Well, that’d certainly be a novel solution to the trolley problem. Just make sure FSD always defaults to hitting the non-nazis first.

I mean, eBay exists. You can get a Commodore 64, a Mac II-era mac, or a 486 for not that much money.

I have a giant pile of retro stuff including those, and an absurdly expensive Pentium 1ghz box with a proper Vortex 2 and 3dfx voodoo 5 card, sitting around for retro gaming.

Which uh, mostly is all I do anymore. There’s also a TON of modern improvements to emulate floppy drives, replace hard drives with SD cards, and even new video and sound cards that are waaaaay better than what you had to deal with when the hardware was new.

It’s not as cheap as it was 5 years ago, but it’s still reasonable if you have an era you’re after and kinda stay focused on one or two retro computers and don’t, say, decide you want to own one of every G3 and G4 tower that was made or anything insane like that.

…stop looking at me like that.

There’s also a ton of Youtubers that are touching all sorts of rare and expensive hardware that’s a good watch, too. (8 Bit Guy, LGR, Adrian’s Digital Basement, Necroware)

I’m not quite THAT old, but I certainly remember the early 90s.

Tech was all new and cool, and I remember very much reading computer shopper or going to various computer stores looking at all the new cool shit I desperately wanted but could in no way afford.

And, of course, the BBS lists that were in the back of computer shopper and various other things like that: I spent uh, more time than I should admit arguing about stupid shit online via local BBSes and Fidonet and a couple of other networks. But, even then, you’re right: the absolute hostility was very high, but it was about who had the “right” computer, or my dumb 13 year old opinion of which games were fun, and the level of absolute grumpiness was way lower.

(As an aside, those FTN-style networks do still exist, and still have people having conversations on them, and it’s still pretty great.)

Now even the hardware is boring: oh gee, the new CPUs are 5% faster for $600! Oh yay! New video cards which are 10% faster for $1800! Like who gives a shit anymore. The days of there being generational or even every-other-generational improvements sufficient to justify prices of buying it are quite dead, and I don’t know if that’s just physics being a pain or if it’s straight up engineering design choices. Both, probably.

Anyway I’ll stop internet Boomering and go take my metamucil and watch the wheel.

Okay I have to ask: if you don’t know someone’s gender, but you can’t call them uh, they/them, then what in the fuck are you supposed to do exactly?

Like, I fully get doing it in person can be being a dick, but on the internet where you absolutely do not know unless someone tells you?

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard today, and I was on reddit earlier.

It’s both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.

But, for discoverability, https://sepiasearch.org/ might help you find things to watch, since it’s the only good multi-server search I’ve seen. (And run by the peertube devs.)

Well, if I had more time, this would absolutely become my new favorite hobby.

Also, if I was willing to buy crypto, which I’m not.

Ugh I always hated that phrase. Like, space age technology is ball point pens, Tang, and those MPET blankets you find in first aid kits. Oh and freeze dried ice cream.

It really really does not mean shit at this point.

Listen, I can’t deal with my sore back, bum knee, AND a hangover all at once.

ArchiveBox is great.

I’m big into retro computing and general old electronics shit, and I archive everything I come across that’s useful.

I just assume anything and everything on some old dude’s blog about a 30 year old whatever is subject to vanishing at any moment, and if it was useful once, it’ll be useful again later probably so fuck it, make a copy of everything.

Not like storage is expensive, anyway.

It’s a TOS violation to discuss one of the very real and legitimate responsibilities you have as a juror?

Like, nullification is a thing because it’s very much the absolute very very last defense against bullshit laws being used against people by a corrupt judicial system.

It’s a moral imperative and something anyone sitting on a jury should understand and be willing to use.

What an absurd take, especially since it sounds like it’s all the .world admins having it.

“As you can see, the computer clearly indicates I’m the winner of this discussion. Once you’ve talked to the AI and understand your failures, we can talk.”

Sounds like he’s a lot of fun.

I totally don’t need this, and I guess my big, loud, hot, noisy, annoying desktop is finally stable so I don’t reeeeallllly have any justification there but somehow I still preordered.

…and got the trackpad.

Be nice to be free of both Windows and Linux on the desktop - sorry guys: <3 Linux-the-Server but not Linux-the-Desktop, even after 25 years of trying to.

Secondary market.

I’ve been playing since my local comics and games store told me I should totally check out this cool new thing they got, back in 1993.

It’s just a case of 30 years of hoarding and being in early enough that I have a fair pile of things like the Power Nine (Though, sadly, mostly the poverty-spec ones, since they’re in the Unlimited printing), dual lands, and basically everything else of any substantial value that’s been printed at any point in the last 30 years.

Best guess is I’ve got something like 60,000-70,000 cards (I store in 800 card boxes because they fit in the wine holder in a kallax shelf, and I’ve got like 80 boxes, plus a giant pile of commander decks).

I’ve been playing a very very long time and honestly the last decade has been a downhill slope of little nibbles of enshittification, but nothing that made me feel that if I’m ever going to get out, I should do it sooner rather than later like what’s going on now is giving me.

Well yes, and I don’t, in any way, own any cards worth more than $5000.

Or uh, maybe have a MTG collection that’s probably worth nearly as much as my house.

Nope.

Not me.

Collectors booster, but still: it’s a stupid amount of money for 15 pieces of cardboard.

I was at Gamestop and saw their CCG wall.

Thirty dollars for a single pack of cardboard.

They’re out of their damn minds.

(Yes, I know that’s the collectors edition nonsense and not representative of the actual pricing and blah blah blah blah, but the fact it exists at all…)

Listen it’s your fault that they’re doing this since you didn’t stop eating enough meat or recycle enough.

Nobody to blame here but you. Do better next time.

(/s just in case it’s not clear.)

Not really: if you’re astroturfing, you don’t do all your astroturfing from a single source because that makes it so obvious even a blind person could see it and sort it out.

You do it from all over the places, mixed in with as much real user traffic as you can, and then do it steadily and without being hugely bursty from a single location.

Humans are very good at pattern matching and recognition (which is why we’ve not all been eaten by tigers and leopards) and will absolutely spot the single source, or extremely high volume from a single source, or even just the looks-weird-should-investigate-more pattern you’d get from, for example, exactly what happened to cause this post.

TLDR: they’re doing this because they’re trying to evade humans and ML models by spreading the load around, making it not a single source, and also trying to mix it in with places that would also likely have substantial real human traffic because uh, that’s what you do if you’re hoping to not be caught.

Vertical tabs in Firefox? Well shit, okay I’m in.

Wouldn’t mind if their webpage had a little more detail on what, exactly, they’ve done to make it “privacy focused” other than a we-dont-collect-data privacy policy, but uh, vertical tabs!

Because I don’t sit down at my Linux destop and feel like the product. There’s no ads or suggestions or popups or apps installing themselves or shit copying my files around in ways I didn’t really want or AI bullshit or anything even remotely suggesting I buy more shit, just… whatever the fuck it is I was intending to do.

The value in not having my computer act like a damn slot machine trying to get me to insert more quarters is, frankly, immense.