What's a service you’ve been using forever that hasn’t enshitified?
We all know the struggle of beloved services slowly going downhill. What’s one service, tool, or website you’ve been using for years that’s still great and hasn’t turned to crap?
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Wikipedia.
Though I could do without the endless donation blockups.
I can forgive Wikipedia and Internet Archive for the spam. Both sites are incredibly valuable and completely ad-free.
They are one of the highest achievements of humanity, imho, that even make me feel proud to be a human.
It's hard not to try to support them.
The "spam" is for them to operate, not maximise their profits.
It's not that simple and transparent actually. Wikipedia doesn't really need those donations to operate. They have money reserves for many years of expenses. I don't have a great source right now but this article looks decent. I didn't read the whole thing though.
Well shit, I guess I'll start donating
I see nothing wrong with that.
I just think it's fair to say the way they ask for donations is at least a little bit disingenuous.
yeah agreed
I came here to say both of those things about the Internet Archive, but I also hope both of those orgs get tons of donations regularly because I wouldn't want to live in a world without them
I just pay the 52$ once a year and know I've done my part for knowledge.
You know what?
I’m gonna start doing that.
It's not just the spam, there is other enshittification like the endless co-option with AI companies and private info disclosure (aka surveillance capitalism) under the self-serving excuse of being anonymized or aggregated.
Just found these custom ad block filters. Seems to be working so far
You can login and it'll stop with the pop ups for a year.
Linux
It just keeps getting better and more polished.
I think Linux enshitifcation will happen when Linus Torvalds is no longer the benevolent dictator. I assume bigtech would add more DRM crap for more usecases etc, regular (unintentional) userspace breaking for desktop users since development would be focused for server/cloud computing etc.
Well thankfully FOSS allows anyone to fork anything, so I imagine there will always be decent distros out there.
There's still danger here. While anyone can fork, it's painful and work-intensive. A well-funded actor could fork something useful, add a bunch of features the community wants, and do a shitty job of committing back. Once most of the community stops using the old stuff and the devs go back to their lives, we can lose control of useful stuff.
Stuff like when Signal enshittifies. It has enough inertia and spin up cost that the forks barely see any traffic.
The community is already full of so many people who would be willing to make actual, privacy-based distros and prorgrams.
FOSS exists because there are so many creative people who just want to make this shit for fun and the fuck of it. And I think most of them are not fascists.
Torvolds doesn't make distros. The work that he's doing isn't highly creative. It's boring pain and no one else really wants to take on. He doesn't have a lot of competition, and hopefully, when he moves on, that vacuum gets another dedicated masochist and doesn't just usher in a bunch of people bickering and at each other's throats.
We need to protect Linus at all costs.
I hope not. Linus surrounds himself with good people (like Greg Kroah-Hartman) who will take over the reigns and most likely continue the legacy in his name.
Linux and the ecosystem are freaking amazing
Steam
This! Steam is the only proprietary program I use on my Linux machines that I'm actually happy with and don't want to get rid of
yeah I just hope they can stay this good. I like them but am always thinking about when I have to ditch it when they get some fool at the helm.
I may need a plan if the Australian government bans me from having an account with Steam without giving them my ID because it's "social media" (this isn't confirmed, the brain fart has been carelessly thrown into the world by the national e-Karen, Steam might be exempt).
Their size & net worth vs enshitification levels are suspiciously high!!
Gabe & co better not die out before they turn it/some parent company into a nonprofit.
I think there are three reasons for this:
That second point got me thinking about Nebula (the streaming service). I don't believe it'll be enshittification even though it has exclusives. I wonder why that is.
Idk, plenty of companies that tick all three boxes and are not like this at all.
A single owner vs a company without a principal shareholder & how they threat humans is just a gamble.
Overall it does have to do with ownership & how the company culture was built tho - in Valve there are like 20 people running a billon monies company. They all have enough, and are happy.
Oh, and Valve it's def a "for profit" c company, being an actual non-profit is a completely different thing.
A for-profit company is a very specific thing. It means a company that's required, by law, to put profit above everything else. Valve may be a for-profit company but as far as I know it isn't.
Isn't Nebula owned/ran by content creators? Or have I misunderstood what that service is entirely?
It is. And I guess that's probably enough.
Nebula exclusives make sense and are being employed. Nebula technically has a monopoly on that content and that's why I was confused about why I wasn't worried about Nebula enshittifying. I guess Youtube-adjacent content is mostly interchangable so missing out on exclusive content isn't on the same level as missing out on a cultural touchstone TV show.
Also Nebula just isn't big enough to enshittify. It needs a far larger market share first.
Voicemeeter
Overwolf
Reaper
VLC
PCPartpicker
Ninite
There’s probably some others I’m missing.
YES to Reaper. No surprise that the original developer of Winamp makes an amazing DAW.
Doesnt overwolf rely on ads?
Isn't Overwolf's business model literally monetizing and profiting from modding communities? Curseforge and Overwolf are the epitome of enshittification.
Yeah.. over wolf was enshittified from the start lol
At least to me, Overwolf is the third or fourth iteration, following acquisitions, buyouts, restructurings, etc. The original FTB launcher worked perfectly fine. It’s mostly just obnoxious now and I make sure not to have it running in the background. No direct rent-seeking behavior just yet, I don’t have an account on there and it’s not a problem.
Right now I have it on my computer just use it to update packs that are only available there and then yoink them straight into MultiMC.
AFAIK it is owned by Curse and I guess those guys make most of their money from those godawful wikis and their ads.
I thought I’d check this before posting it, and it turns out it’s the other way around. Overwolf bought Curse. Worse, Overwolf is a company based out of Tal Abib… that’s two discoveries in one day. I was looking into getting a CaribouMini until I learned where that comes from. Less than two hundred kilometers away from me as the
missilecrow flies (and sadly, has flown). Great. Fucking great.The shitty thing is that a lot of cool pack creators only publish through Overwolf, so I don’t want to delete it just yet, but I don’t like this at all. At best a minor security risk, at worst I don’t even want to know. I just thought it was just some shitty ad company’s Curse buyout as a billboard for more ads. For all the issues I might have with Nexus Mods, I don’t think they’re quite this bad. Concerning that this is the de facto standard repository of MC mods.
I’m ok with things relying on ads to make a product free. Someone has to pay for a product or service, if I don’t want to pay for it, then show me an ad and let someone else pay for it. The thing that overwolf and more specifically curseforge do that keeps them out of the enshitification category for me is they simplify modding of games.
I’ve been around since the early days of video game modding and know how hard it used to be. They have streamlined it to the point that if someone has created a mod it is a simple button click to download, and install, and then keep the mod up to date. You can even create and share collections of mods and mod packs. And if a modder has added a donate button, it’s a single click to donate to the modder. It’s everything I want out of the modding community with none of the headache, and it’s been like that for years.
I recently bought a replacement PC for my dad because of windows 11 (though his old computer was also over 10 years old so it was a somewhat fair upgrade, anyhow). Someone suggested I use Ninite to quickly bootstrap a lot of the programs he'd use and I was honestly surprised. It was genuinely no-nonsense and got the job done. A rare nice thing in Windows...
There is also WinGet.
Sure, I'll add to that.
Is QR bittorent different from qbittorrent or was that a typo?
Typo. My bad!
Tenacity as the most successful Audacity fork after their Telemetry debacle.
Feel like overwolf was out of the gate pre-enshittyfied
Avoided it like the plague
Local library
i been to some that don't have books
Those are called blockbusters and have been gone for some time.
Plz, bro.
Where can I haz shares?
Need lambo.
Most of those are programs rather than services.
That's kind of telling in itself to be honest. Services for most people these days mean subscription (or some kind of recurring cost). The nature of the overwhelming majority of businesses means they will be looking to increase profits. One extremely common way is to degrade the service you provide slightly. Increasing ads, lowering quality, etc.
One of the only exceptions I would say is Steam. But people could argue that Steam isn't a true service because it's closer to a store front, at that point you're arguing semantics though.
There's also self hosting a service to consider? How would that count in this instance. I self host a few things like nextcloud, Plex, and others. Yes it's still a program and technically a service as well?
If you're self hosting Nextcloud, you don't have to worry about the server operator (i.e. you) enshittifying it against you. There is still some concern towards the software supplier, as we keep seeing with Firefox, but users can react to that.
I'm not really familiar with the situation around Plex since I've heard some mixed things, but I don't use it and have lost track of what is what.
I would consider Firefox to be a bad actor but it's a bit more nuance than the situation with, say, Chrome. Firefox is involved in the server side as well (i.e. evolving standards that enshittify the web more and more). I would like to have had the web standards frozen some years ago. BIFL should apply to software as well as to physical products.
Open Office? It hasn't been touched in a decade. LibreOffice is the true continuation of Open Office, which was forked off after Oracle bought Sun and OO had been left with poor governance and slow updates.
Open Office finally ended up under the Apache foundation but hasn't been maintained since 2014.
LibreOffice has had continual development with both bug fixes and new features, and the Open Document Foundation gives it good governance and independence as an open source project..
Honestly, switch to Libre Office.
Thanks for the heads-up. Got both on my pc but i instinctively open up OO when i need to do writing. Will give Libre another chance now :)
honestly I assume when someone says open office they mean libre office.
I've tried so many times to switch to LibreOffice, but as far as I can tell it's just not made for novelists. It regularly shits itself when dealing with a 300k manuscript that Word has never given me problems with.
I genuinely tried using it for a full year, using it on Linux even, to see if it was just me being cranky about changes to my writing routine...and maybe it's still just me, but I eventually went back to Windows and my old copy of Microsoft Word 2010.
As far as I can tell, using Libre Office (or Open Office) as an actual writer seems to be a niche enough use case that developers don't fix some of the issues that crop up that are specific to the needs of a novelist. It also gets laggy and unreliable for long word counts.
But if you need to make a basic sign to be printed out, or letters, or use it for short things like so many people use Word for in an office setting, it probably is ok.
I just had trouble with it behaving poorly with my long-format works in ways that MS Word never crapped out on me for.
You're still using Winamp?
Which version? I never really moved on to Winamp 3 (migrated to foobar back then), has it evolved further from that? Does it run on Linux?
I still sometimes miss my Winamp 2 days with a Calvin & Hobbes skin and spending hours with its visualization features as a young teenager.
WACUP is the nice new alternative unless you want WinXP support retained
on linux i use audacious, works well
On Linux I have found my audio player of choice (Sayonara Player), I'm specifically asking for Winamp because I have nostalgia for it; and because I don't know any player that has its extensive visualization features.
i see. in that case wacup on wine would do the job. (it's basically a slow wip winamp reverse engineering job, based on the last aol version and slowly replacing parts of it with updated/reimplemented stuff)
Yes forgot about it for some time when i saw someone still using it. Will tell you which version and if it works on Linux as soon as i'm done setting up Bazzite. Yeah the skins where a blast back in the days, nowadays i'm only using the vanilla one :)
WinAmp is long gone, no? Audacious is the closest looking replacement. I'm sure it's what you probably meant? maybe? lol.
Still working on win10, didn't set up Linux fully yet, still dual-booting but i'll give updates when i figured everything out.
7zip and VLC.
Actual paid services? Basically only Steam.
FOSS is the only software you can count on to not start nickel and diming you once the subscriber count starts to level out.
30% markup. Predatory currency conversion policies. Recent scandals with Steam censoring games on behest of Australian Right nuts groups.
You missed 3 times in a row.
The 30% cut thing has been industry standard since the dawn of time. Valve goes out of its way to make exceptions to this rule down to 10% in cases of very high volume but everyone only talks about the 30 since thats all they hear about. Only an Epic Games apologist would parrot this as a talking point. Plus, developers are not getting nothing for that 30%, especially games that use Valve's Steam networking services. Unlike Microsoft and Sony who also take 30% cuts, Valve doesn't charge $10,000 per game patch to have someone review and approve it to be published.
The regional pricing goes both ways. There was literally a game recently users were complaining about NOT getting it because the publisher opted out or something, where the regional pricing would have made the game affordable but in USD (Valves country of origin and therefore default), it was exhorbitantly priced. And this one wasn't even Valve's fault.
Valve did not censor games directly on behest of the Australian nutjobs, they fought back against them pretty hard, but Valve is ultimately beholden to the payment processors (who they also pushed back on). Once Visa and MasterCard started threatening to pull services, Valve was put in a "comply or die" situation. If they didn't do as they were told they wouldn't be able to accept money with anything but Stripe or Bitcoin. They literally lost Paypal as a payment option over this fight.
I think its very dishonest of you to frame these points as enshittification. This term means the intentional degradation of a product or service for the sole motive of increasing profits. For point 1, the whole industry literally started off like that. For point 2, it was literally an attempt at equity (valve may not get the deltas correct but in some countries they're losing money on games). And for point 3, you might be able to argue it but ultimately it wasn't for profits so much as it was survival.
If you wanted to shitsling at Valve, you should have mentioned how Valve invented lootboxes in TF2 and then exacerbated the issue in CS:GO/CS2, releasing that awful plague onto the industry.
Why are you trying to offend me? I didn't call you names, why are you doing that?
Visa and Mastercard aren't the only available payment options in Steam. Yielding to them was for profit.
Survival? Steam has enough profit to create it's own payment processor and make it popular.
He didn’t. He said people who parrot it are.
Unless you do, there is no reason to be offended. Up to you.
And no; realistically, if you lose Visa and Mastercard, you can close shop. Obviously it’s for profit, because a 99% reduction in turnover means all employees out of work.
Yes, I took that number out of thin air, but I know most people would never bother as that is what they have.
Maybe it’s different in your country.
Me:
Them:
You:
Confused noises.
Semperverus said anyone who says that 30% is too much is an Epic Game apologists, whatever that is.
Semperverus is insinuating anyone who says that 30% is amount taken by Steam is wrong, and saying that is parroting, and should be instead thought as "Poor Steam is forced to take 30% because this is industry standard", but Valve, and I quote here, "goes out of its way to make exceptions to this rule".
Doesn't change the fact that bending over backwards for Visa and Mastercard and banning some content because of their whims is enshittification. The service is worse than it was before, in the name of profit.
No, again, he said anyone that parrots it. If you keep repeating that argument over and over, then your are parroting it. That's what parrots do; they repeat stuff.
If you are offended, then it's time for some self reflection. That is not an ad-hominem, but a blanket statement and opinion.
And no, you're being selective with the truth. You cherry pick bits of what he said to present your argument in a better light. I don't entertain that, my friend.
Your last point is true, but again you are being selective with how you present it.
If I point a gun at you and say you die unless you do something against your personal morality, you'd most likely still do it. That is in the name of survival.
Yeah, you'll be able to go to work tomorrow and make money because you're not dead, but nobody can accuse you of doing it for profit. That is what you are in essence doing here and it's a bad take in every possible way except morally.
Steam fought back and lost. They could morally tell Visa and MasterCard to pound sand and die with their heads held high, but I'm guessing they like you as my potential murder victim above, chose to keep existing instead.
Signal is good so far. Firefox is teetering on the edge, but it's also good so far (poor little fox). Lemmy and Mastodon are both great, but maybe that's EZ mode because they're built as alternatives to proprietary social media sites.
I pay for ArsTechnica and I feel that I get a lot of value out of doing so. And keep in mind, being a paying subscriber of a service does not safeguard the service from enshittification, so that's quite great
Get LibreWolf . They take FF builds and rip out the telemetry/ads/AI/enshit.
It's... beautiful
Some people miss this but Librewolf uses most of the code from Firefox...so its still VERY dependent upon Firefox developers/services to do its thing. Its still better, but if Firefox suffers, then Librewolf does too.
Theres an excellent graphic here: https://codeberg.org/librewolf/source
I used to compile and contribute a long time ago. Its pretty easy to get it working and make adjustments...when you know what Firefox does in the background.
Thank you for your past service o7
(I want to normalize open source contributors getting the same kind of recognition for providing a Public Good that we currently give to teachers, de-escalatory police, and following-legal-orders military)
Until sites don’t work because they block too much.
I’ve settled on Waterfox.
Linux has become better and better and now its incredibly good, better then windows and mac OS if you just spend a few weeks learning the small differences.
Yeah I have to say I should have moved over earlier but it is literally better. Like osx initially was massive as its unix base gave it a great gui with unix terminal power but linux now blows that away (and apple enshitified since but even comparing to its heyday)
My regular open source tools:
I do like Inkscape a lot, but GIMP simply isn't a viable alternative for photoshop for most users. The interface is horrid and the capabilities are limited. Adobe knew what they were doing with their strategic buyouts of developers.
There are definitely some things PS can do that GIMP can't, but I'd argue it's fine for anyone who isn't coming from Photoshop expecting all those features. I've only ever used GIMP, so it seems great to me.
Someone on the fediverse awhile back had mentioned with the right plugins its much better. https://gimp.cc/plugins.html they even had something that makes the interface more like ps. Not sure what all they were though.
I love OpenSCAD and also realize it is a super backward way to make 3D models, according to most other people. I don’t bother even mentioning OpenScad as an option for most people, I know it is only for certain people.
I tried my hand at modeling and designing using more traditional CAD programs that work more visually. I have good spatial reasoning and visualization abilities but I could never get the breakthrough to a point where I felt literate in those tools.
Constructive Solid Geometry approaches just work for my brain. Now when I need a part designed, I can quickly sketch it out in rough code and I feel confident seeing myself as a ‘designer’ now. Other more ‘visual’ tools waste my time as I get sucked into finger painting instead of working out the fundamentals of the design.
With the code-first framework, I have to really think about what the part needs to do before I tweak the code.
I've worked with 2D CAD programs like Autocad for years, I enjoy working with them. Once I tried 3D modeling, I found the experience frustrating--half of my time was spent typing in parameters anyways. I'm sure with enough practice I could get familiar with it, but modeling 3D shapes with a 2D tool just seems like a losing battle.
There are times when the sculpting ability would be nice, but it doesn't come up that often for me. When I need more complex shapes, I'll use Inkscape to make a 2D profile and import it into OpenSCAD. So far it's been working well for me.
GIMP is SO much better than it used to be, too!
Kiseido Go Server (KGS)
If KGS's UI looks like it hasn't been updated in 20 years, that's because it's already perfect. There's no ads, it's purely functional, it does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. If you click on "KGS Plus" you have the option to spend money on lectures given by human pros. Otherwise it's completely free, and it's still an active go server that's been around forever.
Is that where Sai played the Meijin
Based on time of the anime's development, and of course the fact that it is japanese, more likely IGS was the thought process at that time. KGS was the standard in america... but not the primary choice for China/Japan.
PiHole
Not an overly surprising one, but the arch wiki has been an incredible source of info with no ads, tracking, or any of the modern web bullshit for as long as I’ve used it.
They’ve been hit with some pretty major DDOS attacks recently and they’ve done a really good job of keeping the important parts of the service as accessible as possible - they haven’t resorted to buying into cloudflare’s monopoly or blocking vpn users despite either or both being the easy way out.
For anyone else who’s relied on them as much as I have, now would be a great time to donate!
I've never used Arch yet still use their wiki quite a lot.
For real. The number of times I've been working problems on a Raspberry Pi and my searching ends up there is wild.
Agnostic:
Windows:
Mac:
The Pirate Bay
That's plain wrong that site is littered with viruses and ads these days. 1337x is much better.
Also snowfl and eztvx haven't let me down yet
Is it? I use https://piratebayproxy.info/ these days, as well as uBlock on "medium mode" so maybe I just don't see any of it.
It's littered with uploads which are plain viruses and other garbage. And lacking many things I searched. I found 1337x much better. Rarbg too but I think that was taken down.
FMHY.net
+1 davinci… it’s incredible what you get in the free version, and the studio version is getting more and more worth the money in a value add way rather than a need it way
Which reminds me, I've had a few dropout shows on my jellyfin for a while but really need to drop a sub to support. They do great stuff
I swear, I feel like I’ve watched (or have shown off to people unfamiliar with dropout) A Game Most Changed like 5 times.
Or if they’re straight, Sam Says. Lol
My local ISP. They are not a monopoly, they are local only, they provide fiber and great customer service. You call and they answer instantly, they don't treat you like an idiot when you call. They don't restrict anything and you have unlimited data. It's very simple.
Last month T-mobile bought them after years of great service so I expect the enshittification to come any day now, but so far nothing has changed.
I don't think I've heard of anyone who loves their ISP since the early days of transitioning from 56K modems.
It's increasingly rare.
Mine too!
Still local, small time with a few thousand customers. They don’t upcharge internet prices if you skip linear TV.
All emplyees are local and I see them drive around.
I don’t care how good your pitch is, Mr. Salesman at my door: I’m sticking with what I’ve got!
Irfanview https://www.irfanview.com/
It's literally one of the only reasons I'm still using Windows.
No other image viewer is as fast and as useful.
Just installed ifranview via winetricks install program option. Ifranview works on Linux 😀
It's the VLC of porn photo viewing
People still use porn photos?
Why not?
Because videos exist?
alternatively you could use your imagination. get used to it without porn and you'll have better sex too.
I'm sure you have your reasons, but I just cannot imagine continuing to use Windows over image viewing software?
xnview for me, and it's cross-platform
Wow, I used that late 90s or early 2000s it was great.
I will have to try it under WINE in Linux
Same here. Every time I have used Linux or MacOS for long periods of time as my main OS. I run into that moment when I need/want to look at images (or even just one), and all the other fun things go right out the door. It is such a weird problem that other viewers can't manage to "feel correct," Always amazes me at how this one program is the cause of such a specific emotional response from me. lol
I try out Xnview from time to time on Windows to try and adapt to it, but always run into just something (but it is a very good program and is why I make the effort to check-in on it at all). I think that in Xnview's case, it is just waaaay too much going on and even with the massive amount of settings I can't find the ones that "just work" for me. Just end up installing it through WINE and deal with the random weird things that come from using it that way (most tend to be the UI looking so different due to not matching the OS and presenting the fake C: when opening a file from the menu). And still "feels" much better.
Other more simple viewers also don't "feel" right due to not having some of the additional settings/features Irfanview has for light editing. Would maybe help in the case of Xnview if someone was able to mod it to have Irfanview look (kind of like the various mods of GIMP to layout like Photoshop) and hide the tons of advanced stuff that Irfanview doesn't have in sub menus or a toggle to switch to the normal setup. Though I can get it kind of close if I play around with moving stuff around on the main toolbar. So still like the best next option I have used.
Hey i really love xnview but why do you install it with wine? Xnview is also available on linux.
Sorry if my wording was bad. I meant installing Irfanview with WINE. Xnview having versions for the different platforms is a major good thing. If I can get myself to use it more than I do Irfanview, then I at least know any future jumps to daily using Linux or Mac OS will work fine (at least for image viewing lol).
Rss.
It's cool yeah. But not unenshittified. Many sites enshittify their own RSS feeds, demanding workarounds like caching, reformatting, or scraping, using tools like RSSHub.
You are very correct on how lots of sites have made RSS basically a method for just spamming you with crap. They just give a headline and link (not even a paragraph to know what the thing is about). But RSS itself still works the way it used to. It is the sites that enshittify the feeds.
Yep! I am hopelessly addicted to RSS. On a daily basis I probably use a thousand feeds minimum in some capacity
But the problem is the lack of good, simple RSS readers on mobile. I miss Pulse.
Honestly it's better to use an RSS server and then manage the feeds in one single RSS feed so you don't have to shuffle around any kind of local readers. That will make most of them a lot more bearable since their biggest issue is organization. For editing lists of RSS feeds I recommend RSSGuard as it has the best filesystem-like management. Otherwise just use regular expressions on the OPML file
Sockethub (RSS/XMPP/IRC bridge) for Conversations/Cheogram or the Delta/Arcane Chat bots are my personal choice because chronologically bumping the feeds makes sense to me, muting/archiving/custom notifications is easy to manage, as is inviting collaborators.
I actually have invented something better than Google Reader (including the social aspect) but it's kind of a secret rn 🤫
This sounds awesome! If what you're talking about is a new software you're working on, hit me up! I have time to spare for some coding and have literally considered writing a better feed reader for myself or finding an OSS project to contribute to
It's pretty slapdash and unprofessional using a variety of other people's projects but I will make a guide for easy, reliable assembly of a federated google reader equivalent when I am satisfied with my shitty fork. The whole misskey fork community is a travesty tho bc misskey has some ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴᴀʙʟᴇ design choices. Will keep ya ppsted
But you don't even need the website to support rss, if they enshitified the official rss feed can't you just paste in the url and bypass it?
Sadly, no. Look over the RSSHub docs to see the measures people take to scrape various websites and services such as Telegram or Twitter. Instagram is flat out impossible
Craigslist
Hasn't changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more--i think the only thing I wasn't able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there's no bloat, no ads, don't need an account unless you're posting or saving searches.
The site still looks like it came right out of the late 90's and that's all it needs to be
Every few years I'll look for something on craigslist and every time I'm amazed that it's still going strong and it's still exactly the same.
That's different, those are open source projects, not walled off paid service from companies
Do RSS feeds count as a "service"? I fear one day they will go away and that will be the end of my efficient way of keeping up with things I am interested in.
Steam. I think a lot of people are unappreciative of how user friendly and open it is. When Gabe bites the dust I think it's going to get very shit very quick.
Yeah when hes gone it will go the way of ea and ubisoft, no question. There's so much untapped market there. First thing will be steam subscriptions. Starting at 10 dollars a month. Then limiting your game downloads to 2 per month so no installing and uninstall ing as you wish.
Mark my words. Prepare to leave steam.
The risk is real, but it depends. If it goes pubic it's all over. If it stays private or worker-owned it stands a chance.
Definitely best to keep steam away from the pubics
foss stuff - slackware, seamonkey, emacs, keepassxc, fvwm, etc
nonfree stuff - xnview, wacup, winrar
websites - wallhaven, hackernews, etools
I want Winrar to sell merch with licenses included. I want an official "I bought Winrar and all I got was this dumb shirt" shirt.
man i'd instantly get one! i'm still rocking an unlicensed copy.. kinda feel sorry for them. tho i use 7zip more recently
A bit more niche, but I'd say Roll20 for online TTRPG's. It has quirks, absolutely, but it has gotten better overall and is free with optional paid plans that offer good benefits which are not necessities.
Soma.fm
Stack Exchange. I know, controversial, as people complain about rules being there too strict and community not being too welcoming nowadays, but still a real goldmine of knowledge. All of that with no ads, no spam, no dark patterns.
FurAffinity and e621.
Real
Toilet
Not sure if they qualify as "services," but discogs, rateyourmusic and genius are holding up fairly well. IMDB is also pretty good, still.
I swear I ran into a problem with IMDb having some basic stuff like "what has this actor been in recently" stuck behind their IMDbPro paywall at some point in the last couple years.
But I just went and checked a few movies and shows, can't seem to replicate that issue anywhere.
I either hallucinated it, or they rolled back the enshittification after seeing a drop in traffic, not sure
They toyed around with moving things in and out of public. I'm not sure i've seen the what else get chained off, but for a while you coudn't get much information about anyone. That's when I started using Wiki
Sure, it's still useable. But the redesign a few years ago made it harder to use and I'm still mad about them removing their forums. Who dares to talk about movies and TV shows on a platform meant for that.
IMDb is so enshittified nobody uses it anymore. Bad example.
what do people use instead?
ddns.net
Let's you register an easy to remember domain name linked to an IP address you specify. It's useful for self hosting or avoiding having to buy a domain name.
Free version makes you confirm every month that you still want the domain name, but that's just a couple of clicks from the email they send you.
Thank you for this. Not sure how I've managed to completely miss it.
Procreate. I have payed for it once and it gives me to this day free updates. I had still so much fun drawing.
For a moment there I did not know that word is the name of a software application. Reading your sentence literally is... odd.
Chaturbate
My local library.
Eh, if we are talking about online stuff then VLC.
VLC for android is somehow getting worse with updates via loss of features.
usenet
7zip
qttabbar
everything
windows 10 ms paint
windows 10 notepad
sublime, I think
Can't mention Sublime without also a nod to Notepad++
MUDs are fine
Oh that takes me back. MUDs are still a thing?
Yep! Most don't really have much population, but very much still have a number that exist!
Wouldn't it be great to have a search engine that would bring up sites and services like those in this thread, and exclude enshittified trash like youtube, amazon, etc etc.
With some manual configuration, that's something you can do with Kagi!
Good point. I would prefer to crowdsource the whitelist I think. Also, it would be cool to do stuff like search youtube but bring up a link to a dis-enshittified youtube intermediary.
That is also something you can do with Kagi. 😆 I have it set up so that all YouTube results redirect me to Invidious, as well as Reddit and Twitter for their respective frontends.
Care to share how you are doing this in Kagi?
To create a redirect:
For example, to replace www.youtube.com with inv.nadeko.net (an Invidious instance), you can use the rule
I've also created a copy of this rule for any youtu.be results, as well as X/Twitter and Reddit for their respective frontends. This will work for any pair of websites if you can simply replace the domain in the URL and have it pull up the correct content on the alternative website.
Thanks for this!
Where the heck is this advanced page linked to? Maybe it's not shown by default on mobile, but there is no advanced menu section or button in the settings page for me when I view it on my phone.
Directly typing the advanced url works of course but this is super frustrating that it's not visible for me otherwise. I wonder what else I'm not seeing as I mostly interact with Kagi on mobile
You sould be able to get to it under settings > advanced > "Open Redirects"
If only they didn’t pay Yandex, a company affiliated with Russian govt
It comes down to the fact that Kagi's first priority in search is providing the best results, so they're not going to turn down access to another search api based on politics.
Edit: Stract.com it is what Google was like in early 2000s. It's not perfect, but its free till the dude dev running it in his basement needs paid support
that looks like some kinda weird consultancy site. maybe that ship has sailed already?
Ah crap, my bad. I misspelled it. https://stract.com/
much better!
1password, Fingers crossed though
I only started using it after the introduction of the subscription model. So from my point of view it hasn’t gotten worse, yet..
Playing cards. More or less unchanged from 30 years ago. Real nice, games still play the same too.
Oh also my local electric company is still providing well for not too much money.
Tailscale
I haven't been using it forever because I was just recently forced to switch to it from Pocket (courtesy of Mozilla's enshittification journey), but Instapaper seems to have been going strong since 2008.
For books and audiobooks:
The Guttenberg project
Libro.fm
I was so happy to learn about Libro.fm randomly. Makes things so much easier to just download and have on my dedicated audio player. No DRM to strip or having to use their player. Only thing that annoys me about them (along with other audiobook services) is that they list books that they can't sell due to DRM. Most of the time if they don't have a book you just don't get a result, but for some reason they will show some books and I get excited to see them. Just to then load the page and see that they currently can't offer it due to DRM. Would much rather not see the search result. Another mildly annoying thing with their search is that searching for books by authors will include other authors and show results for all their books. Both are just annoyances that aren't deal breakers so long as everything else is kept the same.
musicbrainz
Does rockauto.com count?
https://www.wikivoyage.org/ for travel tips.
https://www.shareyourride.net/ for when I visit some event in another city and need help with driving or costs.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nononsenseapps.feeder.play to keep up with some old forums or RSS sites I still follow.
Piratebay.
I've been using FilmAffinity for a very long time, and it's just as good as ever.
BZflag
All 30 if us who play it agree.
I haven't heard that name since highschool. Great it's still going.
I've been subscribed to Private Eye for about 22 years now. I don't think it has changed all that much in that time. It's not as apolitical as it would claim I think because it suffers from a little bit of Capitalist Realism. It doesn't pull its punches regardless of who it sets its sights on however I feel it fails to tie together overarching themes.
rhymezone.com
https://premiumize.me/
They have always provided downloads from filehosters, torrents, Usenet and a VPN. And at the end of the year, there has always been a good deal to get the service for a whole year (or even two).
It's too good to be true and every year I wonder when they'll enshittify. But they haven't done so, yet.
Ourselves?
Pinboard.in (bookmarking service)
i've got some bad news
https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1819144082427347211#m
Ugh. TIL Thanks.
So what is the point here? That people shouldn't care about their own ideologies? People shouldn't allow the things they believe in to shape how they feel about something?
Makes no fucking sense. I guess we're all supposed to always just go with the first thing we think about everything every time, and never let critical thinking get in the way.
nixos/nixpkgs
Wikipedia.
Opalstack for webhosting.
Commenting for future reference
Are we using the colloquial definition* or the definition of the person who coined the term?
*"Stuff I don't like"
The colloquial definition is still the original one. A handful of people misunderstand and think it means just "is shitty" but mostly it's used correctly.
We have had different experiences.
It's no use. Resistance is futile.
Signed,
Someone Who Raged Against the Destruction of "FUD" Back in the Day
😭
Android ? Kinda ? I have practically only noticed progress since I started using it.
This might change in the near future though
Google is ending AOSP support and has announced they're gonna stop allowing sideloading.
Ok, I might switch to the Apple side then
They will have the same issues, but at least when it works, it works flawlessly