cabbage
@cabbage@piefed.social
- Comment on Old Teslas Are Falling Apart 7 hours ago:
Tesla was founded in 2003.
The Antique Automobile Club of America defines an antique car as over 25 years of age, which is predictably a much lower threshold than what is common in Europe. But even so, my point remains: There is no such thing as an old Tesla.
- Comment on Why do .ml users get a bad rep? 10 hours ago:
I think instances with ideological underpinnings is fine, and maybe inevitable. The crucial thing is that they need to be honest about it, so that those not interested can go elsewhere.
The problem with lemmy.ml is that it pretends to be a catch-all instance when it’s in fact very much not, and that it doesn’t tell users up front what it’s all about. Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are better in that respect—at least they’re honest.
- Comment on Why do .ml users get a bad rep? 12 hours ago:
The admins over there have some profoundly questionable views, which tends to push away reasonable people and attract bootlickers.
The problem is not the users as much as the site itself and its admins. I wish reasonable people (not bootlickers) would stop using lemmy.ml and go somewhere better. It’s biggest function right now is to scare away good people who would have been happy elsewhere.
- Comment on Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets 3 days ago:
Generally with software I will only pay for things that I get full access to without paying for them. I guess I would render your boss somewhat confused.
- Comment on Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets 3 days ago:
For cloud storage, Nextcloud is the best open source solution (and, I’d argue, the best solution period). I get it from Murena.io - hetzner.com is much cheaper, but I am happy to support Murena as they develop my phone OS. And I still save a lot every month compared to Dropbox. The instance provided by Murena has great OnlyOffice integration (sharing documents and working together with others works great) and an encrypted drive (vault - similar to what Dropbox used to have) enabled by default.
I use it for syncing files, contacts and calendars, passwords, working on documents together with others (collaborative simultaneous online editing works great with word and markdown, my collaborators only need a link), and really anything you’d expect from a cloud provider. I also it for a secondary e-mail account.
Part of what makes it great, of course, is that you can change service providers with relative ease, including self-hosting. Email is an exception of course, unless you come in with your own domain.
- Comment on Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets 3 days ago:
I suspect Mullvad would be a popular choice, but it’s quite a bit more expensive. As I rarely use VPN (I hardly every do anything where it’s necessary), I’m a bit on the stingy side personally.
- Comment on Why isint lemmy more popular? 3 days ago:
I think whoever wants to promote anything on the fediverse should probably just pick an instance they enjoy and promote that, without caring to explain how it’s all part of a federated network or whatnot.
- Comment on Why isint lemmy more popular? 3 days ago:
To be fair, telling people it was founded by Motorhead fans is a better selling point than that it was started by Marxist leninists.
- Comment on Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era 4 days ago:
“Please accept our cookies bro!”
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“And please follow us on Bluesky, Instagram, Linkedin, Spotify, and Tiktok! Together we’re building a better internet!! wooo!!”
Fucking hell Mozilla. What became of you.
- Comment on Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets 4 days ago:
Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I’ve rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.
With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it’s done. But I’m sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I’ll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)
- Comment on Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets 4 days ago:
They’re increasingly divisive I’d say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there’s money to be made on it. I’m migrating away from my proton mail account.
I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it’s cheap and they don’t insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider.
- Comment on Does this post appear on Lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
What is this post?
It seems to be an RSS feed showing this post, which is then bridged back to the fediverse by web.brid.gy, which then posts itself back into the fediverse.
Could this create a recursive loop? Whatever is going on here it looks a bit messed up, but if this post itself makes it back to the RSS feed and then becomes bridged things get messy real quick.
@anewsocial@mastodon.social - this might be worth for you guys to be aware of, even though I guess the bridge is technically working as intended.
- Comment on Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures 2 weeks ago:
Bluesky hardly challenges the establishment as far as I can see, they’re just more venture capitalists waiting to enshittify.
- Comment on Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures 2 weeks ago:
What I hate about it is that this unwillingness to be in a position of power is so correlated with actually being suited for it.
- Comment on Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures 2 weeks ago:
I also recommend reading Eugen Rochko’s own post about it, as Andy Piper linked to as well.
- Comment on Mastodon CEO steps down as the social network restructures 2 weeks ago:
I love and hate how Eugen starts this whole project, leads it into being something truly unique and wonderful that directly challenges some of the most evil and wealthy people on the planet, sets up institutional guardrails to make sure it will not be corrupted by any one individual gone mad with power, gives away his position after 10 years once he’s sure the organization is in good hands, and then concludes in reflection that he does not “have the right personality” for running a project like this.
I hope it has not been to hard for him, and that he’ll look back at it all as a positive experience in spite of the negative interactions. I don’t think any sane person has a personality that is “right” for the kind of abuse public figures receive on the internet. But from the perspective of Mastodon and the Fediverse, it seems pretty clear that he was exactly the right type of personality for the job—including by stepping down when the time felt right.
- Comment on Artist sneaks AI-generated print into National Museum Cardiff gallery 3 weeks ago:
I wouldn’t say art is subject to facts in this way. Some of us enjoy art that is produced through skill and intention rather than some idiot shitting in a jar. The meta debate is just one incredibly lame branch of art that incompetent snobs manically jerk off to while outbidding each other for a fucking banana.
Of course, context matters for interpretation. Guernica is a more meaningful piece with the background of civil war; dadaism only makes sense in opposition to fascism. But both depend on skill and intent to become impressive, not merely the meta context of positioning in art history.
I hate this discussion and I hate that by interacting with it some idiot in a beret will tell me “AHA! So it did provoke you!!”, as if they were making a point or ever had an original thought in their lives.
Opposition to this bullshit is not a problem of the “tech world”, it’s a problem of the art world having obsessed over the same idiotic joke for a hundred years because it’s harder to appreciate something that contains genuine intent and talent than it is to pretend like you understand the genius of stapling a piece of crap to the wall of a gallery.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 3 weeks ago:
Oh yeah. This is not an attack on mediocre white men—I’m one of them. We just have to learn to get over ourselves.
- Comment on The Economist on using phrenology for hiring and lending decisions: "Some might argue that face-based analysis is more meritocratic" […] "For people without access to credit, that could be a blessing" 3 weeks ago:
Whatever it takes to keep hiring mediocre white men, I guess.
- Comment on Artist sneaks AI-generated print into National Museum Cardiff gallery 3 weeks ago:
I hate the debate over “what is art”. Honestly I think the best answer I could give to the question is “something that was ruined by a bunch of idiots asking ‘what is art’”.
That said, and not wanting to go into that discussion, calling this guy an “artist” seems like a mockery. He’s not an artist, he’s just some idiot with double sided tape.
- Comment on Is Kagy web browser worth it? 4 weeks ago:
Well, yeah, they’re run by a corporation, which I guess means they need to show infinite growth to return value to stockholders. If so they can keep growing on subscriptions for a while, but eventually they’ll turn on their customers. So fair enough.
I think that’s part of my problem with them honestly. They seem to always want to grow and do more, but I would rather have seen them focus on search and make the subscription more affordable. But as they need growth I guess that’s not possible.
- Comment on Is Kagy web browser worth it? 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, this is not the case as they run on a subscription-based model.
I used Kagi for a while. I stopped because it’s prohibitively expensive, and rather than prioritizing lowering prices they kept giving me AI features I did not want at all - hell, it’s the kind of shit I was paying to get away from. Mix direct support for Russian companies into the mix, and you have an expensive AI fueled multi-purpose web monstrosity that supports war crimes. No thanks.
Their search results were good though. I wouldn’t mind supporting
- Comment on How Google Tracks and Scans Everything on Your Android Device 5 weeks ago:
There are some user friendly Android based alternatives out there, since it’s based on open source. Personally I’m running a device with /e/OS, which you can either install yourself or buy a phone with it pre-installed. There are also some other user friendly options out there such as the Volla Phone.
But yeah, iOS is probably a better bet than stock Android, as Apple has a history of being abusive towards their customers in other ways than by selling their data. But crucially both Google and Apple are American companies, so you should avoid depending on their cloud services to whatever degree possible. There’s no such thing as safe data if it is stored by an American company.
- Comment on OpenAI signs $38 billion compute deal with Amazon, partnering with cloud leader for first time 5 weeks ago:
If these assholes get bailed out by American tax payers when this shit crashes and burns I’m gonna get real mad.
Well, I’m pretty angry about everything happening in the US already, come to think of it. Oh well. I guess it’ll all just crash and burn.
- Comment on During the lead up to the Holocaust did the N... regime just kidnap people who they even thought were Jews? Kind of like ICE is doing to citizens today? 5 weeks ago:
Historically death camps tend to start out as mere camps, but then suddenly they are full of people who are deemed unwanted anyway and keeping them alive is expensive so why bother anyway.
On its current trajectory there’s no US camp that shouldn’t be expected to turn into a death camp. And as others have pointed out, thousands “missing” from a huge, poorly managed camp in the middle of a swamp is worrying to say the least.
Americans today are like Germans in the 30s, watching the trains roll by.
- Comment on Inside Israel’s deal with Google and Amazon 5 weeks ago:
The reporting goes pretty hard:
‘No restrictions’ and a secret ‘wink’: Inside Israel’s deal with Google, Amazon
To secure the lucrative Project Nimbus contract, the tech giants agreed to disregard their own terms of service and sidestep legal orders by tipping Israel off if a foreign court demands its data, a joint investigation reveals.May this be a reminder to degoogle your phone and boycott amazon.
- Comment on Where is modern Punk? 5 weeks ago:
I’d say the Clash were simultaneously highly mainstream and true to the spirit of punk. Dead Kennedys as well, albeit slightly less mainstream.
Honestly I’d say there’s a lot of punk bands that enjoyed something close to mainstream success without being sellouts.
- Comment on Where is modern Punk? 5 weeks ago:
I’d say he’s imitating the 60s more than the 70s, but he writes some good tunes nevertheless. :)
- Comment on ‘There isn’t really another choice:’ Signal chief explains why the encrypted messenger relies on AWS 5 weeks ago:
Yeah. I’m the nerdiest person I know—I’m not gonna try to convince people to use something I struggle to understand myself. Signal is good because it does not feel like a compromise, and the advantages are easy to explain. Matrix I wouldn’t even know how to sign up for myself, as much as I would love to see the entire internet run on decentralized technology.
I am sure it’s not so difficult and that I could find a good instance and figure it out if I sank some time into it, but that’s really not the point here. The point is that me doing that would be worthless as I still couldn’t convince anyone else to join, and nobody I am interested in talking to is currently on there. (In other words: this post is not me asking for help to sign up for Matrix)
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Yup, Signal is down. The one centralized service I’m still rooting for I guess. Disappointed they’re running on AWS.