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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: February 16th, 2024

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  • It’s like… I want to disagree with you, but you’re making me think.

    Why are we ok with having required services that are only provided by third party companies?

    They’re not specific - No government says you must have a Facebook or Twitter account. But you’re right - you have to have a bank account and you’ll not get far in 2024 without email.

    What about a step further? If you want a phone number, you need a landline or mobile. Both of those are only provided by private companies too…


  • Lemming421@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world20 years of Gmail
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    3 months ago

    While I don’t disagree with you in principle, I do find it a bit funny that you’ve picked one of the easiest services to change between as your hill.

    There’s no reason you _ have_ to use Gmail, or Hotmail. There are a billion email providers and if you have enough technical knowledge, you can even run your own (I really don’t recommend this though, it’s harder then it seems to do it safely and securely).

    If you pick a provider outside the US, your government can’t do dick about getting it shut down, and if you pick one in a particularly privacy-conscious country, you can have everything encrypted to the point where the provider themselves can’t read your messages.

    Also, I assume this is similar in the States, but I’ve seen government IT projects in the UK and some of them are truly awful. I wouldn’t necessarily trust them to look after important emails for me. Plus a single source of email would be an awfully tempting target for hacker groups around the world.




  • The water infrastructure was nationalised decades ago. Each reason has a single private company that maintains the pipes, supply, treatment etc. to everyone in that area. Being private companies, the execs have been getting massive bonuses while dumping raw sewage into public waterways recently. And why? Because as someone else here said: after Brexit, the government got rid of the environmental laws saying they couldn’t. And when you’re a monopoly in your area, are you going to spend money on treating water you don’t have to, or give that money to the shareholders?

    It’s a fucking disgrace, a lot of people should go to prison for it and the whole system should be renationalised. But then people in government would lose money, and we can’t have that now, can we?





  • I genuinely don’t understand the mind of an undecided American voter.

    There are only two choices in the real world. Sure, it would be lovely to have a third party candidate. But there isn’t one. Voting third party just drains votes from Biden or Trump.

    And… they are not comparable. At all. There’s no “both sides” to this election. There’s “definitely not perfect” Biden, or “human shit stain with no redeeming characteristics” Trump.

    What is the undecided voter waiting for? Trump to do something even worse? To owe even more than half a billion dollars in fines? Biden to suddenly break bad and try and catch up to Trump’s 91(?) criminal counts in four separate prosecutions?

    I don’t get it.


  • I want to use my main mail address everywhere, even public places.

    No you don’t. It’s not quite as simple, but buy your own domain, get an email provider such as Fastmail that will let you use a catch-all, then use a unique address for every site you visit.

    Then if one starts receiving spam, you can block that specific address and voila, no more spam. Plus you know what sites have either poor customer detail hygiene or are actively selling your details.