yes, i came to look for this comment - i immediately thought of this (i thought of The Solipsist)

it's very much the story of The Solipsist by Frederic Brown, which was published in 1954

https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/solipsist/

and to think they were fed with our captcha training data (among other things) ;)

the one and only meetup i ever went to (that wasn't something vaguely work-related) was a Werewolf meetup (the game). It actually wasn't very social, but it was a bunch of people who were really into Werewolf. Which, really, was what it was meant to be (and it was fun, because i love to play Werewolf)

I went to one of those too, before Covid. It was great. I went to another one with the same group, but for the similar game "Witch".

Then came Covid, and the group disappeared and never re-appeared. :-(

https://www.salaryconfidential.com which allows you to run private small-size peer compensation surveys without leaking identity (anonymous forms aren't that anonymous when you pick up any context. You can get incredibly niche, as long as a survey peer group is at least 4 people. And hopefully, this sets you up to negotiate hard based in real-life evidence, not broad ranges from Glassdoor

We use data models and release rules borrowed from k-anonymity techniques, batched releases and privacy pass cryptographic tokens to create super safe surveys, and everyone who participates as an invite peer gains access to the same full-fat report.

Our form supports specific benefits extension by geography, an extended equity compensation set of questions for packages where equity is significant; and performance pay questions for groups (like sales, execs) where performance pay is also a significant part of the package

Also, we make it easy to explore pay gaps (gender, ethnicity, gender identity, whatever it is) because you can run several peer groups under one poll. no person gets tagged but you do know which respondent was in which peer group - so you can keep context in view (but size needs to be at least 4) but also have a broader view by rolling up results.

Knowledge is power, and all that

Right - you pay for the GUI and the well-balanced user experience. It's less about, strictly speaking, the storage.

Which is, in the end, true of a lot of tools where the underlying 'things' aren't particularly spectacular but rather it's the user experience that sells it

But Apple knows that there are many reasons why a user who may choose Apple where they make decisions for their dollars, is also a user who is stuck in other ecosystems in other context.

Of course, I'm talking about, for example, work environments where you may be stuck with a Windows PC, or have to use a corporate-owned Android device for your phone...