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@underline960@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on ‘Don’t Patronize Us’: Data Center Charm Offensive Irks Opponents in Rural Georgia 1 week ago:
In the past two weeks, a Project Sail publicity brochure has begun appearing in mailboxes. Featuring images of families in clothing emblazoned with the American flag, the mailing appeared to be an attempt to appeal to the conservative-leaning county’s sense of patriotism.
That’s so blatant.
Probably the only reason it isn’t working is that the company behind it is based in Silicon Valley.
They’re going to have to find someone “from around here”. (And go behind their backs to pay off city leadership.)
- Comment on Reality Is Ruining the Humanoid Robot Hype: The obstacles to scaling up humanoids that nobody is talking about 1 week ago:
Can it hurry up and ruin the AI hype, too?
- Comment on People using fancy characters in their online username ironically makes them harder to be searched 1 week ago:
I wonder how many people are found nowadays by searching vs being delivered by the algorithm.
- Comment on On discourse and decentralisation 2 weeks ago:
In a post where she signs the open letter, ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber summarises the changing world well:
“This is actually a really important time for that message to come across, because our communities do both face major threats which I believe we are ideologically aligned in wanting to face:
We are facing a large number of laws which appear well-intentioned and aimed to try to take on tech gatekeepers, but unintentionally build regulatory moats that allow only gatekeepers to participate, and which threaten user freedom at large.
The rise of techno-fascism and omnisurveillance affects all users. Neither ATProto nor ActivityPub, at present, are built in such a way that they can provide the levels of protections necessary to respond to the needs of activists and community members against nation-state level threats.
These are our existential threats, not each other. And we need to figure out how to work together.”
I’m reading this as “be nice to the Bluesky guys, because we have a bigger problem to deal with.”
That’s fine, I’m not inclined to be mentally ill at strangers on the internet.
But I’m also not going to call it decentralized when it’s meaningfully not, and I’m going to keep an eye on where their money comes from.
We have a common enemy in government control.
But if you’re going to be my friend, I need you to not lie to my face.
- Comment on Anyone running Sandstorm? 2 weeks ago:
Came looking for this comment and was not disappointed.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 2 weeks ago:
Petition for Silksong to be considered an honorary patient gamer game, given I waited seven years to play it.
- Comment on Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions. 2 weeks ago:
Leeds told Ars that the RSL standard doesn’t just benefit publishers, though. It also solves a problem for AI companies, which have complained in litigation over AI scraping that there is no effective way to license content across the web.
"If they’re using it, they pay for it, and if they’re not using it, they don’t pay for it.
…
But AI companies know that they need a constant stream of fresh content to keep their tools relevant and to continually innovate, Leeds suggested. In that way, the RSL standard “supports what supports them,” Leeds said, “and it creates the appropriate incentive system” to create sustainable royalty streams for creators and ensure that human creativity doesn’t wane as AI evolves.
This article tries to slip in the idea that creators will benefit from this arrangement. Just like with Spotify and Getty Images, it’s the publisher that’s getting paid.
Then they decide how much they’ll let trickle down to creators.
- Comment on Wikimedia sunsets separate mobile domains 2 weeks ago:
Sincere question: Why was there a separate mobile domain in the first place?
- Comment on AI adoption rate is declining among large companies — US Census Bureau claims fewer businesses are using AI tools 2 weeks ago:
“I pay for access to music I get access to music.” And with ChatGPT, you pay for access to an LLM, and you get access to an LLM.
Just because you personally don’t value that as a service doesn’t inherently invalidate it as a business model, now or in the future.
Netflix lost subscribers in 2011 and 2022, that didn’t kill the company. Uber stock tumbled during the pandemic and again in 2022. In 2023, Wired was writing about how “despite its popularity…the company has long struggled to turn consistent profits.”
This is a whole wave of companies where the survivors seem financially stable now, but had a long history of being propped up by venture capital and having an unclear path to profitability.
The only thing you’ve successfully shown is different so far is that you don’t think it’s a real service.
I generally agree, but I still don’t see anything that differentiates its trajectory from the Spotifys, Ubers, and Netflixes of the world.
- Comment on Fediverse Report – #133 2 weeks ago:
I don’t understand the purpose of the letter.
Bluesky is, in practice, not decentralized.
It has the potential to decentralize, but if the community stops calling bullshit when Bluesky claims to already be decentralized, it would lose the one incentive it has to actually follow through.
- Comment on AI adoption rate is declining among large companies — US Census Bureau claims fewer businesses are using AI tools 2 weeks ago:
What are you talking about? ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. all have “subscription fees generating recurring revenue” and are famously “exploiting a gap in regulations to undercut an existing market.”
Uber took 15 years to become profitable, and Spotify took 18.
Again, I’m not defending any of them (they all exploit the people who make their service work), but so far AI seems to be going down the same road.
- Comment on AI adoption rate is declining among large companies — US Census Bureau claims fewer businesses are using AI tools 2 weeks ago:
Isn’t that the case with a lot of modern tech?
I vaguely recall Spotify and Uber being criticized relying on the “get big first and figure out how to monetize later” model.
(Not defending them, just wondering what’s different about AI.)
- Comment on Signal announces a backup feature that includes 100MB of storage for texts and the last 45 days' worth of media for free, or 100GB of storage for $1.99/month 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on AI adoption rate is declining among large companies — US Census Bureau claims fewer businesses are using AI tools 2 weeks ago:
13.5%, slipping to about 12%
I know that 1.5% could mean hundreds of businesses, but this still seems like such a nothing burger.
- Comment on What is the current state of Matrix? 2 weeks ago:
Technically, nothing.
In practice, who do you know that’s using it and doesn’t run Arch, by the way?
My point isn’t that IRC/XMPP aren’t technically capable.
It’s that they’re not designed for non-technical users.
I want corporate social media to die. Mastodon and Piefed are far from killing the beast, but they’ve made the more progress than most projects have seen in a long time.
I want corporate messaging to die. Matrix is far from killing the beast, but for a little while, at least it was trying.
- Comment on What is the current state of Matrix? 2 weeks ago:
I wouldn’t mind going back to IRC roots if it could be made more user friendly and integrate voice and video chat.
Good UX/UI goes a long way to make it so non-technical people can join and strengthen the network.
- Comment on Age Verification Is A Windfall for Big Tech—And A Death Sentence For Smaller Platforms 2 weeks ago:
Seems untenable.
If I live in Europe and run a mastodon instance open to anyone, it’s not like I or my server fall under a Mississippi law.
What are they going to do, sue my Serbian ass? Serve a restraining order to my Norwegian server?
- Comment on What is the current state of Matrix? 2 weeks ago:
Damn. That sucks. I get that IRC and XMPP are more stable and built around federation from the ground up, but… they’re not Discord replacements.
That was IMHO, the point of Matrix/Element.
Tell me if I’m wrong, but a significant part of a network’s resilience is the number of nodes and users.
Without a glowup or some kind of repackaging, IRC/XMPP are doomed to stay niche.
- Comment on Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I remember seeing these in malls, and I didn’t think they were a game back then, either.
I mean, maybe this one actually is a game somehow, but… what a thing to take your inspiration from.
- Comment on Genocide by remote control: Israel's explosive robots devastate Gaza 2 weeks ago:
Israeli leadership is treating Gaza like a war crime buffet at this point.
“I mean, if genocide’s on the menu, why not sprinkle in a little murder-children-by-starvation and robot warfare? It’s my cheat
dayyear and a half, after all.” - Comment on Age Verification Is A Windfall for Big Tech—And A Death Sentence For Smaller Platforms 2 weeks ago:
users are left with far fewer community options
Where is the fediverse in this analysis?
- Comment on Cyclops would be a very different character if his eyelids weren't laserproof 2 weeks ago:
X-Men is ripe for nightmare fuel if you think about it long enough.
- Comment on Loops - short form video with ActivityPub - is now open source! 2 weeks ago:
I don’t mind “TikTok-like”. I just think it’d be a silly reason for the project to shutdown.
- Comment on Loops - short form video with ActivityPub - is now open source! 2 weeks ago:
Makes sense. It was in pre-alpha.
Now that it’s in alpha, you’ll have 13.
Once it hits beta, it’ll skyrocket to an even 20.
- Comment on Loops - short form video with ActivityPub - is now open source! 2 weeks ago:
Question: can they get sued for putting TikTok-like in the description, or does that only apply when you’re making money?
- Comment on Over 50% of the job cuts in video games are in California 2 weeks ago:
What percentage of video game jobs are in California?
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 2 weeks ago:
According to fireb0rn, he had no problem buying it on GOG.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 2 weeks ago:
New Team Cherry silkpost:
We’ve run out of Silksong stock!
Please check back in [seven years].
See you soon!
- Comment on Cory Doctorow New Book: Enshitification 2 weeks ago:
The first half of the book is great.
The second half has ads that take up more and more of the page until you reach a page that is just ads and a QR code.
When you scan the code, it takes you to a page asking you to rate the book and pay a subscription for the remaining pages.
(If you rate five stars, they send a 10% discount code to your email and add you to a newsletter list without an unsubscribe button.)
