Yes, sorry, but I can’t take something seriously if every paragraph begins and ends with an emoji. I know it’s dismissive, but all my Facebook lunatic conspiracy theory alarm bells are blaring.

It’s Chromium underneath, so using it increases Google’s control over web standards

mocp

I got the PS1 anniversary edition which had Metal Gear Solid on it, and I don’t get how that game was ever as popular as it was. The handling is super janky, and the graphics is so dark that you basically cannot discern the environment and the enemy unless you stay still and watch for moving pixels.

Whoosh

I’ll just use this opportunity to mention kagi.com, a search engine that you pay for, but which doesn’t track you and gives you controls for customizing your search results yourself instead of letting an algorithm build a profile of your habits. I’ve used it for months now, and I’m not going back.

I finally managed to find my account age. 19 years and one month! Time flies.

I had a long hiatus, but I still play FPS games regularly. And I can still join a random HL2 deathmatch and pwn :).

This. It costs money, but on the other hand it is FAST, looks good and ad-free. You also have the ability to block spammy domains so they just don’t show up in results.

I actually don’t have a problem paying for online services. I host my own email, I pay for Kagi search and I do monthly donations to Mozilla and Wikipedia. What I have an issue with is services that start out as advertisement based and then introduce paid plans, because now you still have all these shitty mechanics just for driving up engagement which results in unhealthy incentives for content creators and rabbit holes. I want a service that is for YouTube what Kagi is to Google Search. But perhaps that model is too difficult to monetize, I don’t know.

I’ve also used Kagi for two months and can really recommend it! I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo a few years back, but Kagi is just so much faster and also generally has better results.