• 14 Posts
  • 966 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • The only use or reason for having a static IP is to have a domain name that resolves to that IP and knowing that the domain register can set the IP address and it’s good until everything falls apart for lack of payment.

    The other use of having a static IP is for a VPN, to remote back into your home network. Technically you can use both of these services with non-static vpns because most people’s home internet does not change their IP addresses that often and there are services called dynamic DNS resolvers that you can get to constantly update your rotating IP address to a specific domain name.

    You will not see any speed increases or throughput increases from having a set ip, it just simplifies running a home domain or home network because then you don’t have to worry about ddns.




  • Yeah, I didn’t mind an ad on the side of the screen when all of the content was front and center. But the problem is is that when you make it so that a company’s livelihood depends on forcing users to do things they don’t want to do, and there’s no regulation on that whatsoever, it’s just going to go downhill very quickly and if you think this is bad it can get much much worse.

    I’m kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.

    They could even charge you like a $10 a month up charge fee for ad-free internet and say that we’re not going to block the ads on the rest of the internet you just won’t get additional ads from us.


  • That would definitely be fair. Like even limit the ratio between tears just give me the option to have the internet that I want at my house without paying for business internet prices.

    I’m not asking for symmetrical gigabit with a static ipv4 address on a fiber line with unlimited bandwidth. I just want a decent amount of bandwidth, 50-100mb up, a static IP address that is IPv6, and I’m okay with a ipv4 address that changes.

    They’ve had a really long time to simply flip the switch in the routers that they use to also transmit IPv6 addresses and they are not doing it.

    Their hardware is not old enough in most cases to not have IPv6 available by default in the hardware and firmware, they are just intentionally choosing not to activate it.





  • I think the last really big hurdle to an actually democratized internet is that we need to make it easier to host at home.

    Asymmetrical download upload is such a fucking pain. I would rather have 100 down and 100 up then 400 down and 5 up like I currently do.

    On top of that, there aren’t a lot of good systems in place to enable me to host a website from home. If IPv6 were common it would be easy for me to secure a static IP address and to point that to my DNS resolver and attach my domain, but since I’ve got to be on an ipv4 system since no provider in my area provides an on-ramp to IPv6 and even if they did the Grand majority of Internet users cannot resolve IPv6 addresses, it’s dead in the water.

    If every person in America had symmetrical upload download and a static IPv6 address for their home, we could get rid of the grand majority of the content provider and hosts and instead use democratized systems like bluesky and Kbin and Mastodon and free tube without having to worry about these multi trillion dollar companies’ bottom lines.


  • I also think a lot of people who grew up on the internet have completely and totally forgotten about how bad it really was. They had ads that would take over your computer, ads that would download viruses, ads that would use your modem to dial 1-900 numbers, ads that would open 800 uncloseable web pages full of porn and start playing loud screaming music and moaning sounds to gather the interest of every other person in the house just a shame you for using the internet.

    And dear Jesus don’t forget about the fucking toolbars. Dozens upon dozens of toolbars installed in every browser, everything from bonzi buddy to AOL email, detecting that a picture would be loaded on your screen and replacing it with one of theirs as an ad link.

    Ad blockers have been necessary to use the internet for the last 20 freaking years.

    If you’re not the kind of person who would go to the STD clinic and fuck every person there without a condom, you should never use the internet without an ad block.


  • Don’t forget, there is a large and worldwide vested interest in maintaining online divisiveness.

    The internet has become our global hearth. The grand majority of humanity participate in the internet to communicate with each other for conversation, connectedness, and social expression.

    This is very bad for authoritarian regimes, whether they are currently in power or attempting to enter into power or attempting to expand their power.

    Should someone do something that is considered “bad”, information about that will spread around the world as fast as a lie ever could.

    To prevent that from hampering their schemes, the smart thing to do would be to poison the source. If you hate everyone on the internet because you have been effectively compromised by psychological poison, then you will not trust the people on the internet that you communicate with when they tell you something bad has happened.

    Therefore, the mote of power you could add to collective action is rendered ineffective.

    And, the interesting thing is they don’t have to fool everybody. They only have to fool enough of us that our own internal division prevents effective action.

    I never really believed in a devil growing up, but if I did believe in a devil now, I would definitely say that this is one of his activities.






  • Counterpoint:

    Thanks to streaming we don’t spend quite as much time thinking about the media we consume and the deeper meanings and subtext and generating internal fanfictions about what could possibly be coming up in the next episode a week from now.

    Streaming makes media easier to consume but fills it with culturally empty calories.

    The grand majority of conversation I see about a show is, “Have you seen _? No? You should totally watch _, it’s really good!” Or alternatively, “Yeah, it’s great isn’t it?”

    Since Netflix came out we’ve definitely taken one step down the ladder rung closer to Idiocracy ass movies.




  • Yeah. The good in humankind is the reason why we’re not currently rioting in the streets.

    The goodness is holding out hope that our innermost desires for what’s best for ourselves and for the future of humanity will win over the short term narrow-minded greed that is currently ruining everything.

    What did not good doesn’t know is that the good has already won, and if the not good does not concede defeat soon enough the good will strike with righteous and ignition and a fury that cannot be abated short of blood.