I feel like it’s a mix of that combined with a similar situation to the cola wars. Everyone has their favorite and wants to talk about it with others while also saying the other brands are bad.

I generally agree but I think you have to acknowledge if you got rid of ads then best case scenario YouTube either limits more features like uploading or HD video behind paying or worst case scenario the platform collapses and there is nothing to replace it. For the longest time they weren’t profitable and it wasn’t until they pushed hard with ads and premium that they started to be profitable. So as much as I wish we could get rid of ads unless you wanna accept moving back technologically and losing a bunch of these online services people rely on I think ads are a needed evil for the time being. Especially when a lot of services already have ways to pay to get around ads. As at the end of the day if you don’t have ads you’re gonna have a subscription you have to pay for every major website you wanna use as they have to make money some way.

I mean I think if anything that makes it worse and easier for billionaires to control the narrative as now politicians can’t campaign for themselves which means in practice most people are gonna hear about politicians from billionaire owned media. Especially for more worker centered causes which right now tend to be championed by door knocking and more grass roots campaigning. I personally think just abolishing PACs and limiting campaign donations would be enough to make it so politicians have to actually appeal and listen to the people rather then the rich. Could also combine this with a government provider donation that you can choose whichever candidate you want to receive it to help people without the means to donate to be appealed to as well. But I feel like the moment you outlaw campaigning then how do you advocate for ballot measures you like at the state level of you can’t go out and door knock or hold rallies for it? As much as the one TV channel style thing would be an ideal idea it wouldn’t really work in reality as we already have a channel for that, C-Span, which covers government related things which no one really watches. You have to meet people where they are, and I think trying to stop that is a bad idea for getting people involved in the political process which is something we need more of.

As much as I’d be down with this I don’t see it happening considering no one wants to pay for the services they use that are ad supported. For example everyone always seems to shit on YouTube premium but that is a currently existing way to get rid of ads on the service. Every time there’s an option between ad supported and ad free but paid people tend to just pick ad free. So while I think outlawing ads would be good at least with the current state of the world it would only be a net negative, killing off a bunch of small and big websites that rely on ads.

What do you mean by campaigning? Do you mean no political ads or PACs then yeah definitely agree. But if you mean all forms of campaigning then how are politicians supposed to communicate who they are and why you should vote for them to the people? And outside of politicians if political campaigning is not allowed would that also not allow grass roots movements who door knock or hold rallys about specific issues? Political campaigning is all of those things, I definitely agree we need to get big money out of it but I don’t think it should be gotten rid of all together.

Honestly out of all those switches email is the one I’ve always struggled with. I feel like that one would take a ton of effort to switch over my accounts on various things to a new email. If anyone has any advice or ways to make that easier I’d love that as otherwise I’m still stuck with Gmail.

I mean yeah I think the main problem is just Google having all that data about you and potentially selling it to others whether that be for advertising, robocalling, or other things. So it really just comes down to how comfortable you are allowing Google to be able to use your emails and communications from corporations to see what things you like. Only time it really matters more is if you are using email for more personal or secure communications which yeah I would always prefer using better encrypted more messaging focused apps like signal for or just talking in person when possible.

Might just be people who are used to having an algorithm so they dislike stuff they don’t want to see more of.

I mean I don’t know a ton about SQL but one thing to keep in mind about SSNs is they were not originally meant to be used for identification but because we have no form of national id and places still needed a way to verify who you are people just started using SSNs for that since it’s something everyone has and there wasn’t really a better option. So now the government has been having to try and make them work for that and make them more secure. The better solution would be to make some form of national id that is designed to be secure but Republicans and people like Musk would probably call that government overreach or a way to spy and track people.

I think it depends on what problems you’re talking about as well. A lot of the problems I faced with Linux was with programs not working or certain features not being supported. Where as with windows the problems tend to be more of bugs or weird behaviors from the os itself. Sure you can say reinstalling isn’t a good solution as it’s annoying to do but if it makes the problem go away it is a solution. Meanwhile on Linux if a program isn’t supported and isn’t popular enough to have people figure out how to make it work it just doesn’t work and there is no work around other than either trying to figure it out yourself or just using windows. Sure you can maybe argue that that’s an experience difference as if you had experience with getting programs to work the figure it out yourself part wouldn’t be hard but if anything I think that shows that it’s not just a different set of experience but also generally requires more experience to be proficient with Linux versus being proficient with Windows. Although that probably comes down more to what you consider as being proficient.

The problem with that is there is no centralized website you go to for Lemmy. The closest thing to that would be the various apps you use for Lemmy so my question would be where would you put this quiz? I think when people talk about joining a server being hard it’s just hard for people used to a centralized social media to get used to the idea that one social media platform can be made up of a bunch of different websites and it becomes overwhelming to even figure out where to go. They’re very used to just going to reddit’s website so if they can’t just look up Lemmy and click the first link to join it’s gonna be too complex.

I mean atleast in terms of the troubleshooting I’ve had to do it’s much easier on Windows. Sure it can be more finicky but if I have a problem 99% of the time I google it and find someone else having the same problem and worst case scenario atleast reinstalling Windows fixes the problem. When I gave Linux a try the amount of times I googled something and either found an out of date solution that didn’t work or was just told that that doesn’t work and you can’t do that was annoying enough that I gave up and went back to Windows. If Linux works for you that’s great but acting like the problems with Linux are just people not being used to it is wrong.

It probably becomes 1m 60s. I’ve had microwaves do it both ways, either having it only be in seconds or having seconds for two digits.

Edit: I’m dumb and very tired from Holidays, I’m leaving this up anyways though.

Are you in a right to work state? That might be why, at least in Oregon when I got a job as a cashier it automatically made me a part of the union.

If I remember right they were involved, and there was some kind of agreement between the factions to not attack each other until the Assad regime was gone. So will have to see what happens now that the regime has collapsed.

My problem with it is the whole purpose of what the device does based on the post is stupid. It just puts a notification on the screen as a way to try and use social pressure to get people to stop vaping. But that doesn’t work cause no one really cares if you vape or not. Some people might even think it’s cool or might turn it into a game of trying to vape without setting it off to impress their other friends who vape. I graduated highschool in 2019 and people definitely vaped and the only people they really cared about hiding it from were the teachers, no other students cared at all. So because of all of that this kind of device is just a waste of money that could be better spent on educating kids on how vaping is bad, just like what we did for cigarettes that worked so well.

It’s just that most people just genuinely don’t care enough about what’s happening to other people enough to do anything beyond just saying that Amazon is bad. On top of that as Amazon starts to drive other stores out of business it does start to slowly become the only choice for getting certain things. So with those two combined expecting personal consumer choice to really make a difference is not realistic, this is the kind of thing that needs the government to intervene on to force Amazon to unionize and to potentially break it up like is being discussed with Google.

Me too, people always told me to use the oven or different ways to warm pizza but it always just made the bottom way crispier then it originally was when it was fresh. So I just stick with the microwave and that seems to work pretty well at keeping it like it was when it was fresh.

I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there’s other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I’m just gonna stick with brave.