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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • I don’t mind much paying for streaming (although that’s increasingly more and more annoying and I still tend to just download whatever I actually care about) but until and unless I can pay to “own” a movie and they just provide me with a DRM free video file of some sort, I will never “purchase” digital content like this.

    If you tried this kind of bullshit in just about any other context, even normal people would think you’re crazy.

    Normal Person: “hi there, one blender please. I’ll take this one for $25.”
    Sales person: “Cool here’s your receipt.”
    NP:: “It says here at the bottom of the receipt that you can just come in my house and take this blender back whenever you want or maybe never?”
    SP: “yep.”
    NP:: “And you don’t tell people that ahead of time?”
    SP: “no when you buy it you agree to that by opening the box and it is on the receipt you get after you bought it.”
    NP: “you fuckin with me rn?”
    SP: “afraid not, and would you look at that corp says I need that blender back, thanks.”
    SP: “oh, shoot. I see here you also bought a toaster from EvilCorp sold in one of our EvilMart locations a couple years ago, we’ve decided to license that brand instead to our new partners FukUMart, so we’ll be taking that toaster but if you want you can head to your local FukUMart and buy that toaster again for more than you paid the first time.”
    NP: spontaneously combusts



  • Ah perfect. Sets up a strawman, completely misses the point of my post, says one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard (reddit being an alt-right website*) and then immediately moves to block in response to me saying this place is a hostile echo chamber. 10/10, no notes, illustrates the point I was trying to make better than I did.

    Just to be clear for other readers, I was not saying that any of those things are bad I was saying that this place has a purity test that borders on stupidity which this post illustrates well.

    * just how does one come to this conclusion? It’s less lefty than Lemmy, but not by much. It’s alt-right communities are usually either banned, quarantined, and regardless of the technicals of the website or how the admins run it, they’ve always been outcast and if you say “vote for trump” in any but the clearly right echo chambers, you’re going to get downvoted to hell.


  • As someone who went from a daily user of reddit for a decade and now hasn’t used reddit basically since the app’s red wedding, I really don’t think this is it. As much as I hope the fediverse and Lemmy take off, currently I’m extremely pessimistic about that because if anything the problem is the reverse of what you describe. My current front page on Lemmy (all/active):

    • an article whining about Elon
    • an article about Fox News/trump
    • a post complaining about charging for XBL/PSN
    • an article about Tesla being banned from driving schools
    • an article complaining about DoorDash

    and so on. And to get to this great non-rage bait content, I had to go through the trouble of even figuring out how to use the fediverse and which instance to sign up for (and then still hop instances a few times) and spend my first week just blocking like I was getting paid for it because language settings on this site mean nothing, more or less, and there are a few “communities” that pop up here that provide all of the intellectual stimulation of jamming a q-tip too far in your ear.

    And if those posts alone don’t paint a clear picture about who the user base is here, heading to the comments will. Most of the comments read like they’re posted by “lefty white linux bro” or “communist trans linux they/them” who have decided that those are their entire identity/personality. While none of those things are bad and I tick a lot of those boxes myself, it creates a real echo chamber that borders on hostile to anyone that isn’t in that category. The other side effect I’ve seen on this is that this place can offer up some real doozies of takes in a way that is likely to make anyone who actually knows anything just up and leave. I saw one the other day that was talking about greatest people in the FOSS space and uncritically lists RMS that was heavily upvoted. At least someone brought up why that’s problematic in the comments, but imagine hopping over to the mainstream sites and talking about best musicians and seeing R Kelly on the list…

    Anyway, while I don’t mind an echo chamber now and then, if Lemmy in particular is to grow and be useful for anyone outside of this base, I’d suggest the community adopt something closer akin to “reddiquette” which is probably the main reason why reddit was able to get somewhat past this in the early days, and some of the “niche” communities were able to grow. I put niche in quotes here, because as it stands now Lemmy doesn’t have even very vibrant communities for fairly mainstream things (music and TV, movies, etc.)

    So while I personally choose to spend my time here instead of on reddit, that’s mostly an ideological choice and I view as a sacrifice because I’m missing out on tons of other content that I enjoy. Even your post is a form of this – “reddit bad” (sure) “because of bots” (also sure) “and Lemmy has less outrage content and fuels engagement” (uh, no.) Lemmy has as much or more, and it’s only fueling engagement on those that don’t immediately bounce off, but since you posted “their team bad, our team good” you’re getting upvotes and probably will continue to.





  • Right now, Haley is polling significantly behind DeSantis, who is already significantly behind Trump. I honestly thought it was more likely that she was angling for a cabinet position or something, but the Koch money injection is interesting. That said, even with money it’s a pretty uphill battle. Given that Trump is far and away the front runner, the number of old school republicans is pretty low. She’s running as if she’s in the general, where a more moderate approach would make a lot of sense (or maybe she’s just trying to dodge creating soundbites for Biden campaign ads which DeSantis seems to have no problem with) but in the Republican primary moderate isn’t going to get very far.

    Even if she manages to clear the first hurdle and overtake DeSantis, she is kinda stuck with her finger’s crossed that Trump is for some reason ineligible to run because he’s such a clear favorite. It would be like going into a room of Swifties and trying to explain why you’re better than Taylor. Spoilers, it doesn’t matter, and the corpse you leave behind is going to look like something out of a horror show.



  • The whole primary is the punchline. It’s either going to be Trump as the nominee, or Biden is going to sweep. R’s are far too racist to nominate Vivek, and even if everyone else in the primary died I have a feeling they’d just write in Tucker or something. That leaves Haley, who is trying to appeal to a Republican base that hasn’t existed for 15-20 years, and DeSantis, who is trying to run as the “is Pepsi okay?” to Trump’s Coke, while he also seems to be simultaneously mumbling “dude Coke is so much better.” The only way this makes any sense for him is if he thinks that Trump is likely to be in jail or barred from running, because that’s the only way he’s getting the nomination.

    I kinda wish that weren’t the case. If it were Biden v DeSantis, Biden sweeps. DeSantis is far too extreme for dems and probably even slightly center/slightly left of center, his whole campaign seems to be designed as if he just has a cuck fetish. And the one thing that I think everyone can all agree on is that as soon as he opens his mouth, you just get the overwhelming urge to shove him in a locker. I also think that almost no one likes Trump’s policies, they just like him and it’s pure cult of personality (and the way they vote seems to confirm that; Trump-like candidates lose, it’s only Trump that has any traction) and DeSantis obviously does not have that. And he’d be running against an incumbent, which is already an uphill battle.





  • I think it’s even slightly different in that Firefox has some dependence on Google (a scary level, actual, if Google ends that deal Mozilla is pretty much fucked) that the fediverse doesn’t - the people on the fediverse right now are enough to keep Fedi alive and moving, and I’d find it really, really hard to argue that they aren’t there deliberately to avoid being subject to the whims of Meta/Twitter/Reddit, etc. Like, in a lot of ways, it’s a sacrifice to be on these services because the bulk of content still exists in the proprietary silos. Because the actual protocols and main developers are also intrinsically motivated by the this separation, it’s hard to picture how they could even try to extend/extinguish here.

    Like, if Threads fully federates, I’d guess that quite a lot of people block their instance just to keep their hands clean. Those that interact with Threads via Fedi probably fall into the boat that I would. I want some particular content or to follow some people, just not shoveled at me however Meta decides it should be, and not in a way that they can profit from showing me ads. If Meta pulls some bullshit, it’s likely the Fedi would more or less just block them entirely then give up and start a Threads account. And I have a hard time seeing a world where they go to Eugen or basically any of the other driving forces in the Fedi and are like “we need you to change Mastodon so we can [do some typical Facebook bullshit” and Eugen are like “yeah cool with me.”

    I think its more likely that Threads users are eventually going to see fedi users dropping a long comment or some post that is about how it’s nice to have a clean ad-free feed and move clients if not over to the fedi in general. It won’t be enough to really matter for Meta other than to say “see we don’t have a monopoly!” and hey, if the fedi gets a little bigger it’s all good for the rest of us.


  • I just want to pause here and say that this kind of thing, much like basically any bumper sticker ever, is stupid as fuck and I hate it. Whether it’s my dumb fucking cousin saying “Killary” or equally annoying mouth breathers talking about “Drumpf.” Like, I’m as atheist as the day is long, and holy shit does it make the parent comment annoying to read. Your super great “hillary lied, people died” bumper sticker, the “honk if Trump should go to jail,” just all of it. It sucks, I hate it, it’s the laziest form of persuasion (spoilers, it’s persuading no one, it’s just pissing off the people you want to convince.) Oh you didn’t capitalize the ‘g’? Well fuck it’s me the pope, let’s peace out and go get tacos this Jesus thing was dumb anyway.






  • Sort of. If you’re receiving a notification from a remote server on iOS or standard android, they go through Apple or googles servers. That said, some apps rather than sending your device the actual notification (where this vulnerability comes from) will instead send a type of invisible notification that basically tells the app to check for a new message or whatever and then will display a local notification so the actual message stays on device and inside of the hosting services servers (like a self host.)