I was born and raised in a country with four distinct seasons. I loved all the seasons. However, I have always been a winter person. One of my bucket list items is to live in a place where the sun sets for months and there is only one long winter night.

I would go back to my teen years just to relive it again. Assuming I could repeat the process when I read this post I would do it over and over again. I wouldn’t change anything, I would just enjoy the ride.

Pardon my French but it feels fucking awesome. I’ve been able to travel the world. I have developed hobbies that I wouldn’t be able to do so with kids. I have saved a lot of money and I have been able to advance my career.

As for passing my knowledge/experience, I volunteer at various charities where I can influence young minds. I don’t believe that passing on genes down the line is the best I can do. The best I can do is to help young people achieve their goals.

Now, to address few some clichés. On my deathbed I will get the glass of water from a highly paid nurse. The “warm bed” is not the issue for me. When I go I will leave my possessions to a charity of my choice.

Whatever rocks your boat. Until you’re not hurting anyone, commission away.

Everything that’s not meme, anime, manga, politics, sports, porn, dei related.

Windows - if it’s possible I only run security updates and postpone all other until there’s no other way. I use Windows only for gaming and because I don’t have much spare time I don’t want to waste it on updates.

Linux - security fixes on a daily basis, all other updates I postpone as long as possible. I was using Linux as my daily driver but the amount of issues I ran into due to updates was too much for me.

macOS - security fixes immediately, minor updates few days after the release, major updates usually until the next minor version gets released.

GrapheneOS - as soon as update is available

iPhone/iPad - security fixes immediately, other updates few days after the release.

Yes, they are on android but I prefer syncthing over KDEconnect/GConnect, mostly due to the issues I had when trying to use it over vpn.

That’s true, but there are some decent forks.

For me it’s “I’m offended” or “this offends me”. I get it, some topics might be triggering for some people but if you get offended because someone has a different opinion, that’s your problem, not the rest of the world problem.

I disagree. I play the devil’s advocate every now and than just to show how biased people can get. I want to introduce some reflection into the discussion so people could at least try to see a different point of view.

So far, 177 users, 68 instances and 1526 communities.

Linux pc + android phone - use Syncthing

Linux pc + iPhone - use KDE connect (or GSConnect for GNOME)

They don’t use it only for improving user experience. Based on a user profile they can bump your premiums just because you posted a photo on a snowboard (risky activity) or they can deny you a loan because someone posted on your timeline that you own someone some money.

Also based on your profile you are manipulated to buy products/services you don’t really need.

Oh man, I had a few of those. For privacy reasons I won’t disclose any of it but I’ve spent some chunk of my life in hospitals. What I can tell is that none was a life changing experience. I did made some adjustments to avoid such issues in the future but the whole “I almost died, it made me a different person” wasn’t my thing.

Let me tell you a story. Many years ago I worked for big banks and insurance companies. One day I was tasked with a project. It was an amazing, from the tech point of view, project. It was something like this: a user navigates to a bank website looking for information about some product. The website presents the user a simple contact form - first name, last name, phone number and/or email. Based on provided data bank would use it to update user data (if there was no official account it would update the “ghost” account, aka “I know about you, but you don’t know about me”). Next the bank would scrape all publicly available social media accounts and build the “hidden” profile (I’ll get to this later). Based on all that data, user would be assigned a score based on which all future interaction with a bank would be determined. For a regular person this would mean that “I’m sorry but according to our system we cannot give you a loan”.

Now, about the “hidden” profile. It’s a thing that all big companies (including banks and insurance companies) hold. It’s all the data collected from all publicly available profiles (and sometimes from the shady sites), used to create a profile that’s not visible to a frontline workers and it’s referenced as a “system decided based on your data”.

Now, to make this more scary. This happened 10-15 years ago. Way before the so called AI. Imagine how much more data those companies have about you in today’s world and how good they are in processing it.

I second that. If you express unpopular opinion in the most civilized way, engage in the discussion defending that opinion you will still get banned/downvoted because mod was in a bad mood. I’ve blocked many big communities because of that.

I have, but the moment I got to the Napster Wars part I realised that the article is nothing more than the “eat the rich” rant. I despise the music labels and all the crap that happened in late 90s but it’s not an excuse to go “over the law” just because you think the law is bad. I know, there were many implications of piracy that shaped the current landscape of music industry but still, just because you don’t agree with the existing law, it doesn’t mean you should “work” around it.

Again, if you’re unhappy with record label, vote with your wallet and buy from the independent ones. The more people to vote with the wallet (in the way you misunderstood) the less power major companies will have.

Again, I think you are misinterpreting the phrase. The quote you provided proves it. If you’re not happy about the “right way” of buying things you can buy elsewhere, aka “vote with a wallet”. The phrase means that you pay for a product/service you are comfortable with. For example, if Amazon offers a great deal on something you’d like like to buy and the price is, let’s say, 30% lower than a regular retail price, voting with a wallet would mean that you ignore the Amazon’s deal and buy directly from a merchant.

I cannot find the exact quote but it was something like “If you don’t grow, you’re dying”. This is the source of all enshittification. Companies are being forced by VCs to increase revenue every year to meet unreasonable revenue goals just to satisfy a handful of investors.

I think you misinterpreted the phrase. “Vote with your wallet” means that if you’re unhappy with a product/service, you stop using/paying for it.