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    1. What are some traditional internet forums that you still use?

      I'm trying to go beyond Reddit and Tildes when it comes to some particular interests. I dislike Federated websites due to their usability issues, but I also get the impression that they try to...

      I'm trying to go beyond Reddit and Tildes when it comes to some particular interests. I dislike Federated websites due to their usability issues, but I also get the impression that they try to replicate or improve on Twitter. I never used or cared for Twitter in the first place.

      I found TrekBBS which looks great, but I was wondering about similar forums for my other interests, such as science fiction literature, classic movies, etc.

      So I am curious to know about everyone's favorite old-school forums that are still active and cool!

      The websites are not required to be actually old, as long as they work similarly to traditional internet forums.

      70 votes
    2. How do I get my iPhone to recalculate battery health?

      My iPhone 14 Pro has been at 84% battery health for almost a year now. Anecdotally the battery lasts significantly less time than it did previously, even when it was already at 84% health. I think...

      My iPhone 14 Pro has been at 84% battery health for almost a year now. Anecdotally the battery lasts significantly less time than it did previously, even when it was already at 84% health. I think it may just be a stale calculation, and my actual battery health is significantly lower. If I can get it to show as less than 80%, I can get AppleCare to replace it. Does anyone here know how to get the iPhone to recalculate this value?

      I have Coconut batter on the Mac, and it can check the battery health for an iPhone attached with a cable. It uses a different formula, so it gives me a health of 87%. However it also shows history for when I have run it in the past, and when I tested it almost 100 charge cycles ago, it also read 87%. I don't know how any battery can go almost 100 charge cycles with zero degradation (537 to 617 cycles, so it's not like it's a fresh battery).

      7 votes
    3. 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.

      164 votes
    4. Looking for a new mouse (maybe)

      I currently have a Corsair Dark Core Pro SE that I like a lot. My scroll wheel is messed up though. I am kind of in the trenches (who isn't these days), and am looking for some good old retail...

      I currently have a Corsair Dark Core Pro SE that I like a lot. My scroll wheel is messed up though. I am kind of in the trenches (who isn't these days), and am looking for some good old retail therapy.
      My big ticket items:

      • works well on linux (openRGB if possible)
      • has forward and back thumb buttons
      • scroll wheel works (lol)
      • has nice support for pinky (I really like this feature on my current mouse)(as I have big hands)

      I am not opposed to just buying another of my current mouse, I can't tell if there is anything really comparable. I also don't really understand/care for my mouse being lightweight.

      Deep cut question though is if anyone has any experience with trackballs, I kind of want to try it out but ultimately I don't really know what I am doing. I really just use my computer casually, and I don't play any competitive games just casual.

      Any recs? Thanks, happy to answer any questions too.

      18 votes
    5. Overwhelmed with the realm of data exploration (datalakes, AI, plus some c-level pressure)

      Hi all, I have been tasked with the gargantuan task of understanding and eventually implementing what is effectively turning our database into an all-knowing human. What they want at the base...

      Hi all,

      I have been tasked with the gargantuan task of understanding and eventually implementing what is effectively turning our database into an all-knowing human.

      What they want at the base level is to be able to open up a chat bot or similar and ask "where can I put an ice cream shop in <x region of our portfolio>?" And the result should be able to reason against things like demographics in the area, how many competing ice cream shops are in the area, etc.

      They also want it to be able to read into trends in things like rents, business types, etc., among many other "we have the data, we just don't know how to use it" questions.

      You may be sitting there saying "hire a data analyst" and I agree with you but the ai bug has bitten c-level and they are convinced our competition has advanced systems that can give this insight into their data with a snap of a finger.

      I don't know if this is true but regardless, here I am knee deep in the shit trying to find some kind of solution. My boss thinks we can throw everything into a datalake and connect it to chatgpt and it will just work, but I have my reservations.

      We have one large database that is "relational" (it has keys that other tables reference but they rarely have proper foreign keys, this is a corporate accounting software specifically for commercial real estate and was not our design and is 30 years old at this point) and we have a couple of smaller databases for things like brokerage and some other unrelated things.

      I'm currently of the opinion that a datalake won't do much for us. Maybe I'm wrong but I think cultivating several views that combine our various tables in a sensible way with sensible naming will help to give AI a somewhat decent chance at being successful.

      My first entry point was onelake + powerbi + copilot, but that isn't what they're looking for and it's ridiculously expensive. I then looked at powerbi "q&a" which was closer but still not there. You can do charts and sums and totals etc but you can't ask it introspective questions, it just falls on its face. I don't think it was designed for the type of things my company wants.

      I have since pivoted to retrieval augmented generation (rag-ai) with azure openai and I feel like I'm on the right path but I can't get it to work. I'm falling face first through azure and the tutorials that exist are out of date even though they're 3 months old. It's really frustrating to try to navigate azure and fabric and foundry with no prior understanding. Every time I try something I have to create 6 resource group items, permissions left right and center, blob stores, etc, and in the end it just...doesn't work.

      I think I'm headed in the right direction. I think I need to make some well formatted views/data warehouses, then transform those into vector matrices which azure's openai foundry can take and reason against in addition to the normal LLM that 4o or o1 mini uses

      I tried to do a proof of concept with an exported set of data that I had in a big excel sheet but uploading files as part of your dataset is painful as they get truncated and even if they don't, the vectorizing doesn't seem to work if it's not a PDF or image etc.

      I need to understand whether I'm in the right universe and I need to figure out how to get this implemented without spending 10 grand a month on powerbi and datalakes that don't even work the way they want.

      Anyone got any advice/condolences for me? I've been beating my head against this for days and I'm just overwhelmed by all the buzz words and over promises and terrible "demos" of someone making a pie chart out of 15 records out of the contoso database and calling it revolutionary introspective conversational AI

      I'm just tired đŸ˜©

      20 votes
    6. Is it okay to use ChatGPT for proofreading?

      I sometimes use chatGPT to proofread longer texts (like 1000+ words) I write in English. Although this is not my first language, I often find myself writing in English even outside of internet...

      I sometimes use chatGPT to proofread longer texts (like 1000+ words) I write in English. Although this is not my first language, I often find myself writing in English even outside of internet forums. That is because if I read or watch something in English, and that thing motivates me to write, my brain organically gravitates toward it.

      My English is pretty good and I am reasonably confident communicating in that language, but it will never be the same as my native language. So I will often run my stuff through Grammarly and chatGPT. If you wanna say "This will teach you bad habits", please don't. Things like Grammarly and Google Translate taught me so much and improved my English so much, that I am a bit tired of that line of reasoning. I read most of my books in English. I'm not a beginner so I can and do check for all the changes, and vet them myself as I don't always agree with them.

      With GPT, I usually just ask it to elaborate a critique rather than spit out a corrected version. Truth be told, when I did ask for a corrected version, it made plenty of sensible corrections that didn't really alter anything other than that. So I guess I just wanna know everyone's feelings about this. Suppose I write a bunch, have GPT correct it for me, compare it with the original and verify every correction. Is that something you would look at unfavorably?

      Thanks!

      17 votes
    7. Bluetooth receiver with a sane low-battery warning?

      The behavior of a bluetooth device when it reaches low battery is never advertised, and a lot of the time no one even mentions it in the reviews. My experience is that most devices give you an...

      The behavior of a bluetooth device when it reaches low battery is never advertised, and a lot of the time no one even mentions it in the reviews. My experience is that most devices give you an audio warning on repeat until you charge it, which is obviously bad design.

      Can anyone recommend a bluetooth receiver that doesn't do this? I've heard that apple airpods only warn you once or twice, but my preference is for a battery-powered bluetooth receiver that lets me plug in wired headphones. I'm still interested in hearing about other bluetooth headphones though.

      If there's nothing on the market, it might be interesting to try and build something. There must be bluetooth modules you can buy, but I wonder if they would have the same problem. Maybe you can modify the firmware? If anyone out there is hardware-hacking bluetooth devices, let me know.

      14 votes
    8. I hate 2FA

      I get that it’s supposed to make things more secure, but it feels like a constant chore every time I try to log in somewhere. Grab a code from my phone. Check my email. Open an authenticator app....

      I get that it’s supposed to make things more secure, but it feels like a constant chore every time I try to log in somewhere. Grab a code from my phone. Check my email. Open an authenticator app. Repeat this process for every single account, over and over.

      I know there are tools like YubiKey that are supposed to make 2FA easier, but the reality is that most websites don’t even support them.

      I already use a password manager, and all my passwords are long, randomized, and secure. Is there something I am missing that makes this easier, or is this just as infuriating for everyone else?

      75 votes
    9. Should I self-host my blog?

      I've gone down the rabbit hole of self-hosting, and I'm wondering if I should try self-hosting my blog. The blog is currently on Netlify. I've left it there because I figure their infrastructure...

      I've gone down the rabbit hole of self-hosting, and I'm wondering if I should try self-hosting my blog. The blog is currently on Netlify. I've left it there because I figure their infrastructure is much better than mine... but part of that is a CDN, and, despite the performance benefits, I'm not thrilled about the privacy implications of subjecting my users to that. I'm torn on that point.

      That said, I'm on cable internet, so my upstream is abysmal. My site is mostly text and the site is low traffic, so maybe it's not a problem. What do you think? What are some of the implications of self-hosting the blog that I'm not considering?

      Edit: Wanted to clarify a couple of things I realize weren't clear in my original posting. I'm already self-hosting a few dozen services from home on my own hardware. Port 80 and 443 both work, and I'm already running a Caddy reverse proxy to proxy to the other services. My question is less about whether self-hosting is a good idea and whether I should be keeping my blog on Netlify for the reasons above. My biggest concerns are the privacy implications of keeping with Netlify and their CDN vs. the performance implications of losing the CDN and serving via a ~30Mbps upstream connection.

      Thank you for all the comments so far!

      17 votes
    10. Uses for retired 2009 MacBook Pro? [Specifically, when I already own an RPi4]

      Its screen and touchpad work as well as they always have, even though it's largely been gathering dust beneath my desk for the past two years. It's obsolete and too slow for modern (read: under 7...

      Its screen and touchpad work as well as they always have, even though it's largely been gathering dust beneath my desk for the past two years. It's obsolete and too slow for modern (read: under 7 years old) macOS, but it's not broken.

      I could install Linux and set up a server, but my Pi has already filled that role.


      This topic came to mind because a friend sent two truly broken laptops—including a MBP of similar vintage to the one discussed here—home with me to send to electronics recycling. Kicking about for other opinions before I add this computer to the pile.

      19 votes
    11. App/browser extension idea if it doesn't already exist: likely bot database

      I just finished reading I hate the new internet post, in which the OP stated: Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows...

      I just finished reading I hate the new internet post, in which the OP stated:

      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.

      Why couldn't we create a bot database, which I imagine would work similarly to uBlock for ads? There would be a number of signals to attempt to classify users of social media sites (likely human, likely bot, etc.) in addition to user-provided feedback ("I think this person is a bot" or "this account is me -- definitely not a bot").

      An extension could then be attached to the database to provide visual changes to social media platforms ("WARNING! LIKELY BOT!") or simply hide bot posts/comments.

      Off the top of my head, some bot signals:

      • Posting known duplicate posts with political motivation (e.g. on Reddit you see the same exact post about how the tariffs will create a stronger America by different posters) [strong indicator]
      • Usernames that follow the lazy bot format, e.g., Pretentious_Rabbit_2355 [weak indicator]
      • Usage of AI-generated or ripped off profile pictures, post images, etc. [strong indicator]
      • etc.

      On the crowdsourced side, there would have to be some rules in place to prevent profile bombing, etc.

      All in all, I could see something like this adding a bit of human value back to the various social media platforms AND I would think it would lead to higher advertisement click rates (bots will become less valuable over time on a given platform and decide to invest their resources elsewhere, while "human" user engagement increases at the same time).

      If this concept already exists, I apologize. I only did a very quick google.

      15 votes
    12. How would you moderate this scenario?

      I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community. We have a section...

      I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.

      We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:

      Let the train hit:
      a) Nintendo developers
      b) Sony developers
      c) Microsoft developers

      Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.

      A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.

      Now that really threw me.

      The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.

      As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.

      Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.

      I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.

      21 votes