angrybits

I know. And I'm sorry, bitterly sorry, but I know that... no apologies I can make can alter the fact that in our thread you have been given a dirty, filthy, smelly piece of technical argument.

Those optimizers you are fighting with have thousands of man hours of research behind them. For every silly choice they make, they make hundreds or thousands of correct ones.

You can have locked cage space leased from a datacenter if you want to be in control of all the things you have any business being in control of.

Except for the fact that you can explicitly contain the potential damage by controlling which accounts can do what. It's not like you have to have one god account with no MFA that has the keys to the city.

Not trying to be snarky, but why on Earth would I mind that my government is trying to prevent a rival government from gaining nuclear capability? World politics are what they are, and they are unavoidable, so my preference is that we do anything necessary to stay in a position of leadership. Would you prefer different if you were us?

edit: clarified last question

That is total bullshit and you know it. This whole culture of self-loathing was cute at the beginning, but it's descended into absolute absurdity. You are patently out of your mind if you actually believe what you wrote. You don't, of course, but what's a little hyperbole when you're posturing for imaginary geek cred points on a website amirite?

This is a good thing even for those outside of San Antonio proper. I was able to upgrade to 1 Gbps on a small-time ISP this weekend, and it's because Google is coming to the large city near me. Competition is a wonderful thing.

No, I value any 1 human over all 30000 remaining lions. How could you not do otherwise?

> I'll be over here riding out the inevitable with my own file sync, git server, chat server, web server, and making my internet how I want it to be

To me, this is exactly why we're not headed for an internet-solely-comprised-of-walled-gardens scenario. There will be plenty for sure, but the pathways will still be open and we netizens can connect whatever we like with them. This is why I am still excited about it, even after 20 years.

> when the last user of it finally gives up and moves to gmail so they can continue to communicate with their contacts or maybe they give up entirely

Between the title and the quoted, I think you have used up your hyperbole quota for one day.

I guess I don't see the issue. The internet is a large piece of infrastructure on which citizens and companies can publish (almost) anything they want. Lamenting that for-profit ventures have tried to wall off their parts is curious, as I am not sure how that impacts me or my decisions. I don't facebook, I don't tweet, and I could not care less that these things exist. (Not entirely true, but my objections to them would be off-topic.) The world is a very large place, and there will always be people who hang out in the more distant corners of the net, you can go be with like-minded people and talk about the good ole days of (insert bygone era here).

Now if you are lamenting this because you want a piece of the action and the big kids are being bullies, then I suppose my answer isn't going to comfort you any. But for just simple usage, I think this is a tempest in a teapot.

> the poor rarely can take advantage of them

I'm pretty sure the solution to that is clean public transportation, no?

Who cares how many lines it takes to do Hello World? Honestly, that isn't a benchmark for any meaningful thing.

There are lots of good sibling comments to this one, but I want to get one more point in before we all move on.

Spending an hour yielding to something larger than yourself is probably good for the soul and definitely good for the ego. You can walk into almost any church, and there you will find a quiet space where you can meditate/pray. You can find a sort of comfort in its 2000 year history, and in the myths/rituals of our past and the people who believe in them. If you are made to feel uncomfortable, then try another one or stop going altogether, there are literally zero negative consequences to it.

The point of this is that you don't have to swear an oath to little baby jesus to get a benefit from a modernized church. You can make of it what you want, they won't mind in the least.