I remember the old AOL promo disks, they gave away to sign up for aol but they were basically a browser and isp iirc. Or atleast thats what i thought it was when i was 10. The point being, there seemed to be a fairly large gap between paying for browser service and browsers selling your first born child's identity to pay for the fines they got for stealing people's data. Im not calling any one or the other out and if you need me to then youre already too fucked to care.

I find it very very very difficult to justify ever spending money on any SaaS and i think its the fault of the browser peeps. The few SaaS ive fucked with used to always be minitool or the otherone for data recovery. I was yound and new to the industry because i didnt have even an email address till i was 33 and that was balls deep in pandemic. The point im getting to tho is that how much fucking service and work are they really putting into a product that is basically running cli commands anyone can usually find and run. Not much changes with 99% of set up pc's so what the fuck could they be updating and slaving over that they can justify some out fucking landish prices.

The most transparent one ive used was as a trial and i did pay for a couple months. That was screaming frog... then i learned everything is already there on the internet anyway so just take the time and scrape it .anually, which lasted about a week and within a month i was able to find keys, access full databases of competators and all by not doing fuck all illegal. Im not talking big companies but still. Am i just too used to working in te mines to know most people would rather pay to have it done than learn or put the work into doing it?

Oh and i almost forgot to bring this full circle. Browsers fucking update almost daily trying to keep up with the internet demands. They always have multiple versions testing diggeremt shit, they are one of the most widely used products and/or services by just about fuckin everyone.

So thats my full circle: microsoft pays people to putout broken products that break other products theyre plugged into. Google mak3s you pay for their security that also ranks highest under most security and data breaches, tinder is just getting paid for buttfucking you into thinking your guna buttfuck someone, i cant fucking believe what they charge now. Partition wizard does the same shit prssing Ctrl and clicking start menu button does on windows (along with tons of other similar software swervice providers who just run cli commands with a gui. ALL OF THEM CHARGING AN ARM AND A LEG meanwhile ive been using ff, ddg and chrome every day got the past 20 years plus. Have never had a security issue i didnt personally cause my self or by using social media nack in the day. But looking accross the field and the players in play, what the fuck are they actually charging for and why are people still paying for the shit.

Unfederated news thread? Unfederated reddit? *i then struggle to explain reddit

Is it social media? Is it a forum?

I live around more tractors than people for context of my audience. I can explain what unfederated aspect is no problem but i sould like my grandpa describing facebook to his older siblings when i try to explain what a lemmy or reddit style forum is to my peers and family.

that it makes you question if victory is even possible.

Its the same person who will never fall for your charm, never gets got by your tricks, incapable of accepting your payouts/bribes, has never and will never lose to you in a face 2 face negotiation. Worst of all tho, is they'll never quit till you quit.

Your biggest obsticle to greater success is always yourself. You win the little battles everyday you make your bed, pack up all your winter gear instead of putting it off, not throwing a brick thru your bosses window. There will never be a K.O. punch. Its the only battlefield that follows you home after punch out and youre victories are 3verything you do that noone will ever notice because your trophy is that tit bit of serotonin your homie neuron sparks up in your honor.

Everyday that you cross that REM finish line is another day that you were victorious over the greatest opponent you will ever face in this world; and all the more reason you can take on anything you put your mind to.

anymore, lol.

I am admittedly low on the learning curve for my understanding of all things IT related. Ive built machines for emulating tho. And depending on what the hardware is, ive downloaded shadder caches for certain cases to improve performance. My very loose understanding of it is they are universal when certain things match like emulator and version. Are they being included in some roms/emulators and i just didnt realize or is there a more technical reason they arent included?

Or would it need to have 1gpu for every 2 screens, meaning a 2gpu setup? Subsequently, would I also need to be running them on like a threadripper motherboard to avoid pcie down scaling each gpu to x8 each instead of x16?

All hypothetical so i apologive for not being able to provide actual specs. Im helping someone setup a mid-tier racing sim with 1 monitor so providing the actual specs Im using would be obsolete. We were just speculating what it would take to build a god-tier racing sim.

Also, I apologize if this isnt the correct community for this post. I didnt find anything when I tried searching different iterations of 'AskTechSupport.'

It'd creat natural triggers for when to pay attention and when its safe to fuck around.

BABUMBUM "OH shit something serious is happening I should prolly pay attention."

Doodotadootadoo "Well no serious shit is going to happen with that kind of up beat shit playing oh look a butterfly..."

This isn't a request for recommendations on how to set this all up, that ship has sailed and all a learning process to be improved on. So what I'm asking is if there is a way to guarantee VSCode program files and appdata content so I can plug in the USB for the meeting and double check/setup the settings so nothing gets mucked up from my PC's setup for the software.

I feel like its set up as it should be but with the way windows just face fucks every sti (sextually transmited integrationfeature) it has into everything it touches, I would feel more confident testing on an environment without VSC installed. It isn't important to anything I'm doing in that I'm not running any code or demonstrating any scripts its just the platform I used for creating a project outline and a universal launcher or interface for the content of the project. (again, I can do a whole other post for people who want to tell me all the ways I should've done this better. I acknowledge I'm n00b as fuck. Just hoping for a brief insight and will decide whether or not it'd be worth doing based on doability difficulty and time to setup.

goal of ask: not fuck up the settings for my desktop while launching vsc from USB to test that vsc and related content doesn't import or use my desktop vsc's files for profile/settings/config/etc ALL WHILE also avoiding the asklemmy scenario where we go through the who setup step by step for how to fix my current setup. That scenario will be c9ming Wednesday or later depending on your local theater show times.

edit: The root cause of this post is that I have a reoccurring problem everytime I'm asked anything to the sentiment of do you want to do xyz to your user profile or to all users using all files globally on every planet... if you can't tell I panic and usually click randomly. The metaphoric version of my problem would go something like:

"Do you want to take this medication orally or as a suppository?" but never remembering which I chose or why there is a pill in my pee hole.

Question was derived from wiping the drive the current OS runs that Partition Wizard runs on before installing a new OS from USB. PW was installed on the pc im working on so I used it instead of doing the cmd line shit at windows setup to wipe the disk. My questions is because im not deleting the disk im actually wiping the disk, where is it storing the code for the wipe disk operation to run from? Further more, if you load up the other options like, creating new partition, assigning letter, etc. how many of these functions can it run after the disk it was installed on was deleted?

It all started by me looking to the year each country was created. I landed on a wikipedia page with a list of countries by date of sovereignty (*not sure how that is defined) and learned Liberia was the oldest country in the world according to wikipedia. Thats also when I learned their flag closely resembles the american flag. The next wikipedia article explained that it was due to the country's founders being former American and Caribbean slaves. .So timeline of flag origins and countries sovereignty dont add up without further research.

During this rabbit hole adventure I also read that the idea credited to George Washington says the American flag was made using the stars from heaven, the red symbolizing the British motherland and white to seperate America from its founding origins.

Im sorry im not including sources cuz its not worth going thru my browser history to re-read each article to know which citation source applies to each point im referencing but I assure you if you start at The Liberian flag article and follow links for the country's origin and the links about their flag being apart of the stars and strips class of flags you'll find sources of everything in this post. I didnt leave wikipedia for any of the shit im posting about.

The paraphrased reference about George's take on the American flag, as far as I could find, seems like a one off from most origins of the American flag. Most of what I read about claims to the origin of design for the American flag say the stars were the colonies, the red was for bravery/sacrafice/courage/valor, white is pretty unanimously considered purity, and blue is the colour of the chief/justice/perseverance.

Even if you buy the meaning behind its colors, you have to see that theyre also qualities required for declaring freedom, right. So did the symbolism of stripes get used to represent freedom from something before the American flag or is it all just accepted propaganda by America and isnt actually any older than the past 200ish years?

Im having beers at bar ordered wings and tipped $2 everything the bartender brings me.

Beer = $6

tip for beer $2

wings = $20ish

Tip for wings from bartender = $2

Total tips = $4

==============================

Same order from waitress/er = $26

Tip = $5.20

Now I know this is micro example but extrapolate this over several drinks with food and the difference swings the other way. The question remains tho, am I tipping correctly?

Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven't had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.

I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.

Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.

I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy's user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.

I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.

As the title says, I updated Firefox, tried searching something in the address bar which is set to search duckduckgo.com and the tab will pop open but get stuck with the loading wheel animation continually spinning. So I go to Google.com search duckduckgo and click on the link, same thing happens. Checked status websites for status of duckduckgo.com and all of them return the status "up and running." So I'm at a loss for what to do.

To clarify the difference between home and main screens: home screen is the folded shut front screen, and main screen is the unfolded open inside wide screen.

So before the most recent Android update was installed, I could select from a list of options for the number of columns and rows that you could place your app icons in. Depending on the selection, it would adjust the size of the app icon accordingly. So, for example, 4x4 would hold larger sized app icons than 6x5. The infuriating part has to do with the fact the home screen is like 2"-3"x4"-6" while the main screen is 4"-6"x4"-6" or double the size of the cover screen. Before the update i could independently set the cover screen to grid size AxA, and then independently set the main screen to grid BxB. The screenshot is just where they used to be located. Iver searched thru all branches of the settings menu tree and found nothing. Fuck I hate when updates remove settings options or a user's freedom to customize shit. The worst part is I dont think I can roll back updates on android either🤬🤬🤬

So I was browsing audiobooks to download when I came accross the title you see in the screenshot. The title reads:

Exposed: How Revealing Your Data and Eliminating Privacy Increases Trust and Liberates Humanity - Ben Malisow

Stopped me mid scroll and had to read the description to see if I understood the title correctly. Sure as shit it really is a book defending the trend of diminishing privacy and justifies the mining of your data.

Against my better judgment I downloaded the tor file and plan on listening to it today. Ill try and edit this post at the end of the day with what the book was like or if I couldn't finish it cuz of how ridiculous it is.

To save the click to read the description from the screenshot:

Discover why privacy is a counterproductive, if not obsolete, concept in this startling new book

It’s only a matter of time - the modern notion of privacy is quickly evaporating because of technological advancement and social engagement. Whether we like it or not, all our actions and communications are going to be revealed for everyone to see. ‘Exposed: How Revealing Your Data and Eliminating Privacy Increases Trust and Liberates Humanity’ takes a controversial and insightful look at the concept of privacy and persuasively argues that preparing for a post-private future is better than exacerbating the painful transition by attempting to delay the inevitable.

Security expert and author Ben Malisow systematically dismantles common notions of privacy and explains how most arguments in favor of increased privacy are wrong; privacy in our personal lives leaves us more susceptible to being bullied or blackmailed; governmental and military privacy leads to an imbalance of power between citizen and state; and military supremacy based on privacy is an obsolete concept.

Perfect for anyone interested in the currently raging debates about governmental, institutional, corporate, and personal privacy, and the proper balance between the public and the private, Exposed also belongs on the shelves of security practitioners and policymakers everywhere.

Its a refreshing experience in a world where products and services will push the legal boundaries in order to:

1. Hide or mask spyware and bloatware

2. Make unauthorized system settings changes.

3. Only offer access to certain features or setting if you downlad their app.

4. Changing everything from opt in as default to opt out being the new default.

5. And the cherry on top is the same companies will also burry the means to contact support while face fucking their useless shit for brains AI bot at every selection you choose.

*lookin at you Google, Microsoft, paypal, amazon, Samsung

Snapchat was just the most recent app I used that triggered this realization but there are literally dozens (*insert Arrested Development's 'never nude' meme) of other products and services that are in the same boat of initially being perceived as annoying but now are viewed in a more appreciated light.

Bonus anecdotal LPT: The simplest way I found to describe the enshitiffication movement to Gen X'ers and Boomers is by explaining to them that its when a company actively engages in implementing changes that lower the quality of the product or service you pay for with the intent of providing a solution option that will either cost more money or force the user to grant the product or service permissions that will, for example, allow them to mine your data and sell it for profit.