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.

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

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

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.

I started with Slackware. It came on floppies.

Now move to the back of the line youngster.

Then why does the whole article talk about PON and fiber?

I’m in Central Wyoming and could call my ISP right now to order a 10Gbs upgrade. My 2Gbs is plenty fast enough though.

Slackware 3.1.

Surely you mean LinuX11.

I’m GenX, my entire childhood was dangerous.

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.

You should also be changing with time to take advantage of such technological growth.

Whoo boy that’s funny, thanks for the chuckle. I’ve been technology professional so long that I literally predate NAT. To say that I’ve changed with the time would be an understatement.

TVs are admittedly geared towards single wide screen tasks like the obvious: media consumption.

Huh, media consumption. You mean like Lemmy or any other web media?

That’s what additional monitors can be used for; but the point is with a single wide monitor you don’t have to run a second monitor.

Here’s where we diverge and despite considering the issue for several hours now I’m still not sure if this is a generational issue or something else. Obviously I’m from the time before widescreen and it looks like to me like you’re trying to use a workaround (multiple windows on a single screen) to justify what is objectively a downgrade in display technology.

You are in essence saying “Yes I know the monitor doesn’t have enough vertical space but you are supposed to use the extra horizontal space to overcome that.” I am going to counter by saying that computer monitors shouldn’t be 16x9, that’s a TV / Movie format forced into the computer industry by display makers who wanted to leverage their investment in television panels to produce cheap computer monitors. In short you are forcing yourself to find ways to work around display tech that doesn’t fit the use case; the screen is wider than it needs to be while not being tall enough.

Amusingly I was discussing this with a peer about an hour ago and he brought up ultra wide monitors like the Samsung Odyssey QD-OLED G9 (5120x1440) and after looking at it we decided that a monitor with the same physical width (48") but double the physical height (20" vs 40") and double the horizontal resolution (2880) would be near perfect. With such a monitor there would be so much real estate that app windows would stay large enough to be readable while still being capable of displaying lots of data vertically.

You could mount one vertically, you could use different sized displays, you could stack them.

Ahhh, now we hit the rub. I do a lot of remote GUI work and what I’m dropping into expects widescreen and uses all of it. Downscaling that into an app window makes the problem worse because it leaves large areas unused horizontally and there’s still not enough vertical. I could flip a monitor to portrait but then it’s too narrow to be handled correctly because what was a lack of vertical resolution has now become a lack of horizontal resolution. This is another symptom of 16:19 being a bad aspect ratio for computer displays.

Be your own person.

This person is seriously considering a pair of frameless ultra widescreen displays in a vertical stack. Expensive AF but potentially oh so usable.

You do you with multiple app windows squished to fit into today’s displays. If it works for you then it works for you.

Enjoy your day.

Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.

It’s also the way we’ve used computers for nearly fifty years and the way we interact with every other display in our lives. As examples almost no one uses less than the full wide of their TV, Smart Phone, or Tablet. There’s no reasons that computer displays should be any different and they weren’t until pretty recently.

If you’re using anything full screen, you’re doing it wrong

I’ll make sure to start watching YT videos in tiny little boxes like we did in the 90s and 2000s. 😜

I have 3 curved monitors in the home office. Left monitor is browser, center monitor is primary task, right monitor is comms or secondary task. I can’t track more than three things at a time anyway and I bought these big ol’ curved monitors for a reason.

This is how computer monitors have been used since I first touched an Apple II+ in 1980. It’s how you use every other display in your life. The problem isn’t with people using apps full screen.

Stop making a single browser window full screen and use the additional space on the side for something useful.

So stop using monitors the way I’ve been using them since 1982? Stop using them the way that literally every other screen I interact with functions?

A chat application, a notepad, a calculator, file browsing, a second browser window, documents, etc.

That’s what 2nd and 3rd monitors are for.

Or rotate the display to be tall instead of wide if you really want the extra vertical space.

That’s not so easy when you’re using multiple curved monitors with a stand or mount.

I get what you’re saying, I really do, but from my point of view it’s incorrect. It breaks the usage paradigm that’s been in place since these things were invented and there’s no other screens in our lives where we intentionally use less than the full width available for a single task.

But web devs seem universally to assume that if it’s a tall narrow screen, to show the mobile version.

Web Devs are also highly allergic to using the 25% of the screen on both the right and left so only the middle 50% is useful space. It’s god damned infuriating!

With that in mind; a wide monitor is useful for … web browsing

Are you serious? As I’m typing this comment Lemmy has just over 4" of totally unused space on the left of my monitor and 3 1’2" of unused space on the right!

Seriously, see for yourself!

Granted that’s not the fault of the monitor but not only does widescreen reduce the amount of viewable area top to bottom modern web hackery doesn’t even fucking use all of that extra space side to side!

I have about the same viewable area now as I did in 2000 with a 20" “square” monitor!

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.

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.