Stovetop

One of the admin accounts appears to have been compromised. The owner/other admins appear to be aware now because that account had its admin access revoked and offending posts are being removed.

Definitely opens up a big question about the security of Lemmy instances that I am sure will be discussed over the next few days.

Just to add onto this good answer, you are really only expected to tip for sit-down restaurants with service and bars.

For takeout, cafes, fast food, etc., you don't need to tip. A lot of places these have payment machines that just ask if you want to tip by default. You can safely hit "No tip" on these if you don't want to.

Ostensibly it's just to replace the tip jar for those who don't use cash, but the prompt appearing every time you pay by card has convinced a lot of people that tipping is what you're supposed to do in those situations, when in reality you have no obligation to.

But even then, however, what's to stop an army of bots from just ChatGPTing their way through the application process?

I went to a website to generate a random username, picked the first option of polarbear_gender, and then just stuck that and the application questions for lemmy.ml into ChatGPT to get the following:

I want to join Lemmy.ml because I'm really into having meaningful discussions and connecting with others who have similar interests. Lemmy.ml seems like a great platform that fosters a diverse exchange of ideas in a respectful way, which I like.

When it comes to the communities I'd love to be a part of, I'm all about ones that focus on environmental conservation, wildlife preservation, and sustainability. Those topics really resonate with me, and I'm eager to jump into discussions and learn from fellow passionate folks.

As for my username, I chose it because I've got respect for polar bears and how they live with the environmental challenges they face. And throwing in "gender" is just my way of showing support for inclusivity and gender equality. Building a more just and fair society is important to me.

I don't know the full criteria that people are approved or declined for, but would these answers pass the sniff test?

I'm just worried that placing too much trust in the application process contributes to a false sense of security. A community that is supposedly "protected" from bots can be silently infiltrated by them and cause more damage than in communities where you can either reasonably assume bots are everywhere, or there are more reliable filtering measures in place than a simple statement of purpose.

It looks like they're in the process. The compromised account was demoted from admin and I see posts are being removed. There will definitely need to be some sort of investigation into how this happened, though.

I know this is a bit of a meme, but there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism. It's entirely a question of where you choose to draw the line.

This applies to a lot of causes/principles I care about, but to illustrate with my stance on LGBT issues:

• If a company openly donates directly to anti-LGBT causes? I'd boycott them, no further questions needed.

• If a high ranking member of a company donates to anti-LGBT causes using their own (likely unethically obtained) funds? I'd boycott for sure unless their product/service is an absolute necessity.

• If a company is headquartered in a state/country that is anti-LGBT? I would definitely boycott as long as there is a suitable alternative.

• If a company pays/employs people who are anti-LGBT? Gosh, well, that's probably most companies. Is it possible to account for how every individual employee/beneficiary chooses to spend the money they make for their work? I have no capacity to make choices at this point.

Those are my lines.

When I shop at the supermarket, I have to accept that there are likely people working there somewhere with horrible beliefs whose income is financially supported by my patronage. When I buy clothing, I have to accept that there are probably products I've purchased that are made through exploitative labor practices. When it is within my means to spend capital more ethically, I will. But it is absolutely not possible for me to ensure that every dollar I spend goes to a worthwhile cause or to someone who deserves it.

The Good Place really illustrated this point well in the later episodes. In the modern world where everything is so much more interconnected than ever before, we need to redefine traditional ethics to better consider what is practical for normal people. And the worse your circumstances are, the harder it is to have that luxury of choice.

Baseless speculation here, but my gut tells me that Microsoft is going to put a remaster-focused studio to task on a current-gen Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim triple pack, a la the Master Chief Collection, to tide people over.

Remastering Skyrim is the easy way out, but Oblivion is still trapped on the 360 (if you don't have a PC) and Morrowind is the darling title of the franchise that people would love to see remastered (and was recently used as an example by Nvidia on "how to remaster a game"). Remaster the earlier two and then just shove the Xbox One copy of Skyrim Anniversary Edition in there for funsies is something people would get behind, more than just another port of Skyrim alone.

Most mod tools and bots rely on API access and are just as affected by this change as third-party Reddit clients.

After the outrage started, Reddit has stated that they will make exceptions for mod tools and accessibility apps, but it requires manual approval, and a number are likely to be declined in spite of it. Particularly when considering that a lot of moderators made use of mod tools which were contained within these third-party clients that are shutting down, and are likely not going to be spun off into separate tools.

Mali*, not Malaysia. Malaysia's TLD is .my

It's almost like they never considered that moderators use the same third party apps as the rest of their users, either.

Though based on the leaked internal memo, it looks like Reddit doesn't think very much of their users at all.

Jerboah seems okay, though I do miss Sync. Keep getting weird Java exception toasts here and there that I believe are causing my votes to not register/comments to not post, though.

More time will definitely be needed. I'm glad they caught it and acted quickly enough to prevent more vandalism from occurring, but until we know how the account was compromised and what else they may have gotten in the process, it's still a situation to keep an eye on.

Consoles are by far the best bang for your buck right now in terms of performance vs cost. A decent GPU alone today costs as much as a PS5/Series X. Unless you need a powerful desktop for other purposes, it's cheaper to buy a console and a decent laptop separately than it is to build a gaming PC.

you choose of your own free will to contract with this company knowing the risks.

But that's just the problem with free market/small government, isn't it? You can't know the risks because there is no oversight to prove people aren't cutting corners and selling bullshit.

As long as it is more profitable for people to deceive and cut corners, they're gonna do it.

That essay was honestly a work of art, and I have a feeling it's going to remain relevant for a while. I'd love to probe Cory for additional perspectives.

GTA5 and TES5 were the two most popular games of the PS3/360 generation.

Despite that, there were no new Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto games released for the entire 7 years that the PS4/XB1 generation lasted.

By the time Elder Scrolls 6 is out, baby Dovahkiin will probably be old enough to vote and die for his country.

I'm 11 years into using Sync.

My first year of college, the only smart device I had was an iPod Touch. After I found Reddit, I installed Alien Blue on the iPod as my first Reddit app experience.

A couple years later, I bought my first real smartphone, which ran Android. And I was so keen to try to find "the Alien Blue of Android" I tried probably half a dozen Reddit apps. It didn't take me long to recognize Sync as the uncontested best of the lot, and I've been using it ever since.

Until now.

It's been an hour since this comment but just in case anyone else has the same, canceling and restarting allowed it to start downloading. For some reason the automatic attempt just hung on my device.

A feature similar to RES, maybe one that pulls from your subscriptions, would be nice. Start typing the name of a community and it suggests some autofill options formatted in a way that folks from other instances can click on it easily.

Give me the outcome of The Good Place as well where you can choose oblivion after there's nothing left to do.

San Junipero was one of the few "happy" episodes of Black Mirror but it didn't ask the question of "where are we in 10,000 years?" like The Good Place considered.

FYI: The Xbox version will still contain a physical disc. It is just the PC versions which will not.

Not that you should preorder in the first place, but before someone cancels their Xbox preorder over the news, figured some clarification would help.

Yeah I think Lemmy still has a lot of wrinkles to iron out before we can even say "close to", but hey, everything's gotta start somewhere. Here's hoping.

Yep, it's definitely not over.

Lemmy.ml then, a lot of overlap.

Likely doesn't make a difference. At any time Reddit can put a banner on their site saying "We've updated our terms and conditions, ream more here" and almost always such changes specify that continued use of the site is your consent (but that you can delete your account at any time, not that that appears to even do anything now).

There are millions of people out there who just accept all this crap as normal. I just don't know how people can feel so comfortable about being constantly bought and sold online.

Ads in general skeeve me out. In the early days (2005-ish?), while visiting a video game forum I used to frequent, my computer was infected with malware delivered by a malicious ad. I didn't even interact with it—the page just loaded, acted erratically, and before I knew it, my system was completely locked down. My only recourse was a full wipe of that PC.

Since then, I've never trusted ads. And even now that some ads have gotten more "legitimate" (thanks to these five secrets advertisers don't want you to know!), they still seem sketchy just knowing how much money goes into them. Do banner ads on a website even result in more sales? I don't know, but obviously they must be conning someone out of their money because they pay so much out.

Still a lot of pasta, which predates the Columbian exchange. But probably a lot more focus on herbal seasonings, cheese/dairy, oils, etc. Carbonara probably still popular. A lot more pesto on average.

Pizza would be white pizza with toppings, maybe with a pesto base. Fish, meat dishes, and European vegetable dishes probably still mostly untouched.

You're really just missing tomato sauces and gnocchi with the lack of the Columbian exchange, and tomato is essentially optional in many Italian dishes anyways. Surprisingly not as big a change as I would have thought.

I think maybe in North America we associate tomatoes more strongly with Italian food because it was more readily available for Italian-American immigrants than it was back in Italy.

I'm assuming by that point, you wouldn't have people driving anymore, it would all be automatic. Likely hooked into some sort of flight control system that would allow the vehicles to navigate around each other and avoid collisions.

Plus, look at it this way. Accidents are common now because roads restrict cars into shared paths of travel, requiring drivers to successfully avoid colliding with other people moving very close to them. If you are able to fly, you'd be able to beeline from point A to point B, distributing vehicles across a much broader area of travel. Plus, the added vertical axis means you won't even necessarily collide if your vehicle can just move up or down around potential midair obstacles.

Ordinarily I would disagree, assuming that they must be privvy to data that no one else is and are making carefully calculated decisions.

But with the way that Reddit leadership just continued to make misstep after misstep throughout this whole debacle, when all they had to do was just say/do nothing and wait for everything to blow over, I can only assume their corporate strategy right now is 100% improvised and not calculated.

Almost all subreddits signed up for just a 2-day protests and were going to return to normal after that. It was only because of how Reddit/spez acted in the wake of all this that they're experiencing the resistance they are now.

To sum up, Dessalines believes that a genocide is not taking place against the Uyghur people by the Chinese government.

That's basically one of the common concerns I see, just kind of in addition to the general tankie vibes that are shared by many in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad which are sympathetic to communist regimes that have committed atrocities.

Facebook/Instagram (Meta) is one I am not sure how to get a read on. They are branching out a lot, but I have no idea what they're doing to remain profitable. It seems like they're in "Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" mode, hoping that they find a new niche before their sizable warchest from the 2010's runs dry.

They severely downsized once this year already and I have a feeling that won't be the end of the story. Wouldn't surprise me if they sell off/shut down Oculus in the near future.

Tiktok, meanwhile...well it's already undergoing enshittification (it is the subject of that original essay) and old people are starting to use it, so I feel like it's only a matter of time before it's no longer cool with kids and they lose a sizable chunk of their revenue stream and content.

Obligatory IANAL, but...

Generally a search warrant needs to be issued by a local authority, and that requires the crime to be prosecutable in the place where it was issued.

So in theory, California is potentially able to refuse requests to search for things that are not illegal in California but may be illegal somewhere else.

That being said, it looks like there are specific practices in place making it easier to issue warrants for electronic data like this scenario, even across state lines.

And in this particular circumstance, the alleged offense is even illegal in California (abortion of a viable fetus), so it's a bit of a moot point anyways. A Californian judge would have issued this warrant if a local police department requested one.

The pandemic caused serious financial burden to the average American, and the only reason why it wasn't significantly worse for millions of people is because the federal government paused interest and repayment deadlines for federal student loans.

Loan forgiveness is another method of providing relief for people whose economic means took a hit as a result of the pandemic, and is something a lot of people were counting on the day it was announced. If this is unconstitutional, then so were paycheck protection program (PPP) loans that were forgiven by the Fed due to the pandemic as well. The only difference between the two is that the GOP likes big business owners who benefitted from PPP loans (and several GOP politicians and their families took out millions in PPP loans that were forgiven) and they don't give a shit about college students who aren't likely to vote red.

This is just another way the conservatives are "sticking it to the libs", so they have something to brag about during next year's election.

From the community rules:

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts - This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.

It is the "default" one, though, and its admins are behind the Lemmy platform itself. Along with the Jerboa app, too.

I think the point of these bots is that they try to make themselves appear not like bots in order to steer the direction of discussions. That and upvoting the agendas they want to push and downvoting perspectives they disagree with.

From the user perspective for sure. It's much easier to join lemmy.world and it has a higher population of fledditors. I was just more acknowledging the role of lemmy.ml as something of a model instance because it is run directly by the developers of Lemmy.

The Sync community turned toxic when the dev implemented an updated UI a couple years ago. The new UI was beautiful and much more in line with the evolving visual design of Android, but the average user hates change. The dev version spent a while on the new UI while it was being refined, but the free/pro version was not upgraded until I want to say probably a year or more later, the developer having gone radio silent for a while under all the criticism.

Same here.

I've gotten in the habit of copying my comments before submitting them, just in case. Including this one.

And the crazy part is, that wasn't even encouraged by the subreddit mods first. Users have taken it upon themselves to protest reopening in the only way that makes sense right now: malicious compliance.

The promise of Radiant AI is still there. I know it has the potential to be something special. I just think it's really difficult to actually capture the realistic behavior people are looking for without building every NPC's routines down to a granular level, which is an incredible amount of work to build/test.

Advancements in AI could really help push that in new directions, with context-aware routines capable of building themselves through improvisation, but I'm not even sure we'll get to that point by TES6.