There is Chrome and many open source variants along with others.

getting real reading done without my ADHD taking over

Maybe that’s the appeal.

The Lynx browser is surprisingly nice.

I’m actually rather surprised by all of the negative responses to this post. Having lived through part of this period of time (gen-x), I can attest to the accuracy of this. This standard of living or quality of life, or whatever you want to callout absolutely was achievable for most. No, it was not perfect by any means - people did struggle, yes, racial discrimination was worse. Poverty was still there, but none of it was on the scale that we see today. People were NOT beat down and discouraged. Young people got out of high school, found jobs and could rent an apartment on their own. Small towns did not have people sleeping in the woods. Cities had homeless people but it was nowhere near the level we see today. Seriously, not even close. Medical care was much more affordable. If you had insurance, they just paid your doctor’s bills without engaging in a protracted fight over copays, out-of-pocket nonsense or other methods of exploiting the fine print of your policy. You just didn’t hear about people losing their homes over medical costs.

For a good portion of my childhood, I was raised by a single mom who was able to make rent on a 2 bedroom apartment working a job waiting tables. She was able to later buy a house on a non-union factory job and make payments on a car. One income, one person. We were very much on the lower end of the scale.

I think many of you have been gaslit by the current state of affairs. Everything sucks and seems to actively be getting worse. I really feel bad for the millennial generation and those that followed because the system is rigged, inequality is off the charts and basic living as we knew it is not achievable for a much larger portion of society. It’s difficult to overestimate how far we’ve fallen over the past 40 years.

There’s nothing in this entire discussion that should be taken even remotely seriously.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

While far from concise, this article is one of the best summaries of the state of modern technology I’ve read in a long time. I’ve followed some of his analysis of the AI market and generally he’s got a good understanding of what’s at play. It’s amusing (and somewhat depressing) to consider how much I’ve internalized the current state of affairs as “normal” and have developed my own methods for compensating or navigating around the toxicity of commercial tech. Read this and then his “Rot Economy” article. I hadn’t read this before, thanks to @Chamomile for posting.

Me too, bird. Me too…

Many years back, I kept my ipod classic in an old sock to protect it while it banged around inside my bag. My buddy made fun of me for it, little did he know that my sense of fashion was just far ahead of its time.

I’m going to disagree with you a bit here. I’ve seen first hand when intelligent people use all their additional cognitive ability to create rationalizations and pseudo-logical interpretations of questionable facts to avoid challenging their own assumptions. It takes a good dose of humility/integrity to admit that you were wrong and be willing to change course. That’s not a feature of intelligence, at least not in the realm where it is typically measured.

…with ads in maps and paying their big tech bribe money…

No kidding. I’ve been an Apple customer since '05 and they’ve lost me. It’s not this one thing but rather, the overall, gradual decline in quality along the way. I help a lot of people with their tech devices and here are a few things that have gone disasterously bad for me just this year: getting a large photo library OUT of iCloud and onto a single Mac; restoring a borked iOS device from an on-line backup; TimeMachine drive that won’t use, spotlight won’t stop indexing and was impossible to run first aid with out a wipe/reformat; failed iOS upgrades; iPhone that won’t notify the user about incoming messages, sometimes calls, etc.; iOS minor updates that will only download the FULL installer (~8GB worth, every. single. time.). There have been many others. I’ve heard other comment on this UI update making it harder to read in various situations.

Apple stuff used to be pretty bomb-proof and really hit the mark because it really did “just work”. I’m seriously thinking about just bailing out entirely from their ecosystem to Linux, since I know I won’t have the OS actively getting in my way when I need to fix it (I’m a 30 year Unix/Linux sysadmin). I was never a true believer but used their stuff because it allowed me to avoid more system work off the clock. I can’t help but wonder how Mr. Jobs would have seen the current state of things today.

Graphene seems quite enticing now.

FWIW, the Mac client lacks features found on Windows, but not as severely.

Showing up early or on time for any meeting, other than a client or outside collaborator , communicates to everyone involved that you have nothing better to do with your time.

and are wearing Crocs everywhere they go.

Oooh, that’s harsh.

I counted the dots along the x axis, multiplied by the y axis count and took that as an estimate for the tile. Then did the same with the number of tiles across the ceiling. Then multiplied that by the number of classrooms… Same with the floor tiles. There was no end to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–szrOHtR6U

Macs can be tamed but they’ll never be as good as Linux in that regard.

*science!

Not if they don’t have a tail.

If it doesn’t have a tail, it’s not a monkey, even if it has a monkey kind of shape.

“Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.”

Ivan Illich on the bicycle. Energy & Equity