Father, Hacker (Information Security Professional), Open Source Software Developer, Inventor, and 3D printing enthusiast.
riskable@kbin.social to 
Politics@kbin.social – 56 points – 
riskable@kbin.social to Politics@kbin.social – 9 points – 
riskable@kbin.social to Politics@kbin.social – 135 points – 
riskable@kbin.social to Politics@kbin.social – 76 points – 
Can you do us all a favor and blog about your experience setting this up and running it somewhere? I'll follow you 👍
I was thinking about making my own Federated kbin-like server (writing the code from scratch) as an academic exercise. I'm a full stack developer and it's the perfect thing to hone my non-embedded (full std) Rust skills and freshen my JavaScript skills.
I have several side projects going on at the moment (that I've been working on constantly for almost three years straight) and I need a mental break from that. I'd love to learn what's a pain in the ass VS what's good from a semi-layman's perspective so I can make something better.
I am with you on rural America getting the short end of the Internet stick! It's just that historically we've given ISPs over $400 billion dollars and they didn't hold up their end of the bargain:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis\_b\_5839394
Giving them more money isn't going to solve the problem. We're at that phase of the game where we need to stop letting them scam us and just do it ourselves. We already build our own roads which is vastly more complicated and requires much more money than laying fiber. If we can make interstates we can lay down fiber optic cable.
We can charge ISPs for the privilege to use it and make different ISPs compete on the same physical network. That's how it works in many countries and it's a perfectly legitimate way to make ISPs incredibly angry which I think we can all agree would be an ideal outcome. If they don't like it we can set up a time next week between 10AM and 4PM to wait for us to show up to discuss. When we don't show up we will make them call to reschedule 👍
I'm not having any problems at all with my dopamine fix. The Fediverse has reached that critical threshold where there's no shortage of typos to make fun of with snarky replies and people willingly walking into dad jokes.
So yeah, I'm good 👍
Not sure about the optics of Reddit force-reenabling a subreddit devoted to piracy LOL
You don't want an FDA, CDC, DOJ, EPA, IRS, etc‽ What about the FCC or FAA?
I second this. I haven't got a certification in like decades but an accessibility certification sounds fantastic.
There hasn't been an IT certification I've seen in forever where I was like, "yeah I can't just go and learn that on my own" but one that's all about accessibility does sound like something I couldn't just learn on my own... since I'm not disabled/blind and don't know anyone who is.
What I really want is to learn about accessibility testing. Oh man that'd be like having a superpower! With a skill like that I'd be useful to literally any and every FOSS team that exists!
Aside: I am blind in one eye so I'm one accident away from actually being blind some day. I should learn this stuff now just in case!
AITruthBot will be just downvoted into oblivion on half of social media. They'll call it, "liberal propaganda bot"
"Ain't nothin cheaper than a dystopian hellscape!" -Texas new marketing campaign
You can't change someone's mind with facts and logic if facts and logic weren't used to make up their mind in the first place.
You also can't change someone's mind about any given topic if their stance on that topic is part of their identity. To a conservative, their very core identity/belief is that everyone is made "by God" exactly the way they're supposed to be. Before you could get them to believe that something like gender dysphoria is real you'd first have to make them believe that their religion is wrong.
I don't think Google cares if the Fediverse succeeds or not. All they care about is that it can be indexed and people will be able to show Google ads on their instances.
Google doesn't have a Reddit equivalent or even any other social network competitor (anymore; they killed them all). They explicitly chose to exit that entire concept of products.
The only reason XMPP mattered to Google at the time was they were trying to compete with Apple for messaging on mobile devices. XMPP meant that Android devices using Google Hangouts/Chat/Gmail could chat with users on other platforms/services while Apple's chat app could only do SMS.
I guess what I'm saying is that Google is mostly irrelevant from the perspective of the Fediverse other than the fact that it can index and maybe give priority to discussions of certain products/topics like it does with Reddit currently.
I'm going to take a guess here and say that the majority of evangelicals (which is the largest block of conservatives right now) do take issue with boob jobs. They also don't like it when girls cut their hair short or wear non-feminine clothing, to give other related examples. At least, that's the evangelicals here in Florida that I know.
There's varying degrees of just how much deviation from their cultural norms are allowed (I'd argue that's what defines how "conservative" they are). This is why conservatives can get extremely upset when LGBTQ+ people are allowed to be themselves in public... Because it normalizes them.
Conservatives know that if it becomes normal for their kids to see/meet gay dads/moms, trans people, or other non-binary people on a regular basis the very definition of what they believe to be "normal" will be swept right out from under them in the minds of their children. The very foundation of what they believe won't be passed on to the next generation.
That's why conservatives are obsessed with children "being exposed" to LGBTQ+ topics/people in school. They know that if their kid grows up around completely harmless LGBTQ+ people that their kid will just naturally start to believe that these people are harmless (because they are), normal, and "no big deal". That's their worst nightmare!
I'd go so far as to suggest that it is impossible (today) for someone to claim they're a conservative while simultaneously claiming that LGBTQ+ people are born that way. There's nothing conservative about that (it's beyond cognitive dissonance). Furthermore, it goes completely against the Bible's teachings that women are property! Property can't just up and change itself into a man/actual thinking person!
The only time I've seen a super conservative person change their beliefs was when two of their fundamental beliefs came in conflict with each other and the conservative side became a problem: An empathy-free asshole I'm acquainted with had a grandchild that was immunocompromised (no idea if it was permanent or what caused it) when COVID hit.
He wore masks everywhere except his house. He told me that that the people at his church "insulted him" and "practically kicked him out" for refusing to remove his mask. He basically made the decision at that point in his life that maybe these people weren't the best people after all and he stopped going to church.
IMHO: We should retain automatic federation approval but with automated de-federation for bad behavior. Thresholds could be increased for "merely very active" instances so they don't get automatically defederated while newcomers get the threshold for "plebs" 😁
Example: If your instance has just a handful of users spamming like crazy or any number of users spamming the same content/links that would put your instance over such a ban threshold pretty fast.
I'd say this information will come as a shock to many but apparently it won't!
OMG great question! I want:
DeSantis was there at Guantanamo when the US government was torturing the people that were kidnapped from all over the world (aka "extraordinary renditions")...
https://newrepublic.com/post/172290/ron-desantis-explodes-asked-role-guantanamo-torture
I live in reality
Building online communities takes time. Migrating from one site to another takes a little less time but it's still a long-term thing.
It's not so different from moving a retail location. Your store is moving from address A to address B down the road. You put up a sign at the old storefront telling customers, "it's just down the road!" with instructions to get there and yet businesses that do this see massive sales drops. It's not uncommon to lose half or three quarters of your customer traffic in the first three months after changing locations. It usually takes a year or more to stabilize to a new normal.
I see no reason why the migration of communities from Reddit to the Fediverse will be different since this type of migration is based on basic human behavior. We need to view it as a new location getting a great big lucky bonus surge because of people angry at our competitor and not some on/off switch.
The key is to maintain quality at the new location so the "customers" start to realize they're getting a better experience here than they did over at Reddit.
STOP WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU'RE DOING and fill out the form:
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/16136257875348-Data-Caps-Experience-Form
Tell the FCC how much data caps suck and how--if anything--it should be illegal for companies like Comcast to exempt their own services from the data caps. If their IPTV-based "cable" service is streaming 4k video 24/7 that should be included in a customer's data usage otherwise it's an abuse of a monopoly over the user's connection!
Even if they didn't ban caps outright the caps would disappear overnight if companies were forced to include their own services in customers total data usage figures (because 4k streaming TV services would eat up 99% of the average user's cap in like three days LOL).
most Reddit employees spend most of their time playing Freecell and jerking off
To be fair, if that's all they did Reddit wouldn't be in this dumpster fire of a situation right now.
Oh he'd probably do that. Sounds right up his alley! To save money on rebranding he might name it, Alcohol, Tobacco, and FreedomFlights. That way they can still be called, "the ATF".
They can continue to raid people's homes but now with extraordinary renditions and torture; just the way DeSantis likes it.
I always felt that rule was no fun. No fun at all! 😁
Does this magazine even have such a rule? I didn't see anything like that (and on mobile it's not showing me any way to access the description or rules/stuff in the sidebar).
BTW: If my editorialized headline is wrong I'll delete the post but I read the article and it looks like these are definitely grants and not subsidies and they must go to qualifying entities which for these types of grants can only be ISPs (and only the biggest would have the resources to even fall within the scope/apply). I don't even think any reasonable person could say it's even misleading!
My opinion is that the regular news media isn't doing its damned job lately and the evidence is right in front of our eyes: Giving every politician and business a huge benefit of the doubt and not pointing out precisely where and how decisions/changes/actions are going to play out in reality. The reality here is that:
He's so weird.
I've never used anything Oracle out of principle
As someone who's been forced to use Oracle products many times in the past I nod to your standards and tip my hat for your sound judgement 👍
Actually this is an area I have loads of experience with! If you want to reduce the cost of higher education stop subsidizing student loans! I work for a huge bank that deals with zillions of student loans... They're like free money for the banks.
The best way to summarize the student loan problem is thus: When you give everyone a subsidy no one gets a subsidy.
The US government started handing out what amounts to free money for students and colleges and universities just raised their tuition costs to collect more of it. Lather, rinse, repeat! Every year they take more and every year the US government hands out more to pick up the difference. It's a system that's inherently flawed.
The correct way to make college cheaper is to pay for colleges directly rather than funneling money through 3rd party banks (we're literally just handing the finance industry free money... They don't deserve it! I know because I work for them!).
Make colleges free by paying for them with taxes just like so many other countries.
WTF‽ So... What you're saying is that even though it's vastly more efficient to have free college (funded via taxes) we still should not have that because some (poor) people will... cheat?
...because clearly nobody--especially rich kids--don't cheat today. LOL!
That's like saying we shouldn't allow comments here because some people will say stupid shit. I know! Let's have a test! If you can spot the unbelievably classiest/racist example comments (we'll copy & paste from your comment) you will be allowed in. Otherwise take out a comment loan and join the other serfs!
While you're using your camera you'll now get popups like, "I see you're suffering from bad human skin! All Lizardio™ skinsuits get the 12-step treatment in our human testing lab. Try one today!
'I've been using Lizardio™ skinsuits for over a decade' -Ron DeSantis"
Listen here, you! I paid good money for this here comment so you're gonna read it, alright‽
<Brought to you by FUBAR, a corporation with huge pockets that can afford to sway opinion with lots of carefully placed bot comments>
The S in IoT stands for security.
On July 1st when the apps stop working.
"Cultural Elite" is not a dog whistle for Jewish people. That's an actual term that academics and historians use to describe people like doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, famous artists, and similar.
"George Soros" is the current right wing dog whistle for, "Jewish people".
Haha "1 hour of AOL" allowance... I used to hack AOL (before AOL4Free came out) by generating fake accounts using fake credit card numbers. I even automated the whole thing with Quickeys (kinda like AutoIt! For Macs back in the day).
Freshman year of high school I was generating loads of fake accounts and giving them out to pretty girls (haha one of my slickest moves in high school). It was genius: The accounts would only last a few weeks before AOL would discover that the credit card numbers were fake. So the girls had to keep coming back to me for new ones 😁
It wasn't something you could plan either: You would be chatting away with your friends and strangers in 23-person chat rooms (a/s/l? Haha) then suddenly you'd get disconnected and your account wouldn't work anymore. So the next day at school I'd have these girls desperately looking for me like I was their crack dealer!
One morning in the cafeteria before school started a couple girls were rushing--fighting--to get to me first (I would sit waaaay in the far corner with my pack of geeks). There was a teacher standing right next to us talking with the cafeteria workers and these two girls were smart enough not discuss illicit activities right in front of teachers so they both said at pretty much he exactly same moment:
"RISKABLE! I NEED YOUR NUMBER!"
Both the teacher and the cafeteria workers were stunned and amazed, haha. After the girls left the teacher came over to me and said, "Wow! You're a popular guy!"
For reference, I ended up marrying one of those girls 😁👍
I just thought it was funny that the very embodiment of "cultural elite" talking head (Robert Reich) is the one in the news today warning us about just how fascist today's Republican party has become. I mean, he's not wrong and my "clever wording" might get some who would never read such an article to actually read it.
Maybe the wording is more clever than you thought? 🤫
Isn't all solar power space based?
I'm kidding, of course. I look forward to getting microwaved from the sky and then later, watching our sun dim and the earth ultimately freezing over from the Dyson Sphere being built around it.
What a cattastrophe!
You're bringing up a very specific problem with the FDA that can be easily fixed with the same sort of legislation that prevents congressmen from becoming lobbyists for a number of years and talking about it like it's an existential issue. It's not.
The FDA does incredibly important work preventing disease outbreaks and unsanitary food for all Americans. Perhaps you yourself are a snakeoil salesman that hates how the FDA prevents you from selling bullshit like it's real medicine?
Not only that but the FDA has the most strict ethics body of any Federal agency. If there's even a hint of something unethical going on with a clinical trial the whole thing is basically cancelled. Everything must follow not only the letter of the law but the spirit as well.
There's plenty of Federal agencies that have weak oversight (e.g. ATF, Secret Service) but the FDA isn't one of them.
The concept behind bamboo clothing isn't so much that it's tough it's that it grows really fucking fast and doesn't require as much water (which means you can also grow it in more places). So it's cheaper to grow but also cheaper to harvest and ultimately a lot more environmentally friendly.
The chemicals used to process bamboo into the type of fiber used in clothing aren't really a big deal (sodium hydroxide aka "caustic soda") and have relatively straightforward (and safe) disposal processes. So if the fibers are processed in the West you can assume that regulations will require safe disposal of waste. They're not exotic or new enough to be of much concern.
However, if it's made in a 3rd world country with heavy corruption of regulatory agencies (e.g. India and Bangladesh) and/or completely inadequate enforcement/policing (e.g. China) that's a very real problem. Though not so much a global pollution problem like global warming as much as it's a local pollution problem.
TL;DR: Bamboo is all around way better for the environment than cotton.
If you're working out in those pants and they don't smell like vinegar after 4-5 uses without washing it means your sweat salt concentration is high enough to keep odor-causing bacteria at bay. Which is basically normal 👍
If you get headaches after working out though or experience vertigo then you're losing too much salt and should down some electrolyte solution (e.g. Gatorade) instead of just water.
i don't want no aroma on my pants
That cave man smell is popular at M:TG events 👍
Most of us don't want any aroma on our pants.
people who pay their way through college typically don't cheat as it's extremely counterproductive.
[Citation Needed]
I'd also like to point out that everyone who's paying taxes in a fully funded collegiate system is paying for it.
What's counterproductive is bringing up cheating like it has anything at all to do with funding college. It's an entirely orthogonal concept.
I may be just a pie-in-the-sky optimist but I think the duplicate communities thing will die down eventually. Natural selection will do it's thing and we'll all eventually settle in specific communities on specific instances.
Based on the nature of life itself all living things become specialized over time. This includes creatures, jobs, products, communities, etc. So what's likely to happen is some communities will die out or be abandoned while others will thrive and yet others will simply become more specialized.
Hypothetical example: /m/gifs on Kbin might become the place to find perfect loops and high quality/serious stuff while /m/gifs on some other instance might become the place for animated silliness.