Semi-related. I switched to Firefox about a year ago, when the Manifest v3 was forced into Chrome. About 2 months ago, I started getting prompted to solve a captcha when using google search, since my traffic was “unusual”. This appears to be a javascript issue where FF doesn’t respond to some server-side tracking correctly.

I now use DuckDuckGo.

I’m tech savvy, but have sometimes been willing to sell my data for convenience (don’t shoot me). But I’m not willing to sell my convenience for convenience: break my ad-blocker or make me captcha to search - fuck right off.

Getting off gmail is going to be hard, but I’m exploring options. Big Tech companies are doing a lot of foot-shooting right now.

They think they won, and can enforce their will, but I’m optimistic that they haven’t.

Gotta say… The Playstation debacle and resulting backlash has somewhat changed my mind on AI as a coding tool.

I still don’t like it, ethically and economically, but if “they” are going to use it to cut costs and punch down, then we can use it to invalidate them and punch up.

I doubt it will make the next great game or piece of software, but it can absolutely let us take a ps5 exclusive and run it on a PC.

Again, we still need actual developers who know what and why they do what they do, same with artists… but enabling a home-brew hobbyist to put mario kart in skyrim or whatever is pretty neat. Just wish it didn’t seem to require clear cutting a forest.

We can choose a salad (or burger) without shit… but not next week at this point. Gotta pick one - or let others pick one for you.

Afterwards, please find your local precinct and be part of the discussion. “Both parties” have been captured by money/capital, but only because we let them. At least on the dem side, the rules we have allow us to outnumber the money, but only if we show up on November 4th.

Edit: Just to be clear - Show up on Nov 3 and vote for your preferred entree of the options available, but show up after too.

As a occasional bleeding edge buyer - I disagree with the motive of ‘look at me’. (caveat: This post is entirely ‘look at me’, but I’m proving my point, not desiring attention, and have never even thought about my purchases this way until now)

I had an HTC Magic - one of the very early Android phones - not because I wanted to be cool, but because I wanted the tech and google was still this sort of open, consumer-friendly company at the time vs Apple. That phone was pretty solid compared to the candy-bar or flip phones of the era, aside from battery life, but compared to modern smart phones it was garbage.

I had an OG Rift VR headset (CV1). It did what it claimed, but it was low resolution, clunky, heavy, and unpleasant to use. But now we have Steam’s Frame.

When I was a teenager, working retail at a tech store, I saved up to buy an early LCD monitor. Now you can’t even buy CRTs outside of niche vendors.

I want quality EVs. I never bought a Tesla, but I wanted one before the crazy came out and just couldn’t afford it. Now we have every auto manufacturer making EV options.

I want quality folding phones, but my normal shape phone is still functional and I haven’t needed to buy a new one for a few years. When I do, it’ll probably fold. I’ll be v3 or so by that time, but still showing there’s a desire.

I want to be clear that I’m not disagreeing with your ‘let others work out the kinks’, but sometimes I’m fine with having the first iterations because I want the resulting tech.

Consider this my investment strategy - but instead of personal profit, I’m investing in innovation.

Counterpoint: if you want version 4.0 of something. Someone needs to prove it’s viability.

You can buy v1.0, just know it for what it is and only buy in if you can accept the risk.

I never bought a folding phone, but I want one and I appreciate the early adopters.

I HATE this part. I have no power to just not invest, because Vanguard or whoever owns the portfolio and they think this stuff is just going up-up-up, but they are playing with my money since I only have 4 flavors of their choosing for my 401k.

They might be right in the short term, and this used to be a thing (I think, in my parent’s age) where you could assume that number-goes-up over time and you could ignore minor dips, and maybe it’s still true for a long enough duration… but:

In this thread, I think we all see that this isn’t sustainable, but we, normal people just hoping to retire someday, don’t have the ability to disconnect from the bubble even if we want to. There are too many public companies involved and they’re all interconnected.

I despise that I’m probably invested in spacex, nvidia, oracle, etc. I’d sacrifice short term gains to let other people take this risk if I could.

I think this is one of the greatest dangers AI presents. Sure it makes some of us stupider, sure it drinks our water and eats our GPUs and raises power prices… but once upon a time, it took actual human effort to run a dragnet, even with judicial approval.

Now, you plug in an LLM to the giant pile of corporate surveillance data and ask it to find troublemakers. Anonymity is dead and its death made retroactive and since there’s no government oversight, the government can just lease access to the tools they used to need approval to use.

I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I want to do this, but only got as far as setting up a minimal Home Assistant. Only put a few hours into it, though, then got sidetracked by trying to turn an esp32 into a speaker/microphone puck.

A lot of Americans would instantly jump to a Chinese competitor

I think this is pretty true. To expand:

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have to either run my own email/hosting/storage servers and surrounding infrastructure with the tech understanding required to do so*, or give my data to someone else. Not having an email address is not realistic when it’s the primary key for your bank, school, employer, etc.

*A decade or so ago, running an SMTP server was trivial. Now, it needs DMARC, DKIM, SPF, publicly trusted certificates, and maybe newer things I’m not familiar with in order to be able send email. These are not bad things, but they increase the requirements for self-hosting.

Right now, that ‘someone else’ is generally google or microsoft for most people, and those companies are so big they get to dictate how other tools I need to use work. They also freely sell my data or give it to the government - possibly without any sort of warrant via ‘data sharing agreements’.

US-based data brokers are actively hostile to me. A Chinese data broker is less likely to care, since I’m further from their profit model: I’m unlikely to buy a Chinese cereal or make-up brand or visit a restaurant halfway across the globe. This only matters as long as US and Chinese data brokers don’t share info, but I suspect there’s friction there. If there’s not, then there’s no reason to NOT switch.

If I have to give my data to someone, then I’d prefer to give it to someone who doesn’t directly impact or care about me the way google/microslop and the US government do.

And Google was still ‘nice’.

Microsoft, at least in my lifetime, invented the ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ method, but google was certainly taking notes.

One of the many little compromises.

I just want to push back on this being a ‘gamers’ problem. We’ve basically hit the point with technofeudalism where we can all collectively moan and groan, but still be effectively locked in.

How do you feel about google or apple… but you must have an acceptable(to the bank) phone in order to set up MFA for your bank account, and you might need to have one for your work or school accounts. How do you feel about linkedin… it’s managed to insert itself into the hiring process for many places and if you don’t participate, then a company will overlook you because you don’t exist. How do you feel about twitter… but the US government almost exclusively drops breaking news there first, if not on the shittier versions.

For the wants instead of needs, the dynamic changes a bit, but the enshittification and perverted “ownership” is coming for us all: TVs, printers, dishwashers, cars, etc. All these things are ‘optional’… but your Quality of Life will be reduced if you give them up and you will either be spending your precious time and energy doing something that used to be easier; or giving up on some of the social and cultural fabric by eschewing the shows/movies/games that others around you are enjoying and want to talk about.

Considering this only a ‘gamers’ problem and that only ‘gamers’ are the mindless cattle is missing the bigger picture.

Another aspect is the difference between Publisher and Developer and Platform.

Sony/Playstation is the platform and they get to do shitty things. So can the publisher. The Developer doesn’t get to make those decisions most of the time. Sometimes we can avoid the bad actors, but not always. The next book in your favorite series has just been released, but it’s not going to be printed, it’s only released on Amazon as an E-book. The author isn’t happy, but their contract says the publisher gets to decide where and how to publish and the publisher gets more money from e-books and expects the audience for the book will not revolt. Same with music. This new album is only available on spotify; no physical CDs, and the artist didn’t have a say because they weren’t big enough to fight back.

Sure, piracy solves some of those access issues (insert Gabe Newell quote), but it robs the artists of their cut because the publishers or platforms are being assholes, which will prevent future content that people like. Do you punish the artist, and remove their ability to make more stuff you want because some monolithic company has locked themselves in the process?

I won’t buy GTA6, or the next Call of Duty or FIFA, because those are not games I’m interested in; but there are other franchises that I would like to enjoy the future. I want to fight back and orgs like Stop Killing Games or the EFF, FULU, Repair.org and more are all helping push back.

We do have hope, and if we understand this isn’t a single-slice-of-the-consumer problem, we can band together.