I just don’t look at it if I have to make an account.
Same. Those sites simply don’t exist to me. If it’s so important that I see it, then copy/paste the content.
Right? If your message is important, then set it free. If it’s not, then I’m not gonna care.
Yep, whenever people text me an Instagram or TikTok URL, I just scroll past it. I don’t even bother to find out what it’s supposed to be about, it’s completely inconsequential to me.
It’s like they’re trying to show you a party that’s going on in some private location, but you don’t get in, because you don’t have an account. Well then, they say, if the account is free and you still don’t make it, it’s not our fault. So they close you out.
You telling them to “just copy and paste the content” is like telling them to send you a photo/video of the party. It’s not the same as being there.
My thought exactly, and I don’t feel like missing out either
Which is 100% fine by them.
They’ve created a situation where we HAVE to use ad-blockers for security, so they instead have to sell our data.
If they can’t make money off ads OR selling our data AND we won’t pay to view the content, all we’re really doing is using up their bandwidth.
You’re missing nothing on Instagram.
Disagree. There are many amazing creators on the app creating beautiful art and music.
just ask them to send a screenshot
I have told my wife and several of my friends stop sending me things from ________, ________, and _________. I can’t see them and I refuse to do what is required.
Haha, so true. I really really miss the “old” interwebz. Imagine the content of back-then with the hardware of today. The dream of yesteryear would come true. A blazingly fast net. Just html with a bit of JS (when really needed). Not 10 frameworks (each used for one function), dozens of mb of graphics, a gazillion of cookies and tracker-scripts and… Jeez.
Today i need so much stuff to fight the other stuff, it’s stuffmageddon.
Oh and if you’re also European you can also fight (for free!) the silly cookie-war.
4chan back before the Nazi takeover was like the wild west. My favorite part was “Lithursday,” when we would share images with embedded PDFs of copyrighted content, including rare books, anarchist materials, and military manuals. I often wonder if those unusually large .jpgs are still floating around the internet waiting to be unlocked. I also saw legitimate acts of activism and terrorism unfolding live, without the interpretation and propaganda of the state.
Oh man, I remember that. I’m sure I still have an Anarchist 's Cookbook floating around from one of those
Oh yes… The rise (and fall) of 4chan. At least the site is still relatively lean, so that’s that 🤷🏻♂️
Not 10 frameworks (each used for one function), dozens of mb of graphics,
Have you seen the old internet?! It would have been even more gifs, music players, and oh the flash websites! Haha I know that’s really not your point but this jumped out at me and made me chuckle.
Under construction 😩
Ok touché 😩
Point taken. The gifs were rising strongly, and music on websites was worse than a rusty nail in my dingdong. But still. One plugin today would’ve just got ridden of those and it would still load faster 😁
At least it came on a free CD.
*shiny coaster
Yes pls
some of our clients are on what the telco calls ‘extended’ dsl. they’re waaaay tf out at the ‘end of the line’ where speeds can be as shitty as 250-500kbps; there’s even a couple still on dialup. so we definitely consider the weight of a page and how many connections are made for each when we do our own sites.
I’d love that… The weight-considered-site that is. Not the 500k line 😁
Today i need so much stuff to fight the other stuff, it’s stuffmageddon.
The most relatable statement of the year so far. It’s so exhausting ;-;
Ha! Recently went to breakfast with a couple of new neighbors (partners).
They were asking me what apps I enjoyed and I told them that I WAS enjoying Apollo. Told them I left Reddit. They sort looked at me. They later said they both worked at home. Their job was creating ad space for the web. One of them gave me the enshitification face. Sigh.
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What is “the enshitification face”
I can only imagine horrible things
What is “the enshitification face”
maybe one of these?
Definitely the first one, with the dollar signs.
It was sort of like you caught me eating my shit cereal face. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Recently went to breakfast with a couple of new neighbors (partners). They were asking me what apps I enjoyed and I told them that I WAS enjoying Apollo.
Lol at first I interpreted this as the waiter asking you what appetizers you wanted
The browser in my computer at work doesn’t have an ad blocker. I haven’t installed one because I most of the time I’m using it to access our intranet. But when I do happen to use the internet, damn are there so many ads! They literally block the content I’m trying to read, and come back even when I try to close it.
All that to say, due to enshittification I will forever keep my ad blocker on my personal computer.
Can’t imagine what the web is like outside of ublock origin…
The few websites I see on pcs by clients are essentially state backed so they don’t have ads as well.Scary world I am not eager to experience.
I’m baffled when companies that self-host DNS don’t have DNS-level adblocking.
It’s because there’s websites out there that will entirely break, and for really dumb fucking reasons. I’ve seen some sites not even load due to google tag manager being blocked. Most of the time it’s a signal to me that I don’t want to have anything to do with that domain.
However, if this was at work, that would be a call to IT. Multiply that by potentially hundreds of calls on the regular, and that could get really expensive.
The better solution here I think, is to default the browser install with uBlock Origin already there. Then allow the user the power to toggle the addon to their own liking. Then last, train your employees to know what the addon is, and how to use it.
Then it’s the best of both worlds: websites aren’t necessarily breaking for all users, ads are absent as a default state, and users are empowered to control their own experience. (And yes there’s still going to be Jims and Karens calling for support, but they’re going to regardless, those types will always find a reason.)
It’s almost as though the overbearing Yahoo/Ask! toolbars that used to plague everyone’s Internet Explorer back in the day have mutated and infected the internet at large. Now most websites feel like one useless, giant malware-riddled toolbar.
I see ads for the company I work at on my work computer, because I don’t have admin privileges to install ad blockers.
It’s wild using a browser without a blocker. I’ve had one since they first started appearing so the internet I know is very different to reality. On the rare occassion I use a browser that allows ads, it feels like shit’s broken. It’s so hard to get anything done and a chore to read or view content.
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It’s gotten real bad for me just in the last week.
Videos load really slowly, constantly stops when I play a playlist of videos.
I have had ad blockers for over a decade now, it’s never been this bad.
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I’ve been using NewPipe since I found out about it. Ad free YouTube with no slow down that I can see.
Really? My main reason for still trying to use adblockers instead of NewPipe or another frontend is that every one I’ve tried is slooooow. Is there a setting I should change or something???
Also libretube (android client to piped.video so you don’t connect to YouTube at all) and clipious (android client to invidious) are worth looking at too. You’ll need to tweak the servers you connect to to get good performance, but both work quite nicely.
Same
Alternative interfaces like NewPipe, FreeTube, etc. work fine for what they are, but I prefer using a web browser because I actually like Youtube keeping track of my watch history and its recommendation algorithm works (reasonably) well for me.
All the alternative interfaces have privacy from Google as a primary design goal, so they want you to import your subscriptions and let them keep track of what you watched locally, but the consequence and downside of that is that it doesn’t synchronize across devices (e.g. FreeTube on my Linux desktop and NewPipe on my phone). At least not without a bunch of extra effort on my part manually importing and exporting, anyway.
The slow erosion of my enjoyment of YouTube inspired me to get Plex set up and start rewatching some classic shows I love. It’s been a great experience. No ads, no wait times, just entertainment.
Cornerstones of the internet:
- social media
- content sharing (video, audio media)
- websites
Internet resources ruined by ads/corporate greed:
- social media (full of ads, borderline unusable without ad block)
- content sharing (account sharing blocks (Netflix) war on adblockers (YouTube) etc)
- e-mail (spam)
- websites (ads, borderline unusable without adblockers, refuses to load with adblockers)
gg everyone. Time to reinvent everything.
So true. I’d like to add that also because of ads, social media and other websites are full of nonsense clickbait content, and every part of the user experience is designed to keep you scrolling through said content. Even with an adblocker, it’s like wading through a swamp to find anything actually worth looking for. (Of course, there are still websites with no ads, and even the ones with ads aren’t always horrible. But generally, shit sucks.)
I believe you’re referring to “the algorithm”. Which is usually just code for “a bunch of people that view and engage with the content you have viewed/engaged with also viewed/engaged with this”
I understand what they’re doing and I understand why, but sometimes, I just want a reverse chronological feed of my friends activities, so I can keep up to date with their most recent life events.
I’m not internet god, but I have a possible first step forward with a protocol and working implementation ;
Decentralized websites, encrypted and takedown safe. Free, FOSS and based on reciprocal sharing. Nothing very complicated, you need to forward a port and run a program.
I’m just a geek though, not a manager or marketing person so I’d love some people checking it out.
Valmond
Web 2.0 desperately clinging to life. FOSS self hosted web is the future. Internet speeds are fast enough on home networks that self hosting is perfectly viable for essentially everything, and for the few things that can’t be self hosted by just anyone, FOSS alternatives and work arounds to existing paid services exist.
Internet is becoming harder to monopolize, and increasing amounts of power and control are being handed back to the working class online. FOSS has become a movement that has grown exponentially over the last few years.
Their next recourse will be attempting to make jail time a thing for piracy. Both for hosting it and downloading it.
There’s certainly a bubble bursting. You only have to look at all the layoffs.fyi since COVID. I’m just hoping it’s happening in a slow enough way that it’s not going to take more legitimate companies with it.
AI is the next bubble. It will hit a brick wall either legally or just on functionality (maybe both). I can see uses for targeted models, bespoke to a use case, but training those is too expensive right now. General models are just toys IMHO. Unfortunately it’s going to get a few years for everyone to realise.
The brick wall on AI is not functionality. It’s cost of running the neural networks. It’s simply not financially realistic to integrate ChatGPT into everything.
Ha, yeah sure, and trains will never go faster than 15mph.
Natural language computing is huge at the moment because it’s a huge and significant development in computing - yes there are lots of shitty ai girlfriend apps and the same goes for generative ai there are lots of shitty art apps but human language interfaces aren’t going away nor are generative design tools.
Even just the coding tools already available for free are a game changer, every single programmer I know and all the coding communities I’m in are using chatGPT regularly. When generative design gets into other areas such as cad and cam with natural language and problem solving (as in task based algorithms like the Go solver) then you’ll start to see the how ubiquitous and significant these technologies are.
I understand why you’d look at the first commercial computers and think that no normal person will ever have a use for them but look at where we are now. The same is true for ai, current stuff is amazing when carefully worked and it takes a lot to get it all wired in but as the ecosystem of code grows and training sets become better established everything becomes much easier which enables more effective use cases.
You are going to train the AI that replaces you. They aren’t going to tell you that though. I’m starting comprehensive plans so that any future work I do can’t be fed into AI. Making hardware that just dumps random input when I’m not using it. Isolating and containing any human input that does happen. Distributing my work across as many devices as possible to only give each it’s single app use worth of data.
It’s not so simple. I’ve been trying to go the foss self-hosted way, as well as help p2p projects, and I got stuck because I’m behind a cgnat, unable to forward ports, and my shitty isp has no ipv6. I can’t afford vpns at the moment, so I got stuck. Besides, all that needed a lot of tech skills most people won’t have. This is a serious barrier of entry for a lot of people.
It does seem like FLOSS is experiencing a renaissance due to rampant commercialization of the web
Some one will say something offensive or a slight threat and the government will charge you for a crime like you did it.
They want the Internet to be HR speak only.
That would require every government worldwide to be on board. Then you’ll have a couple holdouts, and they’ll take in the dough from everyone wanting to host their content there. While there is a mile-long wishlist from the powers that be, they’re still going to chase what’s profitable.
Until ISPs start cracking down harder than they already are.
Jail time already is a thing for piracy. Seriously investigate the history of TPB if you dont already known it, or refresh your memory of it if you do
Have you ever pirated something? If so, have you ever been sent to jail for it?
I’m not talking about hosting companies. Yes, I am aware that prosecution exists for them and has been a thing a long time. I’m saying they’re going to start pushing for end users to face jail time as well. It’s the only real recourse they have.
Lets be real - This isn’t going to change on it’s own. The only way for it to change is if everyone collectively took a stand against it. Which simply just won’t happen. The most reasonable thing to do is to focus your energy on collectives that actively reject such practices. Oh hey, you’re already in one: Lemmy, good job. As long as we work together to create a small corner of the internet that remains true to what the internet should be, we can grow it and create a better internet in the long term.
Or people could stop thinking small.
Back in the day, the GOP was completely controlled by Big Business. A guy named Jerry Falwell saw how Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy had gotten him elected and jumped in. He organized his people at the grassroots level. If there was a local Republican club that got 20 people at the average meeting, Jerry’s church group would show up with fifty. At the start, they were getting dog catchers and county clerks in, but eventually their power grew.
Amen, ClamDrinker! Thanks for speaking the truth.
For me the internet is still just about bearable but only because of the following…
Firefox + unlock origin for web browsing.
RedReader for Reddit when I occasionally need to go there.
Lemmy for the best Reddit alternative.
Revanced and NewPipe for YouTube.
Recently moved from Google podcasts to Podcast Republic after Google moved podcasts to you tube music.
Never had Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram.
Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.
It feels like I’m swimming against a strong tide just to maintain a good experience, in no other industry do the major players want to cripple your goods and services if you don’t bend over and accept their increasingly poor goods and services 🤷🏻♂️
Add ghostery to that browser plugin list if you’re in the EU.
You have to “accept” a lot of crap (cookies, data collection, …), or jump through hoops every time you don’t want to. Illegal here and infuriating.
No. Ghostery sold out years ago. Also uBlockOrigin can do the same, but apparently no one knows that you easily subscribe to additional block lists (one of them just for cookie banners).
Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.
I what way? Are you talking about email lists or something like that? Please share some wisdom so I can think of email as of something more than just annoying spambox that corportations and governments use to spy on me.
I’ve always had a real email and a spam email. I only give companies the spam email. That thing is overloaded with garbage. My real email is actually pretty clean as a result. Unfortunately, my wife has on occasion gave my email out when signing up for things, so a few junk emails still get to me usually from that. I would highly recommend this practice.
I do that too… but sometimes its hard to tell which email I should use.
For example, if I create a patreon account to pay people - I’m giving financial info and accessing stuff that I actually care about - which suggests I use my ‘real’ email address. But on the other hand, the email address is shown to people I’m paying, and I don’t necessarily want them contacting me in that way, or even know that that email address exists. As in, I might want to support them - but that doesn’t mean I trust them to respect my privacy. So then maybe the spam email address is the way?
Email is essentially only useful now when used with aliases. Even having a “spam email” can get your digital footprint linked to your identity and real contact info.
But otherwise, it’s still necessary for longform written communication.
All sorts of things are still useful with email, for instance my work sends my duty rosters to my personal email address (my preference so I don’t have to log into work when I’m off duty) I get a reminder for my car service, confirmation that my online grocery shopping has been picked and when to expect delivery, confirmation of orders I’ve made and delivery dates times, where I live we have a management company and they communicate to residents by email, some 2FA checks come by email, I still find these things useful & prefer an email rather than endless push notifications on my mobile if that’s an alternative, I don’t allow email to notify my mobile either, I just check the inbox a couple of times a day.
It’s not a solution, but as a mitigation, I’m trying to push the idea of an internet right of way into the public consciousness. Here’s the thesis statement from my write-up:
I propose that if a company wants to grow by allowing open access to its services to the public, then that access should create a legal right of way. Any features that were open to users cannot then be closed off so long as the company remains operational. We need an Internet Rights of Way Act, which enforces digital footpaths. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to create little paths into their sites, only to delete them, forcing guests to pay if they wish to maintain access to the networks that they built, the posts that they wrote, or whatever else it is that they were doing there.
As I explain in the link, rights of way already exist for the physical world, so it’s easily explained to even the less technically inclined, and give us a useful legal framework for how they should work.
I agree but I think it needs to be slightly more practical. Sometimes a line of business just dries up and it would damage the company to try and keep that service going. It wouldn’t make sense to force a company into bankruptcy to keep one line going that few people use anymore.
Earlier today, though, I was thinking about sunsetting guarantees. Companies can and should decommission things when it makes business sense, but the user generated content it has gathered shouldn’t just disappear, and they shouldn’t be allowed to destroy the user experience of things people have bought.
So I would propose rules like:
-
If a service is being decomissioned or an entry point to that service being shut down, the content available on that service must be made available as a bulk export. Personal data, such as account data, messages, etc should be made available to users individually, while publicly accessible content should be made available publicly.
-
If a public service is being taken down completely, source code should be made available publicly.
-
If the service for a device which was physically purchased by consumers is being taken down, an update must be provided to allow users to use a local or alternative backend service. The source code for the service must be released publicly.
-
If features are being removed from a service which backed a physically purchased device, an update must be offered which allows users to point to a local or alternative service for either all functionality or, at minimum, the removed functionality. Looking at you, Google, keep removing features…
Yeah, as always, the devil is in the details. For now I think that we need a simple and clear articulation of the main idea. In the exceedingly unlikely event that it ever gets traction, I look forward to hammering out the many nuances.
-
I’m actually glad for it. It made me switch to Linux, discover Mullvad Browser and their VPN combo, get a GrapheneOS phone, find an amazing Freetube YT desktop client, and dabble with Home Assistant and PIHole. Plus I migrated to Protonmail and Kagi as my search, and Lemmy instead of reddit is also an amazing change, the discussions I’ve seen so far feel better and more in depth, and I’m enjoying my time here so far. The lack of endless content is also great, to help with implementing Digital Minimalism.
So, while I hate any large corporation and their greed with more and more passion, it has lead me to a nice privacy journey, for which I’m glad.
Same for me. I switched to Linux, left reddit currently migrating to proton mail and my next phone will be one where I can install Graphene OS onto. More changes will come soon.
Don’t get stuck w Protonmail. I did, not worth.
Why and what would you recommend instead?
Host own email, just buy a domain.
Proton is still worth it IMO, e-mail is inherently unsafe and Proton still beats using Gmail or Outlook.
It does but at ~$80/year, you might as well buy a domain and host your own email…
Yes, and host it on Proton. They are pretty reasonably priced compared to paid offerings by Microsoft and Google, and even if you pay them you are still the product. With proton you are the customer.
Looked into Kagi. Seems interesting. Personally, I use either Brave search or Searx. There’s was post over at Linux@lemmy.ml about open source alternatives to ChatGPT and I might look into those. But I definitely keep Kagi in mind. By the way, How good is Kagi for,um… “sailing the high seas”?
Yes but thats a lot of work, what if all this was already setup
Wow, are you me?? :D
I almost did the same, just my phone is not a pixel, so i had to resort to some other custom ROM. And I still just use good ol’ firefox with proton VPN most of the time.
P.S. I also blocked our TV from accessing the internet as well. Ex. Codeberg is a GitHub replacement, and on mobile Grayjay/LibreTube works great for youtube.
Can you use tap to pay?
If not, there’s always the universal three step solution:
Step 1: buy a stick on credit card holder and stick it on your phone Step 2: put in basically any modern credit card Step 3: tap to pay
yeah but then you are limited to 1 card, I have my travel card(myki), credit card etc all on the wallet app.
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I’d suggest the Firefox extension libredirect. Automatically redirects Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and more to alternative front-ends.
I’m very wary of installing more extensions since I heard how many lucrative requests extension devs get from third parties for allowing them to enshittify their software.
It’s FOSS. You can verify that the code doesn’t make any malicious requests. The only requests it should make are to GitHub/Codeberg to update the list of instances.
Yeah, but that doesn’t prevent the author from selling their extension to an untrusted buyer like in the case of Nano Adblocker.
Wow, didn’t think something like that had happened. That is a valid concern. However, it could be mitigated by disabling auto update and subscribing to the GitHub releases via RSS. Then you can either manually check for malicious commits, or if the extension is more popular, wait a bit for any bad news to come out about the update. Obviously, this isn’t possible for everyone and every extension, so I can understand why people would be cautious of more extensions, but I think Libredirect is a big enough extension that you would hear about it, like the case with Nano Adblocker.
I’ve just blocked YT in my browser, and use https://freetubeapp.io/ instead. It’s a desktop app, so I don’t have to deal with cookies and storage being deleted after every session, just as i can do subscriptions to channels without requiring an account.
So far, it has been an amazing experience, I totally recommend it. And I second the point about Nano AdBlcoker, since I’ve also been one of the victims, since at the time Nano Defender was one of the alternatives pretty well recommended on Reddit, that was better at avoiding anti-adblock scripts. Plus, any extension you have only makes you easier to fingerprint, thus defeating the point of VPN or privacy focused browser. Especially with Mullvad browser + VPN, which is especially build on the idea of sharing the exact same fingerprint with every other Mullvad VPN user.
I haven’t noticed any slowdowns with Firefox and Ublock Origin.
And if it does slow down, I’m downloading the whole video before watching it.
My next plan will probably be switching to my Linux computer, then just downloading the video. That sucks for me though b/c I enjoy a live show I subscribe to.
Ads, on a live show I pay to watch, WTF? I keep the chat open in Chrome but leave the video muted and laugh at how far behind the video becomes after ads start popping up.
Next January, I’m gonna figure out gaming on Ubuntu so I can get ahead of support ending for Windows 10.
I’ll probably run that copy of Windows in a VM JUST so I can use Excel. I use Excel at home for lots of stuff, particularly my personal budget, which has this really big macro I wrote from scratch that I really don’t want to give up. I’ve had the same copy of Office 2010 for >10 years now. It’s where Office peaked.
I’m choosing Ubuntu because of familiarity. I’ve been using it on old laptops since 12.10.
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Proton GE edition should get your games going. Works for me so far!
You’re lucky. I run FF and uBlock and get the pause sometimes. Still better than using YT without uBlock, though.
I take a 2min pause of silence over 30 seconds of ads any day.
I’ve noticed YT seems to be loading a bit slower than normal, but it still takes less than a few seconds so I don’t really mind.
I got a popup “Adblockers are not allowed on YouTube” on Firefox running both Ublock Origin and Adblock, not signed in two days ago. I don’t know what to do with that information.
In the UBlock plugin settings, click update cache. On mobile so CBA to give better instructions, but it will fix it
I had a moment of mild panic two days ago when purging and updating the cache didn’t work. It turns out I got caught by it in the short interval after Youtube deployed the new attack but before the blocklist maintainers deployed a countermeasure, and it worked when I tried again an hour or so later. (Using Freetube instead of a browser worked in the meantime, BTW.)
Bad idea, won’t help. Above commenter says they have adblock enabled alongside uBO- that needs to be fixed first. Adblock is tripping YouTube, not uBO
thx
I thought you weren’t supposed to use uBO with Adblock?
This may be true but I have not seen it before. Do you have a source?
I don’t have a source either, but I can confirm having heard the same advice.
In general, even if uBO has been updated to avoid Youtube’s adblocker-detection, if you’re running multiple adblockers it’s possible the popup is triggering because it detects the other one.
More to the point, (a) you shouldn’t need another adblock alongside uBlock Origin anyway, and (b) pretty much every ad-blocker other than uBO has sold out and been compromised, including Adblock, so using it is a bad idea to begin with.
It was something he posted on Twitter: https://nitter.net/gorhill/status/1033706103782170625
I was checking github, which is why I couldn’t find it.
Thank you, I appreciate this.
I may have hallucinated this, but I could have sworn that gorhill said something to this effect, but now I can’t find it.
I’ll keep looking. I genuinely could be wrong.
Never combine adblockers. ONLY use Ublock Origin.
both Ublock Origin and Adblock
That’s the problem.
Hahaha good edit. Could you imagine?!
(Checks for myself)
…Oh…
It’s sensible that maintaining a current up to date dictionary is worthy of compensation, but I think the tragedy is that such endeavors as “maintaining current information on human language” aren’t just publicly funded, so here they are panhandling for “Dictionary plus” lol.
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The OED has been like this for at least 15 years (possibly longer but that’s when I first encountered it). So I wouldn’t consider this an appropriate example of the enshittification that’s been taking place of late.
Ooh I didn’t realize that, I was just Googling -oidal & this was the first result
I believe it has charged a fee from the day they first offered the dictionary for online use.
I’m surprised people still use commercial dictionaries when Wiktionary exists. Is there a reason more people don’t use it?
Fwiw, this is the first time I’ve heard of Wiktionary
Okay, that’s probably the reason then.
The OED goes very in-depth into etymology in the way other English dictionaries do not. It’s the size of an encyclopedia. This is the print version of the second edition, which has been supplemented several times since:
As far as I know the OED is a very specific dictionary that’s way beyond what most people need and mostly for people dealing with language in their work. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ would be the more personal variant from what I’ve heard.
Not to mention sites blacklisting VPN IPs
Try making an account without any of the 3 “approved” email addresses ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
“you’re using a sub domain, get out of here you terrorist!”
What are the 3? Gmail, Yahoo, AOL?
Microsoft (Outlook/Live/Hotmail) instead of AOL
I’ve never had a single issue with protonmail
I haven’t either, but then there are a lot of popular sites I don’t use because they require an account.
my own site for my very small business gets about 10 legit visitors a week, none of which have ever connected via a known vpn address (dating back some 15 years). another 100 page views a week on average from legit bots (msn, google, etc).
the rest (and well over 95% of overall traffic) is bots, scrapers, and hackers, many of which use addresses linked to vpn services and pound the sites on the server looking for exploitable scripts (wordpress related, usually; which we’ve never run here), login and contact forms. if i could simply ‘flip a switch’ and redirect all vpn traffic to a separate landing page, i would seriously consider doing so. it wouldn’t affect site availability to our legit users and our target audience. but for now, mod_security is doing a stellar job and is the mvp.
