[The Washington Post] Japan won its ‘war’ on floppy disks, but its love of archaic tech lingers

[Glenn Roberts]

Not sure if this “gift” article share will work with the list but fyi, interesting article…

Japan won its ‘war’ on floppy disks, but its love of archaic tech lingers

Japan has long been known for innovation, but experts say the nation’s lasting embrace of outdated hardware may have deeper roots in culture and practicality.

By Kelsey Ables

https://wapo.st/3W9XVox

Download The Washington Post app.

https://wapo.st/3W9XVox

Sent from my iPad

[smb...@gmail.com]

It did say it was gifted, but then did require a "free" login.

I notice this is becoming a trend with news sites. Even for content that isn't strictly pay content, they're starting to refuse access without having a login.

Scott

[Les Bird]

The internet in general is becoming a really bad experience. If I pull up an article on my phone there are so many ads that it makes reading the article really difficult and unenjoyable. And yes, requiring a login to read an article - if they can't sell you the article then they'll sell your email.

Les

[Eric Mack]

I set up a PiHole server on my local network. Many folks use a dedicated RPi for this. I used a Docker session on my NAS.

 

In either case, it blocks ads by killing DNS, giving me greater network performance add-free..

 

Eric

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[Dave McGuire]

I use PiHole as well, in a VM on a server. It dramatically improves life in general.

-Dave

On July 6, 2024 5:06:56 PM "'Eric Mack' via SEBHC" <se...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> I set up a PiHole server on my local network. Many folks use a dedicated RPi for this. I used a Docker session on my NAS.
>
> In either case, it blocks ads by killing DNS, giving me greater network performance add-free..
>
> Eric
>
> From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Les Bird
> Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 9:55 AM
> To: SEBHC <se...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: [sebhc] Re: [The Washington Post] Japan won its ‘war’ on floppy disks, but its love of archaic tech lingers
>
> The internet in general is becoming a really bad experience. If I pull up an article on my phone there are so many ads that it makes reading the article really difficult and unenjoyable. And yes, requiring a login to read an article - if they can't sell you the article then they'll sell your email.
>
> Les
>

> On Saturday, July 6, 2024 at 10:14:40 AM UTC-6 smb...@gmail.com<mailto:smb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It did say it was gifted, but then did require a "free" login.
>
> I notice this is becoming a trend with news sites. Even for content that isn't strictly pay content, they're starting to refuse access without having a login.
>
> Scott
> On Saturday 6 July 2024 at 05:57:29 UTC-7 Glenn Roberts wrote:
>
> Not sure if this “gift” article share will work with the list but fyi, interesting article…
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Japan won its ‘war’ on floppy disks, but its love of archaic tech lingers
>
> Japan has long been known for innovation, but experts say the nation’s lasting embrace of outdated hardware may have deeper roots in culture and practicality.
>
> By Kelsey Ables
>
>
>
> https://wapo.st/3W9XVox
>
>
>

> Download The Washington Post app<https://wapo.onelink.me/e76N/e2316c13>.

>
> https://wapo.st/3W9XVox
>
> Sent from my iPad
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SEBHC" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sebhc+un...@googlegroups.com<mailto:sebhc+un...@googlegroups.com>.
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>
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> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sebhc/SN4PR13MB52949A83672DEE0B4C4E3EDB81D82%40SN4PR13MB5294.namprd13.prod.outlook.com.


--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA

[smb...@gmail.com]

I've heard people talk about the pihole before, but have never tried it. A couple questions:

1) Do sites still complain if they detect your blocking ads via DNS? A smart enough site could tell that all of the ad fetches are failing their DNS queries. Maybe the segment of technical users who are sufficiently advanced to setup pihole is small enough that they don't bother.

2) I assume you have to move the DNS for each computer in whole over to the pihole's DNS server? i.e. there's not moving it just for a particular browser. It has to be all-in from a particular computer.

I have a NAS so I could put it there too.

Scott

[Dave McGuire]

On 7/6/24 18:16, smb...@gmail.com wrote:
> I've heard people talk about the pihole before, but have never tried it.
> A couple questions:
>
> 1) Do sites still complain if they detect your blocking ads via DNS? A
> smart enough site could tell that all of the ad fetches are failing
> their DNS queries. Maybe the segment of technical users who are
> sufficiently advanced to setup pihole is small enough that they don't
> bother.

I've seen one or two sites complain, but not many. You can disable
blocking, including some options for disabling it for a few seconds and
then having it re-enable.

There's a web interface to control that stuff, as well as to get
nicely-presented statistics on percentage of blocked queries, etc. As a
data point, ours runs around 24% of queries blocked.

There's also a phone app that can be used to control and monitor it.
But, it just sits there and works as a piece of infrastructure; I end up
logging into it once every few months at most.

But yes, I think you're right; they'll still get the data from the
huge masses of consumer types who just shrug and say "well I guess
that's the way it is!" and get taken to the cleaners, instead of saying
"no" to the suits who are butt-raping the Internet.

> 2) I assume you have to move the DNS for each computer in whole over to
> the pihole's DNS server? i.e. there's not moving it just for a
> particular browser. It has to be all-in from a particular computer.

Yes, then in PiHole's configuration you point it to the upstream DNS
server that IT will use. Here, I set that to a local recursive caching
server on my network, and since PiHole is a caching server itself, this
creates a hierarchy of caching DNS servers. It performs very well.

-Dave

[Lee Hart]

First, the article was interesting, and worth reading. For those that didn't read it: The Japanese are more safety conscious, and so more inclined to trust older proven technology. It's an older population, which prefers using what they know, rather than having to keep re-learning new things that are different but don't work any better. Their written language is also much easier to write than to type, so dashing off a note and sending it by FAX is much faster and easier than trying to type and email or text it. I appreciate their point of view, and feel the same way myself. :-)

On the online data wars: I'd like to block more of the ads and data harvesting, but don't have the technical "chops" to figure out how. I've tried ad blockers, but then sites won't talk to me unless I turn it off. I've tried a VPN, but then some sites won't work (for example, I can't maintain my website).

With all the hoopla about AI, why can't we have an AI program that work as our "personal assistant"? It gets information from the web, blocks the harvesting and ads, and just serves us the actual content?

Virus-free.www.avast.com

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