tswerts

I'm not waiting to see Twitter fail. I'm just hoping that the federated alternatives for Twitter and Reddit will get more mainstream. And I must say that I'm happy with the way things are evolving at Mastodon and Lemmy.

Am I wrong in assuming that OF, and people making money of it, isn't that mainstream at all?

Being from Belgium, following American politics started for me together with the rise of YouTube and I could watch episodes of The Daily Show on it and where things have gone from topics like 'Dick Cheney shot someone in the face' to news like this. It really made me stop watching talkshows that I really enjoyed like The Daily Show, The Late Show with SC, ... . It's so much politics, every day again, on so many television shows. Is it also perceived as such in the USA itself? In Belgium, for many reasons, politics isn't 24/7 discussed everywhere, everytime.

I hope the people of the USA will make the right decision. But, looking at it from Belgium, I'm also so tired of, since 2016, looking at every presidential election in the USA as being the one that will possibly sent the world into chaos. Every night-show, podcaster, ... that I'm able to watch on YouTube can only discuss the situation from the point of view from one side. This makes the programs that once were very entertaining to watch, much less fun. So since I don't have any impact on the outcome, I'm skipping many of these shows that were once a nice discraction. I'm curious if in the USA itself the people are also taking distance from this rethoric on television to not let it impact their daily lives too much.

I'm not a hardcore gamer but I'm a fan of cloud gaming, first Google Stadia (rip) and later Gforce Now. And Gforce Now supports Steam games so the more games available in the Steam-catalogue, the better.

Thank for bringing this up. I'm currently using a Samsung Galaxy S10e. I mostly use the smartphone from my pocket:

• listening to podcasts with earbuds on;
• running with Strava on;
• working in the garden with music on;
• checking messages with my smartwatch on;
• driving my car with Android Auto on;
• ... . Of course I also use my smartphone itself for messaging, shopping online, banking, ordering takeaway, ... . And a larger screen would definitely be more comfortable in these cases. But having a larger smartphone when I'm currently using my smartphone while it's in my pocket, is a step back. In fact, for use at home I still have a Samsung tablet to have a bigger screen die when that's more useful. When I would switch to the SG S23 version, it seems that the dimensions of the new device are quite similar? Dimensions: S10e: 5.60 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches (142.2 x 69.9 x 7.9 mm) S23: 5.76 x 2.79 x 0.30 inches (146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6mm) Zenphone 10: 5.77 x 2.68 x 0.37 inches (146.5 x 68.1 x 9.4 mm)

So as long as the basic version of the SG s-series is sold in the above dimensions, I'm not worried 🤞

This got mee googling Nextcloud and I think I'm going to give it a try 😱

I didn't want to go into it too much but in Belgium there isn't a political with more than 25% representation. So each government has to be a coalition of several political parties. There isn't a system where the winner takes it all. A voter in Belgium doesn't identify itself with one party for life. So we often switch between political parties. Here's no 'us against them' culture. And because the outrage against other political parties isn't a thing, it also isn't a daily thing in the media.

I have both a Lemmy and Mastodon account besides my Twitter and Reddit account. Every person and channel I follow on both Twitter and Reddit, I immediately follow on Lemmy and Mastodon once they have an account and channel over there. But it's all about content and interaction. Keeping track of the Ukraine war, for instance, was difficult on Mastodon. But posting on Mastodon was a much nicer experience in regard to interaction with members over there.

Watching it all from Belgium, it seems that the contested speech of Trump is purposefully aimed at:

• making the previous wrong remark yesterday's news;
• flooding the news/people with controversial remarks so it's impossible to 'keep count';
• raising the bar of what shocks Trump-supporters and -opponents.

Last Week Tonight, on the other hand, I still find and satire and informative.

I started several years ago with the YouTube Premium family plan. It gave me:

• YouTube Originals
• YouTube Music
• No ads
• Background playing

My kids are fine with it. It saves me and them a Spotify subscription. Having YouTube Originals disappear somewhat, lessened the value for me. Once the kids are not under my roof anymore, I'll have to rethink this subscription plan. But that will be in eight years, or so. In that time so much will change, it's not even worth thinking about it.

🤣

Thanks for the warning 🙂 Sometimes I still think I have as much spare time as 10 years ago 😉

Limp Bizkit

It was a local festival Pukkelpop in the year 2000. First of all, if you see the line-up, you'll never get these artists together nowadays. But it was day 2 and Limp Bizkit was preparing everyone for Cypress Hill. Only Limp Bizkit was so energetic and got the whole crowd in that same energy. By the time it was Cypress Hills turn, the crowd had to decompress. Cypress Hill didn't get the crowd in the right atmosphere until they said 'Limp Bizkit were amazing!' and the crowd cheered 'Yeah!' and Cypress Hills from that moment on got the crowd going.

When Twitter was Twitter the same concerns were outed. Now X is Twitter minus 80% of its employees. From an economic standpoint it seems that investing in moderation doesn't give you less concerns and complaints from the outside regarding disinformation, more extreme content, ... . The advertisers have the most impact, I think. Together with the users that will look for an alternative.

Exactly 🙂

Wasn't the penalty for not going ahead with the purchase 1 billion dollars? That seems to have been the better deal after all?

I used to play around with a lot of internet browsers and executed on top of that scripts in greasemonkey, add-ons, plug-ins, ... . But the trustworthiness of these things were not clear for me anymore. So now I'm at using Edge Chromium. Better the devil you know 🙂

I'm still on Twitter (X) and I don't have a problem with seeing Netflix-ads in my feed. I somewhat have a problem with a product like Twitter being bought by one person. If that could have been prevented in the first place, a tweet from one person would not jeopardize the monetization or engagement of that platform.