Buelldozer

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.

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

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

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.

The modern NRA is near useless but what you’re accusing them of hasn’t been true in a long time.

The NRA that supported The Mulford Act ceased to exist on May 22nd, 1977. The membership was fed-up with their organization supporting Gun Control and in an event known as the Revolt at Cincinnati they removed and replaced the entire leadership then set the organization on an entirely new course.

Post '77 it’s been very rare for the NRA to support any kind of Gun Control, to the point that they’ve spent the last three decades getting torn up in the media for staunchly opposing any limits on 2A rights for anyone. They’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time, money, and energy winding back all of the gun controls and policies that they supported prior to '77 and to my knowledge they’ve made no attempt to limit 2A rights for non-whites.

Now some of the NRA members and 2A associated politicians are certainly racist / sexist / 'phobic fuckheads but the organization itself hasn’t cared about any of that for decades.

The biggest knock on the NRA in modern times, basically the WLP corruption era, is that they completely lost the willingness to go against the Police regardless of the circumstances. The '90s (Cold Dead Hands / Jackbooted Thugs) era NRA would likely have already been in the streets at this point.

The NRA is very nearly a failed organization at this point.

In regards to recent events there was a time back in the ‘90s where they were pretty willing to get involved in stuff like this. Ol’ WLP himself let fly with phrases like “Jackbooted thugs” and Charlton Heston proudly declared “From my cold dead hands.” The NRA of the '90s was a fiery organization that was increasingly positioning itself as an anti-government force.

Then it stopped. I’ve never seen confirmation as to why but my supposition is that after the “jackbooted thugs” comment that WLP got a tap on the shoulder from the men in black suits and a deal was struck.

If today’s NRA had the spirit it did 30 years ago they’d likely already be in the streets.

f the reason EE is shutting down due to lack of staff why would anyone go to a smaller one/one run by a single person?

Small instances can have far less drama and workload. Just because an instance isn’t popular and has a small admin team doesn’t mean it’s in danger of folding up. 😀

If you are looking for a small and stable instance you should evaluate lemmy.today. It’s hosted in the U.S. (Pacific North West) and has a high degree of federation.

First Used - Apple II

First Owned - Commodore Vic 20

I started with Slackware. It came on floppies.

Now move to the back of the line youngster.

It’s not a TERF thing. Nearly no one cares about who goes into a “Men’s” Restroom and it’s always been that way.

Slackware 3.1.

Surely you mean LinuX11.

It’s similar to using Deep Freeze on Windows where outside of specific writeable directories anything that shouldn’t be changed isn’t allowed to change.

I have my smoke / CO detectors, KIdde Z-Wave units, tied to my Home Assistant setup. HA will push a notifier to my phone if the smoke or CO alarm goes off and it’s able to track the battery life and let me know I need to change them before they start beeping.

Had to look hard to even notice the skirt past the mismatched socks. 🤷

XenoForo is a bit spendy but they’re providing the software, hosting and data storage. IIRC the forum I’m talking about is on the “Business” plan due to how busy it is.

there’s no persistence or community.

That’s it right there, that’s what you are missing. The older forum communities were small enough that you could keep track of whose who, something that isn’t possible when the user counts are in the tens of thousands to tens of millions. I think a lot of us olds would like to go back to that but its impossible; our monkey brains can’t handle communities of that size.