I really miss webrings. You’d discover the most absurd niche shit people were into. Especially since everyone seemed to have their own Geocities page or something similar. Nobody has one these days, as we all just use social media and big sites.

It really sucks. You just don’t get that these days now everyone is inside their own little bubble on the net.

Well we are proud of Dutch manufacturing in general. We like to make good products, even if they might be bad for you: for decades, we had the best weed in terms of THC content. And the Netherlands is also a highly regarded global producer of XTC pills and amphetamines. There’s only so many tulips you can export…

So yes, loose tobacco is one of our fine export products. We Dutch also loved it; it was really popular to use in joints (see: Dutch weed) and rolling your own cigarettes tended to be cheaper than buying packs (we Dutch are notoriously cheap). These days people prefer a vape, or pure joint. And with smoking in general on the decline, loose tobacco is a rare sight here these days.

Well, Europe is a big place. The percentage of smokers differs from country to country, as well as the anti-smoking legislation and when that was introduced.

In the Netherlands, you cannot smoke in the workplace, restaurants, cinema, on public transport, near a hospital, etc. Sale of tobacco products is illegal to anyone under 18 and we’ve banned things like flavoured vapes.

Because of all these measures, ‘only’ 19 percent of the Dutch population 15 and older smokes, with people lower on the socio-economic ladder smoking more frequently. That’s below the European average of 19.7 percent.

Now, compare that to other countries like France (22 percent), Spain (23 percent) and Bulgaria (28 percent).

Now, those countries have anti-smoking legislation as well. But because they had statistically higher numbers of smokers, it takes longer to see the overall effect.

So depending on where you are in Europe, your perception of smoking habits could vary wildly.

Childhood asthma, unfortunately. I was born in 1982 and basically everyone smoked everywhere here in the Netherlands. If you had a birthday, you couldn’t see across the room due to the smoke.

Because of it I had childhood asthma, which cleared up immediately when my parents stopped smoking. In the early 90’s, things got a lot better with smoke-free environments. We eventually got full on smoking bans, thank god. As far as I can tell, it didn’t do any permanent damage.

I still absolutely HATE smokers and smoking. It is and was an antisocial thing and children should never have been exposed to it like we were.

I’ve never had a Droid, but loved every other Motorola that I’ve owned. Including the original StarTac and Razr. They made some really nice phones over the years.

The early days of web shopping sure were interesting. I was a very early adopter compared to most people.

The very first thing I ever bought online was a flashlight back in 1999. Which was such a novelty at the time that I actually visited the two guys who ran that shop from a literal broom closet in order to collect it. I was like their third customer ever. These days they have 75 employees and around 7 million euros of revenue.

Collecting a web order seems silly now, but at that time it basically avoided a two week wait. Back in 1998-2005, if you bought something online in the Netherlands, you usually had to transfer the money by bank. Which took a few days. After that, they would send the product, which again took a few days.

In 2005 we got a new online payment method that let you transfer the money immediately, much like paying at a register. That made it way more convenient for everyone and you saw massive increases in spending year over year.

Well that’s pretty much every platform’s lifecycle. Starts small, reaches a sweet spot and either implodes or sucks ass.

I was on Digg, I had a MySpace page, I was an early Twitter user, I had a Reddit account… who knows how long I’ll be on here. But for now, I’m happy to be one of the users on the upswing.

Well, while those flexible screen flip phones certainly look like neat tech, it’s not the same as the flip phones we used to have.

And it’ll need a few more versions before I’m comfortable buying one. Those screens tend to be just a bit too fragile.

Jesus, that’s a blast from the past for sure!

It really was the thing everyone latched on to with the N-Gage. I actually still own a first gen model that I bought on release. It was actually pretty decent, both as a phone and the games it played. Of course, it never really took off, but I enjoyed using it.

As for the sidetalking… I bought a headset for it to avoid that :D

For me, it’s just the fact that phones… are phones. They all look the same, function the same, there’s just nothing new happening with them.

Sure, chips get better and faster, they’ll add another camera to it and fiddle with the dimensions a bit, but that’s not innovation. All phones look like boring rectangular slabs.

Back in the late 90’s, phones had way more variety and personality. Candybar, flip, even the sidetalkin’ taco that was the Nokia N-Gage. A Motorola Razr looked nothing like say, a Nokia or Sony Ericsson. And those were distinctly different from your Samsung or Mitsubishi phones (Yes, Mitsubishi made phones!).

I’d love it if we went back to more phone variety, but I fear the smartphone has effectively killed every other style. Most people wouldn’t ditch their big screen smartphone to go back to a small flip phone.

In fact, at our newspaper only about a quarter of the writers are ‘real’ journalists with journalism degrees, including myself.

From my personal experience (20 years in radio, 8 in newspapers), even most actual journalists don’t really call themselves journalists. I tend to refer to myself as a writer in general, since I also do commercial copy, I write reviews and handle all sorts of general writing and public contact.

Journalist is not a protected job title. Anyone can call themselves a journalist. Even that other poster. Because of that, I tend not to use it as a job title, since it’s been devalued a bit by everyone with a blog or vlogging channel calling themselves journalist.

I’m seriously wondering what the other poster’s point was…

You’re right on the money.

The reason why the early web worked so well is exactly BECAUSE of that early adopter profile. Getting online was a nerd thing; it had a filtering effect of who could get online. And the ones that did all shared that same passion for the platform. There was an assumed baseline of shared knowledge and shared culture.

Today we consider such things problematic. Back then, that was just how it was. And why it worked.

Personally, I miss it.

God yes.

I’m a professional writer for a newspaper. We’re also occasionally asked to put up SEO commercial text for our advertising partners. And good god, they look like they were written by a lobotomised monkey on a malfunctioning typewriter.

A lot of it boils down to the users. Personally, I miss when the internet mostly consisted of us nerds.

Back in 1995 when I first got online, the web was very much a nerd domain. You needed a certain level of computer knowledge to get online, which really acted as a filter. It meant that most of us shared a certain level of understanding and the drive to use such a medium. We disagreed on Star Trek and Star Wars, but to the outside world, we were ALL nerds. Back then, the average person didn’t even think of going online.

These days, even the most tech illiterate can get online. In fact, they don’t even think about it; it’s that integrated in their daily life.

While growth also gave us nice things like large forums, web shopping, YouTube, etc… by and large I think we’d be better off if this was still a nerd domain.

I really miss those days.

This definitely sounds like they’re trying to trick you into some MLM type scam. Stay far away for sure.

As for legal… I imagine they can ask if you’ve used the product, but it certainly FEELS like something questionable in this particular situation.

Any site that does it will not get a second visit from me. It’s really, REALLY fucking annoying when they do it. Especially for people who keep their volume up in general.

Dune 2 and Flight Simulator 2020. Which… actually has an existing crossover DLC, believe it or not. They recently released it. You get to fly an Ornithopter around the movie scenery. I haven’t tried it myself as I prefer realism, but supposedly it’s pretty good.

Well yeah, if your group self-identifies as FOSS nerds, that’s about what I’d expect :D I bet a lot of them are also into Linux, right?

I love my Linux/FOSS brethren, but most people just buy an iPhone or some Samsung and are perfectly happy just using those as is.

It really can depend on where you are. For example, in the US Google had a 4 percent marketshare in 2023. It actually doubled compared to 2022: that was 2 percent.

Buf if you happen to run with a group pf people who go against the grain and buy Pixels, it might very well feel like a dominant brand.

In our company for example, everyone has iPhones. So to me, they appear to have 100 percent marketshare, when reality is closer to 50-60 percent in most markets.

Australia does have some quirks, as many Australians like to point out :D

According to marketshare figures, last year Google had 3 percent marketshare in Australia. IPhone was 43.8 percent, followed by Samsung with 31.8, followed by Oppo (4.5) Lenovo (3.6), HDM (3) and finally: there’s Google with 3 percent.

https://appleworld.today/apples-iphone-now-has-46-5-of-the-australian-smartphone-market/amp/

In the US, iPhone and Samsung have bigger shares and Google is at about 4 percent (was 2 in 2022)

So at least from the statistics, Google isn’t doing particularly well in Australia either. But you certainly might run with a particular group of people who prefer them over other brands. People do like to conform to a group.