Well yeah, I look at All too, to make sure I’m not missing out on something interesting. But I must do that every month or so.

That escalated quickly

That’s too much credit to the poster.

I’d say it went down the sewer quickly, rather.

Ah right okay.

I only look at the ones I subscribed to myself. Different approach I guess.

Forgive me if I’m a bit of a thicky, but why is there a need to block communities? Doesn’t simply ignoring them work?

I trust Google a LOT less than I trust Apple

I have zero trust in both. So if I have to choose a dystopian surveillance device, even a stock one, I’ll choose the one that lets me sideload apps anyday, even if the experience is less polished.

And of course, I run a deGoogled OS so the point is moot. I use it for work stuff and I have no issues. I feel no need for a regular Google or Apple piece of spyware.

What you call a prison, I call a system where I don’t have to fuck around to make shit work. Everything Just Works.

So, just like I said, you’re happy in your prison. It’s cool, to each his own 🙂 It wasn’t a value judgment. Me, I’d rather cut one of my testicles off than give a cent to Apple - or Google too for that matter - or let either decide what I can or cannot run on MY device.

iOS is more fit for my purpose than Android.

As long as it does what you want, then it’s fine.

That sounds terrible.

I was about to post something similar to your reply. But OP says this, which is a reasonable explanation why they need (not want mind you) to use Facebook:

[…] Facebook Marketplace. Here in Australia, there’s simply no better alternative if you want to reach a large number of potentially interested buyers (or even buy some stuff yourself). The supermarket noticeboard is no more

As for iOS, OP said they abhorred commercial social media. They said nothing about their feelings towards abusive monopolistic OS platforms, so I assume they’re happy in their Apple prison.

The sad part of this story is that fucking Zuckerberg managed to make himself unavoidable in Australia apparently. That’s the real takeaway from OP’s post.

I use Github for 4 reasons:

• Everybody else is on Github. Github is to repo hosting what Youtube is to video hosting. It’s sad but that’s how it is in this world of unchecked, extreme big tech monopolization. So I put my stuff up there because it’s just simpler to be found.
• I use Github as a dumb git repo. I don’t use any of the extra social media garbage Microsoft tacked onto it. So I get free hosting and Microsoft pretty much gets no data on me - i.e. I’m a net loss to them.
• You can use dumb repos as PPA and RPM sources, if you need to distribute Debian or Redhat packages. Microsoft never intented for repos to be used this way, but if I can abuse Microsoft services, I will six ways to Sunday.
• Github lets you drop videos in your README.md. But here’s a trick: you can use the links to the video files anywhere. In other words, you can use Github to host videos that you can post on other forums - including here on Lemmy, or on Reddit if you’re still patronizing that cesspit for some reason. I find this a nice way to abuse Microsoft’s resources also, and I’m all for abusing Microsoft’s resources.

TL;DR: I use Github not only because it’s the most prevalent git hosting service out there, but because I can abuse it and make Microsoft pay for the abuse without getting anything of value from me in return.

Do you choose your friends and the folks you hang out with? Of course you do. Why should it be any different in the communities you patronize?

I came here because I was tired of suffering the morons on traditional social media platforms. The Fediverse is not perfect - nothing ever is - and it has its fair share of undesirables too, but it’s much better, and I’m not looking forward to the morons following me here and making things worse. They belong to Facebook and the likes, and they should stay there.

It won’t enshittify in the strict Doctorow sense. But it will become shittier as more people who are currently plaguing Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and making those platforms terrible discover the Fediverse and come splatter their cowpats here. That’s almost inevitable: it’s happened to just about anything that ever became popular.

Incidentally, that’s also a big part of the reason why it’s supremely important to boycott Threads and not let it federate: the Fediverse needs to grow, but it doesn’t need to grow with an influx of low-quality Facebook users.

I use i3 - Sway is supposed to be 100% compatible with i3 - and I find the configuration file very straightforward. What’s different in the version in NixOS?

I know it’s not specific to the Fediverse, but I recommend you watch this video from Fran Blanche: it’s eye-opening and a bit heart-breaking:

When Google calls you a slur

Fran Blanche is a genuinely kind person, a good engineer, and her career has been hobbled by rampant transphobia.

not all advertisement is the same

Yes it is.

Captchas were never about keeping bots out: they’ve always been an excuse to turn ordinary internet visitors into mechanical turks to tag photos to train AI systems without paying the workforce.

Think about it: how many hours total did you spend in your life tagging photos for Google and Google never paid you for your work?

Well if you say so, I defer to your higher authority on bullshit.

Not cheers, no. But it increased my problem-solving reputation within the company and it made Linux more appealing to key people in the company.

What’s wrong with that? What’s your butthurt? Are you bitter about something?

Well I’m sure they have very good reason and I’m not questioning them. I’m just talking from a user’s standpoint (and I’m a very poor Windows users): whenever I try to port any of our tools to Windows, wham the damn antivirus kicks in and puts my stuff in quarantine. If I use an engineering application that talks to some device on an unusual port - and I’m talking outgoing traffic, not incoming, wham it’s blocked. And unblocking it requires making a formal request to IT, that whitelists the application, until WithSecure updates itself and forgets about it, and here we go again.

It’s just a complete PITA. You constantly feel like you’re fighting an algorithm with stupidity built in just to get normal, honest-to-goodness work done.

It’s whatever works for you.

Me, depending on the type of file, I either have a more or less full description (so I can find things with find and English words) and/or some sort of short coding system that makes sense for a given type of file. After using the same codes for a long time, I know exactly what they mean.

For example, I would name an ebook “823-sf-rah-The_moon_is_a_harsh_mistress.epub”: that way I can look it up by DDC number (823), genre (SF), author if they’re well known (Robert A. Heinlein) and of course the title of the book, or any combination thereof. That’s my own system for ebooks.

For music, I make one directory per album or record named artist-comma-name (e.g. “Al_Di_Meola,Orange_and_Blue”) and the individual tracks inside as e.g. “track01-Paradisio.mp3”, “track02-Chilean_Pipe_Song.mp3”… The reason I only do one directory deep per album instead of, say, author/album/tracks is because most MP3 players back in the days, and most music apps today, understand that way of organizing music. That’s my own system for music.

Etc etc. Just make up your own system that works for you. Just stick to characters that are acceptable in all OSes’ filesystems so you can move your stuff around without problems, and avoid spaces so it’s not a pain to type.

mv?

Honestly, just prefix or suffix the filename. I’ve been cataloging all my stuff like that for the past 30 years - including, for things like music, the track number, which the filesystem and every portable device under the sun will naturally sort and play in the correct order. Finding things can be done with regular filesystem tools like, well, find. And it will work exactly the same way in all OSes that have a concept of filesystem.

Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.

Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.

So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.