We all know the struggle of beloved services slowly going downhill. What’s one service, tool, or website you’ve been using for years that’s still great and hasn’t turned to crap?

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months ago

      I came here to say both of those things about the Internet Archive, but I also hope both of those orgs get tons of donations regularly because I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them

    • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Just found these custom ad block filters. Seems to be working so far

      wikipedia.org##.nag-trigger
wikipedia.org###centralNotice
wikipedia.org##[id$=“banner-nag”]
wikipedia.org###frb-inline
wikipedia.org##.cn-fundraising
    • solrize@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months ago

      It’s not just the spam, there is other enshittification like the endless co-option with AI companies and private info disclosure (aka surveillance capitalism) under the self-serving excuse of being anonymized or aggregated.

    • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
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      8 months ago

      I can forgive Wikipedia and Internet Archive for the spam. Both sites are incredibly valuable and completely ad-free.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
        0·
        8 months ago

        They are one of the highest achievements of humanity, imho, that even make me feel proud to be a human.

        It’s hard not to try to support them.
        The “spam” is for them to operate, not maximise their profits.

        • QuizzaciousOtter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          8 months ago

          It’s not that simple and transparent actually. Wikipedia doesn’t really need those donations to operate. They have money reserves for many years of expenses. I don’t have a great source right now but this article looks decent. I didn’t read the whole thing though.

          • PmMeFrogMemes@lemmy.world
            0·
            8 months ago

            Gotcha, it’s another anti-European (and anti-USA), anti-male, quasi-Marxist organization. This is what your donations to Wikipedia are going to. Wikipedia spends more money on left-wing causes than actually running an encyclopedia, and by a very long-shot.

            Well shit, I guess I’ll start donating

    • Skanky@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months ago

      Sure, I’ll add to that.

      • Audacity
      • Inkscape
      • Notepad++
      • DaVinci Resolve
      • QR Bittorrent
      • YouTube to mpe 3 convert (the command line one - can’t remember the actual name rn)
    • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months ago

      I recently bought a replacement PC for my dad because of windows 11 (though his old computer was also over 10 years old so it was a somewhat fair upgrade, anyhow). Someone suggested I use Ninite to quickly bootstrap a lot of the programs he’d use and I was honestly surprised. It was genuinely no-nonsense and got the job done. A rare nice thing in Windows…

    • tko@tkohhh.socialEnglish
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      8 months ago

      YES to Reaper. No surprise that the original developer of Winamp makes an amazing DAW.

      • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        I’m ok with things relying on ads to make a product free. Someone has to pay for a product or service, if I don’t want to pay for it, then show me an ad and let someone else pay for it. The thing that overwolf and more specifically curseforge do that keeps them out of the enshitification category for me is they simplify modding of games.

        I’ve been around since the early days of video game modding and know how hard it used to be. They have streamlined it to the point that if someone has created a mod it is a simple button click to download, and install, and then keep the mod up to date. You can even create and share collections of mods and mod packs. And if a modder has added a donate button, it’s a single click to donate to the modder. It’s everything I want out of the modding community with none of the headache, and it’s been like that for years.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        8 months ago

        Isn’t Overwolf’s business model literally monetizing and profiting from modding communities? Curseforge and Overwolf are the epitome of enshittification.

          • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            8 months ago

            At least to me, Overwolf is the third or fourth iteration, following acquisitions, buyouts, restructurings, etc. The original FTB launcher worked perfectly fine. It’s mostly just obnoxious now and I make sure not to have it running in the background. No direct rent-seeking behavior just yet, I don’t have an account on there and it’s not a problem.

            Right now I have it on my computer just use it to update packs that are only available there and then yoink them straight into MultiMC.

            AFAIK it is owned by Curse and I guess those guys make most of their money from those godawful wikis and their ads.

            I thought I’d check this before posting it, and it turns out it’s the other way around. Overwolf bought Curse. Worse, Overwolf is a company based out of Tal Abib… that’s two discoveries in one day. I was looking into getting a CaribouMini until I learned where that comes from. Less than two hundred kilometers away from me as the missile crow flies (and sadly, has flown). Great. Fucking great.

            The shitty thing is that a lot of cool pack creators only publish through Overwolf, so I don’t want to delete it just yet, but I don’t like this at all. At best a minor security risk, at worst I don’t even want to know. I just thought it was just some shitty ad company’s Curse buyout as a billboard for more ads. For all the issues I might have with Nexus Mods, I don’t think they’re quite this bad. Concerning that this is the de facto standard repository of MC mods.

  • felsiq@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Not an overly surprising one, but the arch wiki has been an incredible source of info with no ads, tracking, or any of the modern web bullshit for as long as I’ve used it.

    They’ve been hit with some pretty major DDOS attacks recently and they’ve done a really good job of keeping the important parts of the service as accessible as possible - they haven’t resorted to buying into cloudflare’s monopoly or blocking vpn users despite either or both being the easy way out.

    For anyone else who’s relied on them as much as I have, now would be a great time to donate!

      • No1@aussie.zone
        0·
        8 months ago

        For real. The number of times I’ve been working problems on a Raspberry Pi and my searching ends up there is wild.

  • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    Playing cards. More or less unchanged from 30 years ago. Real nice, games still play the same too.

    Oh also my local electric company is still providing well for not too much money.

  • vermaterc@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    Stack Exchange. I know, controversial, as people complain about rules being there too strict and community not being too welcoming nowadays, but still a real goldmine of knowledge. All of that with no ads, no spam, no dark patterns.

    • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months ago

      I was so happy to learn about Libro.fm randomly. Makes things so much easier to just download and have on my dedicated audio player. No DRM to strip or having to use their player. Only thing that annoys me about them (along with other audiobook services) is that they list books that they can’t sell due to DRM. Most of the time if they don’t have a book you just don’t get a result, but for some reason they will show some books and I get excited to see them. Just to then load the page and see that they currently can’t offer it due to DRM. Would much rather not see the search result. Another mildly annoying thing with their search is that searching for books by authors will include other authors and show results for all their books. Both are just annoyances that aren’t deal breakers so long as everything else is kept the same.

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    Craigslist

    Hasn’t changed much at all, and their app is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more–i think the only thing I wasn’t able to do in the app was clear a saved search, but there’s no bloat, no ads, don’t need an account unless you’re posting or saving searches.

    • Thteven@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months ago

      Every few years I’ll look for something on craigslist and every time I’m amazed that it’s still going strong and it’s still exactly the same.

    • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      The site still looks like it came right out of the late 90’s and that’s all it needs to be

  • VeryVito@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    There is currently an amazing amount of top-quality, open source, design and development software: Blender, Godot, Inkscape and Krita, for instance.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 months ago

      That’s different, those are open source projects, not walled off paid service from companies

    • JillyB@beehaw.org
      0·
      8 months ago

      Dropout is pretty good. I don’t think they’ve really been around enough to enshitify yet though. They’re on big up-swing. During that time they’ve been cheap, audience-focused, and fair to their cast and crew. They’ve already raised the price at least once. If they get some loans/investors involved or have a bad year, I could easily see them becoming more like other streaming services. I hope I’m wrong.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      +1 davinci… it’s incredible what you get in the free version, and the studio version is getting more and more worth the money in a value add way rather than a need it way

    • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Which reminds me, I’ve had a few dropout shows on my jellyfin for a while but really need to drop a sub to support. They do great stuff

      • Jentu@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        I swear, I feel like I’ve watched (or have shown off to people unfamiliar with dropout) A Game Most Changed like 5 times.

        Or if they’re straight, Sam Says. Lol

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 months ago

      Wow, I used that late 90s or early 2000s it was great.

      I will have to try it under WINE in Linux

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      8 months ago

      I’m sure you have your reasons, but I just cannot imagine continuing to use Windows over image viewing software?

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      0·
      8 months ago

      Just installed ifranview via winetricks install program option. Ifranview works on Linux 😀

    • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months ago

      Same here. Every time I have used Linux or MacOS for long periods of time as my main OS. I run into that moment when I need/want to look at images (or even just one), and all the other fun things go right out the door. It is such a weird problem that other viewers can’t manage to “feel correct,” Always amazes me at how this one program is the cause of such a specific emotional response from me. lol

      I try out Xnview from time to time on Windows to try and adapt to it, but always run into just something (but it is a very good program and is why I make the effort to check-in on it at all). I think that in Xnview’s case, it is just waaaay too much going on and even with the massive amount of settings I can’t find the ones that “just work” for me. Just end up installing it through WINE and deal with the random weird things that come from using it that way (most tend to be the UI looking so different due to not matching the OS and presenting the fake C: when opening a file from the menu). And still “feels” much better.

      Other more simple viewers also don’t “feel” right due to not having some of the additional settings/features Irfanview has for light editing. Would maybe help in the case of Xnview if someone was able to mod it to have Irfanview look (kind of like the various mods of GIMP to layout like Photoshop) and hide the tons of advanced stuff that Irfanview doesn’t have in sub menus or a toggle to switch to the normal setup. Though I can get it kind of close if I play around with moving stuff around on the main toolbar. So still like the best next option I have used.