clara

this is why

there is a very good chance that this project by meta is the thin end of the wedge

(edited to include "the blogpost", link here)

the "open source hackers" are always going to win this one, for a simple reason. if the data of the youtube video is handed to a user at any point, then the information it contains can be scrubbed and cleaned of ads. no exceptions.

if google somehow solves all ad-blocking techniques within browser, then new plugins will be developed on the operating system side to put a black square of pixels and selectively mute audio over the advert each time. if they solve that too? then people will hack the display signal going out at the graphics card level so that it is cleaned before it hits the monitor. if they beat that using some stupid encryption trick? well, then people will develop usb plugin tools that physically plug into the monitors at the display end, that artificially add the black boxes and audio mutes at the monitor display side.

if they beat that? someone, someone will jerry rig a literal black square of paper on some servos and wires, and physical audio switch to do the same thing, an actual, physical advert blocker. i'm sure once someone works that out, a mass produced version would be quite popular as a monitor attachment (in a timeline that gets so fucked that we would need this).

if that doesn't work? like, google starts coding malware to seek and destroy physical adblockers? then close your eyes and mute your headphones for 30 seconds, lol. the only way google is solving that one is with hitsquads and armed drones to make viewers RESUME VIEWING

as long as a youtube video is available to access without restriction, then google cannot dictate how the consumer experiences that video. google cannot win this.

california is the largest "sub-national" economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.

if i had to guess, the answer is "success breeds jealousy"

this comment is aimed at those future "just passing through" visitors, who are still on the fence with regards to the fediverse.

any internet power user will know, and be able to tell you that the internet feels wrong as of late. everything that you try to use is slightly broken for some reason. why is it becoming harder to use basic services that we took for granted 5 years ago?

unfortunately, the internet is changing once again, and it's time to pick a side.

you can side with big corpo, stay in their walled ecosystems, and embrace enshittification.

or, you can side with the fediverse, break out of your silo, and take control of your own means of content participation.

the choice is yours.

if you like following concepts or "things" (reddit-style), then try here: https://join-lemmy.org/

or, if you prefer following individuals or "trends" (twitter-style), then try here: https://joinmastodon.org/

the current solution for that would be similar to the current "sponsor block" plugins, here's an example

crowdsourced start and endpoints for embedded sponsorships

something like this tool, but for future embedded google adverts

here's one example for you (click here) exploring igbo gender norms

here's a second report that's worth reading too (click here)

i don't have much knowledge about the other cultures suggested, others can provide info for those

sure, i'll try to explain briefly

"infrastructure", i.e utilities, transport, bureacracy etc is built to support a fixed population within a city. when the population increases, you have to build more infrastructure to support this new population. this part is easy, you expand your cities at their edges, extend the utilities, and set up satellite bureacracy offices if needed

the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn't happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?

it would be nice if we live in a theoretical world where, as population decreases, the cities magically shrink at their edges, and suburban residents move closer in to fill the gaps. this is not how populations deplete from an area though (example: detroit, 1950 - 2020)

you will struggle to convince a suburban homeowner at the edge, to sell up and move to one of the gaps left behind by population loss. if we stop short of rewriting laws to force this population transfer, the end result is that you are left with a "swiss cheese" city. houses and settlements will be spread so thinly that becomes impossible for city goverments to provide "infrastructure" without providing it at a loss. your local goverment will then take debt and bankrupt, the infrastructure will collapse through lack of maintenance, and then the remaining population suffers big time

i want to note that i am not using this as an argument to support population growth. i am only stating the big, big problem that needs to be tackled somehow, concerning population loss. some big-brains are going to have to work this problem through, fast!

side note: interestingly, most NA cities are spread out and sprawled so much that they are suffering unaffordable infrastructure bills already, despite not suffering the effects of population loss. goodness knows how these places will fare when population loss actually hits...

look, all i'm saying is, the public transit and bike infrastructure aren't the only reasons people wanna move there 😏

😏

this might be the nuclear option needed

would be funny if every community did this, releasing reddit to the entropy of the internet

it also solves the argument of "well if your mods aren't modding then we can remove you"

The so-called “spy clause” in the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which experts argued would have made end-to-end encryption all but impossible in the country, will no longer be enforced...

oh okay. so they're still going to pass it into law anyway, and then pinky promise not to enforce it. right... 🤦

a Catholic health care system

is this like where the doctors and nurses have to be of the religion, or does the hospital get to decide who gets treated using their own rules? or something else? can someone explain this?

either way, what the fuck?

this meme can be saved, there are indeed methods...

the OP's image was originally posted to the internet through twitter on October 21st this year. (nitter link)

source image was posted to twitter handle "GlowFYourSelf", as part an advertising campaign for a website called "GlowFYourSelf", which appears to sell... personal toys. based out of portland oregon, no surprises there lol.

source image was part of an album of 4 of images that all look similar. they were likely generated using AI because in the original image, the writing on the box is all borked.

this original, crisp, 2k x 2k image was then stolen 4 days ago by an instagram meme account called "worst.buy".

from there, it has then received a caption, a bitmoji sticker, and a faint "CV" watermark stamped in the lower left.

through all these saves and re-uploads, it has been deep fried, jpegged, and cut in resolution. for shame.

fortunately for this meme repair, no 'shopping was needed to complete the work - i went straight to the source.

here you go folks. ❤️

he really has shit for brains huh? he's seen the word "hostages" being used in the last month repeatedly, and now his brain has made the association

he never said this about them before 7th october 2023? what the fuck

yeah i mean opel rocks-e is cool... but what about the microlino?

the door is at the front! ❤️

it's an example of simpson's paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

a worked example: if england/scotland/wales all use heart ❤️ 49% and use tears of joy 😂 at 51%, and then northern ireland was to use heart ❤️at 100%, you can imagine this would tip the whole uk over

even more freaky, you could make all 4 constituent countries use heart ❤️ at 49%, make each constituent use a different unique emoji 👍😀🥰😼 at 51% each, and then the aggregate would show that heart ❤️ is still the most used across the UK

now consider for each place on this map, they are ranking more than just 2 emojis. the map itself says that tears of joy 😂 is only scoring 5% worldwide, and that's 1st place. with margins of 5% and under to be deemed winner, it's no wonder funky effects show up

google tries not to kill one of it's products challenge (impossible)

the issue put bluntly, is that in federation, your data cannot be 100% safe. even if this instance is secure and perfectly private, if this instance is then federated, that federated data can then be copied and have anything done with it, or to it.

or, to phrase it in a way that opened my eyes to this, quoting from someone else a month ago, "what makes you think you're in control of your data on any instance?"

gold skin unlocked: escape 1000 cats

i remember playing pokerstars vr like 5 years ago. i learnt after a few days to pick a neutral avatar and mute mic. it stopped being fun real quick after that, because it ended up effectively as a 3d simulator of regular pokerstars.

haven't really done multiplayer vr since 😅

realistically, yes :(

opinion time: not everything has to be about fast/unsustainable growth, in the pursuit of profit. i would prefer that the fediverse grows organically, and entices quality users, posters and commenters to join based on the merits of the service, and not on it's access to inflated VC budgets, huge advertising campaigns, and exploitation of a first-mover advantage.

facebook/meta will slay us, because we are a threat to it's profit model. why are we even contemplating negotiations with a tiger while we have our head in it's mouth? it beggars belief...

this is the original, sourced from here. enjoy

ok, here's the context. (click here)

the source of this file, regrettably, is the daily mail. broken clocks and all that. i will link the "article" that the video file was from, but you will need a hazmat suit going in, for both the cookies/trackers and low quality writing

here's that source now. (click here)

for posters below saying they couldn't find this, i understand it. we all get different search results, it's possible you all got hugboxed and were unable to find the clip as a result

also, i don't care to discuss the topic, i only wanted to link the source, because you were all struggling with it. i like finding sources :)

have a nice day 🥰

good bot

i dont know if you're from europe or not. if you are from europe, you should know better than to make that claim. we are not even close to finishing the cleaning up of UXO from the wars.

https://www.1stlinedefence.co.uk/news/uxo-related-incidents-in-germany-and-austria-over-the-past-two-decades/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge

https://www.horizon-europe.gouv.fr/identify-inspect-neutralise-unexploded-ordnance-uxo-sea-34207

Experts reckon it could take another 500 years to clean up the mess... ...Even today (in Germany), more than 2,000 tonnes of unexploded munitions are dug up annually and all construction sites need to be certified as cleared of unexploded ordnance (UXO).

https://archive.ph/f4fPN

i do get where you're coming from with your first statement, it's just... maybe a bit strongly worded, and definitely, factually incorrect. bosnia is a prime example of a white country that is absolutely littered with UXO and mines. i'm not trying to downplay the severity of the UXO issue in southeast asia, just to make the point that white countries don't have some magic intrinsic ability to clear mines faster.

i cant be bothered to research anymore, so i will guess that the UXO clearance rate is mostly a factor of time, and mostly a factor of the amount of initial UXO that was deployed. if anyone wants to follow up on that (because i'm lazy) then go ahead 😃

it would be a bit like making multiple email accounts with multiple email providers. for example, if you were to signup "eskimofry@outlook.com" and also sign up "eskimofry@gmail.com", all you've done is made 2 accounts called "eskimofry" at the two different providers.

it works the same in fediverse. your account is @eskimofry@lemmy.world, but you could just as easily sign up @eskimofry@lemmy.ml, or @eskimofry@feddit.de, or @eskimofry@lemmy.one, all you would be doing is making more accounts.

these accounts don't conflict with each other in the exact same way that "eskimofry@outlook.com" and "eskimofry@gmail.com" don't conflict either. if these 2 emails are owned by different people, then it is the user's job to know which is the intended recipient.

sure, so 196 refers to a sub called r/196, in reference to r/195, which had one rule only: if you visit, you must post something before you leave.

it was called r/196 after it's predecessor got a bit... spicy. 195 was a sub that skewed slightly left of center, but had a hard time keeping 195 clear of hate speech etc etc, and so they shut it down. r/196 was made, which skews further left as a result of this. since 195 was a general posting sub, some of the audience had a tough time accepting every 2nd meme post with a side of politics, some ended up getting banned quickly, and in reaction they made subs like r/197

r/195 itself was called r/195 because it was the house number of creator of the sub at that time.

It was our address. All the mods lived together in a 5 bedroom condo during college. 195 was our house number. One of the roommates sucks, so he wasn't invited, and one roommate has since deleted his reddit account. But originally this was a subreddit for us to share memes and funny stuff during classes and work. It's blown up in a big way in the 8 years since we created it.

(i cannot fetch sources because most of reddit is blacked out)

that's about it, if anyone else knows better, correct me if i'm wrong :)

this might be a good place for me to reach out into the void

i'm interested in migrating two of my servers over to a matrix server, but i also want to back-copy all the old messages to the matrix client.

does a matrix bridge do all this copying? i.e, if i was to setup a discord-matrix bridge, allow messages to sync, and then disconnect the bridge, does the matrix server then have a copy of all the old messages? it doesn't have to match to the old users or anything, i'm just interested in having the content migrate over.

this is currently the biggest hurdle for me, because one of my servers is a private family discord, and i really don't want to have to explain to my mum that "all the content of the last 4 years is gone" 😅

awww ❤️

wow you guys are getting rinsed over there!

for a UK perspective, we have a cinema chain over here called Everyman, it's cinemas but every seat is a sofa/couch! and you can order food to the seats. unless it's a peak screening, you usually get a whole couch to yourself. matinée shows are roughly ~$17 for adult, ~$11 for child. what's pictured in the OP is no doubt one of those pull-down chairs with the itchy carpet material too. ouch!

yeah, i was watching him occasionally after the events of 7th october 2023. hasan was doing a react to some parent grieving that his kid was shot and killed, and the parent was saying "i'm glad my kid was shot because then i know she wasn't taken hostage"

the obvious implication was that the parent was expressing melancholic relief of the knowledge that yes, his daughter won't be tortured or worse.

instead, hasan takes that and states "see, he's happy that his kid won't have to suffer like the people in gaza" 😬

(not those exact words, before some clip chimp finds the exact phrase to try and score points. but it was definitely this sentiment)

it forced me to introspect and have a real "are we the baddies?" moment

haven't tuned in since

have you considered the EU? here's some routes for you:

if you are degree qualified, then look into getting an EU blue card. it's the EU's answer to the green card, and it's probably the best way for anyone who's got the chops. it gives you a near free pick at where you specifically end up. try this page to get a feel of eligible locations, some of the locations need big boy salary, so might be off-limits

do you have any grandparents (or great-grandparents) that are from europe? some countries offer citizenship through descent. if you can prove the descent, then you can register as a citizen. 100% worth checking this. it's a long shot, with a huge payout if it's valid. common ones you can check are italy, ireland, hungary, germany (maybe?)

third option for you - "digital nomad" visas are a thing that's growing. you pick up a remote job for one EU state, and then you can get a visa to live in... a different EU state!? you pay the taxes to the state that is giving you the remote job, and you live in the state that provides the visa. the idea being, where does it even matter where you work, if it's a remote job? so long as your dues are paid, you can go wild! some digital nomad visas even let you bring family along. not all EU states offer this, you would have to do individual research.

if you are serious about moving somewhere, genuinely serious, then take actionable steps to do it, today. i am a couple years down the path of taking steps to move myself. i don't know how old you are, but you don't want to look back and think "i could have took measurable steps when i was younger to get out of here, and i didn't". wherever your chosen destination, make it your mission. keep your eyes on the prize.

and lastly, if it doesn't work out, oh well? at least you tried! you will have gained life experience some americans would dream to get, and you should be able to move back simply. you can't shake US citizenship that easily ;)

yeah this is exactly the point lol. 😅

it's so hard to escape out of the walled ecosystems because so much of our content is already written in these places, and so even if fediverse grows exponentially, it will still take at least a decade of content creation for "free/libre" content to outpace the old silos.

but we have to start now, to get to that future.

i do have a question, sure

for the avoidance of doubt, you are saying that a matrix bridge can copy all previous messages over from a discord server, to a matrix server, even the messages made before the creation of the bridge? i.e, transfer the entire conversation log over to the matrix server, going back all the way to the first message in a channel?

actually, phrasing this another way, i just caught myself in the XY problem. what i need really, is a copy of a given discord server's content, onto a fresh matrix server. bridge or no bridge. is there any way to (broadly) copy and paste the content of a discord channel over to a matrix server, one time only. i know how to extract the discord content using the discord chat log tool, tokens etc. so, say i have one of those html files with the full chatlog and contents - how do i put that into a matrix server, and have it roughly readable? (if that's possible)

thank you for your patience, i have tried search engines for months with no clear answers

i wanted to add my personal experience, as someone who tried kbin and then ended up on lemmy

when learning about fediverse, i was first introduced to kbin. i assumed that kbin was a close match to reddit, and this was why i was being introduced to it. turns out, nope! it also has some microblogging thing? active people? boost vs favourites? i was bamboozled to say the least.

i'm sure the dual-purpose threads + microblogging is good for some, but i'm really, really not into twitter. and i also found it to be confusing when i was tagged in something as to whether i was reading a thread, or a microblog. i.e, kbin wasn't a good fit. then i discovered most of the actual content i was reading on kbin was being posted from some "lemmy" service? i clicked to find out more and... yeah, i made the switch pretty quickly.

basically, not all of us went back to reddit. i can't speak for all former reddit users, but one of the detracting points for kbin was the mixed purpose. like, for example, if i was to list places like facebook, twitter, instagram, even mastodon - these are all "people" focused places. you post about people, and the focus is more skewed towards following individual people and trends. if i was to list places like reddit, hackernews, something awful, even... 4chan... - these are "things" focused places. you post about things, and the focus is on following things. lemmy is firmly in the "things" camp, whereas kbin is trying to be both "people" and "things" at once, and so it just wasn't for me. 🙂

this would be good content for !THE_PACK@lemmy.world

i'm stealing it 😈

i don't blame the devs, in the same way that you can't blame a cog in a machine. it's the machine that i'm complaining at here, not the devs

historically, big tech companies have exploited their dominant position to snuff out federated protocols in the past. why would they suddenly choose to take a sweet tone to fediverse/activitypub now?

meta has a few options here for Threads, i will list some routes:

1. co-operate fully with activitypub forever and ever, always in alignment with activitypub protocol, always does the right/moral thing, makes a meager profit and growth for doing so
2. all of option 1, but then after building up user lock-in and momentum, then start adding "meta-net" exclusive features to entice users to instances under their control. wait patiently until dominant market share established, and then stop federating outside of meta-net, to force non users to switch over. make a bigger profit and growth.
3. all of option 2, but also compete with fediverse using the strength of it's inherited capital from meta, to gain market share quickly. bribe and buyout instances to join meta-net through sheer weight of money, send frivolous lawsuits/dmca to crush the dissenters. astroturf comment sections on non-meta instances to sway public opinion. harvest all data from activitypub to keep shadow accounts on non meta-net AP users. make even bigger profit and growth

the machine is obviously going to take option 3 here. i feel sorry for the devs, who know full well that what they make can and will be used in this way.

i do get where you're coming from, population density was less than it was. as a consequence, people had less access to resources. i would argue as a result of this, they also had less quality of life. the reason that urbanization has been a trend over the past 150 years that shows no sign of stopping, is because population urbanization is a multiplier on the effectiveness of quality of life, because it makes the cost to maintain higher quality of life cheaper per unit of life.^1^

for example, yes, you can supply a neighbourhood with individual wells, granted. but surely it would be cheaper for your community to build one massive well, and then everyone in the neighbourhood can collect the water at the well? the community could all pay their share to maintain the well, and then the per unit cost of the well would be cheaper to build and maintain.

whilst you're at it, since there's only one well, you can put in a really fancy pump and purifier system. a really high quality rig, with low cost to run. that way, you only need to maintain 1 efficient pump and purifier, rather than 20 or 30 less efficient ones that would cost more fuel to run as an aggregate. the unit cost per person of the pump and purifier setup would be cheaper to run and maintain.

if you wanna go really bougie, you could all chip in to collectively install pipes to every house so that your local community doesn't have to walk to the well. if you build slightly more pipes than you need, this would act as insurance so that if one pipe breaks, you don't all lose supply, and the water could flow round... other pipes... and... ...wait this just sounds like a municipal supply but with extra steps...

i know i'm being facetious, but the reality is that it is just not measurably cheaper to live out in isolated pockets, through supplying individual infrastructure on a per person basis.^2^ economies of scale dictates this relationship.^3^ it's inescapable.^4^. it's inevitable.^5^ by all means, if it's the only option someone has to provide utilities for themself, they should use it. but let's not pretend that it's more expensive to group up, live closer, and share the cost burden through communal resources.

i will trust you are aware of "economies of scale", but i have linked a video here for those who are not aware, and also don't want to read papers like a total nerd. ☝️🤓

[1]. (??? what would the units for quality of life per capita be i wonder? joy/kg? lol)

[2]. "The results indicate that cost savings can be achieved by increases in the scale of production...", from "Productivity growth, economies of scale and scope in the water and sewerage industry: The Chilean case", by Molinos-Senante and Maziotis, accessible at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8162666/

[3]. "...more spread out settlement (“Dispersion”) leads to diseconomies in distribution...", from "Economies of scale, distribution costs and density effects in urban water supply: a spatial analysis of the role of infrastructure in urban agglomeration", by Hugh B., accessible at https://etheses.lse.ac.uk/285/

[4]. "...agglomeration economies make firms and workers more productive in dense urban environments than in other locations.", from "The economics of urban density", by Duranton and Pupa, accssible at https://diegopuga.org/research.html#density

[5]. "Econometric analysis of the data from the Big Mac price survey revealed a significant positive effect of being in a rural area on the increase in prices.", from "Identifying the size and geographic scope of short-term rural cost-of-living increases in the United States", by Díaz-Dapena, Loveridge & Paredes, accessible at "https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00168-023-01244-z"

come on over, we have greggs, we can eat that to pass the downtime if it happens