Yeah it pisses me off the way people are like “tech bros ruined the internet”. No, users ruined it! There was no reason to stop self-hosting webpages, forums and IRC servers. Users switched to Facebook instead because they preferred it and didn’t care about the downsides. There’s an alternative to every website and app which respects privacy, serves no ads, and has no algorithm to farm your outrage. Users refuse to use them because they aren’t cool enough.

Is this part of a series or something? I have no idea what any part of it means

All the answers you got show why this conversation goes badly. No one can come up with an actual problem that data collection causes, it’s all silly comparisons to giving people your credit card number or shitting in front of them.

For me, having my data collected is like having CCTV cameras in stores. Yeah, technically someone is filming everything I do. Yeah it would be bad if a private individual was filming me for nefarious reasons. But no one actually uses that data for anything bad, and it doesn’t actually cause any problems.

All that happens is I get more relevant ads.

VR porn needs to be at least 4k for immersion and you can only get that quality with a paid account. But that’s a waste of money so you pay for one month and fill a hard drive before you cancel.

I’ve never doubted the Tiananmen Square massacre before, but there are so many posts lately insisting it happened I’m starting to think maybe it didn’t

I suspect a lot of “breakages” were failed pacman updates due to signing issues, before pacman knew to update arch-keyring first. I know one person who moved to another distro when that happened.

I wash my hands because I use my hands to manipulate objects, touch my face and prepare food. Perhaps you perform these tasks with your anus?

If I had a sphincter on my hand with shit inside it, which occasionally farted or shit came out, and washing it would never actually make it hygienic because it’s not a hermetic seal and bacteria from the shit inside would always be on it anyway, then yeah I’d just wipe it with paper. And use the other hand

Or you never used paper properly.

I think you’ll be disappointed with the bidet. Your original comment is correct, they are inconvenient and solve a non-problem.

It’s annoying waddling from the toilet to the bidet with a dirty ass. It takes time to wash. Then you use more paper to dry than you would have to just wipe. And you don’t feel cleaner afterwards because wiping is fine.

There’s no polite way to say it, some people like bidets because they make a big mess when they use the toilet. For them bidets are more convenient than paper. For the average person wiping is quicker and easier.

If wiping your ass is a three minute process involving mashing shit around, then you’re the sloppy shit person I’m talking about. I’d want a bidet if that happened to me too.

For me wiping is one to clean and one to polish. First sheet gets stained slightly brown (but no actual shit on it, because that’s in the toilet), second sheet comes away clean. It’s a five second process.

It’s a freestanding ceramic bidet plumbed in to hot and cold water, the kind everyone is saying is the best. Lived there up through my 20s. Waddling over to it to wash and then dry was an utter waste of time.

I still use both Lemmy and Reddit and I honestly think Lemmy is in a sweet spot where there are enough comments for a discussion but not enough to go off topic.

Reddit discussions are never about the OP, they’re always riffing on an off-topic joke that someone made in a reply to the already off-topic top comment.

Because they just aren’t very good.

Bidet people think bidets are incredible and come up with all these psychoanalytic reasons why people won’t use them, but that’s the reason.

I had one growing up and used it occasionally but always disliked it. They’re inconvenient and don’t make you noticeably cleaner than toilet paper.

IMHO they’re for germphobes and people who do really sloppy shits.

if I take a hoop/window and place it quickly over an object

Then the velocity of the object relative to the “exit” of the hoop would be the same as the velocity of the object relative to the “entrance” of the hoop, which is option B.

In your analogy, option A would mean the object has a relative velocity of entering the hoop but suddenly no relative velocity exiting it, so the object magically starts following the hoop.

And never run commands copied from a web page, even if you do know them.

JavaScript’s copy/paste API means a website owner or an attacker can change the contents of your clipboard after you press copy, and you’ll end up pasting malicious commands into your shell. I think Firefox blocks this now, don’t know about Chrome.

Best simple magic trick I’ve ever seen, blows people’s minds:

Cut out a piece of black paper the shape of the opening of a beer can, lick it and stick it to the lid. From a distance it should look like it’s open. Prick a hole in the side with a pin and drain out a quarter of the beer, enough that you can squeeze the can and bend it. Lay it on its side on a table, with the pinhole pointing up so it doesn’t leak. Now it looks like an open, empty, crushed can. Do all that secretly obviously.

Now ask someone if they want a drink, and point out the “empty” can. Pick it up and cover the pinhole with your finger, then subtly wave the can around as you magically summon more beer. The remaining beer will fizz up and the pressure will cause the can to inflate and uncrush itself. Secretly remove the black paper and hide it. Show them the magically restored lid, crack it open an pour the beer into a glass (so they don’t notice it was partly empty).

What makes it so incredible is you never hid the can from them or did anything tricksy. From their POV, an empty can just refilled itself in front of their eyes.

Edit: Here’s David Blaine doing it for some obvious actors. You will be able to make it more convincing than this. Can’t believe David Blaine was so popular back then lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUTG-MIqU-Q

Yet here you are, posting on a website that doesn’t allow absolute free speech.

I was really interested coming into this thread, because although I am conscious about privacy I sometimes wonder why I bother.

Unfortunately none of the counterarguments in the comments are convincing at all.

Analogies with letting someone see you naked are stupid. We’re not talking about naked photos, were talking about stuff like your age range and what newspaper you read. I don’t care who knows that.

“Future authoritarian governments could use it against you” isn’t worth worrying about. The government will have access to official records and can question you in person. Your ethnicity, religion, politics and sexuality are all easily found out whether you post them online or not. The fact that some advertising start up knows them will make no difference.

“If someone knows enough about you they can tailor Facebook ads to control your mind” is just sci fi conspiracy theory paranoia. Besides which they could run the same ads without targeting and I’d be just as mind controlled even if my data was a secret.

Edit: I really don’t mind getting downvotes, but if anyone has time to make an actual counterargument that would be great

I hear you with this, I’ve ended up doing a distance learning Maths degree just so I can understand all the Wikipedia squiggles

That’s definitely the intention. But for the guy on the left, “critical holistic understanding” amounts to “X isn’t worth it because it’s too complicated”, and he posts most of these memes.