For both.

I mean…why would you want to?

I think it’s mostly that it comes across more like religious proselytizing than “good advice”.

Also, that “advice” is mixed in with just as much messaging about how fussy it can be and implications that you’ve got to basically be an enthusiast level user to make it work for you. Not that it necessarily is that way, but overall that’s the messaging I see from this community.

As someone who tried Linux many years ago, disliked it, and went back to Windows, generally my take is that Windows is far from perfect, but it’s the best option for me, and I’m happy to try and ignore the Lemmy buzz around it…but that buzz just gets more and more annoying over time.

WEG’s Star Wars D6 is fantastic.

If while acting in your own self-interest you knowingly, through action or inaction, allow others to come to harm, even indirectly, that is evil.

I think most Americans buy products made via unethical labor practices, and which damage the environment, harming everyone.

Are you really making the argument that the vast majority of Americans are evil?

In that respect, I suppose it’s more on the Star Wars track, where “transparisteel” is used on the TIE fighter windows.

They do both.

When I bought my car in 2015 it came with the free trial but I specifically did not sign up for a subscription. When the trial ran out they started hounding me and I basically struck a deal: I’ll get a year subscription but if and only if you invoice me. Mail me a bill in the mail and I will write you a check and mail it to you or make a one time payment on your site. No auto-enrollment.

The first two years they did this no problem. The third year they put up a big fuss and told me that wasn’t something that was possible. I asked how it was possible for the past two years and he said I must have misunderstood. So I said okay, if that’s not possible then I guess I’m done with Sirius and hung up. A few days later I got another email and called in again and asked that rep for the invoice option and she said while it’s not commonly done, she’d make an exception for me.

The year after that I tried three different reps and nobody would invoice me so I cancelled and haven’t signed up since. They still sent me mail and email for years, and somehow they fucked up their database and when my parents bought their car (same make, different model) now I’m getting all of their ad email from Sirius again, but they did stop (intentionally) emailing me after about two years of no contact.

CAD made me…not lazy, but certainly changed my approach with stairs and railings.

In my architectural design classes, when doing a stair layout, the most important factor, and really the only thing that mattered from a situational perspective, was the overall height. That, combined with values that didn’t change, drove the rest.

Basically we had a defined max height for risers (7 3/4" off the top of my head) so you just divided that whole vertical distance in inches by 7.75 and add 1 to the answer (unless it came out perfectly even) and that’s your number of steps. Now take that overall height again and divide by number of steps, and you get the height of each riser. Set tread length as needed (usually 10-12") and now you can lay out the basics of the staircase with each step surface and riser face marked out.

From there, it’s trivial to strike a line across the front corner of each step and offset it down for the back end of the stringer and up for a railing.

No geometry, no Pythagoras, just some simple arithmetic and drafting skills. I would have thought this would be fairly common knowledge in my field but on one occasion, just Knowing how to do this, in an interview, got me a job offer.

They did the Monster (Manual) Math!

Well duh.

They’re selling your data to these companies, so that they can then sell them the ad spot.

They’ll also sell them access to the analytics around the ad campaign.

While I agree with you in principle, I’m not sure the newspaper example supports your position, although it is an apt analogy.

I would imagine that the counter argument would take the form of something like, “Yes, you don’t have to read the whole paper, but you can’t just buy the comics. You buy the whole paper, get access to the whole thing, and the ads come with it. Similarly, with our web presence, in order to access everything, whether you choose to consume it all or not, the ads must come as a part of it.”

Personally, I don’t fully agree with either that argument or yours, can see the merits and flaws of both, and fall somewhere in the middle.

I’d argue that while they’re within their rights to create, distribute, bundle, and price their content as they see fit, just like the current debate with social media companies, your monitor is your own personal, privately owned platform, and you shouldn’t/can’t be forced to offer a platform to any content you don’t wish to publish (to your audience of one). So you’re perfectly within your rights to want and attempt to only view the content you wish to see, while they’re also perfectly within their rights to want and attempt to package their content in such a way that links their articles with the advertisements of their sponsors.

So at that point, it’s just an arms race between the producer doing their best to force ads onto screens and consumers doing their best to avoid same. Neither side is morally right or wrong, and while there likely is a middle ground that wild be acceptable to both parties, there’s zero good faith between the two sides which would be necessary to establish that middle ground.