@Sina @Blaubarschmann Google is more like a restaurant that has a large chalk board covered with specials. The kind that has a soup of the day, and a fish of the day, and a chef's special.

There are a few core menu items that are perennials on its printed menu. Search, maps, photos, ads, Gmail, Google Docs, Chrome, Android, Chromebook, YouTube...

Then there's the messaging app of the day, the TV platform of the day, the flavour-of-the-month device selection...

@janAkali @maxprime You certainly can follow Lemmy groups from Mastodon. And you can reply to Lemmy threads from Masto.

In fact, take a look at my account — I'm doing it right now...

@Naich @ardi60 Totally agree.

I mean, Windows is just such a weird proprietary distro.

It doesn't use the latest Linux kernel, or even a mainstream POSIX-compliant alternative like BSD. Instead, you have a strange CP/M-like monolithic kernel — I think they used to call it DOS — that's been extended to behave more like VAX and MP/M.

It also doesn't use either X11 or Wayland as a display manager. Instead, you have an incredibly unintuitive overblown WINE-like subsystem handling the display.

Because it doesn't use Linux, Wayland, or X11, you are limited in the desktop environment that you can use. There's really limited support for KDE, despite the best efforts of volunteers.

Instead, there's a buggy and error-prone proprietary window manager that ships with it by default. A bit like how Canonical tried to ship Unity as it's default desktop environment with Ubuntu.

And confusingly, they've named that window manager Windows as well!

That window manager lacks many of the features an everyday Gnome or KDE user would expect out of the box.

It also doesn't ship with a standard package manager, and most of the packages ship as x86 binaries, so installing software works differently to how an everyday Linux user would expect.

There's also only one company maintaining all of these projects. It insists on closed source, and it has a long history of abandoning its projects.

And sure, if you're a nerd who's into alternative operating systems, toying with Windows can be fun.

But if your grandpa is used to Linux, frankly he'll be utterly bamboozled by the Windows experience.

I'm sorry to be glib, because Windows does have some nice ideas.

But.

Windows on the desktop just isn't ready for your average, everyday Linux user.

#Linux #Windows #PC

@lemmyreader Here's a starting point for a fediverse StackExchange: Make sure it's interoperable with Lemmy.

Now, you may not get the full feature set on Lemmy, but you should be able to interact with it from Lemmy as if it's a group on there.

#StackExchange #Fediverse #Coding

@deadsuperhero @nutomic I think the concept of a TikTok on the Fediverse is solid. And if short form videos help to get more people on the Fedi, and engaging with the Fedi, that's a good thing in my book.

@crispyflagstones @yogthos Someone is named @dansup who also created @pixelfed, the app is called Loops, you can follow his progress here: @loops

@BarneyDellar @technology You're right, it should, in truly autonomous cross-functional teams that have a high degree of delegated decision-making.

But that's not what tends to happen in many larger, hierarchical organisations.

In those organisations, what can tend to happen is the daily scrum becomes where managers get to micromanage details and staff are expected to report back their progress.

(I'm thinking about one past job in particular, where it was explained to me that: "The scrum is important because it allows our manager to keep track of our progress and set priorities.")

@zenkat @technology Totally agree.

But.

It's a surefire way to get yourself in that mess in rapid time, when you otherwise wouldn't.

@HobbitFoot I'm not yet, but if there's a good one then I'd be happy to add it...

@LostXOR @yogthos @NoIWontPickAName @technology There's a few other steps they could potentially take.

The first would be to block any financial institution in the US, or that deals with the US, from sending any payments to or from ByteDance's accounts.

They could also freeze any assets currently held by US financial institutions.

Second, if they can get Apple, Microsoft, and Google on board to help do their bidding, they could pull the ByteDance app from the Apple and Google Play app stores.

That includes removing it from any apps where it's already installed. Globally.

They could also request that TikTok is removed from Google and Bing search results.

On top of this, they could do what you suggested, and ask ISPs and mobile carriers to block domains and IP addresses used by ByteDance.

And the US could apply diplomatic pressure on other countries to implement similar financial and ISP-level blocks and bans.

So, potentially, it's also blocked in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and elsewhere.

@Epsilon It's not, but it's the one many first-time Fediverse users coming across from Twitter end up on. (Much like how many users coming across from Reddit end up on Lemmy first.)

Then the jump from Mastodon to Calckey/Pleroma/Frienica/Pixelfed/etc in many cases comes later.

@nutomic Looks like an interesting project!

Will there be a mobile-friendly version of the front end?

And will you be able to follow Ibis pages (or perhaps edit them?) from Mastodon? Or potentially even Lemmy?

@airwhale @technology The issue is that often the core principles of agile fly in the face of how many big companies and organisations work.

Big orgs are often built around hierarchical command-and-control. They're built on monofunctional teams, processes, and procedures. They're built on KPIs and reports. They're built around getting stakeholder approvals ahead of waterfall projects.

So the bits of agile that tend to get picked up and implemented are the kanban boards and daily "scrum" meetings.

And the bits that tend to get left on the cutting room floor are the bits about products being the most important output, the autonomy, the cross-functional teams, the ongoing customer input, etc.

@sunzu @dvdnet62 Oh come now. If there's one thing Mozilla doesn't need anyone's help with, it's shooting itself in the foot with its own gun.

Now excuse me, I have some Pocket articles to read on my Firefox OS phone...

@sabreW4K3 Plume doesn't appear to be active, unfortunately 🥺

There's a notice on the official Join Plume website saying the former developers don't have the time to maintain it anymore. Most of the former public instances now throw up errors of various kinds.

WriteFreely ( @writefreely ) is alive and well. I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a blog through its main instance, which is called Write.as Professional. The sticking point for me was that the official on-platform monetisation tool (Coil) appears to be dead, and doesn't support members-only posts (like Ghost).

Ghost, when federation goes live, looks like it will be the best option for my blog.

WordPress plus @pfefferle 's plugins is another great option, depending on what you want to use it for. (There's no shortage of WP plugins!)

As for Lemmy, I could see a blogging-focussed front end being created for it, in the same way FediBB put a traditional message board front end on it, but one doesn't appear to exist at present.

@Meowoem @kd637_mi Better yet...

Many Lemmy instances have communities on the same topic. For example, there's @technology@lemmy.ml and @technology@beehaw.org and @technology@lemmy.world .

It's unnecessary duplication.

Having a Fediverse-wide !Technology community would avoid a lot of duplication.

Each Lemmy instance would then responsible for the posts of its users, and if an instance fails to moderate appropriately, it gets defederated.

@duncesplayed @Anticorp Or, as some people said at the time: "Windows '95 is Amiga '87."

@pixxelkick @ardi60 Well, if anyone wants to buy it for that purpose, then I just hope they remember to screen out the more NSFW parts of Reddit.

Otherwise, their bots are going to start giving some rather unfortunate responses to customer questions...

@donut4ever @igalmarino Last I heard, @dansup and the @pixelfed crew were working to get the Pixelfed app into the Android and iOS app stores. There's currently a version of the app that you can sideload if you so desire...

@ada @haui_lemmy This is where it's a bad thing that Tumblr hasn't federated with the Fedi yet.

Having the "original" Fedi apps (including Mastodon) plus Tumblr would better balance the size of Threads.

@cosmicrookie @ardi60 "Why does this bloody thing keep asking 'a/s/l' and 'Do you want a NSFW roleplay?' even when I tell it no?!?!"

@nutomic That last question was me trying to get my head around how this works.

Will each page have a username, in the same way each Lemmy group has a username, which can be followed from Mastodon?

If you follow that username from Mastodon, will you see a series of posts? If so, will they contain page edits or something else?

What happens if you tag that account in a post from Mastodon? Or reply to one of those posts?

@AMillionNames @nutomic In which case the ibis, a species of bird that's also known as the bin chicken, might be a fitting name for the platform?

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/apr/09/bin-chickens-grotesque-glory-urban-ibis-in-pictures

@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.

Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.

In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.

Especially if they're reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.

Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?

@denshirenji @asklemmy On photos, does NextCloud Photos or Memories play nice with Digikam or any other desktop photo gallery applications? And what about Immich?

@Dymonika @MossyFeathers I'm guessing you're overseas?

Super fund, short for superannuation fund.

Basically, in Australia 11% of wages are automatically deposited into a compulsory retirement savings account, known as a superannuation account.

A superannuation fund is a financial institution that manages these accounts.

More information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation\_in\_Australia

@vhstape @lmorchard What it means is that every interesting conversation also adds an interesting conversation to Mastodon.

People can interact with those discussions on the platform that suits them best.

So if you're an ex-Twitter user on Mastodon, it appears as a post. If you're an ex-Redditor on Lemmy, it appears as a thread.

And the magic of the Fediverse is that those ex-Redditors can engage with ex-Twitter users in conversations that wouldn't take place had they remained on Twitter or Reddit.

@HughJanus Then that checkbox will appear one morning then.

Either way, it will almost certainly use Meta's existing ad platform. They won't create a separate one for Threads.

It will most likely be opt out.

And given how Elon has scared off many big advertisers, as long as Zuck maintains a decent number of MAUs, then I foresee Meta quickly gaining more revenue than Twitter.

@HughJanus @cyrusg On the revenue front, it's worth noting that all of Meta's social media apps basically share the same ad platform.

Every business that advertises on Facebook or Instagram (and there are many) already uses that ad platform.

I think a lot of social media marketing managers are waking up one morning discovering there's a new checkbox that's suddenly appeared in their Meta for Business ad campaigns.

Along with being able to select their ads appearing on Facebook or Insta, there's now a checkbox that says "Threads".

And, knowing Meta, it's on by default.

If the ad manager doesn't notice it, boom, their brand's ads are now appearing on Threads.

Given how much fashion brands love Instagram, my guess is that there's a lot of shoes and handbags being offered on Threads.

On the other side of the coin, given the number of brands that have abandoned Twitter, I can see how Threads could very quickly win the battle for ad dollars.

@makeasnek @schizoidman YaCy is still around.

And https://searx.space/ is an open source metasearch search engine with many instances. (Try https://searx.be/ if you want to test it out.)

SearX/SearXNG allows you to aggregate results from a number of different search engines. You choose which ones, and they're stored in your browser without setting up an account.

@neidu2 Done :)

@darkkite @maegul From the outside, it also seems like there was some corporate politics involved.

Apple was making its comeback thanks to Mac OSX, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.

Samsung was toying with its own OS (Tizen), apps, and online services (Bixby).

Google responded by toying with hardware itself, including Glass, Nest, and at one point even buying Motorola.

So it looked like all the big tech companies were going to try to copy Apple by trying to own the full tech stack.

The then-CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, responded by trying to reposition his firm as a "devices and services" company. So he ended up with the XBox, Zune, Kinect, Kin, and Surface.

Then he went all-in with a takeover of Nokia.

Soon afterwards, Ballmer stood aside, and Satya Nadella took over.

Satya wanted to reposition Microsoft as a cloud-first company, competing against Google and AWS rather than Apple.

He kept the XBox and Surface, let the rest bleed money for a couple of quarters, wrote off their value as a loss, and then killed it off.

@geillescas @jajabor @asklemmy That, and also making files/emails/calendar events synced across your computer and your phone.

@makeasnek On a broader note, I think possibly the best approach for decentralised, open-sourced web search might be an evolution on the SearXNG model.

At the top of the funnel, you have meta search engines that query and aggregate results from a number of smaller niche search engines.

The metasearch engines are open source, anyone with a spare server or a web hosting account can spin one up.

For some larger sites that are trustworthy, such as Wikipedia, the site's own search engine might be what's queried.

For the Fediverse and other similar federated networks, the query is fed through a trusted node on the network.

And then there's a host of smaller niche search engines, which only crawl and index pages on a small number of websites vetted and curated by a human.

(Perhaps on a particular topic? Or a local library or university might curate a list of notable local websites?)

(Alternatively, it might be that a crawler for a web index like Curlie.org only crawls websites chosen by its topic moderators.)

In this manner, you could build a decent web search engine without needing the scale of Google or Microsoft.

@tokenwizard @asklemmy I'm thinking of eventually doing three websites.

One that's a '90s pastiche (that one), a minimalist personal website that takes some elements of the '90s web but tones them down a notch, and a blog.

@phil_stevens @technology It's now official: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/identity-of-third-party-who-brought-down-optus-network-revealed-20231114-p5ejy1.html

@ngsmcphrsn @fediverse Eeep, my bad, you are quite correct. I'll edit the post.

@thegiddystitcher @helenslunch I think hashtag feeds being overrun with vertical videos is an excellent point. (One I hope @dansup considers!)

But beyond that, I think vertical videos through Loops on the Fedi are likely to be far less obtrusive than they have been on other platforms.

What's so annoying about them on Instagram and YouTube is that the algorithm automatically drops vertical videos into my feed.

And there's *lots* of them in my feed, often on topics I'm not interested in.

They're not there because I'm interested, but because they serve the commercial interests of the social media app's owners.

Hashtags aside, on the Fedi, they'll only appear in your feed if you follow a Loops account you're interested in, or someone you follow finds one interesting enough to share.

And if people on your Mastodon server all find them really annoying, there's always the option to just block the Loops servers and be done with it.

@emi @sudo The seven great alternatives to Reddit should have been (in no particular order):

1. Beehaw
2. KBin
3. Lemmy
4. FediBB
5. Mastodon
6. Calckey
7. Hubzilla

@mcSlibinas @etbe Really good point.

The development time and cost is an overhead. That's divided between the number of units you produce.

If the programming costs are $100k and you produce one unit, then that unit costs $100k.

But if you flash the same software on to 1 million units, then it's just 10 cents per unit.

Worth remembering that millions of people junking their two-year-old iPhones and Samsung Galaxies at roughly the same time.

I think the broader underlying issue is that our economy is optimised for labour productivity, rather than making the most out of finite environmental resources.

It really should be the other way around.