Probably learn first order logic (aka boolean algebra). But something important to keep in mind is: just because an argument contains a fallacy doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong. There might be another logical argument that proves the same conclusion without using a fallacy. So it’s actually a fallacy to assume Fallacy -> Falsehood.

Wow, talk about preventable deaths…

Harvesting user data is a symptom, mitm and taking advantage of users is the root of the problem.

Saying they don’t profit much from your data is like saying, “they only kick you in the nuts a little bit.”

A completely random ordering of a deck of cards. You can have a deck pre-stacked in this order, learn some false shuffles, have someone pick a card and place it back anywhere they want without marking its location in any way, and when you inspect the deck you know exactly what their card is. And they’ll never guess that the way you did it was memorizing the order of every card in the deck.

I’m sure there are a lot more advanced ways to take advantage of this, just a handy ability to have in your back pocket (literally).

They’re still around aren’t they? What am I missing?

I think this article by Alyssa Rosenzweig is important to consider. I think it does make some assumptions about the purpose of federating, but it does make one very important point that I think everyone in this space is ignoring: the internet was already fundamentally federated from the beginning, and look how that turned out.

It’s for this reason that I believe a fediverse only survives due to a culture of keeping it alive, but I don’t know that that culture will survive long term in a free market. It might be that the internet is just like the rest of the world: an ebb and flow of democratic and totalitarian states, history being forgotten, lessons being relearned the hard way. That might just be how the internet works now.

I’m not much of an anime person (and maybe this movie gives that away), but Spirited Away is so magical. Just everything about it is so detailed, I’m entranced every time.

NERD!

Yeah, I had to leave memes because it was my whole feed. I feel like one of lemmy’s biggest potential selling points would be a scriptable feed. There are some small communities I want to see every post in, and other huge ones that I only want to see maybe the top 5 from.

I hear you, perhaps there is a fundamental difference there with the digital world.

I really want to see some linux distro get to the point that users don’t have to wonder if something has gone horribly wrong for them. As much as I do disapprove of some of Apple’s repairability policies, and as much of a toxic human being Jobs was, Steve Jobs really was a visionary. He saw that if you paid attention to detail, you could turn a computer into something that “just worked” for people who weren’t tech savvy. Until that point, it was engineers selling to other engineers, they just couldn’t see the potential that technology had. As far as I can tell, the linux world has never had someone with such a relentless vision for user experience. I personally think it’s because the opportunity for profit just isn’t there, or at least no one sees it.

But there was a time when buying a windows license meant you got a copy of windows and that was it; now no matter what you do it’s full of ads and telemetry and constant popups about new features you never asked for. I would gladly pay the price of a windows license for a linux distro that was as thought out and usable as an Apple or Windows product in their prime, and maybe we’re entering a window (no pun intended) of time where that’s finally possible.

For maximum effectiveness, open your mouth and make a “BONG” noise. It’s literally the same technology as a radar detector.

Yeah for sure, we’re all allowed to have emotions. I just find this quote helps me process mine and maybe it will help others with theirs.

Hey there, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not discounting anything you’re saying, I agree that it’s definitely a very real phenomenon, and didn’t intend to provoke a defensive response. I didn’t say that you were “rejecting interacting with everyone”, on the contrary, I’m saying that in the physical world you deal with people who act like dicks, but you specifically DON’T reject interacting with everyone. I’m drawing a parallel between that behavior in the physical world with how I believe we should also behave in the digital one.

I also did not say that I have any personal aversion to corporations, I owe most of my daily comforts to corporations, so I would be a hypocrite to say as much. But if I had said that “I don’t think we should stick our hands in blenders” that doesn’t mean I have a personal aversion to blenders.

Cheers

Unfortunately, those kinds of interactions are inevitable when the developer/user relationship is so close. And it goes both ways. I saw a thread just yesterday where a user reported an issue on github, a second user said they saw it too. Later the first user posted a workaround to the issue, and the second user came back with “took you long enough”, and that was the end of the exchange.

Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone. Similarly, a community of user-maintained software is going to have some asshats, but that doesn’t mean we should hand our computing freedom over to one or two corporations. Just my two cents.

“I never lose, either I win or I learn.”

As fluffy as this quote sounds, I always find it relevant. From taking on a difficult task at work, to getting past ladder anxiety in a video game. If you’ve ever executed on something so well that afterwards you felt like it was a waste of time, it might be. You didn’t get an opportunity to learn. Which reminds me of another relevant quote, “Losing is fun!”

Semi-related is the Boring Report. It’s an attempt to use modern LLM to remove sensationalism and bias from current media headlines.

From the description, this site seems to either be a Spotify research project, or at least powered by Spotify data in some way. It’s not clear to me.

Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 6,259 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as of 2023-07-12.

Personally, I cancelled my spotify account and moved to a combination of Plex and Tidal, but this project is just too cool not to use.

Most people I know sleep with a fan on for this reason. Really common, yeah.

https://everynoise.com/

It plots every genre of music on a 2D spectrum (“The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.”)

You can click on any genre and get band recommendations.

Or you can search for a specific band and find other bands plotted similarly.

Keepass is

• open source and free
• just uses a file, so you can sync it wherever/however you want
• has a browser plugin with autofill if you’re into that
• is supported on all platforms
• database lives in an encrypted file that you put wherever you choose