DigitalDilemma

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Become a dog. They’re the happiest people I know.

Just installed it.

Went to Reddit, it recommended I use Lemmy. Sounds good.

“Tell me you work in America without telling me you work in America”

Big orders for single people, especially for stuff like curry, pizza and chinese, could just mean they’re buying several meals at once and are going to freeze it for later on. Think of it as meal prepping without having to cook.

How the heck is UK European? They left the EU 5 years ago.

Steady that jerky knee there fella, you might want to read that a bit more closely.

The premise is European, not EU. It’s a matter of geography, not politics.

Right answer. In fact, the only viable answer.

As a 54 year old who has just had two weeks of agony because he forgot his age and tried to deadlift a 225kg motorbike by himself, I’m going to skip this one because I clearly haven’t learned anything.

I think what you’re looking for is known as kiosk software. Basically a locked down browser that has limited or zero user interaction possible.

Or by deliberately breaking DNS on that host. Add the entries you want to allow to /etc/hosts and not supply any upstream DNS servers. (Change of needing maintenance if those sites change IP)

“That’s a great question!” </ai>

The truth is, we don’t need AI to have misinformation, and AI is not the biggest problem in the current post-truth society. There has been a war going on globally in undermining truth for a long time. The old saying, “The first casualty in war is truth” is invalid now, because truth is no longer relevant and lies are weaponised like never before in history. People don’t want to be certain of something, their first reaction to news is to react at a deep and emotional level and the science of misinformation is highly refined and successful in making most people react in a certain way. It takes effort and training not to do that, and most of us can’t.

Journalists have been warning us about this for decades but integrity costs money, and that funding has been under attack too. It’s pretty depressing whichever way you look at it.

One of the interesting things about surveys is you only learn about the sort of people who complete surveys.

Thanks for the full and reasoned explanation.

I do agree there is nuance, and it is very difficult to balance these things when there is often not a great choice about who ultimately ends up with your money.

cancelled Prime in 2025 to boycott USA

Costco for local cucumbers, milk and cereal,

So Amazon bad, Costco good? Both huge American based multinationals, no?

Anything with “allegedly” in the title is probably a lie.

Yes, I maybe misremembered the title. I couldn’t find it in a quick search and it’s up in the loft in a box somewhere.

A book. Teach yourself Perl in 30 days. (Edit - may have been 21 days)

I bought it around 25-30 years ago. I have dyslexia and autism and have had problems learning from books in the past, but something about the way that was written just clicked for me.

It allowed me to write some pretty cool software, including a huge system that ran a large animal charity for a very long time, tons of automation software and scripts, and several full webuis. Indirectly it led me to a new career where I write perl every day.

(I can write in many other languages now, but that was the keystone of everything for me)

Money going online really changed the mood.

So true. Money spoils everything.

Lack of knowledge was the big problem before the internet. Late 80s, early 90s.

Take Phreaking.

Dialup BBSs (1200/75, 2400 or 9600 baud) were the primary source of dodgy files that I knew of. Some would have a secret area with various texts about hacking and quasi-illegal behaviour, including pornography of all flavours and of course the anarchists’ handbook. There were a few hacking and phreaking related stuff (getting free phone calls was huge then, given the cost of online activities - blackboxing, blueboxing, etc) and often required researching the types of PBX being used until you knew more than the people employed to run the things. To get access to this you’d need to suck up to the BBS owner, or prove your worth and “I’m not a law enforcement officer, honest” credits. Vouchsafing friends and others was another way, and there was cross-checking of you by sysops talking to each other.

The security on phone systems was laughable by modern standards, but at the time it was something very strongly guarded and if you found something, you made sure it stayed private. The phone companies helped by constantly denying anything was happening, but stakes were high. Legal consequences were high, but so were the rewards if you could get free calls.

Myself, I never did, but I always wanted to. Not having my monthly phone bills of hundreds of pounds would have been really nice…

When ADSL and always-on connections became available, phreaking stopped overnight.

Thats because you dont have savings.

I’m sorry, why did you assume that?

I guess you never considered that someone older might like a safe and boring job because they’ve finally worked out how to compartmentalise work and life, or maybe it lets them work from home or is conveniently close, or that they have friends there and are accepted as who they are, or that they believe in the work they’re doing, or their health isn’t so great and they don’t want upheaval, or they’ve already had an exciting job and it demanded too much of them, or any one of a lot of other possible reasons.

Maybe they even have enough to retire today, but that they like that boring job you’re so dismissive of and don’t fancy facing the void that retirement can bring, having seen friends retire and just… stop, because they had nothing else to fill their days with, dying soon after.

Maybe, just maybe, your bleak experience of a working life isn’t the same for everyone.

I hope you figure things out a little better as you get older and not jump to conclusions.

If I was in my 20s, I’d be off like a shot.

At 30, I’d think for about 5 minutes before doing it.

At 40 I’d try to have a backup plan in place.

Now I’m in my 50s, I’d cling onto that safe and boring job like a limpet.