1,773 karma · joined July 22, 2012
When you install Linux, where is the OS downloaded from? Where do the software packages and updates reside? What about the source code?
If you blocked Microsoft (Azure + github), Google, Amazon (AWS), and Akamai, I'd be surprised if you could run any mainstream flavour of Linux.
Some *BSDs might work.
I minimize my interaction with the big computing-advertising-consumer entities but I know they're still there behind the scenes. It's all part of the same cesspool.
I'm inclined to try RawTherapee and DarkTable again. Years ago I tried but they never worked as well as the proprietary alternatives.
It depends on the culture of the place the school system is applied in. This kind of blanket utilitarianism by way of school is a sad state for society as a whole. In a country like Canada we have a sordid past, very recently, when implementing the residential school system [0].
That's the more extreme case but I'd argue that elements of that exist in every school system when applied in a one-size-fits-all fashion and when that system has a monopoly on education.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
The value proposition has changed but not in the way that was feared at the time. We're certainly inundated with ads to a greater degree than it was at the time. They never turned around and charged for it but they certainly require a lot more personal information to have an account these days.
There was so much hate for Microsoft but it was wishful thinking that Google would turn out differently.
What I remember are many products released around that time by Google, et al that were sold to us as: we're making gobs of money off of our core offering (e.g. search + little text-based ads), that we can afford to all this other stuff for the benefit of humanity. So much was sold as "making the world a better place". The other sales pitch we got amounted to, "don't worry about it, we'll monetize later."
Nobody was up-front in those days. Which is why not a month has gone by where ToS or Privacy Policy changes need another click to accept to keep using. The frog was certainly slow-boiled.
cmd + ctrl + o to open another tab in Finder in the same folder that's current open. In my opinion this should be the default for cmd + t, which opens a new tab but in your home folder.
Typewriter maker Olivetti. Beautiful mechanical design and innovation right up until the end of the typewriter era. They successfully made computers for a while but couldn't compete in the long run.
Coleco. From leather maker to Cabbage Patch dolls to video game consoles. Then bankrupt after the disaster that was the Coleco Adam computer.
If you’re interested in this stuff, I really enjoyed Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s “The Old Way” and recommend it.
If you want to teach science, start by teaching careful observation. Otherwise, in my opinion, it's not science being taught but awareness of science. Knowing what came before, learning about the observations and science made to build up to what we have today, is important, but should not be mistaken as the central point of being a careful observer.
Use the money you make to decrease your carbon footprint: Operating an electric car, buying or building a net-zero home, etc. Work from home. Get involved in local government.
YouTube can create its own client software (like it does for iOS/Android) and do what it wants. As long as it openly serves content via HTTP then I can render the content it sends anyway I want on my computer.
But in general I listen to what their interests are and where their natural curiosities take them and supplement that.
That "somehow" was billions of dollars for development, acquisitions, and marketing. Sites loved to market themselves as ad-free havens that are making the world a better place. Everyone bought it. Once they achieve platform dominance, the ads come in, slowly at first, and then ratcheted up over the next decade until we have what we have now.
The federated approach is great in my opinion. It's where I hang my hat. Not everyone finds a home on a federated site but there are vibrant communities.
The problem I have is when governments and community organizations start to use walled gardens exclusively. Having to submit to a site's ToS just to get official government communications, releases, streamed video, and take part in discussions around it, is a threat to democracy.
HackerNews and other niche sites, word-of-mouth, and serendipity, play a bigger role in blog discovery for me. It’s a slow process but the results are stronger.
There’s no instant tech-effort solution to this in my opinion. If you want a good blog to stick around, express your thanks and gratitude to the blogger. Buy them a coffee. Encourage them.
Go now to your favourite blogger and send them a message of appreciation.
People in positions of fame, notoriety, power, like Musk, have learned that playing the troll is good for them. They can troll with impunity and the result has turned out to be positive in an "Any publicity is good publicity" way. Journalists lap it up because it gives them something to write about and give their publications clicks for the daily outrage. Everyone gets to fuel the flames.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan
Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
De-Googling services is quite easy for the most part as there are many competing alternatives including good self-hosted options.
As a web user, I block all Google JavaScript that gets embedded in 99% of sites using a combination uBlock, NoScript, and my own DNS. Most sites load fine but some that use the Google API fail to show anything—which is silly when most of them are plain text and image articles.