Ech

Np!

*movie

Not to say it’s not still impressive, but Dessalines and Nutomic also get grant money from NLNet, or they at least did for a while. Not entirely sure what the status of that is lately. I’d guess donations make up the bulk at this point either way, following the surge in users from last year.

It’s not really their fault though

Definitely not, and to clarify, I am laying any blame there is to be doled out at the feet of companies.

I do wonder if it’s reversible at this point, though. I don’t see any company choosing to reverse course, at least not in a way that would cause a large-scale shift. Incapable users are the best they could hope for - uninterested in seeking out anything other than what they are handed and, if they ever did decide to look around, unable to adapt to “harsher” alternatives. Legislation certainly isn’t going to be expected. No government is going to mandate citizens have a “worse” experience. Perhaps a purposeful cultural shift, but that would take a lot of coordination of people that likely don’t see the issue or simply don’t care. I feel like we’re past the watershed here, as frustrating and concerning as that is.

All this really means is they grew up navigating digital spaces socially. I’ve discovered first hand that the generation at large has little-to-no knowledge of the technical workings of even the computers they use regularly, imo due to the “apple-fication” (one button? Really?) of digital devices. Most exclusively use their cell phone as their digital device, or a chromebook provided by their school, all of which have been streamlined to the extreme to “enhance” the user experience, but have in actuality given them absolutely zero-experience learning how to troubleshoot or incentive to dig into how their devices operate. I’ve had to walk teens through how to navigate the file directories on their laptops.

In the past, the only people to be “techies” (ie people seeking out spaces like the Internet) were ones willing and able to deal with hurdles and issues, and the window is apparently quiet narrow for people who grew up with tech (to an extent) and also had to learn how to handle issues like that. The majority of others are either those described above, or those that never saw tech as important or worth it (though we’re also seeing the consequences of those people finding their way onto the “one-button” internet in meme/conspiracy addicted boomers).

Better comparison would’ve been something like “Annoyed with your landlord? Go build a cabin in the woods!”. Like, that’s straight-up appealing to some people, but it’s also not just something anyone and everyone can do.

Might as well ask what’s indicative of stone tablets from millennia ago being data to us now? These things aren’t discovered and studied in a vacuum. They operate within context - where the items were found, their similarity to other better understood things, known history of data storage, etc etc.

Given enough time and disruption, sure, all context could be lost, but if that’s the case, I’d assume figuring out what the weird glass cube thing is would be the least of their problems.

Fair enough, hah

Honestly, my favorite part of survival games is the beginning.

Is this what libertarians fantasize about playing city builders?

Tbf, I say that as someone that lived the Chaotic Good monitor life for like, a decade with a monitor my family was throwing away.

“Chaotic Good”

aka “I got this monitor for free from someone else”