I'm a long time Mastodon user, and I've observed multiple cycles of user influxes (usually caused by some unpopular decision at Twitter) followed by slow but steady decline as these new users got frustrated, disappointed, attacked or something similar. Each wave however did leave a portion that stuck around. I can't tell you whether Mastodon or Lemmy will "succeed", but it's clear by now that both their respective user bases couldn't even agree on the definition of success.

This might sound like a negative, but if you look at corporate social media which has a pretty clear vision of what its own success looks like (is this fair?), it might also be partly positive. Also, while success might be hard to define and agree on in the Fediverse, I think that these networks are more resilient to total failure than traditional social media (though again, this statement hides some implicit assumptions).

Ultimately, I've learned to stop worrying about this. People will talk about what they want to talk about, and this will continue to change and evolve. Lemmy needs better moderation tools (as demonstrated by the recent CSAM attack), but I believe it will get them in time. If you want to talk about something different on Lemmy: do! Just post it, or create a community. It might not explode over night, but it might catch on.

Mastodon and now Lemmy are the only social media I actively use now (permanently deleted my Twitter account on the day the Tate interview was published "exclusively", but was less active there for years) , and I feel the better for it. I've observed tremendous progress in the Fediverse during the past six years and it's very encouraging in the long term.

This should be a big story. Very very big.

Not novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries

The title (click bait as it is) withholds the most important qualifier from the text of which AI we are talking about:

"“Overall, our model shows that the job loss from AI computer vision, even just within the set of vision tasks, will be smaller than the existing job churn seen in the market [...]”

Sure, computer vision is important for some jobs, but it's a much smaller subset of jobs that is really deemed protected as claimed by the study. If the knowledge has already been coded to text on the other hand, it's a different story.

"To a request for comment, X only sent Ars an auto-response, saying, "Busy now, please check back later." (To be fair, in this case "check back later" is a good summary of what happened.)" 😂

It is referring to that Roblox developer conference. But yeah, somewhat click baity as people might be hoping to get one for cheap.

Yes, yes and yes (I contribute money).

Kali Linux introduced a script to reskin the DE to look as closely as possible like Windows a few years ago.

It takes time. Twitter (or whatever it wants to be called) has an algorithm expressly aimed at keeping you "engaged", whereas Mastodon is just a stream of toots which you see based on the time you decide to visit. Should you stick with it, eventually two things will happen:

1. You will find accounts and topic to follow which will fill your timeline with content that is relevant and interesting to you, and, perhaps more importantly
2. Your mind will give up the habit of being hooked on a social media stream (apologies if I'm implying something that isn't true for you - it certainly was for me).

In the end, maybe you decide it's not for you, but I've been using it for years (since 2017), and over time it's completely replaced Twitter for me. I'm keeping three accounts for different interests (and one on Pixelfed), logged into all of them using Fedilab. I actually deleted my Twitter account the day the Tucker/Tate interview hit the light of day, but I stopped actively visiting it years earlier. My mental state improved a lot over time since I moved on.

I'm A YouTube Premium subscriber, and I've been noticing this delay on my TV for a few days now - a very noticeable, long pause when opening the home screen until the thumbnails are loaded. I'll explicitly check other places too now, I'm not sure if it's also happening in Firefox for me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

I actually upvoted the comment because I agree that silencing voices (which aren't harassing or abusive) is a bad thing, regardless of what opinion they are expressing. But downvotes aren't the same as admins banning you based purely on difference of opinion, let's not conflate the two. This thread is about the latter, while downvotes are just another form of free speech.

Do you have a signed agreement with them on the original schedule? I don't think it's legal for them to unilaterally change that agreement.

Thanks for explaining! Let me explain why I disagree with this in general. I'll share a personal anecdote, bear with me please.

So, a feminist friend shared with me a book on human trafficking for sexual exploitation written by a group of investigative journalists that she had helped translate to Serbian. It was thoroughly researched and well documented. Reading it left a mark on me and taught me things about the world that shatter the childish worldview (this was decades ago, I was a young teenager at the time).

Now, the Serbian translation was prefaced by my friend's fellow activist who was clearly a misandrist. The preface was filled with slurs and general assumptions of complicity and guilt about exclusively men, despite the fact that even the very book the preface was for stated that men also get trafficked (though less), and that women themselves are not rarely involved in the illegal trafficking chains of operation (think Ghislane Maxwell).

Reading that preface made me feel unjustly attacked and I would have dropped the book and never got to the good, educational part, had it not been for my friend's highest recommendation (I'm glad I stuck with it). It turns out the woman who wrote this had had bad experiences with men in her life, and used this otherwise well researched book as a vessel to vent her personal hate for men, which was borne out of her own trauma.

While it can be considered "justified" that she feels this way, this damaged greatly the overall message of the Serbian translation, which clearly took a lot of effort to research, document and write, and than translate and publish in my country. Its educational impact was greatly diminished by the editor's choice (out of activist camaraderie, I'm assuming) to include the hateful text at the very beginning, which unjustly attacks the very audience who would most benefit by learning from the unbiased body of the book. It's a tragically missed opportunity.

While social media exacerbates these issues (all this happened long before social media existed), and bad faith actors attempt to skew positive feminist messages, I think we shouldn't excuse the feminist movement for some of its own failings.

To conclude, I'm a male feminist, but I think writing "all men are thrash" or "all cops are bastards", or "all are " in general in the public sphere is irresponsible.

This... is actually true. I'll concede that even as recently as 4, 5 years ago it might have not been entirely true, but now it is - Linux has become so accessible (look at Mint, Pop_OS) while Windows has (somehow) become even more hostile to its user base to the point that an average user would actually have an easier time switching than staying in the long term. I didn't think I'd be able to write this with a straight face, but I honestly think this is now true.

I stick with DuckDuckGo, it stays as it is. Every time I go to Google I see they are messing with the experience, making it easier to end up on sponsored content and harder to just get what you need. Not so with DuckDuckGo.

Depends on the size. Of the pics I mean.

This is a great analysis, thanks for compiling such a comprehensive response.

I hate Roblox. Their Android game somehow goes around Google account settings and allows kids to buy "Robux" for real money without authentication for payments (and, of course, makes this easy to do by accident). Furthermore, this real money can go into a temp account without an email address, so if you delete the app without creating a proper account, your money is unrecoverable. Their "customer support" is very unhelpful. We try to be liberal yet sane when it comes to technology for kids, but Roblox is prohibited for our children.

I agree with most things you wrote, but one thing confuses me. You seem to suggest that writing 'all men are thrash' is ok in some contexts, but when spread without that context can radicalize boys?

I was on a decade-and-a-half gaming hiatus (job, kids, the usual) until we got the Nintendo Switch early in the pandemic (and it was a saviour for the whole family). When the Steam Deck was announced, I hesitated a day or two (this probably pushed me three to four months in the delivery queue), but eventually realized that this is the device I've been waiting for my whole life (a Linux-based gaming hand held which can also be used as a general purpose computer) and ordered it. I had a dormant Steam account with only Civilization V in it (my wife got it for me on DVD when it came out, and that's when I made the account). Since then, I bought >200 games and >100 DLCs (I started playing some of the lighter ones on my under-powered Linux laptop before the Deck arrived and continued on the Deck using cloud saves), finished multiple games, and felt sleep depraved for months.

Currently, me and my wife are playing Divinity 2 in split screen mode on the big TV. I also use the Deck for online courses, responding to emails, writing documents, surfing, etc. I created a desktop controls binding for handheld desktop mode usage which allows me to change zoom and brightness, bring up the keyboard easily, copy and paste, open the start menu, alt-tab between windows and go in and out of full screen mode etc. all with one or two motions of the controls. For example, I mapped swiping up and down on the left touchpad to mouse wheel up and down, and swiping left and right on it to SHIFT+mouse wheel up and down, allowing me to scroll in all directions using my left thumb. This allows me to use it for reading illustrated books where I need to zoom in and out and scroll across the page.

Steam Deck is a game changer in so many ways.

I'm sorry to hear people having issues with FF. I remember the instability spell it had way back (6, 7 years ago?) but I've had zero issues with it on Mac, Linux and Android.

If your wife likes gaming, you can play co-op on the said TV! The dock is somewhat expensive, but any USB C hub with power in and HDMI out will do. We have a thin keyboard with the mouse pad built in and two blue tooth controllers - voila! For optimal play on large screens, you should run it in Desktop mode. For gaming, I still use the Big Picture mode for Steam to be able to navigate to games with the controller, but with the keyboard and mouse, you can use it for anything really. I've responded to school emails, done online courses, even built small games in Unity (did a course on it), all from the comfort of my armchair and big TV screen.

Steam Deck is so versatile, you'll love it!

Finally Windows users have a legit reason to use the command line! /s

I hear you 😁. For whatever reason I stuck with the Vim tutorial and did it a few times over the years. Now I'm using the IdeaVIM extension in IntelliJ - that mode system is just sooo powerful. It has a horrible learning curve, yes, but if you manage to stick with it, it pays huge dividends. I probably know, like, 18% of all commands, and it completely changed how I edit files (mostly for coding, but also text).

My path was the same - there was a time when FF was messing up badly trying to keep up with Chrome, and that's when I switched to Chrome. FF then cleaned up their act, but the damage was done. Or it might simply have been that Chrome was so much slicker (and not evil) at the time. I went back to FF around the time Google merged all accounts with Chrome accounts, and I much prefer it to Chrome now. I'm sad to see it not being able to regain its past glory and serious traction. I blame it mostly on convenience, inertia and "normies" generally not carrying about the same things as some "techies".

While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren't making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

This is a very rosy eyed statement. The "soft" power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.

I agree about the tactic, but I don't feel this particular article aims to use it (though I concede the wording of the title is a bit clumsy). The final paragraph clarifies the clickbait (as it happens nowadays):

“There are already three or four influencers jockeying for position if he goes down,” he says. “He’s a symptom, not the problem.”

Lemmy just point out that this comment is underrated.

OMG 😂, so good! Your comment I mean, not arsenic.

Ouch

Ouch, not sure how that happened. Here: https://www.humanetech.com/course

I updated the post as well, thanks for flagging!

I've been using Firefox for years to access Google services, and have never ever had a single issue. I hope it stays this way, with all this Web Environment Integrity shenanigans they are pushing for at the moment.

Thanks, great list!

Yes, that's what I meant. I take courses using Firefox in desktop mode. The Unity course was one of them.

Yep. I listened to a course on Coursera about Unity game development (alas, Unity), and installed Unity Hub and the engine, and made actual (simple) games on the Deck it self using a keyboard and TV. Then I was able to test play the said games on the Deck right there. Here are the links to the games if you care to check them out:

• https://moormaan.itch.io/solar-system-project-for-the-coursera-unity-course
• https://moormaan.itch.io/2d-shooter-for-coursera

Can you please elaborate on the security layer that flatpak adds? Some commentators here suggest Flathub is not secure.

This comment seems misunderstood, judging by the downvotes.

I came here to type that, so I'll just upvote yours instead. Such a versatile device, the Steam Deck!