You’re completely right to feel that way. As an American, it’s mind blowing to me, too. I really don’t like the fact that “hidden fees” have become normal.

Some mistakes make you want the person responsible fired, but some mistakes are SO bad that you actually feel sorry for them instead. This falls into the second category.

Those damn things are not ready to be used on public roads. Allowing them is one of the more prominent examples of corruption that we’ve seen recently.

“It will not record audio, and it will not use facial recognition,”…

YET

The NYPD does not own the robot, Adams said, but is in fact leasing it from the Knightscope company…

A company which I’m sure is 100% ethical, and has no ulterior motives whatsoever.

Short answer for me is that I joined for a civil place on the Threadiverse not a walled garden. So if you guys leave the Threadiverse I will have to find a new home.

It hurts to admit, but my initial reaction is similar. A completely defederated Beehaw is much less appealing.

No, YouTube. NO. I will NEVER, EVER want YouTube Premium. Stop asking me about it every fucking time I watch a video.

I just avoid those conversations completely. It’s a nightmarish situation, with a long, complicated history. Many opinions are uninformed, and I don’t think I have anything of value to add.

If anyone is upset by this, remember that Sweeney is only repeating information that’s already publicly available. If you have any complaints, talk to the to the FAA.

In related news, Elon Musk has been adamant about ending remote work, but that’s likely to be difficult without, you know, office space.

I like this journalist.

Twitter disbanded its press arm and its trust and safety council, so there’s nobody to reach out to for comment.

I really like this journalist.

If I wasn’t so busy laughing at him, I’d be embarrassed on his behalf.

Is Musk acting more and more juvenile because he can’t deal with the fact that he’s in his early fifties now?

Hate: disproportionately excessive penalties for falls (usually found in platformers).

If you get shot in the face by an enemy, you lose your shield, lose a life, whatever. In a bad platformer, if you don’t time a difficult jump exactly right, you lose a life, lose everything in your inventory, get sent back to the very beginning of the level, get audited, and have to mow the developers lawn for an entire summer.

Platformers are “guilty until proven innocent” - I won’t play one until I know it won’t destroy my will to live.

This is beside the main point, but it jumped out at me and bothered me the instant I read it:

One blue-check user responded…

Who cares if they have a check or not? Any asshole can just buy one. Blue checks haven’t been “special” for a while now.

The article raises some important issues, but it’s undermining its own tone. Since the article is driven by moral indignation, why make special emphasis of a quote from someone who’s helping support Musk’s cesspool of hate?

In a separate filing, Digital World said it also was not ready to file two required quarterly financial reports covering the first half of this year, saying it could not complete them in time without “unreasonable effort or expense.” It has sparred with its former auditors in SEC filings and letters over who is to blame for missing information.

This was a law they knew about from day one, right? Don’t the people who run this circus claim to be professionals? Sorry, folks, but incompetence isn’t a valid excuse. It isn’t “unreasonable” to demand that you comply with the law. If you have to pull a few all-nighters because of your own poor planning, that’s just too bad.

Good. I hope people and organizations keep leaving.

That sanitized corpspeak just sticks out like a sore thumb, right? It takes deliberate, continuous effort not to start zoning out as soon as I hear it.

Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.

I’ve noticed a small uptick in responses like that (which, admittedly, may just be confirmation bias).

I think it might be due to the large influx of reddit refugees (full disclosure: I’m one, too). It takes a while to get used to the fact that the “atmosphere” of fediverse instances is different. It takes time for people to realize that this isn’t a toxic environment that encourages assholes. They’ll just keep on being hyper-defensive, confrontational, and/or deliberate misinterpreters of things while they focus on irrelevant points. After all, that was the norm on reddit for years.

Good users grow out of that. Unfortunately, some users just don’t want to. We have to take the bad with the good, though. Defederating completely would make Beehaw much less interesting and fun. The community just isn’t big enough by itself.

TL;DR: Yes, Beehaw benefits from federation. Federation has its drawbacks, but they are massively outweighed by the advantages.

If I felt like I was forming a “friendship” with one of these artificial personalities, I’d want more control - not in a maniacal way, but because I wouldn’t trust Meta (or whoever) not to say “meh, this isn’t profitable, so we’re shutting it down next month.”

We’re already far too dependent on corporations, but in most cases, they haven’t had the power to emotionally damage us in this specific way. I don’t want to give them that kind of power over me.

I guess I’m kinda naive. “You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?” doesn’t sound like a sex joke to me, but that’s what people are calling it.

Xcrete , xcretions, xcrement

I have yet to see a “smart home” feature that’s worth the potential problems, let alone the cost.

Yeah, a well-integrated smart home can do some pretty cool stuff, but it also means putting my trust in corporations even more than I already have to. Plus, I’ll have to worry about each major appliance I own possibly being bricked due to a buggy software update or a malicious hacker.

Keep my home nice and dumb. Thanks.

“And a hearty fuck you to the dregs of digital society who do real harm and believe themselves above responsibility, beyond accountability. You aren’t.”

This quote is absolute gold.

Wow. Last I read, Prigozhin was talking shit, but the Russian government wasn’t actually after him yet. I’d feel bad for him if he wasn’t such a scumbag.

This will be equal parts amusing and horrifying.

Not prioritizing moderation tools doesn’t make sense to me, either. A database that’s crummy (but functional) is an important issue, but one that seems like it can wait. Moderation tools cannot wait.

Community building is what Lemmy is supposed to be for, right? Any instance, regardless of its goals or ideology, needs good moderation in order to thrive (what’s considered “good moderation” will vary widely from instance to instance, and that’s fine. You know what I mean, though). Even an instance that prides itself on minimal moderation needs powerful, flexible mod tools to deal with things like spam and cp.

The less obvious technical parts are important, of course, but users don’t love or hate an instance because of the back end. They care about how it’s moderated.

Bear in mind that I know nothing about programming, moderating, etc. Take that into account when considering my comment.

Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which Musk purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.

Is this man mentally ill? Is he deliberately trying to get himself fired?

A big reason Musk has gotten away with things so far is because he spent years making himself famous. He’s also among the richest people in America. Even if they don’t like him, people will cut him some slack (up to a point) because he’s Elon Fucking Musk.

It’s even his name is in the title of this article, because nobody knows or cares who Steve Huffman is. Until you get into the article itself, Huffman is referred to as “Reddit CEO”.

If the choice is tolerating trolls and jerks vs. dealing with communities that are fragmented and harder to find, I’ll choose fragmentation every time.

I just wanna say what’s on my mind (trite though it may be) without all the pedantry, trolling, and hostility. I’m not a mean person IRL, I don’t put up with jerks IRL, and I want the same thing online. Everything else is a distant second. I like Beehaw.

By the same token, I support anyone who disagrees, and I encourage them to find an instance that’s a better match. I just want everyone to be happy and feel comfortable expressing themselves. I hope people find an instance that suits them; they shouldn’t feel like they need to change to suit the instance.

So now he’s a thug. Basically, Elon is telling companies to pay him protection money, otherwise something might “happen” to their brand.

I hope a big client tells him, publicly, that he can fuck off.

I want to emphasize the “on those that deserve it” bit. That’s the part angry commenters will misinterpret or pretend to forget.

Anyway…

I have an account on kbin. It can be interesting to compare a thread when viewed here vs. being viewed there.

Usually, a thread viewed on kbin has more comments - but many of them are crude, stupid, and antagonistic. The same thread viewed on Beehaw has a much more readable comment section, because of thoughtful defederating.

Ideally, we wouldn’t have to defederate from anyone, but I don’t think we’re losing anything of value.

Somebody was ignorantly making fun of Beehaw recently. I responded that I only want civil, mature conversations instead of arguments with trolls. I like the idea of a well-moderated instance that has a general guideline of “be(e) nice”. I want mods to have the flexibility to do their jobs effectively.

TransitCenter, a transit advocacy group, found in a 2018 survey of riders with household incomes below $35,000 in eight major cities that frequency, safety, crowding and reliability were higher priorities than bus fare.

Maybe I’m missing something, but if they’re surveying people who are already riders, then OF COURSE fare isn’t their biggest complaint. They’re not getting feedback from people who want to use public transit, but can’t afford to.

The information gathered from this survey is still valuable, but shouldn’t be used as an argument for or against free public transit.

Conservatives can openly break the law, and laugh while doing so. Liberals too often lack the spine to make them pay serious consequences, or any consequences at all. I can’t blame people for losing faith in democracy when it’s disintegrating before our eyes.

“Obstruction for obstruction’s sake” might as well be the Republican Party motto. Good for the judge.

The pressure is driving him insane. I’d be more sensitive if he was a victim, but since it’s all his own fault, LMAO!

I don't like beehaw and how your mods act like children.

This is such a classic example of projection. The mods have to step in when users act like children. They’re not the problem.

Let’s change a few words to underline how asinine that response was.

“If we live in a capitalist society, it’s a very socialist capitalist society. There are lots of programs to help low-income people. No one is stopping the non-wealthy from being leaders.”

There isn’t much of a practical difference between “not stopping” someone and creating unfair conditions that make things unnecessarily difficult.

Because of your comment, I read the article because I wanted to know how long it’s been out. Only ONE year. That’s ridiculous.

I’m no expert when it comes to journalism, but I’d like to humbly offer a suggestion: if you’re going to write an article about a label, consider including A PICTURE OF THE LABEL.

I must be old. I remember when “cancel culture” was called “voting with your wallet”, and rich corporations used it to justify their own success.

I agree. I was caught off guard because it didn’t show up on my radar at all. It’s not like I thought “eh, it’s only a little bit racy”. I just missed the sex implications completely.

Anything on a decorative sign meant to hang in a house. Examples include “Live, Laugh, Love” (which has already been mentioned) or something about wine.

I can’t decide who to root for here. They both suck, so I guess I’ll just enjoy the fact that they’re fighting and I don’t have to care at all.

Nobody in their right mind trusts Meta. What they call a “meeting” is nothing more than an unpaid consultation. They want to pick brains for free. That’s all.

What do the invitees get out of it? Some carefully chosen information that may not even be true, which (thanks to the NDA) they won’t be able to talk about anyway? A mediocre lunch? A demonstration of Meta’s “awe-inspiring” metaverse technology? Please.