Buelldozer

Cloudflare has a ton of services in their “free” tier and there’s a lot of confusion in here because people toss around “Cloudflare” without specifying which service they are actually talking about.

If you are using Cloudflared (notice the d) with your own LE Cert then you are probably fine.

The term VPN is pure marketing bs. What is called VPN today used to be called Proxy Server.

Perhaps if you are only talking about the consumer level stuff advertised on TV. Otherwise I can assure you that “Virtual Private Networks” are a real thing that have absolutely nothing to do with Proxy Servers.

On down the comment chain you mention "…our computers would not see each other and would not be able to connect to each other via that service. " as some kind of test of whether a thing is a VPN or Proxy Service but what you’re missing is that this is a completely common and advisable configuration for companies. In fact Zero Trust essentially demands configurations like this. When Bob from Marketing fires up his VPN to the Corporate Office he doesn’t need access to every server and desktop there nor does his laptop need to be able to access the laptops of other VPN users. They get access to what they need and nothing more.

Hell the ability to access the internet via the tunnel, called Split Tunneling, is also controllable.

It’s that ability to control where the tunnel terminates that allows consumer VPNs, like Proton, to be used the way they are.

So while private individuals absolutely do use VPNs as an ersatz replacement for Proxy Servers they are nowhere near the whole use case for VPNs.

Surprisingly the rear axle is driven! I had to look this thing up to find out WTF it was.

https://www.soflocustom.com/inventory/custom-lifted-apocalypse-hellfire-1c6pjtag4tl152463/

Impractical as heck but cool looking.

That dedication is how you know they actually use Slackware.

Same here.

Why are you not using the shiny new sudo-rs? You some kind of luddite? Get with the times Grandpa!

You can blame Reagan for a lot of things but not this and frankly even if it somehow was all his fault the Clinton Administration could have undone it.

The economy was already in trouble by the end of Lyndon Johnson’s final term in 1969. The Nixon Administration implemented some large changes trying to fix it but was unsuccessful. The Carter Administration also tried with very limited success. It wasn’t until the 1st Rise of Tech in the 80s during the Reagan Administration that things managed to get moving again. The Clinton Administration caught a lucky break with the 2nd Rise of Tech in the 90s so the streak got extended to right about 2001.

The amusing part is that Johnson, Nixon, and Carter bear no blame for the economic woes while Reagan and Clinton deserve no credit for the economic successes. They just happened to be the guy in the Oval when things happened.

Its a good chunk of the reason that everyone from Wall Street to the US Federal Government is trying so damn hard to make AI happen. They want a 3rd Rise of Tech, or something like it, in order to re-float the economy.

For example, I’ve noticed that some websites start throwing captchas at me or even just straight-up refuse to load with 403: unauthorized errors because I have my router set up to load-balance across two Internet connections. (At least, that’s my guess as to why it’s happening.)

I maintain several multi-wan commercial setups and they don’t have this problem. I obviously don’t know what your setup is but I’d guess something is wrong with how its handling flows / connections. Once a connection is established between your edge and an internet resource that flow should remain “stuck” to whatever wan port it started with and it sounds like that isn’t happening.

As an American I fully agree. I’ve completely had it with our politics infesting everything, everywhere, all the time. For everyone’s sanity it needs to stop. More communities need to have and enforce a “No US Politics” rule. No Trump, no Elon, no AOC, no Bernie, no State Senator from bumblefuck Alabama or Los Angeles, California. None of it. Just.Fucking.Stop.Already.

but breaking down what’s different I can’t pin anything concrete down.

One big difference is scale. The 2000s Internet was primarily centered around single(ish) interest forums with relatively low user counts. The entire Lemmy-verse, which is itself quite tiny in 2025, is still WAY larger than nearly any of the 2000s era forums ever were.

Another other big difference is why the user base is online. The majority of them aren’t participating to discuss a shared interest anymore, they are doing it for general entertainment or to earn money.

Those two things explain nearly all of the change. Way more users congregated into a handful of websites with many of them, including the sites, attempting to get rich doing it.

The 2000s web was a much smaller number of users spread across a zillion websites / forums with nearly all of the users and site operators doing it without money as a motivator.

MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.

Usenet was Social Media and it had allllll the toxicity.

Try reading MY comment. You are talking about a central element of the movie GATTACA from 1997. I know it’s old and many younger people haven’t seen it so I provided a link to the Wikipedia article about the film.

This issue was widely discussed, at least in American society, almost 30 years ago. The film is still heavily referenced in any discussion involving bio-ethics and genetic manipulation.

Should I be able to use CRISPR to keep my baby from being born with Downs?

Yes, absolutely yes. Downs children are wonderful, there’s one in my family, but I can say without hesitation that both he and his parents would have used a treatment like this if it was available. He’s 30 now and he himself would choose to do it if it was available.

What does bodily autonomy mean for a fetus?

Doesn’t matter.

What if I was using CRISPR to prevent a child from being born black or brown?

What if was used to prevent a child from being born with Spina bifada? What if it was used to correct SB so that the child wasn’t aborted?

Hell, what if I used it to keep a kid from being born deaf?

Or what if its used to cure deafness after the effected person is no longer a minor?

I agree that it’s not eugenics, at least not as we normally think of it, but it’s definitely edging into GATTACA territory.

The same tailscale that announced last week that they are going to start charging?

https://tailscale.com/kb/1251/pricing-faq

I went over and looked at the peertube FAQ and nope, there’s no monetization plan. Their reasoning for that is consistent with their goals but it is a hurdle to creators moving to the platform.

When are they moving all to freetube or something?

Unless I’m missing something Freetube is a client. So it wouldn’t be Jeff moving to freetube it would be you using freetube to watch his content on YT.

I’m guessing you meant peertube instead of freetube and your answer there is “When they can get paid.” Making content takes time and costs money and YT pays creators like Jeff for doing it.

I dislike YT alot but there’s financial decisions at play here that can’t really be argued with.

At some point, the NRA forgot that and only funded one side.

As the article notes after '94 the number of Democrats the NRA could support steadily dwindled. These days the Democrats purity test their candidates to ensure that they fully support Gun Control and there are various Democrat PACs that will oppose Pro-Gun Democrats in the primaries; making it increasingly unlikely for there to be any future Democrats at the federal level that the NRA can support.

The 2nd Amendment is a wedge issue and both sides do their best to take maximum advantage of their position.

That left them vulnerable when there was widespread financial fraud in the organization…

They were vulnerable because they were up to shady shit. No one should have been going to bat for the NRA during their corruption scandal and the fact they had one is entirely the fault of the NRAs Board of Directors. They knew what was happening and ignored it. No amount of political donations to Democrats, or anyone else, should have insulated them from the consequences.

I’d like for all of the Pro 2A groups, not just the NRA, to get back to donating to non-Republican politicians but they kinda don’t exist anymore and I don’t know how to change that.