The user @trim posted an interesting question in ~Tech and it made me wonder: what are my forgivable sins? What kinds of misdeeds on the part of companies that are suppliers of goods or services do I tacitly concience or to which I will turn a blind eye?

Whenever there is a scandal, the easy answer is, "I don't know, but definitely not that." This, however, is just an ad hoc definition that can be applied to any unsavory revelation on the part of a service or product provider. What would I be left with? I couldn't retreat from society if I wanted to and the cost of commercial puritanism would be prohibitively high.

What I realized in that topic was that (1) I will not sanction providers merely for doing business with others to whom I am opposed and (2) I will not sanction providers merely for issuing words or statements that I disagree with.

That said, I'm curious about others. What are your criteria for bad behavior in a service or product provider that you would judge to be nonetheless admissible?

Alright, time to ask for help. I designed a website for my cousin using Wordpress, hosted via BlueHost. It's 99% done.

The problem: she'd originally registered her domain through wordpress.com. She also has an email through that, which she accesses via Google Workplace. We've transferred the domain, but the nameservers are still registered to wordpress.com. I've found the guides for transferring nameservers on BlueHost and wordpress.com, but this is a step above what I've dealt with in the past.

My main concern and frustration are the email. She's already using it for work, and I want to make sure there's no downtime, but I... honestly have no idea how it's even set up, right now. Or how this would work when transferring hosts entirely. Attempts to search it haven't been too helpful for me.

So my questions: How will changing nameservers impact the email? Would updating them potentially just... break her email entirely? Need her to set up the email separately? And if she does, can it be kept through Google Workplace/Gmail since that's what she's already using? Is it fine to leave it as-is? I assume not but her wordpress.com account shows that it expires in 2027, so...?

Just, please help.

Given the current state of things, I have been trying to avoid internet sites that could trigger anxiety. This is harder to do that I thought it would be. So I'm reaching out to the fine and resourceful Tildes collective for links to sites that are less known, and may provide, if not joy, at least interest, uniqueness maybe, fun, or education? Stuff that may be comforting, engrossing, or diverting to give some respite to those of us who are feeling pretty crushed.

Here are two sites I can offer, but I don't want to limit anyone's idea of what might be a good suggestion.

Futility Closet "is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible." (description from their about page)

Strange Company bills itself as "a Walk of the Weird Side of History"

(edited to add links)

Edit: Apache OR Nginx? Could someone fix my title - I posted without proofing.

My wife is having half decent success with ecommerce. She's doing great on Etsy and eBay, and now her website is starting to pick up.

It's currently hosted on 20i who pride themselves on being an excellent WordPress and Woocommerce provider, with a half decent CDN. In reality, I think it's pretty shit for what you pay for.

I'm tempted to either grab a VPS or even go as far as a bare metal at a CoLo with public IP and run the full stack myself. If I do, shall I go Apache or Nginx? I've done both and I'm pretty agnostic. OS would be Debian.

Before I go to this length though, does anyone know of a fair priced but good performing Woocommerce platform? She's got hundreds of hours already, the plugins and over 300 products listed, so I'm loathe to move to a different solution, however, I'm not ruling it out.

The reason to not all in on Etsy or eBay is the 25% cut they take of everything. Using a personal site and Stripe payment platform means it's more 1% + 20p for processing.

Ideas, thoughts and suggestions please?

I remember seeing a fun website somewhere which was basically an isometric animation of a space station or something like that. It had a lot of tiles with a lot of fun stuff happening on it, it kinda had a "Where's Waldo" vibe. I think it had a number in it's name, like station42 or something like that. I can't find the website now. Does anyone remember what it is?

These could be blogs, forums, any online space where you visit semi-frequently at least.

Here are some based off my interests:

A Year in the Country - Blog on folk horror music

Gwern.net - blog about AI, statistics and psychology

Articles on the work of Lacan

Petit Tube - Random brief YouTube videos with few views

As the title says, looking for recommendations of fun and interesting websites that don't involve current events/news. Sites where you can spend hours diving down rabbit holes, browsing fun and interesting content, or just otherwise detach from reality for a bit.

This isn't a request for just myself, but just in general. I feel like all the biggest websites just have a bit too much influence from current events and news, which can make browsing pretty stressful. And given how centralized the internet has become, finding sites outside those has become a bit trickier. It'd be fun to see some more focused sites for various topics and niches. Can be an educational site with cool articles, could be entertainment, could be a forum or a blog. Just, what sites could you spend hours on?