ConalFisher's recent activity
-
Comment on I hate the new internet. I hate the new tech world. I hate it all. I want out, and I can't be the only one. in ~tech
-
Comment on I hate the new internet. I hate the new tech world. I hate it all. I want out, and I can't be the only one. in ~tech
ConalFisher Perhaps I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. The fact is that I don't hate the internet: I hate what it has become. I wish it hadn't turned out this way. But it has, and that makes me...Perhaps I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. The fact is that I don't hate the internet: I hate what it has become. I wish it hadn't turned out this way. But it has, and that makes me angry. There isn't anything I can really do about it except look for alternatives, both online and offline. This post is about me trying to curate my computer use in a way that aligns with what I believe is how technology "should" be, without all the algorithms and everything trying to sell me something. I know there are other things I can do, but I like this computer thing that I do as well.
I have lots of hobbies outside of my computer, but I have lots of hobbies on the computer too. Those hobbies used to be a lot less of a hassle. I like to read a lot of books. If a mob stormed into my local library and started burning the place down I wouldn't simply go "well, guess I'll stop reading and go find a new hobby then". I would, at the very least, call the police in an attempt to get them to stop burning the library down. Perhaps I'd look somewhere else in the meantime to try and find books. And I would most definitely be angry at the people who decided to burn the library down.
-
Comment on I hate the new internet. I hate the new tech world. I hate it all. I want out, and I can't be the only one. in ~tech
ConalFisher And you must recognise that it is absolutely a privilege to be in a position where you can simply change your job because you "got bored" of the old one. A lot of people don't have that option,...And you must recognise that it is absolutely a privilege to be in a position where you can simply change your job because you "got bored" of the old one. A lot of people don't have that option, not without risking their entire livelihood and any people who might depend on them having income. There are a lot of people out there who hate their jobs for whatever reasons, but can't change because the potential consequences of failing would be disastrous.
-
Comment on I hate the new internet. I hate the new tech world. I hate it all. I want out, and I can't be the only one. in ~tech
ConalFisher (edited )Link ParentI think it's also common for every single person who pines for those "good old days" to respond to this exact point with "but this time it's different", and... Well, I'm no different I suppose. I...I think it's also common for every single person who pines for those "good old days" to respond to this exact point with "but this time it's different", and... Well, I'm no different I suppose. I don't think it's fair to handwave away all criticism of something as simple nostalgia; there are most definitely things in the past that were better than they are now, and vice versa. Certainly I enjoyed the internet more in the past because I myself was different and I interacted with it in a different way. And that most definitely creates a bias. And with all that in consideration, I still stand by my claim that the internet of today is worse than it was in the past. I do think we have regressed in that regard, for the reasons outlined in my post. Maybe I'm simply an old man yelling at a cloud and the internet is actually just fine the way it is, but we'll have to agree to disagree if that's your stance.
-
I hate the new internet. I hate the new tech world. I hate it all. I want out, and I can't be the only one.
I think most people would agree that the internet and technology in general have absolutely gone to shit over the past decade or so. There is no corner of the internet nor of the software world...
I think most people would agree that the internet and technology in general have absolutely gone to shit over the past decade or so. There is no corner of the internet nor of the software world that hasn't been affected by enshittification. Everything exists to serve you ads. Everyone wants to extract as much money from you as possible. Every website is in a race for the bottom as they try to find the lowest effort content that makes them the most money. Every piece of software is pushed out half-baked and/or stripped down to the bare minimum with the rest paywalled or with the devs pinky promising to fix it 5 updates down the road.
Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows what the rest is comprised of. And it's probably the one that's doing the best at the moment, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, all of them are just bots and propaganda and engagement farming the whole way down. And the worst thing is, they're complicit. Hell, they're actively encouraging it and trying to find ways to make it worse. And I have no doubt Reddit will bend the knee soon enough too (they just banned /r/whitepeopletwitter because Musk made a tweet critical of the sub).
There's probably some element of rose-tinted glasses here, but the old internet was just so much better looking back. Like, early 2000's to maybe 2012, 2013 or so, that was the peak. No colossal data harvesting schemes feeding into algorithms designed to keep you engaged on their site 24/7 for the purpose of shilling you advertisements and selling your data, no mass propaganda, no Dead Internet Theory (which can hardly be considered a theory anymore). Yeah there was shit content, there was tons of it, but I can deal with shit content and petty forum drama and whatnot; what I can't deal with is all the multi-billion dollar corporations trying to shape the entire landscape of the Web into the perfectly minmaxxed cash-generating machine that does as little as possible for as much data and advertising as possible.
Modern software isn't much better. Windows and MacOS are filled with anti-user features, telemetry you just can't turn off, Windows will often just install shit on your computer without telling you. They turn your computer into a walled garden, where you can do what you want as long as you play by their rules, but without giving you any real control over what your computer does. Yeah you can delete system files and brick your laptop if you feel like it, but anyone who's ever tried to permanently disable Windows updates will know that in the end you're not the one calling the shots: Microsoft are. And... Like, that's insane, right? It's running on my fucking computer, it's my CPU doing the work, I want to know what the hell it's doing and not just the parts it lets me see, and if I want it to do something different then I should be able to make it so.
I hate it all. I'm tired. I want out.
These are my problems. Here's what I've done about it so far.
-
Obsessive privacy on the web. No Google services. Firefox with as much telemetry turned off as possible. Protonmail and ProtonVPN for everything (and I'm considering getting out of those too with the pro-Trump stances they've been taking recently). As minimal an online footprint as I can get, I make as few accounts as possible and I don't use shared or even slightly related usernames (my username here is an exception as it's my Reddit username, and no, it's not my real name), I delete accounts whenever I can and I GDPR request the services afterward. Virtual cards for online payments as much as possible. Will probably make a Javascript whitelist at some point too. Is all of this overkill? Yes. Why do I bother? Because fuck them.
-
As little social media presence as possible. Real life necessitates some amount of social media interaction of course, I have Facebook and Instagram but use them exclusively for messaging. I often see people excluding Reddit from social media but I don't fully agree, even if it's not exactly in the category it still targets a lot of the same psychological weak points in us, encouraging doom scrolling and shaping our opinions through echo chambers and propaganda (it's always important to remember that echo chambers and propaganda you agree with are still echo chambers and propaganda). I still use Reddit admittedly, but I've tried to minimise my usage as much as possible and I'm shopping for alternatives.
-
Free and Open Source software as much as possible. I'm all in on GNU these days. Yes, it's a massive pain in the ass. My job unfortunately requires some Windows-only software so I'm running a dual partition but I'm trying to get as much of my computer usage onto Linux as possible (I use Arch btw). Like I said above, it's my computer, if I can't control what it's computing then it stops being my computer, it's at best shared between me and all the developers of the proprietary software I have installed on it.
That's my rant. It's been a long time coming.
There are still things I'm looking to change, especially with how I use the internet. Getting rid of Reddit is the next big step for me, I think. I just can't be bothered with it anymore, but there is still something about it that I love, every time I look through a small niche topic community, or an interesting new hobby sub I've never seen before with years of cool posts for me to go through. And yeah, I do still enjoy browsing through /r/all even when it's 80% shit and objectively bad for my mental health. But at this point the overwhelming mass of utter shit is just not worth digging through anymore. I'm tired.
Tildes is really cool. It reminds me of the old internet, the ideal usage of the Web. I open the site, I see a link to an interesting article, I read it, I give it a like, I read and/or contribute to the discussion in a comments section. I want more of this.
If anyone has any links to cool sites that I should check out I'd greatly appreciate it.
152 votes -
-
Comment on Norway's environment minister has ruled out a ban on open-net fish farming at sea despite acknowledging that the wild North Atlantic salmon is under “existential threat” in ~enviro
ConalFisher Everything is under existential threat these days. We as a species simply do not give a shit about any of it, not when there's money to be made. And that will never change. Technological miracles...Everything is under existential threat these days. We as a species simply do not give a shit about any of it, not when there's money to be made. And that will never change. Technological miracles are our only hope anymore, nuclear fusion coming along to solve our energy problems, lab-grown meat becoming cheaper than farm meat, gene engineering and god knows what else to stop antibiotic resistance. Humanity is more than capable of solving all our problems with the tools we have on hand; hell, it could have solved them with the tools on hand in the 60's. We just don't give enough of a shit to solve any of it.
-
Comment on Snacks that aren't just sugar or crazy salty in ~food
ConalFisher (edited )LinkMy gotos when I'm in a healthy mood are greek yoghurt with things in it, or stovetop popcorn. Yoghurt needs no introduction, just put it in a bowl and throw stuff in it; I like granola and a...My gotos when I'm in a healthy mood are greek yoghurt with things in it, or stovetop popcorn. Yoghurt needs no introduction, just put it in a bowl and throw stuff in it; I like granola and a spoonful of honey, sometimes berries, whatever's in season normally, the possibilities are endless. Popcorn is shockingly low in calories when done on the stovetop with just a bit of olive oil. Really cheap and quite easy to do. Once you embrace the fact that you are gonna burn it to shit the first time you try to make it and that's fine, it becomes a really quick and easy snack to whip up, at the cost of having to clean a dish (which to be honest is sometimes a dealbreaker in the snack business, we've all been at that point of laziness).
I'll throw in a wildcard too: Rice with stuff on it. I normally have rice in the fridge and I'll often just microwave some in a bowl, mix in a teaspoon of soy sauce (but you could honestly omit it if you're watching your sodium intake), and whatever seasonings you like. I strongly recommend sesame seeds, togarashi. and/or furikake, all things that are basically non-perishable and widely available in any asian grocery store; I throw all three in. I'll normally stick a fried egg on top or mix in any leftover meat I have too, or I'll just chop up a scallion.
-
Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
ConalFisher Saw a performance of Ravel's Mother Goose Suite the other day. Never ceases to amaze me just how differently an orchestral performance hits in person compared to on a recording, I'll always...Saw a performance of Ravel's Mother Goose Suite the other day. Never ceases to amaze me just how differently an orchestral performance hits in person compared to on a recording, I'll always recommend going to see a symphony orchestra perform at least once in your life whether you like classical music or not just to experience it.
-
Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
ConalFisher I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings at the moment, it's my go-to book when I'm feeling anxious about the world and need a comfort story. Incidentally, I think this is the fourth time I've read it...I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings at the moment, it's my go-to book when I'm feeling anxious about the world and need a comfort story. Incidentally, I think this is the fourth time I've read it in the past 2 years, which is telling.
-
Comment on What fictional world would you live in, if you could pick any one? in ~talk
ConalFisher The town from Kiki's Delivery Service. Post-scarcity and magic and fantastical elements are all well and good, but I just want something normal again. Alternative answer: Middle Earth, if I'm...The town from Kiki's Delivery Service. Post-scarcity and magic and fantastical elements are all well and good, but I just want something normal again.
Alternative answer: Middle Earth, if I'm allowed to bring a set of scuba gear. Like, Maglor couldn't have thrown the silmaril that far into the ocean, right? He was just standing on the shore, and that thing glows real bright. Sea monsters notwithstanding, surely it'd not be all that difficult to find???
-
Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (January 2025) in ~health.mental
ConalFisher Really struggling to see a point in going on when it's abundantly clear that everything everywhere is just going to get worse and worse until I'm dead, naturally or otherwise. And the only advice...Really struggling to see a point in going on when it's abundantly clear that everything everywhere is just going to get worse and worse until I'm dead, naturally or otherwise. And the only advice anyone seems to have is "just don't think about it" as if that actually solves anything, as if I'm supposed to see the world we're in and pretend like it's all fine and everything's going to turn out okay.
-
Comment on What are your favourite let's plays? in ~games
ConalFisher Oliver streams: Minecraft Blind It's a series of livestreams where a guy who has knows absolutely nothing about Minecraft just plays through the game, figuring things out as he goes along. The...Oliver streams: Minecraft Blind
It's a series of livestreams where a guy who has knows absolutely nothing about Minecraft just plays through the game, figuring things out as he goes along. The first stream is done on Bedrock edition but every subsequent stream is on Java. I stumbled upon this letsplay in a Reddit thread somewhere, having never heard of the creator, but I immediately started binging the series. Oliver is an incredibly charismatic and funny guy, and it's very entertaining & endearing seeing someone who knows nothing about Minecraft, not even the most basic concepts like crafting, piecing everything together over time.
Minecraft is one of those games where I think most gamers just "get" a lot of it without thinking: like, obviously you make things in a crafting table, obviously you make a crafting table from four wood you get from punching a tree, obviously you need to make tools to go mine and collect iron and so on and so forth. The game is so ingrained in the gaming world that basically everyone with a passing interest in the medium has played it for a while, and seeing someone without that knowledge base working things out is really cool and interesting, and puts into perspective just how complicated a game it can actually be at times if you don't know how it all works already.
It's a 10/10 background video to have on while you're playing a game or something. Would highly recommend checking out.
-
Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food
ConalFisher Green tea is definitely one of the more finicky beverages to get right especially in comparison to the likes of black tea of coffee. It's super easy to brew it for too long or at too high a...Green tea is definitely one of the more finicky beverages to get right especially in comparison to the likes of black tea of coffee. It's super easy to brew it for too long or at too high a temperature or with too many or too few tea leaves, all of which will impart bitter flavours or a distinct fishy aroma on the final product. Great if you're a weirdo who likes making everything with a thermometer and a timer like me; less so if you just want a hot drink with no fuss. Green tea is all fuss.
Absolutely down for genmaicha in all its forms! Green tea sellers will unfortunately just see it as something that they can put their old/lower quality tea leaves into (which it was traditionally designed for to be fair), but I like to make it at home from time to time with any leftover tea leaves I end up with, or sometimes just using a freshly opened box to make a load in bulk.
-
Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food
ConalFisher Have been on a green tea journey for the past year or so. Got a handmade kyusu (a type of japanese clay teapot) and a bunch of high quality sencha leaves. If you've never had actual good green...Have been on a green tea journey for the past year or so. Got a handmade kyusu (a type of japanese clay teapot) and a bunch of high quality sencha leaves. If you've never had actual good green tea, the kind that doesn't come in teabags and isn't steeped in boiling water for 5 minutes, you're missing out. I used to roll my eyes whenever people said this about anything, but honestly it's better than any drug out there. I now have a little tea-making ritual in the mornings which just makes every day better by default. I am unfortunately extremely sensitive to caffiene so any more than two cups makes me jittery and anxious the whole day, but those two cups are the best part of my mornings now.
This is the precise brand & type of tea I've been drinking recently. It's a light-steamed green tea which has a lighter flavour, I also really enjoyed this deep-steamed green tea from them but I generally prefer the flavour of light-steamed teas (though I am in the minority apparently).
I've recently purchased some white teas to try, and I'm probably going to buy some fancier teas in the future as well. Tea is good. Drink more tea.
-
Comment on Legacy is a delusion in ~talk
ConalFisher You're effectively describing Terror Management Theory here. TMT says that there is a fundamental conflict in human nature caused by us being intelligent enough to realise the inevitability of...Legacy, or the eternal rewards I'm leaving out of the conversation, is a big shiny counterpoint to impermanence. You might even call it a psychological coping mechanism. We all need them sometimes and a key part of their operation is that they're not entirely rational.
You're effectively describing Terror Management Theory here. TMT says that there is a fundamental conflict in human nature caused by us being intelligent enough to realise the inevitability of death, which when combined with the natural self-preservation instinct, causes an inescapable existential terror that we spend our lives either ignoring or deluding ourselves about, through religion or philosophy or aligning ourselves with something larger than us (nationalism, culture, family, etc), things that offer immortality, either literal or symbolic. It's why basically every single popular religion promises life after death in some way, shape, or form. It's why people align themselves with their glorious nation that will last a thousand generations.
-
Comment on Tom Merritt's opinion on if Mozilla should join Chromium in ~tech
ConalFisher Tom is an idiot, as is anyone who's in favour of the ever-approaching monopolization and centralisation of the internet.Tom is an idiot, as is anyone who's in favour of the ever-approaching monopolization and centralisation of the internet.
-
Comment on The sham legacy of Richard Feynman in ~science
ConalFisher She's one of my favourite content creators on Youtube nowadays, but I do think she could do with having someone edit her videos a bit as she does often end up repeating herself a lot. Some of it...She's one of my favourite content creators on Youtube nowadays, but I do think she could do with having someone edit her videos a bit as she does often end up repeating herself a lot. Some of it is her style of presentation of course, repeating things for emphasis from slightly different angles (which I'd imagine works well in an academic lecture setting), but there were moments in this video where she sorta just said the same point over and over for five minutes where it could have been "here's the point I'm making, here's 3 examples of that thing" rather than "here's a thing from the book, therefore x, here's a thing from the book, therefore x, here's a thing from the book, therefore x, therefore x".
Plus I think her content sorta toes the line between long-form explanatory content and full on video essay; some of her videos are great for having on while playing a game but others (like this one) really require your full focus. The problem is that you can get away with minimal editing and a semi-improvised script for long-form background content, but a video essay requires a lot more structure. To use a contemporary video essay metaphor, she's trying to create a Jenny Nicholson video, but she's covering a HBomberguy topic. ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 wouldn't have worked if they'd just bullet pointed a bunch of things, sat in front of a camera, and just talked about each thing off the cuff.
-
Comment on Coffee prices surge to highest since 1997 on supply fears in ~food
ConalFisher Gonna be an awful lot of these supply fears in basically every single type of crop over the next few years and decades; we're at the point now where climate change is really beginning to kick in,...Gonna be an awful lot of these supply fears in basically every single type of crop over the next few years and decades; we're at the point now where climate change is really beginning to kick in, and it's only getting worse and worse from here. Coffee is the least of our concerns, already we're seeing mass harvest failures in staple crops like rice and wheat all over the world.
-
Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
ConalFisher Qigang Chen - Instants d'un Opéra de Pékin. Orchestral version here if that's more your vibe -
Comment on Maybe Bluesky has "won" in ~tech
ConalFisher Anything is better than Twitter now, but I feel like as it is currently Bluesky is just... A bit of a left wing echo chamber, though it tries to claim otherwise. I hope it'll evolve as more people...Anything is better than Twitter now, but I feel like as it is currently Bluesky is just... A bit of a left wing echo chamber, though it tries to claim otherwise. I hope it'll evolve as more people sign up but the early adopters have undoubtably been mostly politically-oriented American left wingers and the content on the site reflects that. Posts mostly fall into two categories: "Common interest" posts with very broad appeal (nature photos, relatable anecdotes, very safe jokes, etc), or American politics. I've got nothing against left wing politics to be clear, I just don't find the site particulary interesting at the moment over it.
Ultimately I just worry that it's a lot of artificial hype in this initial stage, and once it dies down people will be left with little of substance. I find that it's quite common in left wing spaces (speaking as someone who's been involved in an unfortunate amount of Reddit moderating) for enormous hype trains to form over something with everyone patting themselves on the back over how great it is and how everyone is on board while shutting out any and all dissent, only for the hype to slow, the dissenters to realise how numerous they are, and the whole thing flips on its head with the dissenters getting to be smug over how stupid the whole thing obviously was (from their perspective at least). Then your average person without a stake in the thing decides to steer clear entirely to avoid being lumped in with the weird ones whom everyone is laughing at.
Yeah if I were to make this post again I'd have not included that part, I was somewhat misinformed as to the level of line-crossing they'd gone. I still wish that Reddit hadn't made a special exception for the sub in the situation though and had rather dealt with it the normal way that they deal with these things; the fact that they went out of their way with a manual ban reason and an abnormal set of further steps feels to me like they're trying to appease Musk specifically. Now I'm very much of the opinion that we should not negotiate with terrorists but I suppose I can't fault them taking extra precautions when the most powerful man in America is specifically calling them out for something.