I used to participate in (what was then) the largest and most active automotive enthusiast forum for a specific brand. They had forums for each major model run, and classifieds, etc. I’d go there for how-to’s, detailed info, reviews, tips and tricks, and of course, to tall with like-minded people. Meet ups even spawned from these groups, and friendships were forged.

As it really picked up steam, though, the forum creators decided to monetize, as every large website grapples with how to sustain their growth. Unfortunately, they decided to implement ads, subscription/pay wall, and within a month, there were five competing websites. The majority of us left in the first two weeks.

Now that forum still exists, but the content is gone, deleted by users who didn’t appreciate their content being monetized (sound familiar, June 2023?). The replacements? Some struggle on, and one or two are vibrant, but mostly, it imploded. There was one glorious pair of years though, when I (and thousands of others) spent hours every day on the forum, and every topic was covered.

In hindsight, the downfall was more than just the advertisements and pay walling. It was a few non-admins that were treated as defacto mods, and they had bad attitudes. Flaming anyone who asked questions that were asked before (this was before Google made searching easier), and also holding their own practices as the only way to maintain their cars.

The reddit versions of the forums were not remotely the same, with people coming and going and not really sticking around. The best place for the info is still forums, though I think they struggle with server upkeep and costs. It’s sad to me, but all things change. I’m glad for archive.org.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has refused to sign into law a bill approved by parliament last month that rights groups and many opposition politicians say drastically curbs the rights of the country’s LGBT community.

The so-called “family values” bill was pushed through parliament by the ruling Georgian Dream party on September 17 in an 84-0 vote, which was boycotted by the opposition while rallies were being held by protesters outside the parliament building.

In line with the provisions of the Georgian Constitution, Zurabishvili refused to endorse the bill and returned it to parliament without written comments, the presidential administration **confirmed **to RFE/RL on October 2.

The move highlights the dramatically polarized political landscape in the Caucasus nation ahead of national elections in October.

Parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili, a co-sponsor of the bill and member of the Georgian Dream is now expected to sign the bill into law and publish it within five days.

Filing taxes is how we get refunds for overpaying in the US.

Paying taxes is done for us, through withholding out of our paychecks (don’t need a SS#, as a TIN will do here), sales tax on purchases of goods, and in other ways, like connected to housing, etc.

Four-rd?

China=Bad

TikTok does what every other social media app does (which is 100% legal in the US, thanks to corrupt leaders and law makers), but:China, so: Bad.

My suggestion doesn’t make sense in the classic PATA sense either, since there were potentially several “slave” devices, but they weren’t slaves so much as dependent on the “master.”

Primary/secondary?

Agreed. Another change that got me was removing the ability to set a unique color for your contacts.

“We’ve removed the ability to set color for your contacts. Our users are too sophisticated to need at-a-glance ID of chat by color, but we’ve added the useless ability to change the color of your own messages you send. That’s useful, right?”

There’s no shortage of loud feedback from the userbase in their forums, but they dismiss it all and force ahead indifferently.

More reason to never give away pets on a website… yikes.

tl;dr I really don’t get it either.

I really don’t understand how people can do it. I moved to a developing nation in the Caribbean. Everyone’s livelihood is connected to nature here. Reefs, especially. Yet every local I have met will casually toss their garbage. I went to a festival on the beach and most of the locals were burying their trash in the sand just enough to keep it from blowing away in the moment. Some don’t even bother with that pretense. There were trash cans in easy strolling distance, every 50 feet.

The roads and waterways are stuffed with garbage here. I live on a canal that connects to the sea, and have watched tour guides and fishing expeditions tossing plastic bottles, polystyrene food containers and plastic bags overboard daily for two years. These are the same people protesting dredging their flats and cayes near the reef, but inexplicably and deliberately ignorant of their own impact.

Also interesting to observe is the speed at which the nation transitioned from class and aluminum drink containers to plastics. Mt first visit here was just three years ago, and most drinks were in bottles that were clearly recycled. Laser etch marks, rubbing from other bottles, etc. Now its all plastic. There’s a national ban on single use plastics, but it isn’t enforced, and it all ends up in the water and in the ground.

When I first witnessed the ghastly indifference of everyone here regarding proper disposal of garbage, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like watching a bunch of five year-old kids, the way they shamelessly toss their trash to the wind.

Back in the 1980’s they told me it’d trickle down.

…eventually.

We’re a fucking joke.

But nobody is laughing. I’m shivering…

Calmly, friend. That isn’t the person you replied to.

So Biden could shoot Trump dead but the court would rule that that was illegal because some bullshit reason.

Ah! But with what evidence? They also ruled that presidential conduct (paraphrasing here) can’t be used as evidence.

No, you’re absolutely right. That’s what happens when you have the WaaSMedic service running, which cannot be easily disabled in services.msc. I would think I had finally gone the “full-nuclear” option and broken al updates by disabling and stopping the update services (that I knew about), but they would re-enable themselves without fail.

This comment explains where you need to disable it (if you want to go that route).

I’m not sure what the purple app was.

It was a website, and after a Lemmy user reminded me of privacy.sexy, I realized it is decidedly un-purple.

Yes!!! ⭐ ⭐

And it isn’t remotely purple! Thank you for sharing!!!

Its all coming back to me now. Must’ve been repressed memories…

For the record, the service names are: UsoSvc WaaSMedicSvc wuauserv

WaaSmedic must be that watchdog that kept re-enabling update services after I disabled them years ago. I just remember my OS would start a multi hour encode or compile, and I’d come back hours later to a login screen and update history telling me it rebooted when I didn’t have automatic updates enabled.

Thx for the reply.

That is similar to the web page I was thinking of. Thx. I’ll check it out.