In a perfect world, I'd run my games in a virtual OS so I had control over what info was sent to the various companies. Something to spoof what hardware I was actually using... but VMs are often not an option with AAA or AA games due to anti-cheat. (which is a whole other kettle of fish)
If the OP had a mechanism to opt-in to aggregated comments, rather than individual community comments, there could be an identifying notice that the comments of that post were being "hosted" in whichever community on whichever instance and were governed by their rules. Essentially, commenters would be guests in that forum and be expected to comport themselves accordingly. I don't think it needs to be complicated for mod teams.
Consolidation is one of the things the fediverse tries to mitigate. I see your point, but federated services need some amount of redundancy and autonomy for the whole thing to work.
I certainly hope so! Human ingenuity has gotton us here. I'm interacting with you across who knows how much distance, using a handheld device that folds up.
.....but, just because we've gotten ahead of trouble and found solutions thus far, doesn't mean that an unintended bit of code, or hardware fault, or lack of imagination can't cause consequences further down the road.
I appreciate your optimism and pragmatic understanding. You seem to be a solution driven person that believes in our ability to reason and fix things. We'll definitely need that type of attitude and approach when and if something goes sideways.
As with your original comment, i like your argument. :) Additionally, I dig the wall of text. WoT, written well, leaves little ambiguity and helps focus the conversation.
I don't disagree on any particular point. I agree that its a net positive for programming to be approachable to more people, and that it can't be approachable to many while requiring apollo era genius and deep understanding of technology. It would be a very different world if only PhDs could program computers.
To that, I believe the article author is overstating a subtle concern that I think is theoretically relevant and important to explore.If, over the fullness of decades, programming becomes so approachable (ie, you tell an AI in plain language what you want and it makes it flawlessly), people will have less incentive to learn the foundational concepts required to make the same program "from scratch". Extending that train of thought, we could reach a point where a fundamental, "middle-technology" fails and there simply isn't anyone who understands how to fix the problem. I suspect there will always be hobbiests and engineers that maintain esoteric knowledge for a variety of reasons. But, with all the levels of abstraction and fail points inadvertently built in to code over so much time passing, it's possible to imagine a situation where essentially no-one understands the library of the language that a core dependency was written in decades before. Not only would it be a challange to fix, it could be hard to find in the first place.
If the break happens in your favorite cocktail recipe app, its Inconvenient. If the break happens in a necessary system relied on by fintec to move peoples money from purchase to vendor to bank to vendor to person, the scale and importance of the break is devastating to the world. Even if you can seek out and find the few that have knowledge enough to solve the problem, the time spent with such a necessary function of modern life unavailable would be catastrophic.
If a corporation, in an effort to save money, opts to hire a cheap 'vibe-coder' in the '20s and something they 'vibe' winds up in important stacks, it could build fault lines into future code that may be used for who-knows-what decades from now.
There are a lot of ifs in my examples. It may never happen and we'll get the advantage of all the ideas that are able to be made reality through accessibility. However, it's better to think about it now rather than contend with the eventually all at once when a catastrophe occurs.
You're right that doom and gloom isn't helpful, but I don't think the broader idea is without merit.
Yes, but also the bit about when someone creates an application without understanding the underlying way that it actually functions. Like I can make a web app, but i don't need to understand memory allocation to do it. The maker of the app is a level or two of abstraction from what the base metal of the computer is being told to do.
I like a lot of your responses. I agree about nostalgia being a main driver of his article. However, i think the bits about how a doctor needs to know how a medical tool functions etc, is a little misplaced. I think the author was referring to the makers of the device not understanding what theyre making, not so much the end user. I ALSO think the author would prefer more broad technical literacy, but his core arguement seemed to be that those making things dont understand the tech they're built upon and that unintended consequences can occur when that happens. Worse, if the current technology has been abstracted enough times, eventually no one will know enough to fix it.
If you dont require open-source in your decision, Vivaldi is great. Its what i use most. It has a ton of granular features that i appreciate, but can be a bit too much for folks that want a more minimal experience.
Respectfully, i disagree. If a person's main instance defederated from an instance that was set up for a specific game, their main instance is likely doing so for ethical reasons/whim of admins.
If a user of that main instance has values that match with the mission of the instance they will either,
a) not want to be federated with the game instance in the first place,
b) only align with a majority of the instance's values and occasionally need an alt to access places defederated from, or
c) find a new main since the one they chose is too restrictive for them.
I agree that having alts is annoying. Ideally, there will be options enough for users to find a main instance that they're aligned with so they wouldnt need an alt. Regardless, i still think the game company running their own instance for the specific purpose of the game is where the fediverse ought to head.
I want, as an example, the US Forest Service to have their own instance. It solves two problems. One, the USFS gets to personally interact how they want in the fediverse and federate when they want with who they want (just like the rest of us) and two, Anyone with an @usfs.fedi.gov account could be trusted to actually be who they say they are. I would like this trend to include news outlets, gov angencies, schools, etc. It helps with validating information and provides trusted first-source information directly from orgs.
If the girlscouts changed a girlscout cookie flavor, their @girlscoutsofamerica.federated.social could make the announcement and we could trust the info and be mad that a cookie flavor changed.
It solves #1 as well because the Lemmy-phile/end user is already apart of an instance that would federate with the game instance.Administration is taken on by the game company for their own instance, so updating and technical, server side stuff isnt a worry for the end user. As far as the instance owner, its no more difficult to keep updated as it is for other instances. If anything it would be easier because only the devs and company folks would be users of the instance itself so an update doesn't impact their user base directly, there might just be a pause in new content while it was updating
At this point we could pull down all the fencing... who the hell would want to come here anymore?