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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Not doubting you here, but I just tried searching for two very different terms on DDG on two different devices (Windows laptop and Android phone) and two different browsers (Firefox and Brave), and I didn’t really see any ads or dodgy stuff.

    The mobile Firefox version had a couple of main links at the top (they don’t look like ads), and some news cards under that. But the links were all relevant. The desktop DDG was super clean, again no ads.

    This was without ad blockers enabled too. I also tried it in private mode, and still clean.

    What am I missing? Why is my DDG experience so clean compared to yours?












  • Not a big surprise on the Huffman Shitshow. A lot of subs over there are insanely toxic. But yeah, a ban for that? That’s crazy.

    I didn’t even know RuneScape had a subscription! I think I briefly played it about 15 years ago. Good game, I just don’t have the time to play it, unfortunately. I assume you play? What’s the community like over there?

    I just looked up their pricing and it makes sense for them to have an optional subscription. $14 a month is in line with other similar games (e.g. wow). Would be nice if they had a couple of tiers of subscription. Maybe a $7 and a $14. But that might complicate things. How much can you do on the free mode?



  • I was looking into something similar recently, and asked around on Lemmy. The general consensus I heard was that a Mini PC weren’t ideal, mostly I think due to the fact that they aren’t designed purely for streaming.

    One think someone said piqued my interest, and I might try this. They recommended buying a cheap, Android TV compatible streaming box (like an Onn brand one), and side-loading an open source (and ad-free) launcher onto it.

    I found this thread over on the Huffman Shitshow that had some good instructions.


  • Great article! This kind of thing fascinates me. I’ve thought about this topic quite a lot over the past decade or two. Mostly in the context of my own personal digital data and the stuff created by people I love and care about. But also on a wider level.

    I’ve been backing up what I consider my most important stuff (including writing, audio, and art work) on to MDISCs for several years. Each disc is supposed to last around 10,000 years. But realistically because of the organic elements in the disc they ‘only’ last for about 1,000 years.

    That should be fine from a longevity perspective (assuming the discs themselves don’t get destroyed, obviously). But there’s still the question of whether future generations would have the ability to extract that data, even if it’s still there on physical media. Would they have the devices and the know-how to read and parse them back into a useable format?

    I guess if we hit another dark age then there will probably be more pressing concerns anyway. But it makes me sad to think of all that lost content - not only mine but so many other people who have created interesting stuff. Especially when one realizes that, like the article says, a lot of the early Internet has already been lost. And quite a few of those creators are no longer alive.

    To paraphrase Roy Batty: all those creations have been lost, like tears in rain.



  • Next time I have to get a new TV I think I’ll just get a large computer monitor and stream content via an old mini PC with Linux installed on it. Not an ideal solution, but I’m so tired of this invasive bullshit. At least that will cut out some of its vectors.

    After the recent Roku TOS fiasco I’m done with them. If manufacturers won’t give us a viable situation we will make one ourselves.

    Anyone know a good OS setup for reduced ad streaming? I know about Pi-Holes, but I’m talking about a way of actually streaming content (in addition to blocking ads at our near the router level).