When they locked out anonymous access to old.reddit.com, I moved on.

Yes, I will miss the technical, humor, and local-events discussions. The rest, I won't.

A slight smile crosses my face at the ad views this will cost them - as one might presume with the current old.reddit.com redirect to a login page (which does not show ads), the only way one would be shown ads on the platform going forward is if one is logged in (and doesn't have an ad blocker). So all those ads being served to anonymous viewers goes bye-bye. I very slightly wonder if the bean-counters took this into account.

This move will create a vacuum. Some other thing, for better or worse, will come around to replace it. The internet, as has been long said, will interprit this as damage and route around it. I still have just enough faith in humanity left to believe this...

I would amend the title to: "Please let the way that most people use the internet die".

And that has to start with individuals.

Are you ready to give up social media and clutivate a local group of like-minded friends who will put in the time and effort to socialize in-person?

Are you ready to shop locally for everything you can, and not order online unless you have to?

Are you ready to walk or drive yourself to your favorite local restaurant to pick up your takeout, instead of using a gig delivery service?

Are you ready to eschew LLMs, even to the point of pushing back on your employer if they insist you incorporate LLM output in your work?

The punchline to my little ol' rant here is that I feel most people are too comfortable with, or too addicted to, or whatever to, the kind of things I mention above, and that for most people, if they think about it at all, might have a passing thought of "why should I bother, some other activist will start the fight and then I'll just like their posts".

With blackjack! And hookers! ... In fact, forget the internet!

More correctly, it is default on for nearly 100% of computers sold. Large orgs want it that way (it's a feature), makes installs easier. And yes, that includes all servers, workstations and laptops in the world, except perhaps special purpose stuff (military, space, etc).

It's correct. I've never seen any machine with a default BIOS configuration where PXE booting is disabled. This is considered a feature (makes installations faster). You need to switch it off in the BIOS to stop that.

It is not off by default. I have seen a lot of different hardware in my life (I basically do booting for a living), and I have never encountered a BIOS that had PXE disabled by default.

BIOS has a boot order, and as far as I can recall PXE is always the last option. The order of what comes before varies, e.g. whether or not USB boot is tried first.

In fact, on most systems if they cannot boot, they keep rebooting and ending up in a loop trying PXE boot over and over, and then giving up and rebooting again. But it should be noted that of course, if you get access via PXE you already have full control over the system anyway. The new thing here is that you can use a single "malformed" packet with a payload instead of having to set up a DHCP and tftpboot server to deliver a malicious payload. The fact also that this happens before TPM is enabled makes is extra serious, as there is no way to stop any malicious code executing.

BIOS upgrades can be helpful if they contain a fix, but they tend to be unavailable on consumer hardware fairly quickly after the vendor stops selling and supporting it. Also BIOS upgrades are know to be finicky, and it's very easy to brick your system, which means opening up the box and connecting to the chip with a CH341A EEPROM programmer, something which not everyone is going to be capable of. Some machines have way to recover from a bricked BIOS, but in my experience those don't work most of the time and you end up reprogramming anyway. On many laptops the BIOS is on the back of the mainboard which typically means disassembling the system to get the CPU cooler off.

On nearly all machines it's enabled by default, but it's usually the last boot option.

AFAIK it was only put in the PRO versions of Intel NUCs, the other NUCs I have don't have it. It's really handy to have, because you don't need physical access to the box anymore. So I use the PRO boxes a lot for testing.

Of course on server hardware it's a different thing. It's hard to find any server that doesn't have it. On some boxes it's even a licensed feature that you need to buy^H^H^H rent to get it to work (the bastards).

I do believe you reised to the occasion here.

In real countries, worker conditions are subject to negotiations, not dictates.

And dont pay anywhere close to what they were making.

Any subs that follow the TrueWhatever invariably turn into shit.

This is Slashdot :)

This also clarifies things (why am I not surprised):

The local teleco switched to Fiber. I get 2Gbps up/down. + phone for $80 a month. I had Comcast Business for $200 a month, I had a 3 year contract for 160 the first year, then 180, then 200. Except it didn't stay that consistent. Their fees increased. the contracted base amount stayed the same.

So I'm saving 140 a month now. i may drop the phone and save another 30. And my speeds are better. So far I haven't had any issues.with reliability. 2 months of service, it's been up while I needed it.

I can't say that for Comcast either. Even on a business account, I had regular outages.