http://www.zachtronics.com/wmp-skins/
There were exceptions though. I unironically think the transparent graphite iMac and the transparent Apple Studio Display CRT still look good today in 2020.
The free and open internet died when Facebook and social media became ubiquitous...it’s very much degraded since its heyday in the late-90s and early 2000’s. And who knew that the government would compel YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to censor content on their behalf.
Companies like Palintir are working with LEAs to develop pre-crime algorithms and there was a financial institution that recently floated the idea of using a person’s internet search history to rate their credit worthiness.
The tech “revolution” was a bait and switch scam. The internet, smart phones, social media etc. were sold as tools to complement life and make doing certain things easier and more convenient. Instead we got a system of control that makes us dependent on technology that has effectively replaced life with a degraded digital facsimile so that a bunch of parasitic middlemen can make a lot of money. Just look at Twitter, a platform that brings out the worst in people or Facebook, which openly manipulates its users psychologically.
We were promised a utopia but a dystopia is what we got. And now we’re stuck in it with no easy way out.
Then again, I'm all about people putting information out there because they have something to share, not because their primary focus is "how can I monetize this?"
I can spend less on a VPS for a month than I can at a morning of Starbucks. I can do a whole lot more (and share a lot more) with the VPS. No expectation of making money from it either.
I miss the days of /~ pages too.
But yes, absolutely, all the chairs were inflatable. None of them survive. Actually that's how the standing desk was discovered.
The vast majority of the bridge work and maintenance is done single-handedly by tulir. It'd be awesome to see more capable individuals contributing :)
My bet is that having the French and German governments as paying clients will be a game-changer for Matrix. We've moved over to it internally, and I'm federating onto a couple of social channels; using Slack feels like chewing glass now, and if I could interact with my remaining Slack obligations from Element, I would.
Slack can be as hostile as they want, I welcome it in fact, because I want them to be unprofitable, hemorrhaging users, and eventually shut down. Best of all, there's only so much they can do in that department, while keeping all the bot integrations which are their only remaining (and fast eroding) edge.
Matrix deserves to win— and they're poised to.
> I'm now back to using email.
/s