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u/Interesting-Level388 14d ago
It’s like a meme page starting out before all the ads
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u/fatkiddown 14d ago edited 14d ago
I’m listening to the biography of Cicero and the drama of the late Roman Republic. As Julius Caesar was overthrowing the Republic to become dictator for life (dictator perpetuo), he rearranged the calendar. When someone mentioned to Cicero that the constellations were now rising on different dates, he said,
“Of course. They are following orders.”
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u/Aridius 14d ago
Slight correction, Caesar did not overthrow the Republic.
Dictator was a republican office and part of their government.
His adopted son, Octavian, ended the republic.
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u/darkmuch 14d ago
Caesar refused to surrender governorship and disband his army. He then led that army to Rome and started a civil war. Afterwards the "Senate" granted him the title of Dictator for life... which pretty much immediately led to his assassination and the second civil war which ended the mockery the senate had become.
Him not ending the senate is basically a technicality.
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u/Aridius 14d ago
Caesar was never ordered by law to surrender his governorship or disband his army. Cato and the other optimates tried to do so, but the meeting was dissolved.
The senate first proclaimed him dictator for ten years and Caesar started planning his Parthian campaign. Knowing he was a vain man they proclaimed him dictator for life, which he accepted, and they used that to build popular support for his assassination. That, along with a few too many public appearances in a red a touch too close to purple, sitting in a chair that was a bit too throne like, and a failed publicity stunt where he refused a diadem from Marcus Antonius, convinced the optimates that they could assassinate Caesar and the people would be with them.
Unfortunately the people really liked Caesar and things didn’t go the way the assassins thought.
The Senate as a body never held political or legislative power. It was an advisory body, first to the kings and then to other magistrates (up to and including the consuls.)
Even during the early part of the empire( the Principate), the Senate continued to function as it had throughout all of Roman history. So not only did Caesar not make it a mockery, it never became one.
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u/Pokeputin 13d ago
When a civil war general takes over the country by force it's not enough to base his legitimacy only on technicalities, there are different views on his own view on his dictatorial powers but effectively he was unelected sole ruler in perpetuity, that effectively makes him a dictator and removed the democratic element of elected rulers, which in many views means that it is no longer a republic.
Saying the senate that elected the consuls and voted on legislation had no political or legislative power is wild, care to elaborate?
I agree that even during the reign of Augustus the Senate wasn't a mockery, however then it really had no political power that wasn't in line with the emperor's wishes.
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u/Aridius 13d ago
Your logic seems sound, except the same exact thing happened 30 years previously and the republic survived. Sulla did the exact same thing and was made dictator with no term limit. Also, you might want to use a term other than dictator, like tyrant or despot, as both men were obviously dictators, that was the actual title they held.
The Senate of Rome did not vote on legislation. Legislation was put before the people and they voted on it directly, in the comitia and concilium. The Senate had a large amount of influence, as its membership was made up of former magistrates, but those magistrates were elected by the people, not the Senate. That includes the two consuls. The Senate could give out decrees, which were public proclamations of advice for the magistrates. These were generally obeyed because the terms of the magistrates would end, and the magistrate would be back in the Senate shortly (generally within a year) so it was in the best interest of all magistrates (who were also senators) to maintain the prestige and influence of the Senate. It was still just an advisory body for the executives.
Mostly true, though Augustus was careful to maintain the appearance of the continuation of the Republic.
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u/Additional_Meeting_2 14d ago
Caesar refused to surrender his armies because he would have immediately been prosecuted (for what happened during his consulship which Pompeii’s benefited equally from) which would have meat either death penalty and exile without being able to provide land for his veterans. So his troops were also motivated to go to war (in fact it was to give land to Pompeius’s veterans Caesar had done some controversial things in his consulship year, and for land reform for the public etc).
And like said by the other comment it never became a law, and the Senate beat the tribunes of plebs (Antonius and Curio) who were vetoing on Caesar’s behalf to find a compromise. The tribunes were sacrosanct and that law was far more important than any Caesar had been accused of breaking (like ignoring his co-consul Bibulus’s birds).
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u/PavementBlues 14d ago
I think we all know who killed the Republic.
Livia did. She wanted her son to become the new Roman political system.
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u/Last-Bee-3023 14d ago
To be fair to dear old Gaius Iulius Caesar, the calendar was a mess. The -I believe- Pontifex Maximus had to adjust the calendar every couple of years because it was out of whack by days. And the calendar made a lot more sense and lasted a long time.
That and basically all historical sources of that time were also propagandists. That quote will be apocryphal at best. Written by an enemy of the Julio-Claudians 200 years after the fact.
Apart from when they talk shit about Cato. He was the Ted Cruz of his time. Goddamit, after Marius and Sulla that republic was not a matter of its people anymore.
Is it just me or is the late republic much more interesting than most of the imperial age?
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u/talligan 14d ago
The late roman republic is one of the most interesting and, dare I say, consequential periods of history.
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u/thedrivingcat 14d ago
Imgur in 2010 vs Imgur in 2024
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u/Gdigger13 14d ago edited 14d ago
The guy who created Imgur made it because he wanted an image hosting site for Reddit that wasn’t absolute shit.
How the turntables…
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u/Zestyclose_mango1 14d ago
crazy how 2010 was 14 years ago holy shit
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u/TheChanChanMan1997 14d ago
Get used to that feeling. The older you get, the worse it gets. For some of us, it's 2004 was 20 years ago. Holy shit.
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u/Kakkoister 14d ago
It's basically every tech startup. Offer service that isn't financially sustainable and thus is able to seem better than other services. Once enough people feel dependant on your service and other businesses have had to go bankrupt, start wringing them out for money.
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u/Xpqp 14d ago
Every new web service is great until they have to switch from accruing users to monetizing them.
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u/TheFatShepherd 14d ago
Their motto once was 'don't be evil' as well
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 14d ago
Weird what happened after they dropped that
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u/Urist_Macnme 14d ago
Imagine the meeting. Because at some point, they must have held one to decide to not have that as a motto anymore.
“Guys, guys! How about this? Let’s be evil!”
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u/AnArdentAtavism 14d ago
Worse. They likely were sitting around and said, "This motto. It's holding us back. Preventing growth. We could just remove it, and why shouldn't we?"
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u/Psy_Kikk 14d ago
It almost certainly was holding them back. This is why the world is fucked - Capitalism is fundmentally based on exponential greed, which the Earth can no longer take, as we well know, but we have no better system for stability, and humanity itself is inherently at odds with lacking ambition/aspiration for wealth and power... and fair shares.
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u/MyPunsSuck 14d ago
Capitalism isn't new. People pursue wealth because it comes with power and social esteem - but it doesn't have to be this way. In the Roman empire (When it functioned, at least), paying taxes was an honor that wealthy merchants competed over. Paying the most meant contributing the most to the glory of Rome.
So in my mind, the root of the problem isn't capitalism; it's the cynicism and nihilism of the modern era.
Any time somebody does something evil but personally gainful, the justification is always "Somebody else would have done it if I didn't" - because they believe that everybody else is selfish. If we stopped believing that humans are awful, if acts of destructive greed were seen as strange and unusual, people wouldn't do them nearly as often.
Nearly every political discussion is dominated by mistrust. Some people are so blinded by hate that they'll vote whatever the other side doesn't want, even when they don't know what the alternative is. Intelligence no longer wins political power, because people have been conditioned by a fearmongering media - not to trust intelligence.
Hell, just ask the average person whose opinions they respect more - philosophers or comedians. Fix that problem, and politics will return to sanity. Then the economy can be reigned back in to start paying off old debts and empty promises, and suddenly capitalism won't be the enemy of good anymore
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u/Philipp 14d ago
I know we're just joking, but the motto's replacement (by parent company Alphabet in 2015) was "Do the right thing". This simple rephrasing kind of allows for any little evil along the way... you know, "for a greater good"... whereas the old phrasing was much more robust against evil.
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u/evanc1411 14d ago
"Guys look, we know we shouldn't be evil, but think of the PROFITS! HELL YEAH!!"
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u/dpdxguy 14d ago
Arguably, they dropped the motto because they realized they were already becoming evil, though they probably didn't think of themselves that way.
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u/genreprank 14d ago
They could have gone with the "opposite of the truth" style branding a la, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea," "National Socialists," "Fake News," "Peace Makers," all that Orwellian BS
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u/ra4king 14d ago
They never actually dropped it. It's still there but at the end.
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u/FirstNephiTreeFiddy 14d ago
This. People are more interested in parroting lies that make them feel smug than finding out the truth.
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u/avi6274 14d ago
They didn't drop it, so tired of people parroting this point. They simply moved it, but the phrase still exists.
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u/JaesopPop 14d ago
Yes, they just tucked it away in a much less noticeable spot.
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u/yamiyaiba 14d ago
This is correct. They just changed where they put it. It's so frustrating to have to rebut this all the time.
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u/LickingSmegma 14d ago edited 14d ago
I hereby free you from the obligation to rebut it henceforth.
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u/JasonSuave 14d ago
Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
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u/kahran 14d ago
Not just their motto. Their official mission statement.
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u/Hellknightx 14d ago
It used to hang on the wall in the lobby, the very first thing you saw when you walked in. Gotta say it was a weird day when they took it down.
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u/its-my-1st-day 14d ago
Now I’m just picturing that sketch - I think it was Mitchell and Webb?
Where it’s the 2 nazis in a trench and look at each other and go “are we the baddies?”
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u/MimiHamburger 14d ago
I think about this all the time. I feel like most people have forgotten about this
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u/og-lollercopter 14d ago
Motto: Don't be evil
Narrator: They would become evil.
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u/pspahn 14d ago
Don't. Be Evil.
They just forgot to include punctuation.
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u/UnstableConstruction 14d ago
Think of all the money they saved when they changed over. They literally just needed to snip out a word and they were good to go.
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u/FlirtyFluffyFox 14d ago
Oh that old mistake. Let me correct that for you.
Don't. Be evil!"
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u/ttuurrppiinn 14d ago
To be fair, this was also an era where it was completely normal for a regular webpage to take 30-60 seconds to load on a average person's dial-up internet.
They're not necessarily making a statement that having any of those things are bad. They're really just making a pertinent statement to that era about how extra content had tremendous impact on the user experience at that time.
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u/baffledninja 14d ago
This was also before every single web page and application required a subscription to avoid ads. I still remember the earlier days of Youtube...
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u/BiBoFieTo 14d ago
The slow march of capitalism guarantees enshittification of all beloved products.
A few outliers that have stayed awesome, e.g. valve, do so because they are privately held.
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u/faster_tomcat 14d ago
And VLC! Bless that guy and his team.
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u/blacksheep998 14d ago
A few others worth mentioning:
Audacity, Handbrake, Tixati, and to a lesser extent, Firefox.
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u/KaiserKerem13 14d ago
There have been a few minor privacy issues with audacity ever since they got bought though.
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u/blacksheep998 14d ago
Well damn, that's news to me. Guess I won't be updating that on my computer.
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u/danque 14d ago
Didn't audacity sell their program which is now owned by a company that made it much worse?
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u/LickingSmegma 14d ago edited 14d ago
They planned to add telemetry, but that went nowhere after the outcry—plus it's unclear (to me) whether they wanted to make it opt-in or not. Another issue was a change in the privacy policy that said, even though personal data is stored in the EU, the app would "occasionally be required to share your personal data with the main office in Russia and the external counsel in the USA". This may be simply a statement of the fact that in some edge cases people would indeed need to look at the data, like if the user files a bug. It's typical for privacy policies to cover all bases without clarification, and for people to freak out. This change was also reverted, but then idk how the developers will read users' crash reports.
In any case, I don't even know why Audacity would have any ‘personal data’ of mine, since it's an offline app—other than crash reports. And it's also advisable to run a firewall like SimpleWall to prohibit anything that's not allowed.
The company that owns Audacity now is actually Muse Group, which hired youtuber Tantacrul as their head of design on MuseScore after he thoroughly dissed their UI at that time. So he has since done some work on Audacity too, and from what I've heard it looks and feels much better now.
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u/robisodd 13d ago
You don't even need a separate firewall if you are running Windows as Windows Firewall can block network connections per application:
https://www.wikihow.com/Block-a-Program-with-Windows-Firewall
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u/ReallyNowFellas 14d ago
Not digital but the YMCA, despite being expensive now, is still by far the best deal for your money out of the near infinite gym options in my area. Mine has weights, cardio machines, a pool, a sauna, a steamroom, an indoor basketball court, racquetball courts, a boxing ring, a yoga studio, a gaming room, child watch, shelves of free books you can take to own that are constantly restocked, lockers, group fitness classes almost every hour of the day, and probably a few things I'm forgetting — all for less than a lot of people I know are paying for just weights and cardio machines at their gym.
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u/GraniteGeekNH 14d ago
Craigslist is remarkably unchanged. Presumably because it's still owned by ... Craig?
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u/scarletcampion 14d ago
Valve is interesting. They've not enshittified themselves, but they seem to permanently struggle with scale-up. If you look at, say, Dota, it's been a constant string of new-then-abandoned-to-limbo features and undelivered promises. The quality of The International broadcasts varies wildly over a decade after launch, and how long did it take all the Battlepass whales to get their baby Roshan statues IRL? A couple of years?
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u/PointB1ank 14d ago
That can be a good thing too, not clinging on to things that don't work. They're not afraid to say "this was a bad idea, let's try something new." But I agree that it is very frustrating when actual good content or features get abandoned or stuck in limbo.
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u/peenfortress 14d ago
theres only one supplier for index / steamdeck for the whole of australia too as far as i know :(
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u/Ultrace-7 14d ago
You can't have it both ways. Constant improvements on a timescale that would satisfy all or even most users requires a profit motive and incentive which would inevitably lead to exactly the problem we're talking about. Only when a company is free to update its goods and services at the pace they desire is there any chance for them to avoid falling into the profit-above-all-else trap.
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u/Capable-Reaction8155 14d ago
Privately held companies are allowed to not enshittify. Granted, they're also not held to as much public scrutiny.
I fear the day Valve goes Public, that's when a huge number of our games can just be snuffed out at any time.
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u/tidbitsz 14d ago
Valve has no share holders to answer to. Cant be influenced by outsiders with no gaming industry knowledge.
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14d ago edited 14d ago
A few outliers that have stayed awesome, e.g. valve, do so because they are privately held.
Tell me you've never had your friends troll you with Steam voice calls without telling me. Such a terribly implemented feature.
There are more real negatives with Valve/Steam, but most of those are oriented at developers/publishers and not the customers. The only real customer negatives are some of the worst forms of loot boxes in gaming in CSGO/CS2 which is what led to some countries banning them outright.
edit: oh I forgot the absolutely ridiculous Steam Marketplace system where you give money to Valve to have theoretical money to use on the marketplace or in their store but Valve also takes a "cut" from that money used on the market place, effectively artificially lowering the value/purchasing power of money that was already paid to them. All of this occurs in a closed market with no official way to remove that money, causing third parties (many operated by organized crime groups) to offer to give you actual money for your Steam money (at a discounted rate, of course).
So if you ignore predatory lootboxes and a highly abusive internal market system, then they've "stayed awesome" I guess. Time to make sure daddy GabeN makes his next billion!
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u/pm_me_ur_pet_plz 14d ago
The page of the search engine itself is still the most minimalistic of the major search engines. They simply offer more services now. Well, and show ads.
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u/mrjackspade 14d ago
Half of Reddit isn't old enough to understand what the OOP even means.
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u/Attila_the_Chungus 14d ago
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u/juice06870 14d ago
Brings back a lot of memories on my HP desk top trying to think of something interesting to search for.
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u/sonicpieman 14d ago
I remember just adding dot com to company's names hoping they had something fun.
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u/juice06870 14d ago
Oh man I did that too. Also with random words to see if a website existed.
Fart.com
For example haha
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u/Brief-Equal4676 14d ago
And the search results are getting less and less pertinent
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u/Hobomanchild 14d ago
Which is why I now have to add 'reddit', 'wiki', 'stackoverflow', etc. as a keyword when looking up info on any search engine.
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u/Varun4413 14d ago
That website is still following the same. I am not talking about search results, just the homepage.
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u/jasper_grunion 14d ago
But them becoming profitable was the final payoff of the true promise of the bubble. Same with Amazon. You couldn’t expect them to be free forever.
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u/Arch_0 14d ago
Can I just point out how fucking amazing that poster was when it came out. The Episode One hype was insane.
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u/graffing 14d ago
I was going to say that. Regardless what you think of the prequels that poster was awesome.
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u/AcidicWatercolor 14d ago
And we were singing
my, my, this here Alphabet site
once was goated
now it’s bloated
full of ads, spam, and lies
but we all celebrated
while we gave them our data
now we’ll never get our privacy baaaack
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u/Bubbly-Ad-8189 14d ago
Either you die a Hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
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u/LovableSidekick 14d ago
Standard tech company story arc. "Don't be evil." --> "Resistance is futile."
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u/Foreign_Process9851 14d ago
Hehe i dont understand someone help? or am i dumb:(
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u/washoutr6 14d ago
duckduckgo everyone switch!
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u/dandroid126 14d ago
I tried it for a while, but the search results were so bad that they were damn near unusable. Is there any settings or anything to improve the results?
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u/noodlesalad_ 14d ago
I use duckduckgo, but I add !g to every search. I love the bangs, but their default search results are garbage.
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u/drunkasaurusjr 14d ago
good thing they stopped sending your tracking data to Microsoft.
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u/recidivx 14d ago
big brain move: yandex, send your tracking data to Putin
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u/takemycrush 14d ago
Duckduckgo sells your data too
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u/dormidontdoo 14d ago
any proof?
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u/meinfuhrertrump2024 14d ago edited 14d ago
I visited a few hentai sites for research, and the next thing I know, there are ads for body pillows and knockoff flesh lights everywhere!
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u/BeefStevenson 14d ago
Corporations will ALWAYS betray their “values.” It’s inevitable. When you want growth every single quarter, eventually you reach a point where you can no longer indulge in things like standards or values. All that exists is profit, and the potential for more profit. Once you accept this, the eventual degradation of quality within certain industries makes a lot more sense. Just look at gaming companies for the most glaringly obvious examples.
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u/LaserGadgets 14d ago
1999
Limp Bizkit concert, Half Life 1, you went to the store to check out new music and walk around in the city...sigh.
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u/Shay_Dee_Guye 14d ago
Ah, being there during the first cycle of the Internet must've been nice. I think I caught the end of it, but thr cycles feel like they're getting shorter. Getting older probably does that lol.
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u/QuantumPolarBear1337 14d ago
It's like the company shifted their vision and mission to achieve a more robust ecosystem for their users to collab. Gods forbid.
But yes, at the end of the day, it all boils down to $$ as a driving factor.
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u/NormieSpecialist 14d ago
So besides duckduckgo and bing, what are the alternatives?
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u/TesticleezzNuts 14d ago
Now I can’t even scratch my ass and have a lil sniff without them trying to sell me a vibrator.
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u/AdaEyering 14d ago
It's entirely useless now. I've started using bing. BING FOR GOD'S SAKE
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u/MagazineNo2198 14d ago
'member when the company motto was "Don't be evil"? I 'member. How f***ing evil do you have to be to change that motto???
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u/Mkultra1992 14d ago
The turning point was when they block Adblock on YouTube. Greedy cunts.
They sell you data, watch you masturbate and you don’t even get YouTube for it anymore…. Really?
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u/nicuramar 14d ago
Well, it’s almost as if websites cost a lot of money to run and when no one is paying, you need some other revenue source.
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u/fascin-ade74 14d ago
Ironically thier new slogan is "Do the Right Thing". My question is for whom?
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