s “academic institutions can’t bypass DRM or make games remotely accessible for academic purposes”, emulation or no emulation.

Which in turn is a big part of your second statement.

The headline mentions emulation, and it certainly is the most effortless way to stream access to a different location, which is what the proposal is about, but that’s not the focus of the argument. The argument is about remote access for academic purposes.