The issue with “tech-leaning” people who believe AI is the future is that they’re in the “peak of mount stupid” part of the Dunning-Kruger curve. Once you get past that, you realize AI was never good at anything and it’s harmful to everyone in a million different ways. Most of lemmy’s tech-leaning people have already realized that, and are actively trying to avoid AI.
If it is a productivity boost for you, it is at the cost of someone else who will have to proofread and test everything you do. LLMs (and genAI) are useless.
Disclaimer: never use Brave browser, it’s really bad. The CEO is an asshole, and they promote crypto and scams, while still showing their own ads. They also got caught sneakily adding affiliate codes to URLs. (https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/)
Use firefox or any firefox derivative with ublock origin (yes, even on android)
Client side anti-cheat (the one installed on your PC) will never work, it’s just fundamentally impossible. They can restrict user freedom as much as they want, but the hardware still isn’t under their control.
The only reason they push for those kinds of anti-cheats is because they don’t have to pay for the extra processing of server side anti-cheat, and they also get the benefit of a backdoor into your computer that you may never fully uninstall without buying a new computer.
Rounded corners. Everywhere. They lose so much space, especially on small screens, and everything feels crammed.
No personalization anywhere. You used to be able to completely customize social media profiles, to the point of editing your page’s CSS directly.
Modern OSes (except linux or BSD based ones which are not android) also have no color or personalization. You usually have the slabs of white on light mode, or the slabs of blak on dark mode, with only one color you can choose for some details.
JavaScript animations on every. Single. Website. I have an old phone (because I don’t like modern stuff), and it struggles with almost every modern, animated site. Is it really necessary to add all that js and animations?
No headphone jacks or expandable storage on modern phones. It probably costs cents to add those features. I know phones don’t usually have expandable storage because it makes you buy a new one once you fill all your storage, and I know they don’t have audio jacks because it makes you buy the company’s wireless headphones, but I need those features in my phone.
Why does everything have to be a web app now? Have people forgotten about actual softwate, that you own, that doesn’t need internet to work, that uses almost no resources and is faster and has more features than a web app? We got everything backward. Sites that should be webs like reddit will ask you to download their apps, while microsoft will try to code Word in javascript and sell it to you as an “upgrade”.
I hate subscriptions with passion, especially for software.
How is that good for climate change?
Nobody listens to this guy. Have you been recycling just cuz Gates told you to? Also these kinds of yachts pollute so much with a single trip that it outweighs any good that he could have done by convincing millions to save electricity or water.
I don’t need to know him well. It’s not rocket science.
What Gates is doing right now is a massive publicity stunt to make people believe he’s actually a “good person”. He is not. He is still a disgusting billionaire that contradicts everything he preaches.
He is constantly buying farmland, to the point where he’s the biggest land owner in the whole US. This is seriously harming small farmers.
He preaches about climate change and using cardboard straws while in his massive ($650M!) mega yacht
The “humanitarian/healthcare” stuff he did, while helpful, was only done because he could use it as a tax writeoff. He wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t the case.
The fact that it needs a bridge is what makes it not federated. Federation allows for interconnection without bridges, because everything talks the same protocol. You can bridge Discord to Matrix, and that doesn’t mean Discord is federated.
If you want a decently hidden VPN, I recommend setting up an OpenVPN instance, with a TCP tunnel, encapsulated within Stunnel. It manages to stay hidden even with DPI.
The setup is a bit convoluted, especially if you want everything to use certificates for maximum security. It’s also not the fastest VPN, and TCP isn’t the most efficient for a VPN. But it’s decent enough for a normal user.
You can set it up on both Linux and Windows, even having both ends of the tunnel on Windows, but it’s easier and better to set it up on Linux.