I'd say it's more that we've been paying out the nose in the form of offering up our data and digital autonomy, and by allowing not only the Internet but our societies at large to degrade and polarize. We've paid dearly for our 'free' services, in the case of the US with everything from our reproductive rights to our connections with our own families and communities.

I'd much rather pay the price of an extra latte now and then for real internet communities than deal with actual Nazis and orbital Teslas for some shitty undermoderated ad feeds infested with trolls, AI, and literal societal saboteurs on the payrolls of Putin and Winnie the Pooh.

I could see a legitimate service being made out of something like an extra private lemmy, or a lemmy with additional features. Sort of like you'll see these suites of services from Proton or Nord. Yeah, i can set up my own SMTP server, even encrypt my data, but it's a lot easier to pay a few bucks to have a reliable service do it.

With federated services eventually becoming mainstream, i wouldn't be surprised to see some companies offering packages that do things like provide additional privacy or larger amounts of storage.

Or like I'd imagine sustainable video hosts will have to monetize somehow just to pay for the storage space.

This is a big part of the shift in mentality that needs to happen. Something doesn't have to be the biggest to be better. We don't need millions of concurrent users per server to enjoy connecting with other people and sharing ideas and art.

Like, a local cafe doesn't need to beat the profit margins of a Starbucks, it just needs to make ends meet. And it's probably a lot better experience in the process.

It really does sometimes seem like a lot of people just go through life working and killing time. There are definitely people living their lives for themselves, but I think it's a pretty foreign concept for some folks who've bought heavily into a commerce-focused culture.

Any replacement for Discord is going to run into the AIM problem. Even years after nobody was on AOL, AIM remained the biggest instant messenger client simply because it had the most users. A big factor in it losing its dominance, though, was Trillian. Once you could have all your accounts in one place, it kind of made it starkly obvious which ones were redundant. At the same time, it made the barrier for entry feel lower.

Instead of needing different clients for ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, you could have it all in one place, packaged with a totally garbage IRC client. So if you had friends on, say, ICQ, there was little reason not to register an account.

This is what we need with Discord. A client that people can migrate to because it's objectively better, which allows them to connect both to Discord and to an open source Discord killer (a Disczilla, if you like). That way nobody has to convince whole ass communities at a time. You can slowly osmosize over as the client gets popular without having to have that critical mass from day 1 to draw people.

Ahhh, okay, that makes sense. I can see where there might be demand for a more efficient layout as you're getting away from looking and poking. Probably a lot easier to get there if you don't have a couple decades and some change of qwerty typing taking up brain space.

Oh! I feel like I'd cramp up with an index mouse, but that's neat!

I love my Ergo, honestly. The programmable buttons are really nice, and i like the horizonal scroll wheel leaning. Plus the angle is a lot more comfortable than their other ball mice.

What's really made a difference for me though is the precision mode button. It's upped my graphic design game in a major way! It honestly feels kind of like having a half-assed tablet as far as the more precise control goes! It's waaay easier to draw with, though if i were doing more freehand stuff (and could draw for shit) obviously a tablet would be better.

They're labeled as Keychron Pros or something like that, but to my understanding they're literally just Gaterons with a different name.

Glad you're liking it! I've fallen in love with mine! Honestly, the sound never gets old! :D

I could never use this but I'd love to hang one on my wall!

I've got a V6, bought it around a month or so ago as my daily and it's been great. I bought it assembled, and the stock gateron browns it came with were really nicely factory lubed. Same with the stabilizers.

Four layers of electrical tape later and some nice thick ASA keycaps and it sounds amazing! Gives it a unique look without being impractical too! If you're looking to swap your knob out, guitar knobs fit pretty well, though they may be a little more flush with the case on the underside than you'd like unless you sand them down a little first.

In any case, the v6 is a great board. Really solid feeling, and VIA is a really nice workflow changer.

Also, it says that layers 0&1 are for Mac and 2&3 are for Windows, but you can use all four for whatever, that's just the default they're programmed for.

How do you get yourself to learn a new keyboard format after years of typing with qwerty?

I've looked at some of these alternate options and i can see how they'd be efficient, but like, i can't see myself unlearning qwerty after decades of typing every day.

Doing that on Jerboa right now. It's great!