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Excrubulent

@ Excrubulent @slrpnk.net

Posts
1
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253
Joined
3 yr. ago

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  • It's just really weird that you turn to profit motive as a benefit when we're talking about systems that tend to enshittify, and that's like, the main thing that makes them enshittify.

    My argument is about how enshittification destroys platforms, and platforms that don't do that will retain their growth. Bluesky has all the ingredients to enshittify, mastodon doesn't.

    Yes they need to work on their onboarding, but unlike bluesky, they can keep going at it till it sticks. Centralised platforms get a launch, and a lifecycle, and then they tend to go away.

    Quite literally the opposite of what you said. If a platform is central, it can be switched off tomorrow. Nobody can do that to the fediverse as long as the internet exists. The idea that hobbyists are somehow less reliable than fucking corporations is also absurd. Have you met corporations?

    This is literally a tortoise-and-the-hare situation.

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  • If you can explain the existence of wikipedia under your theory then I'll listen to you, but like... wow. Profit motive, what a joke. That's literally what causes enshittification.

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  • Oh, I didn't realise the technical barriers were that steep. In that case I think I'm right to say that Mastodon is technically better for achieving the decentralisation it promises.

    That's a great resource, I'm going to follow them. Plus the link to Spritely was really interesting. Looks like it's meant to be a successor to ActivityPub, which is quite exciting. From what I've seen activity pub is pretty limited in the ways it can enable interaction, like how mastodon posts look so funky on lemmy.

    Plus, holy web 1.0, that's a motherfucking website.

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  • Right, my point is that they have the ingredients to meaningfully decentralise control, but until they do they are not meaningfully bettee than twitter, and it's just a branding exercise.

    Maybe they'll fix that, maybe they won't but until they do I think the fediverse's resilience proves that platforms will keep turning over until a viable federated system arises, whether that's bluesky, mastodon or something else.

    I can't even see where you disagree with this. You're just throwing out details withoit reference to how this affects my point.

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  • It doesn't matter how distributed the servers are. You could say any centralised platform is "distributed" if it has at least one redundant server, which plenty of them do. Youtube has servers all over the world. That has nothing to do with enshittification and it's not the feature I was talking about.

    The thing that supposedly set bluesky apart was that they would be using a decentralised protocol that allowed anyone who wanted to to operate their own server with full control over their data. You can actually see some people posting from different domains.

    That's a nice idea and it trades on the rising popularity of the fediverse, but it's not doing it in an open manner because the software isn't open and separate instances are locked to 10 users maximum unless the central authority allows them more. That means it's not meaningfully decentralised, but it's still trying to capitalise on the concept. It can still be torpedoed by one company's bad business decisions.

    That's what I was referring to.

    And I said mastodon might be able to take in the exodus if they improve, so I guess I agree with your last point.

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  • By "technically better" I mean it actually delivers on its technical promises of decentralisation, as opposed to bluesky that simply uses decentralisation as a buzzword without being actually open source and without allowing real competition for the main - centralised - instance.

    I think mastodon has actual legs in that if bluesky fails to actually open up, it will enshittify and there will be another exodus. Mastodon has technical barriers to that kind problem, so it will still be there to pick up the pieces. The decentralised nature protects the network from enshittifying and means it will tend not to get exoduses like central platforms do. It's a matter of making that growth count.

    If in that time mastodon has worked on its discovery features, it might be finally ready to capture that growth.

    If bluesky manages to properly decentralise then I imagine mastodon will not need to pick up the slack and will either join the network or fade into irrelevancy.

    Hard to say which way it will go. I don't hold out a lot of hope for bluesky changing its ways, and who knows when mastodon will improve in this way.

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  • Yes, exactly this. Like something might be technically better but unless it's doing its main job of actually connecting people it's not going to work.

    I wish more FOSS nerds understood this.

  • Designed by men, for men: Why sex with robots does not have appeal among women

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  • No worries lol.

  • Designed by men, for men: Why sex with robots does not have appeal among women

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  • I was more referring to the fact that they were very ready to say how they'd kill for it but the price was the thing stopping them. The maths is pretty easy but I think 3 people didn't get the joke.

  • After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad

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  • Thanks! Looks like on the talk page there's doubt about whether it even has a touchscreen, which is a little discouraging. I guess I can just try, but It's good to know a resource like this exists.

  • After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad

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  • I have a lenovo yoga 14s which is similarly transformable. Are there good resources out there for installing linux on these kinds of laptop, or are they mostly focused on surface laptops?

    Honestly Windows on it is just a nightmare and I'd love to ditch it.

  • Designed by men, for men: Why sex with robots does not have appeal among women

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  • So you're saying you value human life at less than $1,300.

  • Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian

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  • That's the thing, thank you! I tried looking before and couldn't find anybody doing it. Maybe I discounted obsidian because it wasn't free or foss. If it's free now and the format is open then that helps a lot.

  • Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian

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  • So does obsidian support nonlinear spatially organised notes the way onenote does? I've been using joplin but without that onenote feature it's been a bit underwhelming tbh, and I can't find any software that does it.

  • Amazon will remove the option to download/transfer Kindle e-books via USB by February 2025

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  • https://epubor.com/3-ways-to-remove-drm-from-kindle-books.html

    It's astonishingly easy tbh. I think this might be the main reason why they're trying to stop you from getting the files on your PC.

    Edit: that link is apparently promoting their own software, but the calibre plugin works very well, and as a bonus calibre is a great foss ebook manager.

  • Amazon will remove the option to download/transfer Kindle e-books via USB by February 2025

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  • I'd say what he actually did was deflect the question and refuse to acknowledge that it was about appearance at all. He just talked about function over form, and that it works well and is intuitive.

    I actually agree with that, I like the big buttons, and context menus usually have whatever I'm looking for, but you can take the deflection as an admission he knows it's ugly and doesn't think it's even important enough to directly address.

    I mean honestly just a beauty pass that softened the colour palette and gave it a less harsh appearance overall would make a big difference. He could even just create a skinning system, that's one way that this has been addressed in the past, and it's a job an engineer should be able to do just fine.

  • What movie is in your top list despite its absolute shit rating?

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  • Oh my god I saw that a long time ago, I just checked the trailer and it is what I remember.

    Even as a teenager I remember thinking that the final race was absolutely unhinged. Like what about the enormous pile of dead or maimed teenagers that the camera cut away from just in time to maintain its G rating?

    In the trailer there's a bunch of kids that slide under a moving semi trailer but lose too much momentum to make it out the other side, or it looks like they do. We never see what happens to them. Main character even looks back at them for a second, just long enough to see that they're still on the ground and not moving but fuck them because our hero made it and he's on his way! Huzzah!

    I mean the movie is memorable, it's fun and all, but that scene just lost me so hard. Like actually maybe fuck everyone who thinks this race is a good idea and worth winning. They can have their race, and I will win the broader game of natural selection.

  • What movie is in your top list despite its absolute shit rating?

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  • OpenAI whistleblower’s death deemed suicide

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  • I don't think that's it at all. Wealth and power makes people stupid, and in order to keep believing in their own superior status, they have to believe we are stupider than them, which is very stupid indeed.

    Like it or not, even "monsters" have to have a model of the world and a theory of mind in order to operate. If they didn't think about us, they wouldn't be able to exploit us. If they didn't treat us with contempt, they wouldn't be able to exploit us. So, contemptuous consideration it is.

    It's just that is a poor model of reality, so it's going to be part of their downfall. They are going to keep treating us as idiots until we surprise them by suddenly not acting the part anymore. These abuses are clear and they are piling up. We remember the panama papers and what happened to those journalists. We remember what happened to Snowden, Manning and Assange. This has an undermining effect on the legitimacy of the system.

    You don't see the termites until the house is already falling down around you.