this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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There are lemonade stands making more money than OpenAI. Right now. In January. In sub-freezing weather.
Ice cold lemonade is really good.
and doesn't kill the planet or support fascism!
Setting a pile of money on fire is more profitable then openai. Like you can not physically shovel enough to come close to even a tiny amount of what openai goes though.
Absolutely brutal. I love it.
Thats because winrar is useful.
It’s is not useful. It is fucking great.
Its kind of shit and always has been. Winrar love is pure nostalgia.
Its icon is good I will admit that.
Wait till you learn about 7zip…
7zip didn't exist when winrar was released... im pretty sure anyway...
7zip didn't exist when winrar was released... im pretty sure anyway...
Fact check: TRUE
Winrar released April 1995, and 7zip released January 1999 according to Wikipedia.
Yeah there was a time when winrar was basically the best option for zip files it made it easy...
There was Winzip before.
Yeah, but it was a poster child for nagware. Edit to be fair so did WinRAR, but that sweet sweet compression and multi-volume splitting made it the best tool for those sailing a jolly roger on those slow, stormy seas...
I don't really have an issue with nagware. You got a powerful, useful piece of software for free. I'm starting to see a lot of comments in this vein on Lemmy. Open Source is fantastic, but it's also okay to want to get paid for the time and effort put into something.
What you're seeing on Lemmy is up to you.
What I'm talking about is late 90s and early 00s, with WinZip being the prime example but others like ACDSee or even mIRC also coming to mind, where the whole shareware model for the era was companies testing out just how inconvenient they could be and still get the users to buy their apps.
The glorious counterpoint to this was WinAmp, who not only whipped the lama's ass, but was also free (for non-comercial use) shareware and users paid voluntarily, which I gladly would have if I wasn't a broke kid at the time.
This era died off completely after that, as the internet became more accessible, open source and libre licenses exploded, and many apps migrated to web browsers.
What you're seeing on Lemmy is up to you.
What is your point? The issue isn't that I'm seeing it, it's the level of entitlement people feel they have to free stuff.
I remember using winzip frequently, I don't remember ever paying for it, ditto mirc. It would have been a damn sight more inconvenient if they'd actually ended the 21 day trial vs clicking a button after 30s, no? Shareware was primarily limited trials - you usually had to pay for the full version.
The name died because we didn't need to share the disks any more, it grew into modern freemium apps, mtx and ad supported software, I'm not sure I like any of those more.
OS has grown, as has the complexity of free programmes, sure, the number has grown because there are a lot more devs, people have always been willing to give software away - they should be seen as generous, not the base level of expectation.
I still don't see why any of that should stop people wanting to get paid for the work they're doing and I do find it somewhat bizarre the level of expectation people have that others give away software then maintain and support it for free.
I want that WinRAR bag
That's absolutely hilarious. All the times I've either patched Winrar or ignored the 40 day subscription nagging did not matter for their bottom line at all.
All the times I've either patched Winrar or ignored the 40 day subscription nagging did not matter for their bottom line at all.
You individually? No. But RARLAB aren't saps; the "40-day limit"(TM) transforms their software from nagware into something valuable the user is "getting away with". If one or two stray consumers happen to purchase a license based off of that, then excellent. The real kicker, though, is that a culture where everyone uses WinRAR for creating and extracting archives is one where they can push a ton of business licenses – one of the main reasons e.g. Microsoft will often provide Office to universities at steep discounts. By using WinRAR, you act as a brick in the wall of WinRAR's (thankfully waning) hegemony, even just by giving it word-of-mouth or not using competing software.
They want you to feel like you're getting more value than you are out of a product that is near-strictly inferior to free and open-source software with a public domain compression algorithm like 7-Zip. This has been common knowledge for over a decade.
4.83 Million USD is quite a lot.
I wonder if Berlin Berlin is different than Berlin Germany
It's the city of Berlin in the state of Berlin (similar to New York City, NY).
The country Germany consists of 16 states.
!subscribe BerlinFacts
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More useful too.
The poop in my pants makes more money than OpenAI
apparently fecal donors can get 500 bucks per shit
Kinda like a rich person saying "You have more money than I do because you only have $100k in debt" to a normal person because they have a $2 million dollar loan for a house, but only have $500k in easily liquidated assets.
Ah man that takes me back,….to when windows was somewhat useable.
Windows got market power because they took the term "Personal Computer" seriously. It was yours, and you could put what you wanted on it. They are now heading down Apples path of proprietry ownership, without Apples flair.
Loving Linux Mint atm. Maybe it'll help me get more adventurous with other distros?
Adventures are nice, but it seems I always come home to Mint.
Distro hoping is quite fun. Load up a vm or have a test ssd and play around
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I am also very old
Yes? They don't care it's an infinite money glitch where big corporations pretend that they are in a growth phase and give each other money by using shares that they can print at will.
Then I'll hurry up and buy some WinRAR stocks!
I want to know what unprofitable businesses are still more profitable than WinRAR.
Maybe ChatGPT should get one of those super annoying nag messages to get you to pay up like WinRAR used to have. That ought to rake in the many billions they need... right?
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