It was the same thing with IE back in ancient times. A popular browser violates web standards so many sites were designed with that rogue browser in mind. If you use a browser that actually follows the standards, some sites just won’t work properly for you.

And that’s why you need to figure out what’s the right balance of work and inconvenience vs. the amount of privacy you get in return. Setting up a degoogled android is possible and relatively easy too. Living with that phone and interacting with the real world around you in 2024 is a completely different matter, and it’s entirely understandable if that isn’t your cup of tea.

This is the way. If OP doesn’t like olives, that just leaves more for the rest of us. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Our perception of it is also highly distorted due to the bubble we live in. Chinese are living in a different kind of bubble where everyone can more or less understand each other, as long as they stick to the written form. The languages may be different, but they are written using the same system, which makes communication possible. Also, the Great Firewall of China keeps Chinese people inside that bubble and foreigners outside it.

Really? I should totally give it a go some time. Sounds like the ideal life hack for me.

If you’re in a city, bikes and public transportation are the answer. Rural areas are stuck with cars though. America seems to be a bit of an exception to this rule, because lots of things would need to change before any of this could potentially happen.

That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.

Congrats!

Remember those mobile games where you can watch ads to get some gold and diamonds or simply pay for them with real money? Well, I can imagine a dystopian future where that logic has been applied to everything.

Wanna press an elevator button? Pay with shopping center diamonds or watch this quick ad.

Wanna try on this shirt before buying it? Ads. Is this made of cotton? Ads.

Take the escalator to the next floor? Ads.

Wanna check the info screen to figure out where you can find a restaurant in this shopping center? Ads.

Wanna unlock different parts of the menu? Ads. Wanna see the prices too? Ads. Allergens? Ads again.

Need to go to the toilet? Ads. Want some toilet paper? More ads.

If you encounter this literally every 30 seconds, spending some money on those shopping center diamonds suddenly becomes a very appealing idea.

On the outside of the mall you see a punk looking guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand. You feel a sudden urge to join in whatever he is up to.

Anyway, if you want some more suffering and sadness, simply dump the first lines to GPT and ask it to take this dystopia to its logical conclusion. It could get pretty wild.

That’s true. If something doesn’t directly make money, it can still exist because of taxes or another arrangement like that.

So, the key is to run your business for loss. Wait, that’s called a charity, not a business. How is this thing supposed to work?

In the early days of laser development, it was seen as a solution seeking a problem. A few decades later, it actually turned out to be really handy, but it would have been tough to sell this idea to anyone before that. Imagine how hard it is to find funding for research that solves a problem that doesn’t exist.

LOL. Far in the unseen later, it is then.

This is the way.

Selection bias. There’s plenty of overlap between the groups of people who know about it, care about it, use FOSS, use Lemmy etc. It’s basically a prominent characteristic of the stereotypical Lemmy user. We’re still a small and surprisingly homogenous group of people. If Lemmy ever grows like Mastodon, you’ll begin to see more diversity.

There’s also something you could call the “fish out of water” bias. If you’re not LGBT, you’ll suddenly notice how many LGBT people there are on Mastodon. If you’re not into ML, you’re going to notice the people who are.

It should be called the WISHFUL list. It stands for “Wildly Improbable Scenarios Happening Unbelievably Far in the Unseen Later”.

Oh, and no youtuber would ever say anything like “pause the video here if you need more time to read the details” and nobody ever adds any single frame easter eggs in their videos either.

Sounds to me that Meta defines privacy in a very particular way. You’re still going to give all of your data to Meta, but anything outside this transaction is in the realm of privacy where you can have rights and settings.

I recall watching a defcon speech given by someone who used to make malware. He opened the speech by apologizing and saying that he knows that he will burn in hell.

Can not read at all. Total mystery to me. Will I ever know?