In their cars.

Counterpoint: before Gmail, I ran my own mail server and futzed with Mutt for a perfect email experience. It was a frustrating time sink.

Gmail came out and I now get a better end-user experience with virtually no cost of ownership. I’m comfortable with the ad-supported model. I’d prefer a low monthly fee, but not so much that it’s worth moving to Proton. Eventually, maybe I will.

I get this take, but it isn’t for me.

Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses.

Why would I refuse? It’s company software running on company hardware. It isn’t my problem what the ToS is.

I’m not sure it’s devil’s advocate: I work with computers for 40 hours a week. There’s no way that I want to put any effort into a computer in my personal time

I love shitting on Python, but I feel like all those problems are present in libraries for other languages as well. There’s a tonne of that crap for JS/TS.

Similarly, I find a fair number of Rust crates (that I want to use) have virtually no doc or inline examples, and use weird metaprogramming that I can’t wrap my head around.

I tried Gemini and it periodically failed to set timers and reminders. When I asked it the date next Tuesday, it got the answer wrong. 🤷‍♂️

I tried Kagi and found the results to be significantly less helpful than Google. Searches for local businesses, open source libraries, and Canadian history missed useful sites that Google provided.

I guess I’m an outlier, because other people seem to have a good time with it.

It looks like a pretty minor change, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

yes yes, but the robot cannot strike, you see, because one robot must make the strike motion, another robot must second the strike motion, and then all the robots must vote. if there is no robot to second the strike motion, then no robots may vote, meaning the strike cannot pass.

Our demographics don’t support uncertainty. Most of us are here because we are certain distributed is better than centralized, community run is better than corporate run, FOSS is better than proprietary, etc. The sign-up process discourages casual users, so most users have made up their minds to be here.

For better or worse, we’re highly opinionated, and we’ve decided some things are bad and others are good. Very few topics are open to discussion because we’ve already decided.

And if we haven’t decided on something, it’s usually because we’ve decided it doesn’t matter, so we’ll ignore it.

It isn’t a sustainable community, but I fit in, so I’m still here.

https://lemmy.ca/post/15125231 has results of a demographic poll for lemmy.ca.

Yeah, bull sessions were (and still are) part of my experience. I’m a similar age, and had a similar university experience.

Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to watch Three’s Company.

Yeah, I’d like to use the network, but the reviews are pretty bad. That and the lack of UWB makes it seem pretty weak.

Agreed - traditional media and online commentary both suffer from this problem.

We need a way for beat reporters to get paid for their work. Sadly that doesn’t really exist right now.

We need experts that are knowledgeable on issues who can put them in context for lay readers.

In the past, those were often beat reporters, but academics can fit that role too.

With the collapse of traditional media hegemonies companies we’ve lost beat reporters, so we have to rely on third party experts. Of course, there are problems with that: if they’re owned by bad actors, then they can spread misleading narratives.

I’m not sure who fills that role now. Whoever can tweet the most convincingly at journalists? Whoever makes the sexiest YouTube explainer?

😂^(we’re screwed)

How do you market an encryption platform exclusively to criminals?

Apparently through word of mouth and suggestions by undercover agents.

innocents that downloaded this as a secure messaging system

The app wasn’t made available for download. The FBI bought a few thousand Pixels, flashed a custom ROM onto them, and then installed the messaging apps. In theory they cost thousands of dollars to buy.

It’s entirely possible some innocents used the system, but it’s unclear how selling rooted hardware to alleged criminals would induce them to commit crime.

See https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/1197959218/fbi-phone-company-anom

Entrapment techniques like that make me sick.

What was the entrapment? The FBI sold phones to suspected criminals and monitored the conversations, didn’t they?

I got a Breville Dual-Temp for $350 CAD on sale, but you can spend less. You can always spend more if you want, but that’s where I top out.

I’m not sure about ROI. I guess I’ve had it three years, so that’s like $.33/day, but I don’t track what I spend on consumables.

Espresso machines rock. I got one to cut costs, and I’m really happy with being able to make an Americano in a minute or two.

no one at Microsoft gives a single fuck about their users anymore

I don’t think they ever did.

A place for teenagers to go on dates.