cerevant

@cerevant@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steve Jobs Rigged The First iPhone Demo⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Aside from the “well duh” factor, and the fact that this wasn’t even a secret, The demo had to happen long before it was ready to ship because the FCC filings were slated to go public and they didn’t want the world to find out about the phone from that source.

  This wasn’t the demo of a defective unit shipped to customers, it was the demo of incomplete software and hardware. The reception of the first iPhone was overwhelmingly positive. So much so that Google abandoned their plans for Android being a BlackBerry knockoff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple’s MacBook Pro memory problem is worse than ever⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The whole thing boggles my mind. Keep in mind that a good number of “Pro” users are corporate types running PowerPoint and Excel but certainly wouldn’t stoop to using a consumer model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i love centralized social networks...⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not talking about interactions between instances, I’m talking about Google and Bing indexing Mastadon. That’s who we should be using for search.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft patents a system to care for your well-being using AI⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sigh. Time for another round of patents that all say the same thing, except instead of “…but using the internet” they will be “…but using AI”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i love centralized social networks...⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, you are disappointed that Mastadon doesn’t have the same feature set as Twitter. The fact that you can search off instance at all is impressive. What you are asking for is like saying you should find GM cars in Ford’s search bar. Each instance is its own website. Search engines are designed to do what you want, and as Mastadon grows in popularity, it’s search results will become more prominent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New enshittification just dropped⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you can’t explain how the change makes the company more money, it isn’t enshitification.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard leaves X for Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Data scrapers don’t need an API, but you are still wrong - there is a Data API for Reddit that anyone can use. If you want to use it at a commercial scale, you just have to pay for it.

  How exactly do you think ChatGPT was trained?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard leaves X for Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The implication is that social media is inherently not private, and it is extremely difficult to have social media benefit you without revealing personal details that can be aggregated to identify you uniquely, if not specifically.

  Definitely question the services - that’s why I’m here. I have much more control over my data here than on a commercial, ad driven platform. There is nothing available through the API that isn’t available to logged in user, and remote instances don’t have access to any of my private profile data (the entirety of which is my email address).

  It is fine if you don’t like Lemmy, but I challenge you to identify a social media platform that isn’t worse without being so closed that it loses the whole “social” part. If your goal is to have a blog with 4 followers, then you don’t want social media, you want a private Wordpress or wiki instance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard leaves X for Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is what is going to drive federated social media. Once marketing types can figure out that they won’t need to maintain 12 different social media presences and can host it on their own domain, they’ll gladly subsidize general purpose instances to make it easier for people to access their content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard leaves X for Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tell me what my email address is (the only private-ish info that Lemmy has about me). If you can do that, then I’ll think about worrying.

  Big data has enough info about me from social networks to guess my underwear size already. The only way to be really safe is to not play.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flipboard leaves X for Mastodon⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So, like email?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why several big-box stores have ditched their self-checkouts | CBC News⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Store managed delivery/pickup seems to be growing since the pandemic. I think they discovered that the reduced theft and the ability to sell imperfect produce more than covers the cost of the system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why several big-box stores have ditched their self-checkouts | CBC News⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Store managed delivery/pickup seems to be growing since the pandemic. I think they discovered that the reduced theft and the ability to sell imperfect produce more than covers the cost of the system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software is Unsustainable⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Never said devs shouldn’t care about money. If you aren’t having fun maintaining some code, stop. If it is commercially interesting, you will probably be contacted. Charge for bug bounties. Prioritize features based on compensation. Start a foundation. There are lots of business models for OSS, the author of this article talks about how this problem is already solved - just not for him.

  OSS is not a business model. OSS is provably sustainable. Dude just wants it handed to him.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software is Unsustainable⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There are plenty of people who get paid to write open source software. The internet simply wouldn’t exist without OSS:

  • Linux/Android
  • Apache/Nginx
  • MySQL/Postgres
  • gcc/llvm

  And that’s just scratching the surface.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon and today's fediverse are unsafe by design and unsafe by default⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Say you don’t understand the fediverse without saying you don’t understand the fediverse.

  By these standards:

  • The web is unsafe by default
  • Email is unsafe by default

  In all three cases, your safety is determined by the home you choose, and who/what you choose to interact with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The average car purchased in 2023 emits higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) than its 2013 equivalent. This is due to the large proportion of SUVs in the mix, which tend to be bigger and heavier.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Agree. As for the history, wagons were popular in the 70s, but the minivan really took off in the 80s. This led to a perception that Minivans weren’t masculine, so there was a big boom in SUVs which had the volume and utility of a Minivan, but were more manly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans and tells them it’s not a price hike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  No, it isn’t an MVNO, but I do think it gets lower priority than their premium plans.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans and tells them it’s not a price hike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember that T-mobile gives a bottom line prices, while AT&T and Verizon add a bunch of junk fees. Be sure to check into that before you switch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans and tells them it’s not a price hike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In SoCal it can get pretty bad, and I’ve been to Disneyland and other events (concerts/sports) where the phone simply doesn’t work at all. I’m on a Verizon MVNO right now that seems to be fine, but the AT&T and T-Mobile based ones both have issues around here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Stormed Into the Tesla Office Furious That Autopilot Tried to Kill Him⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the reality of safety engineering: he will go on for days about his statistics that say it is safer to drive a Tesla, but when it is you that rolls a nat 1, suddenly they aren’t safe enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I.R.S. Deploys Artificial Intelligence to Target Rich Partnerships⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In Canada they definitely do - I was asked for verification on about half of my tax returns. One was a pretty big oops that I thought they might come down on me for.

  In the US, I think they are much more random with what they audit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are smart door locks more or less secure than traditional door locks?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to disagree - this is more like the gate that blocks the sidewalk that you can get around by walking on the grass. The mechanical locks that these come with are significantly weaker, more common and better understood by thieves, that they wouldn’t bother even trying to figure out how to hack the smart lock.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Opinions wanted: defederating with bot spam instances⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps it would be useful to look at the subscriber numbers for these communities? Maybe contact some of those subscribers directly, since they are the ones who requested the content in the first place? I would venture that people interested in a non-interactive firehose of links is probably a lurker and wouldn’t respond here.

  If a lot of these communities have one subscriber, It could be that someone subscribed just to get the community on All.

  I’m generally of the view that defederation to curate content is a bad idea. I’ve seen suggestions to have the ability for an instance to exclude certain communities from All, or maybe Lemmy needs a semi curated Popular feed like Reddit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to watch Wheel of Time season 2 online: Release date and time⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to watch Wheel of Time season 2 online: Release date and time⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  S2E1 was better than any episode of S1. They have really upped their game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sibling communities: A middle way⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Why are people obsessed with communities having the same domain name as their login? How do you expect these communities to deal with moderation and admin policies?

  Here are some ideas for solutions to the real issues:

  • Add smart cross posting like on Reddit where interacting with a cross post happens on the community where it was created.
  • Develop mesh federation instead of a star topography. There would still only be one community with a unique name, but instances could share changes between each other, not just with the host.
  • Provide a true cross instance community search that is integrated in the primary UI. It would need to provide better metrics for like-named communities so that users can make an informed choice.
  • Admins need to stop land-grab communities. There needs to be a commitment to moderating, maintaining and growing the community. They could start by purging Reddit general interest knock-offs with fewer than 10 subscribers.
  • Add support for instance relative links not only to communities, but comments and posts.

  In general, I think user focused instances should be separate from community focused instances, but that’s a different rant