Bye bye, nytimes.

When the only thing that continues to work on you ad-filled web site is the captcha, I’m not interested in supporting your journalism any more.

Ironically, another pet peeve of mine was the “you can sign up online, but you have to call and talk to a human to cancel”.

But with apparently nothing but your main page (and your ads - surprise surprise) working, that was actually good for once.

@brianstorms Shh! Keep this private between just the two of us, but I actually have and use an ad-blocker. But I see those ads on my tablet, and I find them unreasonably annoying.

Don’t charge me, and then also show page-wide stupid and annoying ads. The news I can get elsewhere with less annoyance, and I’ll probably miss wordle and the new math game in beta the most.

@juancnuno it’s not hard to cancel. It’s just really annoying. I at one time tried to use a pre-paid credit card just because I despised that practice so much, but that didn’t work.

If you rely on that kind of behavior to keep your customers, what does that really say about you?

The fact that they have some technical problems right now, and you can’t actually read the articles without going into soem endless captcha hell - who does that idiocy any more anyway - was just the last drop for me.

I didn’t mind subscribing per se.

@morgthorak I think you might want to make sure you don’t follow me.

Because your “woke communist propaganda” comment makes me think you’re a moron of the first order.

I strongly suspect I am one of those “woke communists” you worry about. But you probably couldn’t actually explain what either of those words actually mean, could you?

I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with.

And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. So please just unfollow me right now.

@torvalds Can I recommend https://archive.ph/ for firewalls in general

1. Find the article you want to read on ny times or wherever
2. Copy URL
3. Paste in search box on that site
4. (usually) find the article in full with zero ads

https://12ft.io/ also works for a bunch of sites :)

@powellnathanj lovely. They fixed it at some point since I originally subscribed. Except today I couldn’t actually even get to my account since I couldn’t prove to them I was human.

Maybe they’ve fixed whatever went wrong by now, maybe it was just the smoke in the newsroom, but it’s all moot by now. The phone worked fine.

@torvalds 👏 screw the bigots

@gamingonlinux @torvalds because of this event I learned of social.kernel.org so I’m happy

@BrideOfLinux yeah, somebody else pointed out that NYtimes has apparently fixed some of their old bad habits.

And it’s not the mobile app being crappy that was one of my peeves. It is what it is.

It was the constant “I’m reading this in the web browser, stop asking me over and over to move to the mobile app” whining that got to me. Please ask me once. Then shut up.

And the “Oh, you clicked on that thing that you need to do other things for” nagging, whether it be wirecutter or the athletic or whatever.

So yeah, the NYtimes experience has had these kinds of constant small annoyances. Which is sad, because the news itself I had no issues with (as a part of my news source, not exclusively, of course).

@torvalds

re https://mastodon.social/@phryk/110034564453075734

My patience was well rewarded. <3

@torvalds Do you literally carry a card declaring yourself an atheist?

I’m a lifelong atheist myself, but for me, one of the things that atheism means is that there’s no formal authority that can issue cards declaring you one.

@gabriel @torvalds
This you?

@torvalds News outlets have recognized they aren't profitable without ads. Are we willing to pay for subscriptions to other people's labor, so we can enjoy that labor without ads? Yes, I am. Are you? You created the Linux kernel. Do you profit off of that? Is someone paying you for your labor? I would if I could. Others should because they can. You have quite an influence and surely you're aware. Use it. Do better.

@torvalds I think free software communities need to do more to exclude “anti-woke” types and other such toxic people.

tip for new fedi users: repost the linux torvalds woke communist post at least once

@avram An atheist could carry a pope card. Or a mome card. No central authority.

@torvalds

@torvalds
I think I'll just keep calling myself a woke communist. Don't get put on the defensive, strike back.
@rail_

@torvalds this one post should be the reason to every trans person to use linux/bsd exclusively and only linux.

@asahi @torvalds it has proprietary things but to my believes its not considered a sin. The only thing considered a sin is to get every year a new apple device because the old one isnt the newest anymore.

@asahi @torvalds it would also be offensive to my religion, the church of Holy tux ;)

@torvalds king 😩🙏