• 2 Posts
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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2024

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  • For more storage space yes. We have 2x2TB HDDs in raid atm and a few years ago that cost more than $100 (although I forget the exact amount). I have no doubt they will last long long time (I have a 1TB HDD in my PC that is about 10 years old and still going strong). But we can’t even store all our favourites let alone movies/shows we watch as one offs. So we would need to ‘upgrade’ what we have which we can’t remotely afford because in this country even 2nd hand storage adds up to expensive.





  • I’m an ex web dev but I still maintain a few non-profit websites. It adds a much t my time load to make sure, what I sometimes a quite complicated system, mobile enabled. And even then it’s often more difficult to use a website with a lot of information or a necessarily complex store/booking system on a mobile phone or laptop. A larger screen with more screen real estate can make UX much nicer. But people have this perception that convenience or ease of access translates into easier to use. Hell even just using a keyboard n a desktop compared to a phone keyboard.


  • Heh, that box and version of Redhat was the first I tried Linux, as well as the same year - 1999 Cost me $110 brand new from a local stationary shop. Which was a lot for a poor student! Sadly didn’t last long as I just couldn’t get everything done in Linux as I could in Windows. And this was despite studying computing at the time.

    Oh well 15 years later I tried again (Mint then Arch) and haven’t gone back to Windows since. 🎉





  • I think some amount of it is apathy, or modern-life time-poor induced apathy where people just want something to work and work quickly without much effort or time and so they just pony up. And with so many people not keeping a budget, $10 a month here and there or $30 once a month doesn’t seem like much if you’re not adding up all those subs combined over a month or a year or 5 years. Really, some subs could fall into the category of a dark pattern because $10 a month doesn’t seem like much compared to say $100 up front even though over the course of a year (or 2, 3, 5+ years) that sub costs you more than just buying software up front. (Think also Sam Vines Boot Theory).

    I see some people are getting fed up (I’m one of them) but sadly plenty more who mindlessly keep paying more and more.











  • Yes, absolutely. I used to pirate almost everything because I was too poor to afford most things. Nowadays I can afford more (albeit still poor so some piracy is still out of necessity for monetary reasons). Sometimes I pirate as a try before I buy. Watching/reading reviews just doesn’t always cut it and the only way to know if something is useful/enjoyable if trying it out first. And some things I intentionally pirate even if I can afford because I have an ethical and moral objection to giving money to the company/creator (like Amazon, Disney, Adobe, etc.). And in those instances I also try to pay it forward as much as possible by direct supporting creators, donating to FOSS, charities, FSF, Internet Archive, etc.