I stopped using Bandcamp when Epic bought them. Looks like they've sold it to Songtradr, who also bought 7digital (another music store that offered DRM-free FLAC files).
I've never heard of Songtradr. Does anyone have info on their history or ethics? I would love to have Bandcamp back as an artist-friendly, customer-friendly, relatively independent source of music, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
I mean, what can be done? If you want or need to use the thing you almost have no choice.
We have to act collectively.
Don't buy products or use services that require personal info. Of course, this means being willing to make do without some things, at least until they're convinced/forced to change or alternatives appear. In cases where the thing is a necessity, push back (clearly, articulately, and firmly) before sharing your info. Let them know that they're losing goodwill by being nosy, and that you'll stop buying from them as soon as you can.
Look for products/services that respect our privacy, and support them when possible.
Pass legislation that forbids needlessly collecting such info. Some regions (e.g. European Union, California) have already taken small steps in this direction. We need to take it further, everywhere.
I think it might also be helpful to have some kind of (independently verified) privacy labeling program for products and services. It would ease some of the burden from consumers when shopping around, and could become an easy marketing tool for companies that want to attract customers.
Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and tactical combat. My only significant gripe is that I want more of it: More tales, more character customization... just more. (Although I now see that a cosmetic pack is available; I'll have to check it out.)
Gigantic caught my attention when I was looking for an Overwatch alternative, because of the art and the praise from fans. I wish development hadn't shut down before I had a chance to play it. (I hear there's an unofficial client and server out there somewhere, though, so maybe I'll get to at least try the work-in-progress that was never finished.)
protestors are “probably not moving the needle at all,” he says. “Nobody is going to listen. It’s a bunch of noise. And don’t be surprised when people are going to investigate you because you made their life difficult.”
"hey man, get off social media. Go buy a lake house, get a beach house."
From the president and targeting instructor:
“Why not take advantage of information the bad guys share willingly online? After all, they have friends lists, too,”
So this company is run by rich men who take tax money to persecute taxpayers, and view people exercising their right to protest as "bad guys". I guess it shouldn't surprise me that this is the kind of garbage that modern law enforcement agencies hire to help them oppress citizens.
It's embarrassing that we still haven't put a stop to government overreach through the loophole of private companies doing the dirty work. I would like judicial reform, please.
We need something like this to be enshrined in the law of the land
I suspect that if we taught our people to value education, and made it easily available to them, we wouldn't need to enshrine this particular issue (or many others for that matter) in law.
I like it a lot. The fact that it translates entirely on my machine, without revealing to some corporation what I'm translating, is indeed a killer feature.
(Now if only we could link headlines that state the key information instead of baiting people into clicks.)
And I don’t think it is reasonable to expect people to understand the basics.
If we assumed everyone asking a question knows nothing at all of the surrounding topic, and responded at length addressing every related detail instead of what was asked, our answers would be tedious, and often annoying. It's called overexplaining (among other things). It's usually better to tailor the answer to the cues given by the person asking, and let them ask more questions if necessary.
If they did, then they wouldn’t have asked.
OP didn't ask about the basics. They clearly know them already, as we can see from the language and specificity of their question. I was happy to answer and provide a link for deeper detail.
But then someone else came along who apparently knew less than OP did, and decided express anger at me for not preemptively guessing and catering to their unstated special needs, in an answer that wasn't intended for them in the first place. That was incredibly entitled and rude.
This answer makes me so angry like revisiting trauma from learning programming.
If you bothered to read the documentation, which exists in abundance on the web, in many books, in the built-in manuals of various operating systems and dev tools, and which I also linked in my answer, you would see a full explanation with clear examples.
But you can't be bothered with any of that, and instead expect other people to spend their time writing custom tutorials just for you?
Your anger is misplaced. Please consider taking a walk.
I just remember asking questions early on and getting answers more confusing that are even harder to parse
When you ask people questions about their field of knowledge, and they don't know you, it's reasonable for their answers to assume you know the rudimentary basics. (Just as it would be reasonable for a fourth-year group to assume a that a stranger asking them questions has at least taken the first-year class.) Asking beyond your level of experience is not necessarily bad, but you should be ready to describe what you don't understand about the answer, so that people can either elaborate with a helpful level of detail or send you to a forum more appropriate for your needs. For example:
Programmer time is more expensive than computer time.
That might excuse inefficiency if all of these things were true:
The programmers (or their employers) were buying new computers for all their users
The new computers were fast enough to keep slow software from wasting users' time
The electricity to run them was free and without pollution
The resources consumed and waste produced by that upgrade cycle had no impact on the environment
What's really happening here is that producers of software are making things cheaper and easier for themselves by shifting and multiplying costs onto the users and the environment.
The amount of waste is staggering. It's part of why I haven't enjoyed professional software development in years.
You don't need to go on a research project to see the personal info fields in a sign-up form.
For more complicated stuff, a labeling program would help.