sbv
@sbv@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Selfhosting Sunday - What's up? 3 days ago:
My machine is not a workhorse. I got it second hand. It has around 8gb of RAM, and an 80gb HDD I found in a laptop.
But it’s enough to work as a testbed, so it’s fine with me.
- Comment on Selfhosting Sunday - What's up? 4 days ago:
I’ve finally powered on a 15 year old machine to run a bot I’ve been writing. The thing is slow as dirt and stuck behind a flakey power line network, but it’s working. I got to write my first systemd service definition, which is kind of cool.
- Comment on Garmin adds AI and a subscription tier to its app 6 days ago:
All existing health data and features, however, will remain free.
Perfect!
- Comment on Disappointing coyote attack 1 week ago:
there’s always next time
- Comment on Justice Department asks judge to order Google the "immediate" sale of Chrome 1 week ago:
I don’t really get what selling Chrome and Android would accomplish.
There was a leak of Google’s old page ranking algorithm (not PageRank, but how they change the order of results on search) - it looked like they used a bunch of signals from Chrome about the amount of time users spend on a page, how quickly they go back, etc. Chrome gives the search side of the business an advantage.
Conversely, Android feeds a bunch of extra data to the ad business about what people do in real life.
Both products give the rest of Alphabet a significant advantage over their competitors, and make it harder for new entrants to get a foothold.
- Comment on Nicole endgame 2 weeks ago:
Times are tough.
- Comment on Foxconn unveils first large language model 3 weeks ago:
Ask it about the nets!
- Comment on I'm a provider 3 weeks ago:
thank you daddy kayaks
- Comment on Opening Lemmy in the morning and seeing dozens of unread comments in your inbox makes you think: what the heck did I say yesterday? 3 weeks ago:
on Lemmy that’s just karma farming.
- Comment on I'm a provider 3 weeks ago:
We are your family and you are providing
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
But if the only way to do it is to have ads or selling our data etc, then I don’t want that.
Nobody wants that. It’s a bunch of lil features:
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following users in Lemmy,
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allow mods flair users in a community (so subscribers/patrons can show off),
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Make it easier to see popular posts on Lemmy and Mastodon,
Stuff like that.
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- Comment on Viking-Age Skulls Reveal Widespread Disease and Infections - Medievalists.net 3 weeks ago:
Isn’t that a New World disease? Unless you’re saying the Vikings raided Columbia (and made it back), it’s at least 200 years too soon.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
It’s not just ad-free, it’s actively anti-corporate, anti-advertising, even anti-monetization.
There are upvoted positive posts and comments about
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the Switch 2 announcement (but not Nintendo’s legal policy),
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the Framework advertising event last week,
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Valve/Steam/SteamOS/Steamdeck/Gabe Newell in general,
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Costco in general,
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EVs in general (excluding Tesla and Cybertrucks 😂),
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podcasts that solicit funding and carry advertising,
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anime and anime adjacent products,
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Lenovo’s laptops,
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individuals selling stuff on Redbubble/Etsy/OnlyFans,
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subscription razor blade delivery (not from Amazon),
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and “voting with your wallet”.
It’d be cool if the platform made it easier for orgs to build and interact with a following here. Niches of users really like talking about them. That doesn’t mean ads, it means features that would benefit regular users as well.
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- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway
The things people need to build a livelihood on a platform are quality of life features. In a lot of cases, I think it’s small stuff: being able to reward patrons with a tag on a specific community; automatically highlighting popular posts; making it easy to find a user’s monetization page; etc.
I think the fediverse will attract more and more people with its network effects, but probably never all of the people all of the time.
At the moment, Lemmy is an ad-free version of Reddit missing some community and notification features. There are good political reasons to be here, but that hasn’t driven a sustained increase in users.
So we won’t get critical mass for network effects by being a better Reddit.
One to make the platform self-sustaining (or grow) is to give creators a reason to use the platform, which will give people a reason to come and stay.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
Absolutely - I wanted to list interactions between regular users and someone who makes money with a platform.
After a bunch of Twitter users (including journalists) bounced off Mastodon when Elon bought it, the fediverse needs to understand why, and think about what it means to be a viable platform.
- Comment on Google Photos will no longer sync with third-party digital photo frames 3 weeks ago:
To be clear, users can still manually share Google Photos pics with connected frames.
It’s shitty that they removed apps ability to see all photos when authorized, though.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way.
I think online journalism might be a good example of influencers and users interacting as equals. Users provide extra information, ask questions, reify, and help highlight where the journalist can focus. The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
To build an interesting, self sustaining network, where people can express themselves fully, and understand each other.
The features I’m suggesting would benefit everyone: a decent view of trending topics/posts/tags; mod-controlled tags; stuff like that. Most users would find them helpful, but a few could use it to build a livelihood that others value.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
The unix surrealism Lemmite is awesome. They deserve my donations. Saying that people shouldn’t be able to use the platform to express themselves rejects a whole bunch of people.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
Now, I also think that the monymaker needing to serve millions of people can go and do that elsewhere.
That’s the issue. If we’re gonna get evil tech bros out of our human interactions, we need to build a platform that doesn’t reject people who like to eat.
Journalists need to get access to sources, and want to see when events are happening.
Documentary creators want a way to create interesting and useful videos that will earn them a living.
Streamers want a platform that can serve a bunch of users with near-realtime (okay, just fast) interactions.
That’s what OP’s link is missing: being able to use a platform to do your preferred job is one of the things that makes a platform compelling. Until we have that, we’re rejecting a big part of our audience.
- Comment on The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied. 3 weeks ago:
The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it.
Part of that is making it monetizable. Influencers can build huge followings (and make some cash) because existing platforms recommend their content to other users.
Mastodon devs have chosen not to provide recommendations and quote posts. That’s reasonable, but it reduces the utility of the platform, and it cedes space to Twitter & co.
To my knowledge, the only creator that’s exclusive to Lemmy is the unix surrealism author. Until it’s easy to monetize content, we’re gonna have a hard time attracting creators, and a hard time attracting users.
- Comment on Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not) 4 weeks ago:
So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.
- Comment on I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better 4 weeks ago:
tbf, the past few years have felt like decades
- Comment on New To Android? What Apps to Choose? 4 weeks ago:
+1 for AntennaPod. I haven’t found a great podcast player, but AntennaPod is the best I’ve seen.
- Comment on Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Landing - NASA+ 4 weeks ago:
The mission art is amazing.
- Comment on OpenEvidence Sounds Promising, but is it Reliable? 4 weeks ago:
“Open” is “.com” 2.0.
- Comment on Could it be offensive for me to use the word "cracker" in this way? 4 weeks ago:
No, that’s awesome! It’s an impressive level of opsec. 👍
- Comment on Could it be offensive for me to use the word "cracker" in this way? 4 weeks ago:
I just noticed your account age and name. Did you create this account just to ask the question?
- Comment on Could it be offensive for me to use the word "cracker" in this way? 4 weeks ago:
Eh. If you’re worried about people thinking it’s a weird or offensive name, just pick another name. You don’t have to use it.
As an aside: I wouldn’t broadcast a variant of my name as a network name or mention it on social media. I don’t think anything bad is likely to happen, but it’s just good practice.
- Comment on The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US? | George Monbiot 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 5 weeks ago:
The guide seems to be aimed at attendees, rather than organizers and media. If someone is showing up to add their voice to the protest, then leaving their phone at home is an ideal way to minimize their footprint.
