I read this on Daring Fireball the other day:

Mastodon is at risk of falling into the trap that a lot of free/open source software does, where the idea of the software being “free as in speech” is expected to outweigh or explain away deficiencies in its usefulness. However, this ignores three salient facts:

  -Most people don’t give a thruppenny fuck about their freedom to view and edit the source code of the software they use, which they would not know how to do even if they cared;

 -Most people are not ideologically opposed to the notion of proprietary software, and cannot be convinced to be because it is simply not important to them and cannot be explained in terms that are important to them; and

 -When given the choice between a tool which is immediately useful for achieving some sort of goal but conflicts with some kind of ideological standpoint, and a tool which is not as useful but they agree with ideologically, they will probably choose the former

A lot of the hardcore advocates of free software get, understandably, upset when they see masses of people spout FREE software! or opensource software...then not give a flying fuck about what that actually means. The quote above is pretty accurate imo.

I think half of the people using free(as in libre, not gratis) software are doing it because its free (as in cost). Not because they care about the "four essential freedoms": (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions. Because, well, see the quote above. Most wouldn't even know where to start. They just want to use the software..and not pay for it. They aren't opposed to closed, non-free software.

So if you truly believe in the philosophy behind free software, you'll start getting pretty opinionated as you see people co-opt, distort, and disregard key tenants of your philosophy. Even looking at some of the responses to this post, you can see people misusing the definition of free and/or not being precise with their language (which for something like this, can completely change the meaning).

This is a fantastic article: https://ploum.net/2023-06-19-more-rms.html

It gives a good short history of how we got here.

That's a really solid point. I guess it depends on the phone. The low end Android market probably isn't holding up as well as the high end or iphones.

My pixels seem to last as long as it takes for me to pay them off before they just black screen and brick themselves. I had 3 pixel threes, since two replaces under warranty and the last one died a few weeks outside.

Meanwhile my wifes iphone was just fine. She only changed because her dad got the latest and greatest and handed down this last-year model to her. So I could see batteries being an issue over time.

Yep, and while working from home should never be in lieu of actual child care, cutting out 2-3 hours of commute time in each side and being able to help at lunch is HUGE.

Even if you still put your kids in daycare, you would still spend more time with them and it'd be less stressful if you were working from home. You can get a daycare close to your house vs on the way to work/near work.

I gained weight working from home :(

Even a boring day at the office with little "extra" walking had me close to 10k steps.

I can go for a 2 mile walk everyday I work from home and barely get 8k it seems.

Plus ironically I eat more garbage. When I was at the office there were decent healthy options like salads and stuff. At home...it's way to easy to grab a box of wheat thins and eat the whole thing.

It feels like this fight is 5-7 years late. I am glad the EU actually tries to regulate on behalf of the consumer vs what the US has been doing lately(almost nothing), but the EU does it in a ham-handed way half the time.

I don't necessarily want a user replaceable battery on my phone. I prefer it not be chonky and I prefer it to be water and dust proof. All of those features impact me sooo much more than being able to change the battery.

Also batteries have come so far this past decade it almost seems like a non issue.

I think I'd feel less overwhelmed if these games had hand-holding features. I recall Fable and Fable2 having some features that basically highlighted the route for you or hinted at which way you should go.

I get that open world is supposed to let you explore freely but if you are doing a specific task..help me get there!

I've started and stopped Witcher 3 3x. I just couldn't get into it. I realized I kept getting stuck and not able to figure out where I was supposed to go. I got frustrated and gave up.

He's not asking how to spot it. He's asking who gets to be the ultimate arbiter of fakeness?

Even reputable news sources make mistakes. Sometimes their sources give bad information. Maybe they reported in good faith, but with bad information?

What happens when they work around it by JAQ-ing off. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

I'm gonna throw this out there:

If Meta is going to join the fediverse (or implement something with activitypub) there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them.

It's an open protocol. They can use it.

The only thing we can do is force them to follow the AGPL and/or fork the code if they get crazy with change requests.

It's also incredibly important to note that they are making this explicitly opt-in. So none of that 'dark pattern' mumbo jumbo with the tyranny of the default--where companies opt you in and most users dont realize they have to opt-out.

All in all they are going about this the right way it seems. The devil will be in the de-identifying technical details imo.

All the drama and pisspoor management by spez aside, ultimately the way I used reddit is through RiF. To me, that's reddit. I can't stand their official app and their official website is horrendous.

They forced my app to close down so I guess that's that.

I stopped using RiF and consequently reddit in protest. I held out hope this was a shitty negotiation tactic by Reddit and they'd eventually back off somewhat. But they've tripled down on it.

This forced me to reevaluate my relationship with the platform and I decided to check out Lemmy kbin and mastodon. I also checked out some old forums I frequented before reddit took over.

I reinstalled a newsreader and set up RSS feeds for my favorite things.

Basically, I'm realizing I don't need reddit as much as I thought I did. I actually have enjoyed the fediverse,beehaw in particular, more. I never used Twitter but mastodon has really great content and engagement as well.

I'm not saying I'd never go back to Reddit. I probably would if RiF somehow survived, but reddits lost its luster for me and I don't trust it anymore. So why waste time actively participating there so I can have the rug pulled from under me again?

Reddit may not see a mass exodus like Digg or Myspace, but it's been poisoned and over time the rot will set in and it will fester. This will be the moment people point to as the turning point.

The only drama I've seen on it is a few idealists on other instances complaining about it and these posts.

I actually like beehaw more as an instance because of what they've done.

Nilay Patel had a great article when Elon bought Twitter. One of the key take aways I tend to agree with is:"The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works."

I love being part of a community and being able to discuss and debate. But ultimately I want to do it in a place where I don't feel creeped out, skeevy, or where I am getting harassed or threatened.

I value the moderation. I value the curation. I want the mods to defederate if they see an influx of trolls, shit posts, or sketchy content from a particular instance.

And you know what, I'll be annoyed when they block something or someone I don't think they should have.

The reality is: the fediverse is designed for this sort of thing. Theyve been very transparent and they will re federate when the tooling is better. I have no reason to doubt that.

I see this as growing pains and nothing more.

My take is that "L"LMs are already old news. I think targeted or limited data-set language models are going to be the next wave.

I think this partly because very few people can do LLMs at the scale of Microsoft and Google so I think smaller firms and people in their garage are going to aim their sights and smaller targeted data sets with a eye towards factual accuracy.

And then maybe link them/daisy chain them together. I hope there is this unix philosophy for models where they do one thing well but you can 'pipe' data from one to another.