Steam. I think a lot of people are unappreciative of how user friendly and open it is. When Gabe bites the dust I think it's going to get very shit very quick.
Yeah when hes gone it will go the way of ea and ubisoft, no question. There's so much untapped market there. First thing will be steam subscriptions. Starting at 10 dollars a month. Then limiting your game downloads to 2 per month so no installing and uninstall ing as you wish.
Mark my words. Prepare to leave steam.
The risk is real, but it depends. If it goes pubic it's all over. If it stays private or worker-owned it stands a chance.
Definitely best to keep steam away from the pubics
Piratebay.
My local ISP. They are not a monopoly, they are local only, they provide fiber and great customer service. You call and they answer instantly, they don't treat you like an idiot when you call. They don't restrict anything and you have unlimited data. It's very simple.
Last month T-mobile bought them after years of great service so I expect the enshittification to come any day now, but so far nothing has changed.
Mine too!
Still local, small time with a few thousand customers. They don’t upcharge internet prices if you skip linear TV.
All emplyees are local and I see them drive around.
I don’t care how good your pitch is, Mr. Salesman at my door: I’m sticking with what I’ve got!
I don't think I've heard of anyone who loves their ISP since the early days of transitioning from 56K modems.
Craigslist
Hasn't changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more--i think the only thing I wasn't able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there's no bloat, no ads, don't need an account unless you're posting or saving searches.
The site still looks like it came right out of the late 90's and that's all it needs to be
Every few years I'll look for something on craigslist and every time I'm amazed that it's still going strong and it's still exactly the same.
There is currently an amazing amount of top-quality, open source, design and development software: Blender, Godot, Inkscape and Krita, for instance.
ddns.net
Let's you register an easy to remember domain name linked to an IP address you specify. It's useful for self hosting or avoiding having to buy a domain name.
Free version makes you confirm every month that you still want the domain name, but that's just a couple of clicks from the email they send you.
Linux
It just keeps getting better and more polished.
I think Linux enshitifcation will happen when Linus Torvalds is no longer the benevolent dictator. I assume bigtech would add more DRM crap for more usecases etc, regular (unintentional) userspace breaking for desktop users since development would be focused for server/cloud computing etc.
Well thankfully FOSS allows anyone to fork anything, so I imagine there will always be decent distros out there.
There's still danger here. While anyone can fork, it's painful and work-intensive. A well-funded actor could fork something useful, add a bunch of features the community wants, and do a shitty job of committing back. Once most of the community stops using the old stuff and the devs go back to their lives, we can lose control of useful stuff.
Stuff like when Signal enshittifies. It has enough inertia and spin up cost that the forks barely see any traffic.
We need to protect Linus at all costs.
we also need a worthy successor lined up
I think Linux enshitifcation will happen when Linus Torvalds is no longer the benevolent dictator.
I hope not. Linus surrounds himself with good people (like Greg Kroah-Hartman) who will take over the reigns and most likely continue the legacy in his name.
Linux and the ecosystem are freaking amazing
My local library.
Eh, if we are talking about online stuff then VLC.
Not sure if they qualify as "services," but discogs, rateyourmusic and genius are holding up fairly well. IMDB is also pretty good, still.
IMDB is also pretty good, still.
Sure, it's still useable. But the redesign a few years ago made it harder to use and I'm still mad about them removing their forums. Who dares to talk about movies and TV shows on a platform meant for that.
I swear I ran into a problem with IMDb having some basic stuff like "what has this actor been in recently" stuck behind their IMDbPro paywall at some point in the last couple years.
But I just went and checked a few movies and shows, can't seem to replicate that issue anywhere.
I either hallucinated it, or they rolled back the enshittification after seeing a drop in traffic, not sure
PiHole
A bit more niche, but I'd say Roll20 for online TTRPG's. It has quirks, absolutely, but it has gotten better overall and is free with optional paid plans that offer good benefits which are not necessities.
7zip and VLC.
For books and audiobooks:
The Guttenberg project
Libro.fm
I was so happy to learn about Libro.fm randomly. Makes things so much easier to just download and have on my dedicated audio player. No DRM to strip or having to use their player. Only thing that annoys me about them (along with other audiobook services) is that they list books that they can't sell due to DRM. Most of the time if they don't have a book you just don't get a result, but for some reason they will show some books and I get excited to see them. Just to then load the page and see that they currently can't offer it due to DRM. Would much rather not see the search result. Another mildly annoying thing with their search is that searching for books by authors will include other authors and show results for all their books. Both are just annoyances that aren't deal breakers so long as everything else is kept the same.
Agnostic:
Windows:
Mac:
Wikipedia.
Though I could do without the endless donation blockups.
I can forgive Wikipedia and Internet Archive for the spam. Both sites are incredibly valuable and completely ad-free.
They are one of the highest achievements of humanity, imho, that even make me feel proud to be a human.
It's hard not to try to support them.
The "spam" is for them to operate, not maximise their profits.
Kiseido Go Server (KGS)
If KGS's UI looks like it hasn't been updated in 20 years, that's because it's already perfect. There's no ads, it's purely functional, it does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. If you click on "KGS Plus" you have the option to spend money on lectures given by human pros. Otherwise it's completely free, and it's still an active go server that's been around forever.
Irfanview https://www.irfanview.com/
It's literally one of the only reasons I'm still using Windows.
No other image viewer is as fast and as useful.
I'm sure you have your reasons, but I just cannot imagine continuing to use Windows over image viewing software?
Voicemeeter
Overwolf
Reaper
VLC
PCPartpicker
Ninite
There’s probably some others I’m missing.
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