There is a bug with hot sorting at the moment: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3428

If you want to know how it's supposed to work, see: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html

I think E/E/E is still a risk. If some "high follower" type people start joining Threads, and people on Mastodon start following them and making that content a big part of their feed, those people are not going to be happy if Threads accounts suddenly disappear because Meta make arbitrary, incompatible changes.

Hopefully it won't actually extinguish Mastodon/the Fediverse, but it can still do damage.

spez is a Musk fanboi. What a surprise.

Reddit's clearly in a death spiral, but I've been wondering if was going to go thru an "alt right" phase. Guess we know now.

It's a difficult question to answer precisely, because of:

• Scientific uncertainty in exactly what the climate effects will be. It will be "bad" regardless, but exactly how bad and exactly what will go wrong is not 100% clear
• Uncertainty over how much warming will happen over the next few decades - this is highly dependent on how much action is taken to reduce emissions
• Interactions between multiple highly complex systems, including climate, the biosphere, and human societies
• The difficulty in imagining what life will be like when there are significant changes in parts of the world. One of the things people really struggled with in the early days of COVID was: "what the hell is this going to be like?!". No one really had anything to compare it to. It is similar with climate change, but on a much larger scale.
• Timescales. Even if we limit it to this century, that's another ~77 years (but the effects will probably go on for multiple centuries). It's really difficult to predict the future with a high degree of confidence.

So limiting it to the end of this century, there's a few things we can say. This is taking a somewhat pessimistic view, i.e. there won't be a substantial change in emissions trajectories over the next couple of decades.

• Climate change itself is highly unlikely to wipe out humans on this time scale. We are a highly adaptable species, spread across the planet and the temperature / climate changes won't be enough to kill us all.
• That said, there will be human suffering on a scale that is difficult to imagine. Millions will die in heat waves, droughts, floods, fires and other extreme weather events. Some regions, including heavily populated ones will become uninhabitable.
• There will also be suffering due to food and water shortages, and the spread of diseases
• Social instability (including war) will increase, due to competition over resources, migration on an unprecedented scale, and general fear/uncertainty among the population. It's possible that instability could become bad enough to wipe out humans (and possible all life) through nuclear war.
• Parts of advanced society could begin to break down, e.g. we may no longer be able to maintain reliable electricity grids
• Other species will be hugely impacted too. The rate of extinctions will accelerate, although some species will probably benefit (not necessarily species that humans get on well with).

It is pretty hard to overstate the scale of what will happen this century. It may take a while before we see the worst of it, but we're already seeing the effects, and I think within 20-30 years it will be hard to deny that climate change is affecting everything. At that point, there probably will be substantial action to reduce emissions.

As bad as all this sounds, it's important to remember that it is the "pessimistic" view in terms of our emissions trajectories. i.e. it is not written in stone. There is still time to bring emissions down to avoid the worst of it. There is also no point where it's "too late" for action. Every 0.1 of a degree that we can limit warming will reduce the impacts. So it's important to avoid "doomerism", which often just ends up being an excuse for inaction.

Even if we do restrict warming to 1.5-2C, the world will look very different to what it does today. To get to that point, there will have to be fundamental changes to global society and the economy, which will make the world unrecognisable from today. There are no moderate solutions left, it's either the nightmare described above, or a complete transformation of society. So in that sense, the apocalypse (going by the dictionary definition) is guaranteed.

"Let's have a reasonable rational debate about whether certain groups should have the right to exist! If you're a member of one of these groups, please be respectful to the people who say you should be exterminated!"

Yeah, it's a fricken nightmare... Windows is ok in a well managed corporate setup where all the crap is uninstalled

I bought a laptop recently which came with Windows. I was going to setup dual boot because I need Office365 for work... but in the end I just gave up, deleted windows and installed Ubuntu.

I hear lots of people used to using Windows saying "I tried Linux and couldn't get anything to work"... it's not that I don't believe them, but I really struggle to understand it. Windows is so much worse!

In some cases, it's more complex than that. e.g. see this very interesting post by the r/LegalAdviceUK mods: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/14cr5zc/were_back_and_heres_whats_happening/

Seems highly unlikely that Reddit will back down at this point. But because they've chosen to burn their userbase, they need to accept the consequences.

Every sub that can stay private is a problem that Reddit has to deal with. They have to remove the mods and find new ones. Doing that is going to massively disrupt the community of that sub, and even people who were not really paying attention to this issue will start to get pissed at Reddit. They'll have to set fire to any good will they have left. But that's the choice they've made, and we have to make it as hard as possible for them.

You have to be careful with any TLD. People outside the US have found themselves subject to US law because they had a US controlled domain name.

Some ccTLDs are fine, some are not, but you have to think carefully when you buy it.

Codeberg is at least non-profit. Gitlab.com is for profit and has (or will have) the same problems as GitHub.

The thing to remember is that the user experience on Reddit, Twitter etc. is only going to get worse from here on in. But on the fediverse it's only going to get better.

There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command

I'm not sure what you were doing to break apt, but it was probably something pretty funky (or at least adding a bunch of repos without really thinking about it).

The thing with Linux is that it doesn't stop you doing stupid shit as much as Windows. If you know what you're doing, that's a really good thing. It's really annoying when your OS stops you doing something for your own protection if you know that you're not going to break anything. Simple example: Windows locks any file that's open, Linux doesn't. That's really convenient, but you can screw things up badly if you're not careful.

If you're a beginner, I would suggest sticking to the GUI, i.e. control panels, software installed, etc. in Ubuntu. If you ever go into command line, be really careful, and understand what you're doing. Definitely do not copy and paste commands you find online without understanding them reasonably well. Ubuntu puts in pretty good protections in its graphical tools. You'll be able to do whatever you need to do, but shouldn't break anything. Over time, you'll pick up some knowledge and be able to do more in the command line (etc.) without breaking things.

Yeah, we always knew Reddit had the power to end the protests overnight if they wanted to. I just thought they would have to exercise more of that power directly rather than just threaten to do so.

Or find a smaller instance. If everyone joins a bigger instance it's just moving the problem

I don't think Meta really gives a shit about the Fediverse. They are hoping to take out Twitter though, and the Fediverse could be collateral damage.

I'm not sure what makes you think the law applies to billionaires

Most people don't really want to move off Reddit. They might see how shitty spez is being, but moving off Reddit will be a big shake up to their online life. So any excuse they can find to stay on Reddit is something they will latch on to. "It's too complicated" is a good one, because there's some truth to it, and it's pretty subjective anyway, so it's hard to argue with.

Fortunately, there is a small percent of people who embrace new things like the Fediverse, especially if there is good reason to overcome some of the obstacles and make it work. Without those people, we would end up stuck.

Trying to help people move over is a good thing, but it's not worth getting frustrated with them if they find reasons not to do it. In my view, we're seeing the end of the current era of the internet (where corporate social media dominates), and moving into a new one (where decentralisation wins out). The people stuck on Reddit will realise this one day, just maybe not today.

Yeah, which in the long run is a recipe for disaster.... putting the most power hungry mods in charge

Lemmy.nz winning per capita

Eventually the "fediverse" may end up even more loosely connected than it is. All that it really needs to be is decentralised/federated and open source/open protocol.

We're in the age of epic centralisation of the Internet, but it wasn't always that way. Hopefully we go back to something where there is much more diversity, much less corporate control, and much less need for monolithic platforms that need to support millions of users (and the technical challenges that come with that).

As far as money, I think people are much more likely to pay for things online if they feel like they have some kind of genuine control over them. i.e. it's a "donation" not paying for a service. Servers are pretty cheap these days, so even a big instance can get by on a few thousand a year.

I think they have some areas where they're very useful, but beyond those areas they're only OK at best. They don't come close to living up to the hype, which is mostly based on "the next version will be mind blowing!".

They are a new type of app, nothing more. New types of apps can be extremely useful, and make a lot of tasks easier, e.g. spreadsheets. I would say at best generative AI is as game changing as spreadsheets were, but maybe less.

The hype machine wants us to believe they are as revolutionary as the PC itself, or the car. In fact 10 times as revolutionary! I just don't buy it... at least not in the foreseeable future.

Brutal dictators.

There’s no way to effectively protest a corporation on its own platform. It controls the platform, it can and will change the rules or enforce them unequally just to shut you up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You can still make it painful for them on the way out. They are using up a shitload of resources dealing with this, and it will be hurting their image and valuation. The more Reddit has to stomp on its users, the more damage they do to their brand in the long run.

You can't win, but you can go down fighting, and possibly take Reddit down with you.

Have a look a r/JustUnsubbed... plenty of people there whinging about John Oliver and all the other stuff. Seems like it's having an impact

The cops are moving in with tear gas and rubber bullets...

Yeah looks much worse when they delete it as well

There's more to it than that, see: https://beehaw.org/comment/257522

LLMs choose words based on probabilities, i.e. given the word "blue", it will have a list of words and probabilities that those words should follow "blue". So "sky" would be a high probability, "car" might also be quite high, as well as a long list of other words. The LLM chooses the words not by selecting whatever has the highest probability, but with a degree of randomness. This has been found to make the text sound more natural.

To watermark, you essentially make this randomness happen in a predefined way, at least for cases where many different words could fit. So (to use a flawed example), you might make it so that "blue" is followed by "car" rather than "sky". You do this throughout the text, and in a way that doesn't affect the meaning of the text. It is then possible to write a simple algorithm to detect whether this text was written by an AI, because of the probability of different words appearing in particular sequences. Because its spread throughout the text, it's quite difficult to remove the watermark completely (although not impossible).

Here's an article that explains it better than I can: https://www.kdnuggets.com/2023/03/watermarking-help-mitigate-potential-risks-llms.html

They're planning to support ActivityPub, so sounds good to me.

I struggle to see why I shouldn't wear a mask in certain situations. e.g. the supermarket, where I'm not there too long, am hardly talking to anyone, it's indoors with lots of other (unmasked) people. There are almost 0 downsides to wearing one in that situation (for me at least).

COVID is still killing a lot of people, and even if it doesn't kill you, it sucks to get it. So yeah, makes sense to me to mask when you can.

Doubt it. Why do you think Reddit is broke?

Good luck doing one on one assessments in a uni course of 300+

If you don't need the web gui stuff (and you shouldn't for personal use) you can set up a git server using gitolite. Very easy to manage

I thought it was too big at first, but it meant everyone had a lot of space so turned out about right I think

Yeah kind of seems like a bunch of teenagers graffiting "school sux" and thinking they're edgey rebels.

Sure, Reddit admins are being dicks, but if you don't like it just move on

Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. There's no point posting something in the big Reddit subs most of the time because someone else will have already posted the same thing.

To get noticed you have to be early and/or say something witty or superficially inciteful. There's no room for nuance.

It just becomes a competition for karma, and if you don't play you're screaming into the void.

Yeah, that's basically why I got out of IT. Too many managers/clients refusing to listen to warnings about what would happen when they did X, then blaming the techies when things went to shit.

Because they are the "boss", they have 0 accountability. Worst case for them is a golden handshake, and failing upwards where the cycle starts again.

Agreed. Commercial sites like reddit like to create false scarcity. Doesn't have to be done all the time, but every 3-6 months might be good.

Also if it's advertised in advance more people will know about it

You could look at the development practices parts of extreme programming.

Also remember software development is a craft to be mastered. It takes a lifetime of continuous improvement to get there.

There is no point fighting. Reddit is a business and they will do what they want, even if it ends up killing the company in the long run.

Even if you could somehow "win" it would be a short term victory.

Much better to put time and energy into making the fediverse a great place. Then people will join naturally and the age of social media giants will end.