This is getting so stupid, it’s beginning to sound like The Onion. Why don’t they just start charging for reading posts.

Here’s an idea: Every day you get 5 Reddit Emeralds for free, and you can use them to read 5 posts. If you want to read more, you can get more emeralds from Common Reddit Loot Boxes. You can buy those boxes with Reddit Rubies.

You can get Reddit rubies from Rare Reddit Loot Boxes, and in order to get those, you have to use Reddit Diamonds. If you have 19 Common boxes you can also craft 1 Rare Loot Box. Doing so will also require 10 rubies.

You can also buy Reddit Diamonds with Superior Crypto-Augmented Money (SCAM), and getting those coins requires real world money.

Ok, so now that you have all these gems, you can put them to good use. Emeralds are used to read posts. When you comment, there’s a 50% chance that it will be deleted within 30 minutes, but you can improve your odds by spending 1 Reddit Ruby. For each Ruby, the odds improve by 10%. Posts have the same mechanism, but you need to spend Diamonds instead.

relevant XKCD

Text written before 2023 is going be exceptionally valuable because that way we can be reasonably sure it wasn’t contaminated by an LLM.

This reminds me of some research institutions pulling up sunken ships so that they can harvest the steel and use it to build sensitive instruments. You see, before the nuclear tests there was hardly any radiation anywhere. However, after America and the Soviet Union started nuking stuff like there’s no tomorrow, pretty much all steel on Earth has been a little bit contaminated. Not a big issue for normal people, but scientists building super sensitive equipment certainly notice the difference between pre-nuclear and post-nuclear steel

I’ve already moved on. Couldn’t care less about Reddit any more.

Before the APIcalypse, I was already playing with the thought of quitting Reddit. Spez just sped up that process.

I’ve learned to shut up more often. Just because I think I understand how something works, doesn’t mean I actually do. Just because I know enough to extrapolate an answer to something, doesn’t mean it’s always right. It’s scary how often it is, but that only makes this problem worse.

There are funky exceptions here and there, and on Reddit you absolutely will bump into the expert who will call you out on your misguided reasoning.

Or EA.

In the meanwhile, EU legislation has gone from being so boring you would prefer to watch the grass grow to making headlines that make you smile.

Do you still remember when LI would ask you to give access to your address book and then proceed to spam all your friends? This level of scummy behavior is nothing new.

Can confirm. Before FB, almost nobody told their real name online. Nowadays you can easily find out who is a racist and who believes in conspiracy theories just by looking at what they post. Usually there’s also their real name and face attached to the post so that you can be sure who you are talking about.

How did this happen? FB made it normal and almost obligatory.

Why did it happen? So that FB could make more money. Simple monkey brain people like to socialize and share stuff with everyone, and FB is simply exploiting that vulnerability.

It’s funny how these things go.

Long ago, you would need to buy or rent your movies, because other options weren’t really very convenient or effective. Then the internet became fast enough for you to use DC++ and later torrents to get all the movies you would ever want to see. Next, streaming services became popular due to convenience, ease of use and affordable prices.

What’s going on today? Streaming services are increasing prices and reducing convenience. Seems like the balance of power is tipping again.

“Lemmy uses a voting system to sort post listings. - - You can upvote posts that you like so that more users will see them. Or downvote posts so that they are less likely to be seen. Each post receives a score which is the number of upvotes minus number of downvotes.

• Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time
• Hot: Like active, but uses time when the post was published
• New: Shows most recent posts first
• Old: Shows oldest posts first
• Most Comments: Shows posts with highest number of comments first
• New Comments: Bumps posts to the top when they receive a new reply analogous to the sorting of traditional forums
• Top Day: Highest scoring posts during the last 24 hours
• Top Week: Highest scoring posts during the last 7 days
• Top Month: Highest scoring posts during the last 30 days
• Top Year: Highest scoring posts during the last 12 months
• Top All Time: Highest scoring posts during all time”

source

Hot sounds a lot like what Reddit uses. They use some secret algorithm where each upvote is like a balloon that lifts the post up and as the post ages, more and more weights are added to it over time so that it sinks down and gives more space for newer posts.

Reading the documentation can be a bit boring, but you can always use Bing to summarize the main points and even ask specific questions about the text.

Or as I do:

1. Watch videos of Cyberpunk
2. Think of buying it
3. Realize I still haven’t finished Mass Effect
4. Never actually buy Cyberpunk.

Currently I’m thinking of Baldur’s gate 3, but you know… I’ll probably get around to it in a few years.

Literally the only reason why I still bump into Reddit even when I’m not trying to.

Here’s an example from real life. When I searched for “ipados brave yutube ads adblock”, I found some Reddit posts discussing the issue.

Spoiler: Ditch brave and switch to something else.

BTW, Reddit is currently in the “hold my beer” sort of state when it comes to shooting itself in the foot.

One of the early utopias was that people would no longer debate about things because the internet would bring people together and provide them with information about anything and everything… well then algorithms and social media happened, and now we’re stuck with echo chambers of anti-vaxxers and flat earthers.

Other than that, it’s been nice in many ways nobody could have anticipated back then.

Star ratings are very broken, because everyone seems to think of the rating differently. IMO the criteria should be like this:

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ = The best thing ever.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️⚫️ = Above average.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⚫️ ⚫️ = It’s ok. Get’s the job done. Not great, not terrible. The usual. Nothing special. Totally average.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ = Below average. I’m disappointed.

⭐️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ ⚫️ = Worst thing ever. Crime against humanity. Ban this product and burn the remaining stock immediately.

However, in reality people tend to use it like this.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ = It’s ok. I don’t have anything to complain about. Could be ok, could be great or anything in between.

⭐️ I’m not happy. Minor complaints, big complaints and anything in between.

When it comes to book reviews, the five star reviews tend to be useless. Especially when it comes to self help books, it seems like those reviews were made by people who are completely incapable of noticing any flaws in the book. I’m inclined to think those people shouldn’t even review a book if they can’t think of it critically. On Amazon there are always lots and lots of fake reviews produced in a click farm, but in other places you’ll also find genuinely incompetent reviewers too.

Companies change the contracts all the time and customers just agree to them.

Consumer protection would help, so maybe it’s time to start voting for the people who support it.

That’s literally what I thought about installing Chrome and sharing my browsing history with Google. Why would I get a Facebook account and share my name, my face and my daily activities with the entire world. I thought that this is just pure insanity, and nobody will ever go along with this level of stupidity. Oh, boy was I in for a surprise.

Look who is laughing now that Chrome is the number one browser and many websites are only tested on Chrome. FB has so many users that people think it’s really odd that I’m not there with everyone else.

TL;DR bot seems to on summer vacation now, so I had to ask Bing to summarize the article for me. Here’s what It says:

“According to an article on Tech Xplore, the European Union has introduced a new set of digital regulations called the Digital Services Act. The act aims to protect European users' privacy, transparency, and removal of harmful or illegal content. The act will affect big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon. The act will allow users to turn off AI-recommended videos and personalized search results. Users can choose to view content only from people they follow. Search results will be based only on the words they type. Users should find it easier to report a post, video or comment that breaks the law or violates a platform's rules so that it can be reviewed and taken down if required. Affected service providers will have until 1 January 2024 to comply with its provisions.”

What wasn’t reasoned in, can’t be reasoned out. Many people who suffer from conspiratorial thinking need help and support more than evidence and debate.

Start holding a grudge against all companies that don’t deserve your respect. If they clearly violate your trust, that bridge just got instantly burned to ashes, and there are no seconds chances.

Wait until you hear about microbes. In the top 10 causes of death, microbes are involved in at least 4 different categories.

Repeat the word “computer” a finite number of times. Something like 10^128-1 times should be enough. Ready, set, go!

What wasn’t reasoned into her head, can’t be reasoned out.

Sounds like there’s a good chance that you may need to apply a method I use when dealing people who believe in conspiracy theories. It’s largely a psychological thing, and it has very little to do with proof, evidence, logic, reasoning and science. No amount of evidence is ever going to solve a problem that is psychological in nature. Religious cults and conspiracy groups share some characteristics, so maybe this is applicable in her case too.

The idea is that people believe in crazy BS because that makes them a member of a group. That gives them an identity and makes them feel like they’re a privileged group for knowing some “hidden truth” about something. It also produces an “us against them” dynamic between the in-group and the out-group. Many individuals in these groups also have sub-clinical psychosis, narcissism or paranoia accompanied by anxiety and loneliness. This setup means that they find these BS nonsense groups appealing, and that the misguided beliefs become essentially bullet proof. Fighting against these beliefs will only make them stronger.

These people need therapy more than evidence.

Here’s my favorite part.

“In addition, the conversions were sometimes not even self-consistent and applied completely arbitrary. The 3½-inch floppy disk for example, which was marketed as “1.44 MB”, was actually not 1.44 MB and also not 1.44 MiB. The size of the double-sided, high-density 3½-inch floppy was 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 160 tracks, that’s 512×18×16 = 1’474’560 bytes. To get to “1.44” you must first divide 1’474’560 by 1024 (“bEcAuSE BiNaRY obviously”) to get 1440 and then divide by 1000 for perfect inconsistency, because dividing by 1024 again would get you an ugly number and we definitely don’t want that. We finally end up with “1.44”. Now let’s add “MB” because why the heck not. We already abused those units so much it’s not like they still mean anything and it’s “close enough” anyways. By the way, that “close enough” excuse never “worked when I was in school but what would I know compared to the computer “scientists” back then.

When things get that messy, numbers don’t even mean anything any more. Might as well just label the products using entirely qualitative terms like “big” or “bigger”.

Dark pattern of the week: button colors.

Can you guess which button Meta really wants you to press?

The kWh is a silly unit. Joule (J) is the one true unit of energy.

Also, common time units suck as much as inches, pounds, feet and whatever nonsense units you Americans still use. Just use seconds with the appropriate SI prefix instead.

Cubic meters and tonnes suck too. Just use kl and Mg instead.

Having gone through conscription military, I have leveled up some very important abilities.

Looking busy: I can find convincing ways to spend time without actually doing anything important.

Wasting time: When nobody is looking, I can find creative and fun ways to pass the time. (this ability is maxed out)

Also gained a few special perks.

Forest fun: Who needs movies, games or the internet when you have an axe and some wood. Even pine cones, rocks and sticks will be enough to keep you preoccupied in creative ways.

Day dreaming: Who needs the forest, when you can build countless universes in your mind.

Oh, and I did learn to shoot and keep my rifle in working order. I guess that’s nice too. Didn’t get to level that anywhere near as much, but that’s ok.

The worms in those strawberries are just some extra protein.

Selection bias. There’s plenty of overlap between the groups of people who know about it, care about it, use FOSS, use Lemmy etc. It’s basically a prominent characteristic of the stereotypical Lemmy user. We’re still a small and surprisingly homogenous group of people. If Lemmy ever grows like Mastodon, you’ll begin to see more diversity.

There’s also something you could call the “fish out of water” bias. If you’re not LGBT, you’ll suddenly notice how many LGBT people there are on Mastodon. If you’re not into ML, you’re going to notice the people who are.

Reminds me of the time when I bought a stack of microSD cards and readers from alibaba. About half of the cards and readers were dead on arrival, and the remaining ones died within a few years.

Now I’ve learned my lesson. This is what happens when a company outsources quality control to the customer.

You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you. Well, small unprofessional companies do, but everyone else has a domain, website, mail server and all the usual internet infrastructure in place. Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance. For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.

True story. This thing happened last week.

Person A: I want to eat something.

Person B: Do you want some of these (B opens a box of boring cookies and shows the contents to A)

A: No!

B: How about these (opens another box of bland cookies)

A: No!

B: (grabs a third box, realizes it’s empty, but opens it carefully not to show anyone what’s inside) Ooh, I’m not showing this to you. (Puts the box away.)

A: I wanna see! (Tries to grab the box)

B: No, it’s mine! (Pushes A further away)

After some futile struggle B let A have the box. A opens it up and realizes it’s empty. We all had a good laugh.

Better not look it up on wikipedia. That place has all sorts of things from black powder to nitroglycerin too. Who knows, you could become a chemist if you read too much wikipedia.

Covid conspiracy nuts taught me that what wasn’t originally reasoned in can’t be reasoned out. These people don’t play by the rules of logical arguments, so don’t expect your logic to work with them. What they need is therapy, and possibly even some stabilizing medication.

A group of brain cells begins to have emergent properties such as consciousness and intelligence. A group of human brains has similar emergent properties. An individual human mind wants this and that, but an entire human community will have completely different priorities.

I prefer to think of the human population on Earth as a single massive organism that spreads like the mycelia of a fungus. Individual cells have simple needs and goals, but the organism as a whole will do much more than just expand everywhere and extract nutrients.

Long story short, the HAARP nonsense has its origins in psychology. If you want the long version, check this article. It also answers how conspiratorial thinking in general works, not just the nut jobs spreading wild stories about HAARP.

Because these delusions are based on defects of the mind, there’s no amount of facts that you can throw at this problem and expect it to be fixed that way. What wasn’t reasoned in, can’t be reasoned out of a broken mind like that. These people are in need therapy and support more than anything else.

If podcasts, are more your thing, consider listening to You’re not so smart - episode 197 conspiratorial thinking. I think the part about the history of small and large conspiracies was particularly fascinating. Grand conspiracies are impossibly difficult to pull off, because there’s always a weak link somewhere which will make the whole thing collapse sooner or later. On the other hand, small conspiracies are a reality, and there have been numerous documented cases of those happening in real life.

Let that sinking ship join Myspace and Tumblr already. Revolting may rise awareness of the problem, but it isn’t going to change the direction where Reddit is headed. They need to become profitable, and they’ve decided to do that by backstabbing the users.

Better start preparing for the coming exodus. Try Odysee, Peertube and Nebula and see what works for you. Once the enshittification hits critical mass, you’ll be ready to let go of that sinking ship.

Here’s my risky comment of the day.

I think piracy isn’t like stealing, but it’s still wrong in some interesting and nuanced ways. Just so you know, I’m in no position to judge people for pirating, because I’ve done my fair share of sailing the high seas. However, I would still like to discuss the ethical aspects of piracy and how it compares with stealing.

IMO, calling it stealing is completely wrong, but free-riding or trespassing could be more suitable words for this. Obviously, the movie industry would love to compare it with the most severe crime they can come up with, but they certainly have financial incentives behind that reasoning. I’m looking at it from a more neutral perspective.

Stealing has clear and direct harm associated with it, whereas the effects of piracy are more subtle and indirect. Free-riding a bus or sneaking into a circus (AKA trespassing) are somewhat similar, but there’s clear indirect harm. If you watch a football match from the outside of the fence, it’s probably still considered free-riding, but I would put that into a completely different category. IMO it’s also closer to piracy than the other examples.

Most pirates shouldn’t be counted as lost customers, so the argument about depriving the creator of their rightful income is only partially correct. If pirating wasn’t possible, but paying for the movie was, vast majority of these people would prefer to do something else like, go outside and play football with friends. To some extent, piracy still does reduce the demand for the pirated material, so there’s an indirect harm associated with it, and that’s what makes it unethical IMO. Still not wrong enough that I would stop doing it, especially considering what the alternatives are. Again, I have no moral high ground in this situation, and I’m willing to call my own actions unethical. You can call yours whatever you want.

“The script accepts the name of a program or package as an argument when you run it. This value is then referenced as "$1" (argument number 1). Everywhere the script says "$1", it substitutes in the name of the package you gave it. The end result is the name being tried against a large number of software repositories and package managers, and hopefully, at least one of them will be appropriate and the program will be successfully installed.”

Source: explain XKCD