You’re a rude patronizing prick, that’s for damn sure.

And boomer is telling you it was mainstream. Very much so. The only reason it wasn’t as developed as it is today is because computing wasn’t as developed as it is today.

open source wasn’t really a thing in the 90s and early 2000s

Truly written as someone who wasn’t alive back then and just makes stuff up.

Open-source - which was called free software back then - was very much alive and totally a thing since forever, and especially in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I learned all I know with free software in the 80s. Linux came out in 91 and was a pure product of open source: Minix - the forerunner of Linux - was a fully open-source OS created in 87, and GNU had been around since 83.

Please read up on things you don’t know before posting nonsense.

Maybe the restaurant is infested with investment bankers for whom life is indeed to short. Maybe the sign is a secret handshake to tell other investors they’re welcome in this joint.

It’s not just soda bottles here, it’s milk bottles, cream, fruit concentrates… Anything in any kind of plastic container with a screw-on cap.

Actually the soda bottles are the least egregious examples. The milk bottles are terrible: you’re 100% guaranteed to spill milk if you don’t detach the cap.

Thanks!

With a scalpel and a bone saw - at least that’s what the surgeon said - and because sometimes people are born with issues that need fixing later in life.

Plus, they very likely can’t sell electrical equipment that has had its cord chopped up and repaired

I did it proper. You couldn’t tell the cord had been replaced. For the rest, yeah I know what you mean. That doesn’t mean it’s not crazy that the Red Cross should refuse free shit. My Dad lived through the war and the food restrictions, and let me tell you, he would have been outraged.

Next time, find a friend with small feet who would like to take it off your hands.

The funny thing is, I’m a clear foot taller than my wife, but my own feet have been shortened surgically a few years ago and are now shorter than hers, and I fit inside the machine just fine. But I didn’t want the machine because I hate foot massages 🙂

The only problem with that theory is, they didn’t even open my box. I know that because the box still had the tape I closed it shut with. So they couldn’t know I had replaced the cord.

Besides, it wasn’t a shitty splice: I actually opened it and replaced the whole cord. You could never tell it wasn’t the original thing.

The less Google can figure out who you are accurately, the longer the ReCAPTCHAs get. For instance, if you run Librewolf with Resist FingerPrinting, you’re going to eat a metric shit-ton of buses, stairs, bicycles and fire hydrants.

Captchas are maddening, they’re forced labor and there’s a special place in hell for whoever invented them, deploy then and maintain them. However, you should take comfort in the fact that if you have a really hard time getting past a particularly stubborn ReCAPTCHA, it means Google has a harder time tracking you.

The problem isn’t suddenly allowing third party browsers.

The problem here - the ONLY problem - is using a fucking browser to do everything, instead of… you know, browsing.

An app store app should be installed as an app. It has no business being specially handled by a browser.

That’s what you get when you turn browsers into mini operating systems: the thing’s attack surface increases by orders of magnitude.

Try uBlock Origin in hard mode. You’ll see how much garbage needs blocking that you don’t see in easy or medium mode.

European countries don’t really have class action suits

You mean they don’t get their $0.55 check in the mail when some lawyer successfully sues a company on their behalf and walks out with $50M?

Gee, that’s truly a loss.

Even simpler: don’t do Discord.

I was invited to some Discord chatroom once: when I hit the website, the list of blocked scripts in uBlock Origin was longer than my arm. That was all I needed to close the tab immediately. I don’t need to run 500 trackers from sketchy advertisement companies to join a glorified IRC chatroom with enough emojis and color to put an epilepsy sufferer in danger.

Oh the humanity!

Which is batty. I want lemmy to grow

That’s like saying you want your country club to grow by letting crackheads, ex-convicts and hooligans have a membership card.

I want Lemmy to grow too but not at any cost. I’d rather have quality than quantity quite frankly.

When I was a kid, my parents taught me not to accept free candy from creepy old men.

Kids should be taught not to install VPNs from Big Data for the same reason - and a whole host of other common sense internet hygiene rules.

Yeah but…

Facebook achieved their MITM attack by selling a VPN with spyware in it.

And so you have to wonder: who in his right mind would buy a VPN service from effing Facebook of all companies? It’s like asking the KKK to do the catering at your bar mitzvah: if you have a problem with the service, you kind of asked for it.

The scary thing isn’t that this sort of thing is technically possible. It’s that the cops try this lazy-ass investigative method because they know full well the information oligopolies readily play ball and provide the data more often than not.

And that my friends is the very definition of Fascism: when big business is in cahoots with the authorities. Don’t take my word for it: Benito Mussolini, the very dude who invented Fascism, said it himself in 1932:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

I’ve known Big Data would eventually lead us to full-blown fascism since Scott McNealy inadvertently spilled the beans about the future of privacy in 1999. Everybody dismissed McNealy back then and said nobody would stand for this. But I instantly realized he was telling the naked truth as it would happen that day. And I’ve been called a nutcase and a conspiracy theorist ever since, for a full quarter of a century.

And now here we are: everybody is finally coming to the same realization - too late to do any goddamn thing about it.

This is sad…

How is this infuriating?

You haven’t been taken for a fool. You haven’t been taken by surprise. Thule isn’t an unavoidable monopoly you have to give money to.

If you feel it’s overpriced, you can, ya know… not buy Thule.