jemorgan @ jemorgan @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

Awesome tips, I’ll give those a try, thanks

My brother in Christ, I don’t know who it was that hurt you but it wasn’t me. Being this emotionally invested in disliking a company is definitely not good for your mental health. Nobody here is even remotely suggesting that any company cares for anything other that maximizing profits. That doesn’t mean that there are no companies that maximize their profits by having a reputation for privacy and security.

If you don’t think my comment was valuable, downvote it and move on. Nobody wants to hear someone cry about how mean the big bad computer company is.

Yeah I don’t think businesses doing SEO is really the issue here.

It’s the millions of low-quality, garbage blogspam websites that have SEOd their way into filling the first 10 pages of every single search.

What’s a good canister vacuum? What I can I do for fun in Sparks, Nevada? Why is my cat throwing up? It doesn’t matter what you search for, you’re going to get articles filled with 6000 words of barely-passable English that you have to scroll through, with an add between every paragraph, until you finally get to the part where they “answer” the question with the most common-sense, useless, vague pile of word vomit that proves the author doesn’t know any more about the topic than you do.

But it’s no accident that that’s what Google has tuned their algorithm to prioritize. They’ve got as much of an interest in making you look at those ads as the website, because the ads come from Google and that’s their entire business model.

I have personally never had something I’ve searched for not show up, I’ve never had the App Store crash a single time (I don’t think I’ve ever had any first-party app crash on iOS actually), and it’s always loaded for me as fast as my network will allow.

Just another anecdotal point of view, maybe the situation is different if you’re using an older iPhone?

Careful there, expressing an honest take about an Apple decision instead of trying to spin it like it’s evil is a good way to piss a bunch of people off.

I don’t believe in ethical for-profit companies either.

The open nature of Android was the single biggest reason I used it for the decade that I did. If I were to switch back, I’d buy a pixel.

But android isn’t as open as it used to be. Yes, you can still unlock your bootloader, root, and install custom roms, but Google is now actively fighting against users who want to do so. On my pixel 3, it became a never-ending battle to keep apps like my banking portal working while rooted, and to keep rooting working through updates. At least once a month, I’d be out of the house and have my phone fundamentally break in some way.

Eventually, I reached the point where I needed a smartphone as a tool more than I needed one as a toy to tinker with, so I left it stock. But stock android sucks from a privacy perspective. I realized that I wasn’t using 3rd party App Stores and I wasn’t rooting my phone, so the largest benefits of avoiding an iPhone weren’t really a factor to me anymore.

I was also extremely disappointed in the hardware, quality control and longevity of new android phones, especially compared to the iPhones being released. So I switched. And was amazed at how glad I was.

No police showed up to my door to force me to trade my Sony headphones in for AirPods or my Dell laptop for a MacBook. I already had an iPad because at the time, it was the only serious tablet of you care about using a stylus, but that had been working beautifully for me without any other apple products.

I think it’s silly to list the fact that an OEM has a ton of products that work well together as a reason not to buy any of that company’s products. If you don’t want to get locked in, don’t buy an Apple Watch. As far as I know, nothing else requires an iPad. And anyway, the resale value on apple products is so solid that if you did totally buy in, selling all your apple hardware would get you more than enough to buy matching hardware of a similar age from other manufacturers. Sell your two year old iPad and you can probably get 3 two year old Samsung tablets, assuming you can find any that still work.

The web browser thing also hardly locks you in. If you really don’t want to use safari, that’s a decent reason not to want to use iOS. For me at least, safari is the browser I would choose to use, so I don’t really care that I can’t use Firefox.

What are these containers that you’re talking about?

Probably my fault you didn’t see this because it was buried deep in the wall of text, but I clarified that I’m definitely not trying to morally exculpate Apple.

In the context of which of two companies you choose to do business with, you shouldn’t criticize one while ignoring the immoral actions of the other. If we’re just talking about the things apple does wrong, I’m right there with you. But if we’re talking about which mobile phone ecosystem is less predatory than the other… at least my relationship with apple is a voluntary business arrangement with exactly two parties. That’s actually the reason I moved all of my stuff out of the android ecosystem in ‘21 after >10 years. Seeing ads across a dozen websites related to a private medical diagnosis made me realize Google just knows too much about me, and I do care about my privacy after all.

That’s obviously just my personal opinion but my point is that if you’re looking for an ethical tech company, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

I think the answer to your question about why it’s frustrating for some people and not others has a lot to do with use case.

One use case that easily makes Linux way less frustrating is of developing software, especially in low-level languages. If you’re writing and debugging software, reading documentation is something you do every day, which makes it a lot easier. Most of the issues where people break their systems, don’t know how it happened, and can’t figure out how to fix it are because they default to copying bash commands from a Wordpress blog from 2007 instead of actually reading the documentation for their system. If you’re developing software, a log of the software you’re installing and using is open source, so you benefit tremendously from a package manager that’s baked into the OS.

If your use case is anything like that, Windows in particular is way more frustrating to use IMO.

If instead your use case is using a web browser and a collection of proprietary closed-source GUI tools, then most of the benefits that you’re getting using Linux are more ephemeral. You get the benefit of using a free and open source OS, not being tied into something that built to spy on you, not supporting companies that use copyrights to limit the free access of information and tools, etc. Those benefits are great and super important, and I would still recommend Linux if you’re up to it, but they definitely don’t make computing any easier.

If your use case is anything like the second one, you’re probably used to following online guides without needing to understand how each step works, and you’re probably used to expecting that software will make it hard for you to break it in a meaningful way. Both of those things directly contribute to making Linux might be frustrating to use at times for you.

If you’re in the second category, the best advice is to get used to going to the official webpage for the applications you use and actually reading the docs. When you run into a problem, try to find information about it the docs. It’s fine to use guides or other resources, but whenever you do, try to look up the docs for the commands that you’re using and actually understand what you’re doing. RTFM is a thing for a reason haha.

That’s interesting, but it’s hardly what I was imagining based on what the user I replied to was saying.

The source linked quoted an Apple exec explaining that the cost/benefit analysis of building a piece of free software on a platform that generates them no revenue doesn’t justify them spending the resources to build the software.

I get it, we all want corporations to be benevolent entities that give us free software out of the kindness of their hearts, but if we’re going to criticize one of them for not doing so, I think it’s more clear-minded to criticize the system as a whole.

Why in the world would anyone expect Apple to spend development resources building iMessage for Android (for free), especially if they’ve determined that it will hurt user retention? Because we want them to? It sucks, but not like “evil mega-corp manipulating users” sucks, more like “corporation making decision that literally every other for-profit corporation would make in that situation” sucks.

I’m not trying to morally justify it, I’m strictly speaking in the context of “use products from x instead of y because y did bad thing”. In that context, that’s a bad argument if it’s true that x is just as anti-user as y is.

And if we’re specifically talking about using Apple products vs using Google products here, you’d have to be taking crazy pills to think that Apple is more anti-user than a company who’s entire business model is the commoditization of vast amounts of personal data gathered for the purpose of more effectively manipulating literally everyone, including non-users of their products, into increasing their consumption.

That’s some real salt there buddy.

You are definitely entitled to your opinion, but ‘apple hardware and software is objectively inferior’ isn’t much of one.

It’s especially disingenuous to present those opinions like they’re established fact, when they definitely aren’t. You may not think that Apple is particularly innovative or that their UX is particularly good, but I think you’d definitely be in the minority there, especially outside of niche online communities filled with people with an axe to grind.

I’m pretty close to being as much of a power user as someone can be within the use case that I have for general purpose computing. I also feel like I probably know the mobile/desktop software space better than the average person on the street, I’m a SWE by trade.

I honestly think that the gap between the UI/UX design on Apple software and the UI/UX design on windows in particular, but android to a lesser extent, is the most compelling reason to use apple. And I also think it’s ridiculously out of touch to claim that Apple’s innovation’s (especially in hardware) aren’t significantly better executed and consistent than the competition. Sure, they don’t throw every half-baked idea into every new product they release, only to abandon that idea in 18 months for a new batch of experiments. I think that’s one of the reasons Apple users like Apple products. Personally, I’m not buying a phone because I want to spend two weeks trying out a bunch of gimmicks and then never using them again unless I’m showing my friends the cool thing my phone can do.

But, of course those are my subjective opinions and I’m not faulting you for disagreeing. There are people out there who thing Outlook is good UX, and they’re entitled to that opinion lol. But I do think it’s a little silly to disagree in a way that makes it obvious that you think that anyone who disagrees with you has no idea what they’re talking about.

Source?

I was an employee at In-N-Out for four years, it’s actually a pretty nice company to work for. Compared to food service in general, it’s an amazing company. Much better pay than the industry average. Management gets bonuses for promoting people within a set number of hours, so everyone gets pushed to move up. Actual benefits, and if you want to make a career of it, management at my store made ~$160,000, which was pretty typical. They also don’t hire managers, they only promote from within, everyone has to start as a level 1, which is kind of cool.

Don’t know if your question was genuine, but INO was one of the first (technically, the 2nd) drive through restaurant to open back in 1948. The name was meant to convey that you get food quickly.

In-N-Out is a little controversial in online discussions because people on the internet just love to be contrarian for whatever reason, but out in the physical realm, it’s got an extremely dedicated following. The food is pretty decent for what it is, it’s also really inexpensive for what it is, and the company has ridiculously high standards for food safety, cleanliness, service, etc. They’re kind of an outlier in the fast-food burger world because they’re still totally family-owned, and the current owner is very sentimental about ‘preserving her grandparents’ legacy’ by not compromising on virtually anything.

The food is all as fresh as can be, the meat comes from company owned distribution centers where it’s produced from start to finish. Goes from cow to hamburger in less than 3 days, the stores don’t even have freezers because they get fresh fresh shipments every 3rd night. Potatoes are peeled, diced and fried on site, all the produce comes as whole tomatoes, onions and heads of lettuce and gets prepped at least twice a day, with any leftovers getting thrown out at the end of the night.

It’s funny because the whole ‘always fresh’ thing kind of negatively impacts the fries in particular in some ways. Fries taste better when they’re more heavily processed. Taking a potato, peeling it, dicing it up, frying it in oil for 5 minutes and serving it is fun to watch (the kitchen is behind a window and is visible from the dining room and drive through), but McDonalds fried taste better haha.

Didn’t mean to rant, I really did enjoy a lot about working there and it can be fun to talk about once in a while.

Okay, so I kind of lied, when I set up my radarr/sonarr/transmission/etc docked compose setup earlier this year, I did purchase PIA VPN, which is like $60 per year I believe. Didn’t want to have to think about it anymore, and I can afford it now, so whatever.

But still, over 20 years, that’s like a $1200 savings. When all that you’re realistically risking is having to switch ISPs, and that’s so unlikely that I’ve never met anyone who had to do it, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

Having said that, don’t pirate things without a VPN and blame me when the fuzz comes for ya

Yeah, if they’re going to twist my arm, that’s one thing haha. Surprised that your ISP actually took action.

I’ve always thought it had something to do with absolving themselves if liability.

From what I understand, companies hired by copyright owners send a DMCA request to whichever ISP owns the IP addresses that show up in their honeypots.

ISP has to act on those requests in some way, so they send a sternly worded letter that basically says “we have been notified that your network was used to download copyrighted material illegally. Piracy is bad, you naughty boy/girl. If this continues, we may have to take action which could include canceling your service (don’t worry we won’t because we want your money)”.

Hypothetically, they could turn your information over to the digital rights company, who then could hypothetically file charges against you, but there is established judicial precedent in the US that says that showing that activity came from a specific IP address isn’t enough to convict an individual of a crime without more evidence. Could have been anyone in the household, or it could have been someone who hacked into the network and used it for piracy.

If we want to get even more hypothetical, they could try to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, seize your device, and look for evidence there, which could be used to convict you. But that is an insane amount of effort to go after one of the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded an episode of game of thrones an Ubuntu ISO.

They do pull out all of those stops going after the original uploaded, though, but if that’s you you’re using way more than a VPN.

Okay, I see this so much, but I have been pirating virtually all of my media downloading Linux ISOs (in the US) without a VPN for… 20 years?

I’ve gotten about a dozen letters from my ISP and I just chuck ‘‘em in a bin.

iPhones get OS updates for ~6 years, security patches for longer. In 2021, apple updated a 9 year old phone with a security patch.

Apple is objectively the only way to go if you want a device that you’ll be able to use for >5 years.

Ah, but then they’d have to use an iPhone if they want to keep their device for 10 years, and everyone knows Apple is evil doesn’t let you use old phones. /s

Hilarious that that only phone OEM that meaningfully supports hardware past 5 years is the one that the goofy goobers here love to shit on for checks notes not letting them use older hardware.

The good news for you is that most 10 year old phones have user serviceable batteries, so you’re free to keep using those if you want.

Not much you can do about software updates, unless you want to pay significantly more for a new phone to cover the cost of OEMs having to pay their engineers to build those updates for the dozens of phones that get released over a 10 year window.