Yes, this. I've known a number of very wealthy people over the years, and there's one thing they all have in common: they're frugal. Some of them are downright cheapskates.
None of them would spend $1,000 on anything unless they see a clear return on that money (even if the return is in status).
As one of them once told me: the key to being wealthy is not having a large income. It's having an income that's larger than your outgo.
You 200USD smartphone is probably made by a Chinese manufacturer like Huawei or Lenovo with a terrible post-sales support. They give you barely any security updates, and they often give just one major Android version software update.
This is a use-case dependent thing. Personally, I couldn't care less about post-sales support beyond replacing the unit if it turns out to be defective.
I don't care about manufacturer-supplied updates, either, because the first thing I'm doing is replacing the operating system anyway.
It has nothing to do with being rich or poor, it has to do with spending my money in a way that I get the most use and/or enjoyment from it. A $1,000 smartphone doesn't maximize either of those things for me.
$1,000 is more than 25% more than $725. Seems like a pretty large jump to me.
Honestly, though, even $725 is too expensive, although I might pay that much if I were pressed and there wasn't another phone out there that met my needs. In practice, for a high-end phone, I start to get price-sensitive in the $600s.
I suppose it might be possible to come up with a phone that would be worth $1,000 to me, but I can't imagine what that would be like. Maybe if it gave great handjobs or something.
The internet is completely dependent on Javascript now...sad.
I think you mean the web, not the internet.
That aside, I still think that assertion is overblown. Yes, there are some sites that break completely when you don't allow Javascript, but most sites that I encounter handle it without breaking. You just don't get all those fancy animations and such (which, in my opinion, is an improvement).
It is true that the first couple of months of use NoScript can be a pain in the ass, but once you get it dialed in, it rarely gets in the way.
Christianity Today is absolutely coming from a specific perspective (please name the new organization that is not), but I think they're a decent news outlet nonetheless.
They aren't sneaky about what their slant is, and despite their slant, they actually engage in solid, honest, and relatively unbiased journalism.
I'm not Christian, but I still consider them one of the more respectable outlets these days.
I'm not able to come up with a list for you at the moment, but I do see it often. I do it on my own sites as well: I use "noarchive" to prevent the caching of pages that change frequently (typically, this is the front page), and allow caching on pages that don't. This is the pattern I usually see with non-paywalled sites.
They can't , at least until someone comes up with a reasonable micropayments system for websites. I'm still baffled by why nobody seems to be able to make this work, given that laundromats have been doing it for years now.
But I'm not going to pay to read a single article. I pay sites that I read regularly, and there aren't 20 of those.
Ad companies appear to have already started to defeat hosts by using pseudorandom subdomains. APK's solution can't block these
This is true (although I bristle at calling this "APK's solution", since this has been around longer than APK has). So far, this has been pretty easy to compensate for with wildcard entries, but I see the day coming when that won't be a decent solution anymore. I've been working on other ideas to handle it in the longer term.
What method do you use for this? VPN or root?
Both. When I'm away from my own WiFi, my phone sets up a VPN connection to my home network. When that's in play, then the ad networks are blocked by my network's firewall. The phone also has a hosts file installed to cover instances where I can't connect to the VPN for one reason or another.
I use Firefox's tracking protection as well, but I consider it incomplete -- so I use NoScript in addition to it. I don't use an extension specifically designed to adblock (NoScript covers that as a side-effect), but I do use a rather huge hosts file to redirect ad company domain names to localhost (I do this on my phone as well).
This is pretty close to exactly what I do on Android. I use Tasker to accomplish this. My Tasker script samples the GPS periodically and when it sees it's not in an area I've defined as OK, it turns the WiFi off. Otherwise it turns it on.
Tasker is awesome, by the way -- I use it for a ton of other things, too, such as: I have it read incoming text messages, and when it gets one that contains a specific code phrase, it grabs a GPS reading and takes a picture from both cameras. It then texts the GPS coordinates back and emails the coordinates and photos to my email address.
I have my phone rerandomizes its MAC every hour. That's not really short enough for this use case, but then I disable my WiFi whenever I'm out in public anymore anyway. There's far too many trackers being deployed everywhere these days. It's safest just to turn the radio off unless its needed.
I think that's why the commenter said "optional". Personally, a whitelist wouldn't be useful to me unless it didn't require me to have an account with the search engine and didn't require me to tell the search engine what sites I'm paying.
I'd much rather have an blanket on/off switch that excluded all paysites.
If the means by which people are choosing to get paid involves subjecting their audience to the online advertising industry and the tracking that goes with it, that's their own fault, not mine. Such advertising is far from the only way to get paid, it's just the easiest for the websites.
I don't object to reasonable advertising. I will not tolerate the tracking, though, and until it stop then I am keeping my adblocker in place and not disabling it for anybody. If that means I'm locked out of some sites, then so be it.
Sure, I'm with you in that I'm very selective about what sites I go to. But you and I aren't representative of the usual web user at all. For those who are less discriminating, extensions are very important in terms of making the web usable, at least until browsers start incorporating these sorts of defenses natively (which will never happen).
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Yes, this is common but not universal. I won't pay unless doing so eliminates the ad-related tracking.
Yes, this. I've known a number of very wealthy people over the years, and there's one thing they all have in common: they're frugal. Some of them are downright cheapskates.
None of them would spend $1,000 on anything unless they see a clear return on that money (even if the return is in status).
As one of them once told me: the key to being wealthy is not having a large income. It's having an income that's larger than your outgo.
An iPhone X you probably wouldn't use more than 4 years.
A phone that's only usable for four years is a bad phone, in my opinion.
You 200USD smartphone is probably made by a Chinese manufacturer like Huawei or Lenovo with a terrible post-sales support. They give you barely any security updates, and they often give just one major Android version software update.
This is a use-case dependent thing. Personally, I couldn't care less about post-sales support beyond replacing the unit if it turns out to be defective.
I don't care about manufacturer-supplied updates, either, because the first thing I'm doing is replacing the operating system anyway.
It has nothing to do with being rich or poor, it has to do with spending my money in a way that I get the most use and/or enjoyment from it. A $1,000 smartphone doesn't maximize either of those things for me.
which is exactly what they charge to unlock it.
The last time I was under contract (to AT&T), once my contract ended they unlocked my phone for no charge.
The reason I avoid contracts is because I don't want to be locked into a carrier like that. It's caused me pain before.
Yes, I was.
That's what they're banking on.
Personally, though, I buy my phones outright. Those contracts just aren't worth it to me.
$1,000 is more than 25% more than $725. Seems like a pretty large jump to me.
Honestly, though, even $725 is too expensive, although I might pay that much if I were pressed and there wasn't another phone out there that met my needs. In practice, for a high-end phone, I start to get price-sensitive in the $600s.
I suppose it might be possible to come up with a phone that would be worth $1,000 to me, but I can't imagine what that would be like. Maybe if it gave great handjobs or something.
Damn, my brain farted hard in that comment. I confused Christianity Today with a different site. Please ignore everything I said there.
The internet is completely dependent on Javascript now...sad.
I think you mean the web, not the internet.
That aside, I still think that assertion is overblown. Yes, there are some sites that break completely when you don't allow Javascript, but most sites that I encounter handle it without breaking. You just don't get all those fancy animations and such (which, in my opinion, is an improvement).
It is true that the first couple of months of use NoScript can be a pain in the ass, but once you get it dialed in, it rarely gets in the way.
Christianity Today is absolutely coming from a specific perspective (please name the new organization that is not), but I think they're a decent news outlet nonetheless.
They aren't sneaky about what their slant is, and despite their slant, they actually engage in solid, honest, and relatively unbiased journalism.
I'm not Christian, but I still consider them one of the more respectable outlets these days.
I'm not able to come up with a list for you at the moment, but I do see it often. I do it on my own sites as well: I use "noarchive" to prevent the caching of pages that change frequently (typically, this is the front page), and allow caching on pages that don't. This is the pattern I usually see with non-paywalled sites.
They can't , at least until someone comes up with a reasonable micropayments system for websites. I'm still baffled by why nobody seems to be able to make this work, given that laundromats have been doing it for years now.
But I'm not going to pay to read a single article. I pay sites that I read regularly, and there aren't 20 of those.
Ad companies appear to have already started to defeat hosts by using pseudorandom subdomains. APK's solution can't block these
This is true (although I bristle at calling this "APK's solution", since this has been around longer than APK has). So far, this has been pretty easy to compensate for with wildcard entries, but I see the day coming when that won't be a decent solution anymore. I've been working on other ideas to handle it in the longer term.
What method do you use for this? VPN or root?
Both. When I'm away from my own WiFi, my phone sets up a VPN connection to my home network. When that's in play, then the ad networks are blocked by my network's firewall. The phone also has a hosts file installed to cover instances where I can't connect to the VPN for one reason or another.
I use Firefox's tracking protection as well, but I consider it incomplete -- so I use NoScript in addition to it. I don't use an extension specifically designed to adblock (NoScript covers that as a side-effect), but I do use a rather huge hosts file to redirect ad company domain names to localhost (I do this on my phone as well).
This is pretty close to exactly what I do on Android. I use Tasker to accomplish this. My Tasker script samples the GPS periodically and when it sees it's not in an area I've defined as OK, it turns the WiFi off. Otherwise it turns it on.
Tasker is awesome, by the way -- I use it for a ton of other things, too, such as: I have it read incoming text messages, and when it gets one that contains a specific code phrase, it grabs a GPS reading and takes a picture from both cameras. It then texts the GPS coordinates back and emails the coordinates and photos to my email address.
Who needs Google to find your lost/stolen phone?
I have my phone rerandomizes its MAC every hour. That's not really short enough for this use case, but then I disable my WiFi whenever I'm out in public anymore anyway. There's far too many trackers being deployed everywhere these days. It's safest just to turn the radio off unless its needed.
Those tags are commonly used on sites that aren't paywalled, too.
Since the choice we're given is often between ads that spy on you and paying money, I have taken to paying money for sites that are important to me.
But only if paying money allows me to keep my browser defenses up.
I think that's why the commenter said "optional". Personally, a whitelist wouldn't be useful to me unless it didn't require me to have an account with the search engine and didn't require me to tell the search engine what sites I'm paying.
I'd much rather have an blanket on/off switch that excluded all paysites.
Oh, please.
If the means by which people are choosing to get paid involves subjecting their audience to the online advertising industry and the tracking that goes with it, that's their own fault, not mine. Such advertising is far from the only way to get paid, it's just the easiest for the websites.
I don't object to reasonable advertising. I will not tolerate the tracking, though, and until it stop then I am keeping my adblocker in place and not disabling it for anybody. If that means I'm locked out of some sites, then so be it.
Sure, I'm with you in that I'm very selective about what sites I go to. But you and I aren't representative of the usual web user at all. For those who are less discriminating, extensions are very important in terms of making the web usable, at least until browsers start incorporating these sorts of defenses natively (which will never happen).
Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".
This jumped out at me, too.