I just joined yesterday so I don't know yet. But I've tried about 6 other sites and come to one realization. Not everybody joins the same site, and sites mostly aren't linked. If somebody nearby to you joins a different site you aren't going to find them unless you happen to try their site. So within reason the more sites you try the better. Some sites are just plain crooked and expect to charge for whatever they can. They all have to make money to stay afloat so charging for a couple things is reasonable, but you should be able to look around and contact someone for free, otherwise move to another. There are something like 900 online dating sites to choose from. They all have scammers, there's almost no way to avoid those. Learn to spot people who look to good to be true and feed some of their pictures to Google images because scammers use stolen pictures. If the picture is somewhere else in a different context that's a scammer. But Google doesn't spot them all. Some sites have fake users too, bots that might "like" you to make you feel like the site is reaching more people than it is. I'm usually on about 3 sites at a time, more gets confusing. A couple others I have no complaints against are OK Cupid and Badoo. Speaking of complaints you can check sites on the Better Business Bureau website at bbb dot org. If they've never heard of the site that's good, because they accumulate complaints. They don't have a lot of muscle to enforce anything, especially outside the US. I find looking around these sites to be entertaining, I don't expect a lot more out of it. Sometimes people get lucky.

Oh, the forums here are a big plus.

As another atheist I'd say science. It's spectacular but how can I minimize my chances of being hit? You could curl up in a ball but it's hard to accomplish much else that way. Running for cover is as good as anything probably, minimizing the time you're exposed. Getting low to the ground is also going to increase your surface area unless you can get into a hole, dubious benefit to that. Don't fall down running in the mud, that won't help, especially if you break something.

It's a complicated subject from a programming standpoint. I have an account on ilikeyou.com which is from the UK or Europe. They have no concept of states, only city. Here in the US we might have 6-10 states with the same city name. Some of us have started using a zip code in place of city, at least it's unique and you can look it up to see where it is.

Geolocation, mostly from phones with GPSes could change all that. It would need to be written into the site's software, but potentially it can read a user's latitude and longitude. And you can calculate an approximate distance between 2 points. Cities and states don't matter in that case.

Verification of location is another matter. A scammer in Ghana can say they're anywhere and it might end up within 5 miles of you. Pictures are stolen from Facebook or wherever. That 20 year old cute blonde 20 miles away can be some 50 year old guy in an an internet cafe in Accra. I got scammed, now it's kind of a sport to spot fakes and report them. Look up the picture with Google Images before you get very serious. I've been at this about 3 years. Don't get paid a dime for it and I haven't met anybody either. It's like shooting rats at the dump.

Yes, I used OpenBSD for 15 years or so but then the Raspberry Pi came along with no OpenBSD support because of the binary bootloader. So I've largely switched to Raspbian. Right now I've got 3 Pis and 2 Zeroes. Debian on a laptop. Tried Ubuntu once, found it too dumbed down. Started with Slackware about 1993 when I used to download it onto floppies, ran FreeBSD for a year or so then needed Open for its security at a job where a Linux box had been root kitted.

But a Raspberry Pi 3B is almost the equal of an i386 desktop machine from 10-15 years ago and runs on about 1 watt (and sells for $35) so that's mostly what I use.

And then there's that bastardization called Android. I have a couple, had Debian running on one. It used Android's Linux kernel but with normal Debian userland stuff. Phone has to be rooted. But even when you aren't doing anything in Linux the CPU is about 70% busy with Android spinning its wheels. The phone crapped out eventually.

Oops, I thought I had quoted another post. Wrong button I guess.

But I've been on dating sites for about 3 years now so I've seen both sites that are ripoffs and tons of scammers. Haven't actually met anyone though.

I'm impressed that this site has a forum. OK Cupid used to have one long ago but they dropped it. If we could make the analogy to the real world a forum gives a chance to see how someone interacts with others, it's not just one on one. If they're a jerk in public that's a good reason to avoid them. I've used forums for years, mostly for computer stuff but also alternative energy, garden tractors, bitcoin mining, a few other things.

I'm looking for a girlfriend basically. An ongoing relationship, no objection to it getting serious if it works out. My longest relationship of 7 years ended in 2002. I'm quiet and moderately intellectual, quit watching TV in 2012. Don't like tattoos and piercings. But I'm probably happier alone with my computers than in a bad relationship.

Ah every site has its gotchas it seems, I see I have 11 matches but I have to pay money to see who they are. There was some other site where you had to join to message anyone. I spent a little money on a few but mostly not. Not many ads here, I did see one from Adult Friend Finder. I paid them money a couple times, didn't amount to anything. None have.