JubilantJaguar
@JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
- Comment on FR#156 – Share Where? 2 days ago:
An unusually clear explanatory article. This problem needs fixing. As a layperson it looks to me like the “discussion” mentioned needs to crystallize into a proper meeting of all stakeholders so as to get a binding decision about how to fix it.
- Comment on The Spread of Homo sapiens 1 week ago:
Technically prehistory but OK.
Would be interesting to have an update. There’s been a lot of new discoveries in the last 20 years.
- Comment on YSK: 'It turned out to be a tougher one': Trump says he was wrong about ending war in Ukraine 1 week ago:
What the hell is this completely random news article doing here? Seriously. Moderation needed.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 1 week ago:
OK I get all that and it’s not to be dismissed. But their product is better than what we have here. That’s why Blacksky built upon it and not upon this, despite the cost. The excessive centralization seems to be more of a human problem than a technical one. Humans take the path of least resistance and Bluesky’s resources have allowed it to make a product that the fediverse will never be able to compete with.
Personally, I get what I want here (I don’t use Bluesky) but it’s pretty clear to me that I’m not representative (in caring about the principle of decentralization) and neither are you. I’m a pragmatist by nature. Bluesky and AT Proto are an obvious improvement on Twitter. If they have the potential to be a version of decentralization that actually takes off and goes mainstream (because let’s be serious, the fediverse is not doing that), then personally I would take that win. It hasn’t happened yet but personally I’m not going to spit on it in advance like everyone here is doing.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 1 week ago:
they are in complete control of the real-world use of it
They’re not. I mentioned Blacksky.
As I understand it, the their endgame is that Bluesky will be a big fish in a pond of other fish, and that the best way to get that fishpond is to make Bluesky as good a product as possible, hence the (limited) VC money.
As a strategy it has risks but so does the alternative. To make the obvious comparison, UX on the fediverse is rubbish, with an incomprehensible onboarding funnel, amateurish design, servers that keep disappearing. There’s a reason Bluesky has eaten the fediverse’s lunch.
With respect, I think people here are making this into a sterile religious war when really it’s a disagreement about strategy. Some of the people who vouch for Bluesky I have been following for years. They want exactly the same things as most people here. Personally, I see no reason to question their intentions.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 1 week ago:
Fair enough. But, as you know already, AT Protocol is not chained to Bluesky. Other things are already being built on it (Blacksky for instance). Sure, the startup costs of federation are high, but that was a technical choice. To insist that it’s all a plot to become the next evil Twitter continues to feel a bit swivel-eyed to me.
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 1 week ago:
This seems to be the closest to a reasoned argument in this thread. Realistically, what should they be doing differently?
- Comment on Be Wary of Bluesky 1 week ago:
IMO this is unfair and conspiratorial. The people behind Bluesky have been quite clear about where they are trying to go (i.e. not simply replace Twitter), some of those people have a lot of credibility in this area, built up over years. Maybe they make different assumptions about tech and user preferences but I see no reason to assume evil intentions.
- Comment on Mastodon is testing easier ways to get you started in the fediverse 2 weeks ago:
With this attitude you’ll get the journalism you deserve, alas.
- Comment on YSK the phases of the moon 2 weeks ago:
Useful. As much as I’m comfortable with the general movements of Earth and Sun (i.e. seasons, latitudes, and so on) it’s always been a bit of a mystery what the Moon is doing.
This makes things a bit clearer.
- Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem 2 weeks ago:
Don’t be discouraged. Personally I don’t have the energy any more to endure the abuse of the mob (these “leftist” ignoramuses whose obsession with “Zionism” leads them to support literal fascism) but it’s important that somebody makes the points you’re making.
- Comment on Blocking Threads 2 weeks ago:
Meta gave up on the idea, effectively
From their perspective: not enough users to be worth the bother.
- Comment on YSK that Politico is a subsidiary of Axel Springer, a right-wing propaganda house 2 weeks ago:
Ha. Actually I believe there are hundreds of thousands who do (and good for you!). It’s a great model IMO. Foundation status with an endowment, free to access and beg banners saying “Pay so that others don’t have to”. Of course, the quirky status was a bit of an accident of history.
- Comment on YSK that Politico is a subsidiary of Axel Springer, a right-wing propaganda house 3 weeks ago:
Reminiscent of dumping on the Washington Post because Bezos.
The reason that quality independent journalism is so hard to find is that nobody much is paying for it. Including you, probably.
I listen to Politico’s EU Confidential podcast and it’s pretty good. The EU’s national medias are too parochial to cover Brussels, with Politico at least somebody’s doing it.
- Comment on Is it just me or is there a lot of Spam and abuse on Lemmy lately? 3 weeks ago:
Now that is some enthusiasm for the fediverse.
- Comment on YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened 4 weeks ago:
Or how to smuggle US politics into literally any community.
- Comment on Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse 5 weeks ago:
I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist
He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: “The USSR: A People’s Tragedy”.
- Comment on Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse 5 weeks ago:
Amusing. And what detective work! Your time is valuable, careful not to waste too much of it.
Personally I’m not especially bothered by sockpuppetry in itself (talking of people wasting their time…). But it’s obviously important to have a plurality of viewpoints. If only they would sockpuppet more creatively!
- Comment on Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse 5 weeks ago:
This seems right. Personally I’m not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves “communists” - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism… And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I’ll stop there.
Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to… dutifully.
- Comment on Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse 5 weeks ago:
Out of interest, how do you know it’s sockpuppets?
To be honest I’m genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I’m imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I’m being slightly optimistic, but I can’t see how they’ve convinced anyone here that “China bad” who didn’t already think that.
- Comment on Fediverse needs a Q&A (Questions & Answers) service before Quora runs out of money 5 weeks ago:
The real issue is that AI bots are making Q&A forums de-facto redundant. The StackExchange posted its stats recently, and activity is dropping through the floor there too.
Of course, this leaves the question of what the AI bots are going to do in a few years when they have no new original content to eat. But right now they still have a banquet.
- Comment on Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse 5 weeks ago:
Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, !china@sopuli.xyz, is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.
This person, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando’s “I hate China” blog. Hardly surprising that it’s not a very successful community.
I’ve asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn’t care. Oh well.
- Comment on Euro Cobra - The VFW Fokker/Westland P277 was a concept attack helicopter. In the same way that the AH-1 Cobra used a lot of the Huey "off-the-shelf" gear, this one used engines, rotor, and other comp 5 weeks ago:
Nice, though all the aviation jargon straight off the bat is probably going to be meaningless to the handful of normies here.
- Comment on photos in the park 5 weeks ago:
This is great but perhaps there’s some other more appropriate community to put it.
- Comment on Recommendations for federated CMS alternatives to Wordpress? 1 month ago:
Some general thoughts. I have done multiple CMS transfers of large sites involving Wordpress, Drupal and Discourse. No matter what plugin you find that supposedly will do the job, in my experience it is always a PITA that ends up involving a lot of programming. That’s why the simplest option would be to stay as close to Wordpress as possible, using a fork for example to fix to the ethical problems you perceive. Otherwise you’re almost certainly going to find it’s much easier to archive and start afresh, with the compromises that implies.
If you do dump Wordpress, in your position I would go for a database-less static site generator like Hugo. So much simpler and more secure. But that’s just my opinion.
- Comment on YSK: Europe Can Wreak HAVOC On America Without Firing a Bullet. 1 month ago:
This is not a “YSK”, it’s just yet another post about (US…) politics.
Seriously, this problem ruined !showerthoughts@lemmy.world and it’s ruining this community too.
- Comment on YSK you can add a noAI version of DuckDuckGo to Firefox 1 month ago:
A spicier take still: I personally have found DDG’s AI summaries useful even without further clicking. When one’s query is purely technical (vs politics or whatever), I don’t see any need to click dutifully.
- Comment on How to follow just tech, international etc. (No sports) 1 month ago:
This is what RSS was invented for. Sigh.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
And we were told Cancel Culture had peaked.
- Comment on YSK a US passport card costs $30 and is definitive proof of citizenship. It fits in your wallet like a credit card. 1 month ago:
Finally, a YSK which is actually a YSK.