You don’t even need bribery. You can just throw money at something and make things happen.

If you think something is true, you can pay the world to prioritize things as if it were true.

If you think vaccines cause autism and you are rich, you can create massive “education” campaigns and the like to convince people its true. You can buy ads telling people its true. You can amass an enormous following of people who believe you and change policy without bribery.

the same process

It doesn’t necessarily involve the middle man, who is ultimately the bigger fish that enshittifiers are looking to land. I think that’s relevant. Enshittification’s process involves capturing both a “retail” user base and a business user base and then squeezing both.

Edit. Enshittification is layered and more specific to industries and markets that are not inherently profitable. It starts with seed money being burned for that initial user base and fucks over everyone up and down the chain because the business is not really profitable otherwise. Skimp/shrinkflation is more about squeezing more profit than you are already making.

I’ve see it used a lot recently to describe the general degradation of quality in service of increasing profits. I think technically, it is not enshittification. Below is my general definition of the process enshittification describes. Repost from another comment.

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

A word that includes the word “shit” in it has a very nice ring to it when describing things getting generally shittier in favor of profit. I suppose language can evolve rapidly and things mean what people believe them to mean.

Edit: As per Wikipedia’s Shrinkflation Entry:

Skimpflation involves a reformulation or other reduction in quality.

I see skimpflation as a form of shrinkflation. The idea is still that the price stays the same but to try and hide the cost increase from the customer they give you less. I guess fewer strawberries per “smoothie” is even more subtle than fewer ounces of the original “smoothie” formula per bottle.

To be a pedantic asshole, technically enshittification is meant to refer to online services that follow an inevitable process of…

1. Attract users/customers with high quality services/products to create a captive/dependent user base.
2. Attract business customers (ex. advertisers or businesses that can benefit from access to the user base in some way) by offering them high value services by fucking over your captive user base create a captive/dependent busiess customer base.
3. Fuck over your captive business customers to increase your own profit.

Admittedly, I see enshittification used colloquially meaning basically “business found a way to fuck over its customers more than usual to increase their profit”. Perhaps that is what you mean by “General enshittification”.

In maybe third grade I brought my collection of x-men trading cards as part of a sort of show and tell activity. It was in a sizable three-ring binder with those 3x3 slot cars sheets. I had a number of highly valued “foil/hologram” cards. The binder was gone when I got back from lunch. I was devastated and learned to never leave anything of value not locked up if I’m not watching it.

At work we have a kitchen/break room. I’ve had shit stolen from there a lot. Utensils, cups, bowls. Wash it after lunch, put it in the drying rack, come back in an hour to get it and it’s gone. Once my department had a leftover pizza from an event donated to us. I brought in a baking sheet to reheat it in the oven for a lunch morale boost for the team because we had to work that weekend. The sheet, left in a drawer and not visible to any casual observers, was gone by Monday. That was actually the first item I’d had stolen there but I thought I was just s fluke.

I’ve literally bought upgrades and utensil sets for the kitchen (maybe people “stealing” my utensils just forgot to bring a fork, borrowed mine, and brought it home by accident?). Stuff like drying towels, soap dispensers + large refill bottles, a microwave food cover… all stolen. I’d keep getting frustrated with, for example, people leaving the sponge wet in the sink. I’d think “its been a year since I last donated something, maybe it’ll be different this time…” and I’d buy an OXO sponge holder or something and within a week it would be gone. Everyone in my office, including secretaries and cleaning staff, gets paid at least a living wage with great health benefits. Some make well over 100k. I just imagine someone making twice my salary seeing a nice soap dispenser and taking it home… lost a good bit of faith in humanity and affected me way more than it should have.

I found a solution though. Whoever was stealing this shit couldn’t deal with the shame of being reminded that they stole it. I started labeling the donated items using my organization’s acronym with a permanent marker in big visible letters. None of that’s been stolen. I was going to engrave my utensils/dishes but decided instead to look like an asshole and bring my own towel when washing my dishes, drying them immediately, and taking them back to my desk immediately.

I doubt you give a shit what I have to say, but the causes of the problems you see… I don’t think you’ve got that part quite right.

You are expected to defend yourselves for 20 minutes. I’m genuinely curious - what are you defending yourself from? How often is this defense required?

Defending your livestock - sure, I can see that. What kind of gun do you need to do that?

Bear and mountain lions. Do me a favor and look into how many people have been killed by bears and mountain lions in the US’s recorded history. Now look into how many people have been killed by gun violence in the US since… the beginning of July.

Yeah, you don’t have a gun violence problem… that’s why you need a high capacity magazine to defend your home while waiting 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. Better make sure all that firepower is available for you with no limits, checks, or balances. There is no way somebody else might have the same firepower and use it to attack your house, rob a store a few towns over, blow their girlfriend’s head off in a fit of paranoid jealousy, or take out their incel anger in the local synagogue or some bullshit.

You say you’ve seen more mountain lions than ever before. Do you think that, perhaps, loss of habitat due to development or changing climate might be contributing to that? Look into how the wild animal population has changed in the US in the last 50 years or so. When food is scarce, animals will relocate searching for food. Now consider whether Democrats or Republicans are in favor of regulating, limiting development, destruction of nature, and pollution that damages ecosystems and the climate.

We all see homelessness and the associated drug addiction when we go into town. Addiction that is supported by the Democrat’s free needle program. Homeless camps that, until this week, were supported by Democrats

Holy shit man. There is so much to unpack here. I guess if you are cool with thousands of people dying every year from gun violence just so that you can feel safer with easy access to guns why not completely ignore the needs of the unhoused and drug addicted humans in your local town.

Frankly, this sounds a bit like Trump according to his nephew. This is what he quotes Trump saying about his (the nephew’s) disabled kid.

"maybe those kinds of people should just die,” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.”

You think free needles is the problem? That they’ll just stop doing the drugs? Or, perhaps, that they will, in desperation share and reuse needles, putting themselves at risk for all sorts of nasty shit. Where will they go when they get an infection or HIV/AIDS? If they don’t die, they’ll go to your local hospital. Do you think they can pay their bills? Nope. Now the hospital is in the red and needs to charge your community more to recoup costs.

Now we could get these addicted folks some actual help, but that’s expensive. Instead, you should lock them up somewhere… somewhere that will pay their medical bills, feed, cloth, and house them, likely for a tidy profit so there will be a good amount of overhead… and who will pay for that? Someone else?

…and what is it you recommend we do with these people who have nowhere to live? We can’t help them find a place to live, that’s socialism. Republicans sure as hell aren’t going to vote for a tax increase to fund it. Hell, whatever funds were previously available were likely cut in order to give tax breaks to the rich folks who have been destroying the mountain lions habitat so much that they’ve moved onto your property. You know what, maybe just throw the unhoused in jail too… I’m sure that will cost less than actually helping them and at least they’ll be having an even shittier time. It’s important for them to suffer more.

This is 95% a poverty issue. Homelessness? Poverty. Drug addiction? Likely poverty. Shoplifting? Poverty. Stealing gas, catalytic converters? Poverty. Sure, I’m sure there are a few assholes getting rich off of it but I think you’ll find that the folks taking the risks and doing the actual deeds are more desperate than greedy.

Permit fees? I agree - those should cost less or be free, but that doesn’t remove the need for regulation. That’s just people not wanting to pay taxes. I’m sure if your neighbor rigs up some solar panels without the proper checks and starts a wildfire that spreads to your land you’d still blame the Democrats for letting it happen while you paid your fees. Most of these regulations are right up there with the ridiculous warning on products. You know some chucklefuck did some serious damage somewhere and now we have to get it all checked out by a pro before we can install things or some other chucklefuck will do it again. While I’m sure some corrupt officials treat it as a bribe but most of the time there is an inspection to make sure rules were followed for your safety and the safety of others. I think it should be free and paid for by taxes but I’m sure Republicans would throw a fit.

The transition from fossil fuels is a rough situation. The US is a BIG place and rural infrastructure is often overlooked. Do you know which party wants infrastructure built out to meet these needs? Not Republicans. Too expensive, need to cut the taxes for the rich.

This has been way too long but there is just so much in your post that simplifies shitty situations so that somehow it is the Democrats fault. Now maybe you have a corrupt corporate Democrat running things. If so, fuck them and vote them out. Just don’t pretend that this is what Democrats stand for.

As someone who is trying to teach themselves a few new things this year by diving to projects using them… I seriously, seriously feel you. It honestly makes me question whether I should just abandon each project I start, both professional and personal.

All the relevant hits are from years and/or 2+ versions of whatever ago or forum posts with dead links to an alleged solution.

I feel like in the past I could just dive into something and search my way through it. Now I feel like that era is over and I question whether it’s me, my niche project idea, the disappearing community, or just the search engines.

AAA devs publishers are spending too much money making games people don’t like and then making devs design them to get every penny out of customers that they can, then fire the devs if the project doesn’t turn into a fire hose of infinite money. If it does, the sequel better earn infinite^2 money because unlimited growth is the only acceptable success.

Or you could mandate that corporations, instead of being legally required to make the line go up at the expense of anyone they can exploit, are required to pursue less environmentally destructive practices. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of them already did research on this but found it impacted their bottom line and dismissed it.

It would really help to know what concepts you are already familiar with and feel like you understand. Edit: it would also be helpful to know what you are trying to do that has you working with ports or using a VPN. There are countless situations where ports and VPNs are involved. /Edit Lacking that, I’m going to cover a lot of basic concepts. I’m assuming typical/common situations, as always it can always be different and more complicated. Wall of text incoming.

Typical basic networks are a collection of devices that are able to communicate with each other through some medium like a wired network or WiFi. Each device In a network will have an IP address (a set of four numbers between 1 and 254 divided by periods for example: 192.168.1.100). For one device to send a message to another device, it addresses the message to the device using its IP Address. This is like sending a letter in the mail - you need to mark the letter with the street address or it won’t be delivered.

Now sticking with this analogy, if I wanted to send you a letter and you lived in a hotel or apartment complex without a dedicated address just for you, I need to make sure to address the letter not just to your building but also to you specifically. This is where ports come in. If I want to join your Minecraft server, I need to be able to reach your computer specifically and I also need to make sure my Minecraft game is talking to your Minecraft server and not your web browser or something. Software listens for specific ports. So to join a Minecraft server hosted on your computer with the address 192.168.1.100 I’d need to also specify the port so that the Minecraft server software know my messages are for it specifically.

That’s the ELI5 version.

Stepping up the complexity now. In most cases, joining someone’s Minecraft server is more complicated because I’m on my home network, and my router is connected to the internet, and through the internet I connect to your router and then from your router I need to connect to your computer. The way this works is that each of our routers are on two different networks - our home network and the Internet.

Most home networks will look very similar. There are ranges of addresses that are reserved for local (non internet) network devices, such as my example IP address - 192.168.1.100. It is possible that each of our networks (and countless other home networks) have a device with this IP address so I can’t just send a message to 192.168.1.100 and have it get to your networks 192.168.1.100 address. Fortunately, routers act as middlemen and coordinate communication between devices inside our network and devices on the internet. Think of the router as a fancy doorman outside the hotel or apartment who knows what room all of those living there are staying.

Unfortunately, it is often the case that my computer will not know the IP address of your computer within your network. You can work around this by using port forwarding. I write “Minecraft” on the letter and you instruct your doorman that any letter with “Minecraft” written on it should be delivered to your Minecraft server. In reality, you’d forward any traffic from the internet with a specific port number directly to your Minecraft server computer. The computer running the server is already “listening” for traffic on that port and will take it from there.

Now for more complicated stuff. Technically, ports are rather arbitrary. Some ports are standardized. As someone else had mentioned, port 80 is the standard for HTTP and 443 is standard for HTTPS (encrypted). However, nothing is stopping you from hosting a webserver on a server using a different port, like port 12345. Your web browser will assume port 80 and the webserver will ignore your web browser until you tell your browser to use port 12345. It is also possible for multiple service or pieces of software to have the same port which causes problems. I have a server on my home network and multiple services that display a web page (port 80 or 443). They can’t all use the same port so I have to work around this by either using different ports or assigning each a different IP address.

So what does “opening” a port mean? Well, as you might imagine there are many pieces of software and many services running on devices in your home network. As a security precaution, many routers will block or ignore any traffic on the internet that tries to talk to it in a way it is not expecting. You don’t want randos trying to connect to your computer through the internet and your router.

Unblocking or opening a port could be something like forwarding a port to a device on your network. Technically, this would involve finding a “Port Forwarding” setting on your router. Here, you would indicate any traffic with port 25565 (the default Minecraft server port) should be directed to your server at address 192.168.1.100. Now your doorman will always deliver every letter with “Minecraft” written on it to your Minecraft server. Be aware that even if you aren’t the server software, every letter like that will continue to be directed to your server. If there is a security flaw in Minecraft, this could technically be something someone could exploit.

Similar to your router, Windows (the operating system) will also block/ignore traffic that it isn’t expecting as a security precaution. Opening a port might mean creating a rule in your firewall setting to let traffic from certain ports into your computer. If Windows is ignoring any letters it doesn’t recognize, my Minecraft letters still won’t reach your Minecraft server even if it is clearly addressed to it. Windows may also be blocking traffic from leaving your computer if it does not have a firewall rule telling it otherwise so its possible the server got my letter, but Windows blocked the reply so I’m left hanging.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. This term can mean a few different scenarios but what they all have in common is that it creates a hole into your network, bypassing the router (maybe both routers). It is sometimes called a tunnel, which is a pretty good metaphor. Basically, you are running a virtual network cable through the internet from one computer or network to another. Through this virtual network, devices will be able to see and interact with each other as if they were on the same network.

Real life example. I manage a few servers where I work. If I need to log into those servers from home I cannot do this. It would be extremely dangerous to just let anyone on the internet have access to the server’s login screen. So instead, I use a VPN. Now my home computer is virtually connected to my work’s internal network - as if I’d brought my personal laptop into work and plugged it into the network jack next to my workstation in my office. I can use the same software I’d use at work to log into my servers without having those servers directly exposed to the internet. I am limited by my home internet speeds but it is otherwise almost identical.

Similarly, we could install VPN software on our two computers and I could then join your Minecraft server directly, bypassing your router, as if we were both on your home network.

Like I said, there are quite a few ways to do this and I’ve heard many of the ways referred to as either a VPN or a tunnel. More context could get you a better answer.

Generally, opening ports is a security risk. This is especially true when opening more common ports or ports that get a lot of use. More common, standard ports will be more likely to get attacked and ports that get a lot of use will be more likely to be targets of exploits. It really depends on your scenario. Imagine that, if someone wanted, they could likely figure out what port you’ve opened and what is listening for that port on your home network. They might try to brute force a password or take advantage of the software’s security flaws.

Forwarding a randomly chosen port so a friend can join your Minecraft server? Not so risky. Opening port 22 so you can log into your home computer while you are away from home? Much riskier. Using an atypical port for remote access is still risky as, like I said, you have to assume that if someone really wanted to, they could figure out that remote access is running on port 17426 or whatever random number you may have chosen.

1200/35 for $120 US/month. I also own my own modem and router. Otherwise it would be another $15-$20/month.

Anything cheaper knocks my upload down to 20 and saves me very little. Viewing my options now hides upload rates but I checked a few months ago when my promotional rate expired and the price jumped $40.

1000/20 is $115, 800 is $110, 500 is $105, 300 is $90, 150 is $68

Any competitors don’t qualify as broadband anymore. Maybe 35/5? I didn’t even bother checking the price.

At least it’s fairly stable and “unlimited” but I’m fairly sure they can say that and still cap it at 200GB/month or something. Oh, and I can connect their surveillance device… I mean “free streaming box”… and get Peacock at no extra cost!

'murica?

I think he gets a lot of anger directed at him because.

• He’s not as progressive as many leftists hoped

• He’s done a terrible job of highlighting the progressive stuff he has done (or that progressives have pushed/negotiated with him to get done), like he’s afraid that if moderates find out he’ll lose their votes

• He’s not Bernie

At least, these are the things I hold against him. And Gaza plus some very specific other things.