I don’t have any experience with CoreOS so can’t help you on that front. That said, it sounds like the server in question isn’t mission-critical in the first place and you seem to have come up with a good argument for trying it out. Why not give it a go and see how it works out?
To be fair I’d straight up trust the bigger porn companies more than the credit bureaus. They seem to have a much better grasp on technology and somehow manage to seem less sketchy.
This is an excellent point. My benchmark for something like this is, “What would cause my wife to migrate from Reddit to Lemmy?” The answer is a Digg-level fiasco where the majority of users leave.
Those of us who already swore off Reddit in favor of this platform are vastly the exception. Most people follow the herd when it comes to social media.
That said, as much as I’d love to see a larger userbase and more active niche communities here, I’m quite happy with our incremental growth. The fediverse feels a lot more like the community of the early internet, which is something I really missed.
This is indeed the way. In my personal life I’m like 50-75% there: I run Linux on my primary computer, use Firefox and LibreWolf, self-host as much as possible, etc. But you’re right about the duopoly (triopoly, if that’s a word? If you consider MS, Google, and Apple as being the main gatekeepers to the average person’s technical experiences). As much as open-source and privacy-respecting alternatives have gotten vastly more accessible over the last decade or so, it still almost always requires effort and at least some technical knowledge on the part of the user. Sometimes at the end of the day I just want to chill out, so I pick my battles and approach this as a long-term, gradual process.
To your last point I’ll even admit that I’m part of the problem. In addition to some other roles I run IT for the small business I’ve worked for over the last decade+. About a year and a half ago the owners decided to retire and my family pooled our money to buy the business (a bunch of us had worked there a long time). Newly promoted to treasurer, I had the keys to the castle and could have used this as an opportunity to push for a paradigm switch in our IT to Linux. I didn’t though, because with all the other moving parts and major financial risks we were taking, it would have just been one more source of friction in an already -stressful time.
So, instead, I doubled down on the MS tax and moved us to MS365. The thing is, though, outside of two Windows-only apps (only one of which is mission-critical) 90% of what my users do is all browser-based and they probably wouldn’t even notice a difference in their OS. But, a) I didn’t want to waste the political capital when I had other priorities I wanted to push for with the new owners, and b) again - sticking with the status quo is just easier in the short term. The thought of teaching a new OS to a dozen non-technical admins and salespeople was just too much at a time when I was scrambling to make sure we could pay our bills. As the old adage goes, “no one gets fired for buying IBM.”
What makes this even more ridiculous is that, in part due to my lack of super-in-depth Windows admin knowledge, I ended up setting up a co-management agreement with an IT provider so I had a fallback option when my other duties kept me from responding to IT issues myself. The really crazy part, looking back, is that I regularly run into way more weird bugs on my Windows 11 work laptop than I do on my goddamn Arch desktop. Perhaps if I’d have just pushed for this back then, I’d have saved the company thousands of dollars in subscription fees - money which could have instead been spent on my main priority of raising wages. But, alas, the tech establishment is really good at marketing themselves as a turnkey solution (which really isn’t true).
Anyway, thank you all for coming to my Ted Talk.
Shifts nervously
For real though, I’ve been meaning to switch to a de-Googled variant but just haven’t found the energy. Baby steps.
I honestly just assumed this would more or less be happening all along, even pre-AI. Google and Microsoft are established Peeping Toms. If you care at all about privacy they should be avoided. (I type from my Android phone…)
I can only speak anecdotally, but I’ve bought dozens of used network/server components and refurb drives off eBay over the past few years and haven’t had a single bad experience. Once a seller forgot to send one of two cables I ordered and immediately shipped the second on their dime. As long as you’re buying from sellers with good feedback you’re likely going to be fine. That said, I can’t speak to their warranty system as I’ve never used it.
Also, if I recall correctly Newegg got bought by some conglomerate a few years back and has apparently started the process of enshitiffication. That’s just something I recall hearing though - I think I’ve only ever shopped with them once, years back.
Okay, thanks for that. I thought I was losing my mind.
Makes sense - it’s friggin’ cold here like 4-5 months out of the year. The part that really blew my mind is that it only dates back to 2001. I was almost an adult then, and I don’t ever remember it not being a thing.
Exactly! However, there are in fact shady porn companies in practice. The difference is:
Some porn companies are shady
While all credit bureaus are shady
At least with the former you can opt into participation. With credit bureaus you’re automatically being tracked by them unless you live in a tent and pay cash for everything.