cabbage
@cabbage@piefed.social
- Comment on What's wrong with Bluesky App? 2 days ago:
Mastodon is non-proprietary software. So one person or company cannot own it in a meaningful sense.
His foundation might own the copyright on the name and logo, so that bad actora can't pretend to be them. That's pretty much it.
- Comment on What should I bring to far-north Scandinavia? 1 week ago:
Vitamin D supplements. You're not gonna get much sunlight, and you need vitamin D not to get depressed.
The locals are used to seasonal depression. Foreigners tend to have a hard time with it.
- Comment on What should I bring to far-north Scandinavia? 1 week ago:
Layers are key. Noting beats real wool.
Use mittens, not gloves. Gloves suck.
- Comment on List of book and/or film titles dealing with resistance movements--organization, strategy, tactics, etc? 2 weeks ago:
I think Homage to Catalonia is an important read. It's a great account of things that can go wrong in a resistance, despite amazing people and incredible efforts.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 2 weeks ago:
They elected the candidate backer by Russia, which is still the shining beacon og a state for the Tankies out there. So Trump is a perfectly fine representative of fascism, left or right.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 2 weeks ago:
I think we have to accept that the American electorate actually wants fascism.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 2 weeks ago:
I meant to say that I would never have believed back then that Lemmy would become as popular as it is today.
My point is that it's a moving target. Reddit has a billion active users. Instagram has two billion. I don't think these make sense as targets.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 2 weeks ago:
I'm gonna say yes, for the exercise.
Four assumptions:
- Reddit will keep getting worse, due to the nature of enshittification and venture capital. Eventually enshittification reaches a breaking point where people leave or stop arriving.
- Lemmy (in a broad sense - et al!) will keep getting better, due to.the nature of open source software.
- Non-free alternatives to Reddit will eventually enshittify, law of enshittification.
- Free alternatives will use ActivityPub for the obvious advantages.
If these assumptions are met, given infinite rounds of enshittification and unhappy users, eventually a federated and free alternative will be the most lucrative option for the majority of users. Eventually Reddit will Digg itself a hole. Maybe Lemmy won't take over then, but it'll stick around.
The most unrealistic assumption is of course that the federated solutions will keep getting better indefinitely. Maybe they won't. But as long as people keep developing and contributing to the Fediverse, it's alive and improving in a way commercial alternatives cannot in the long run compete with.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 2 weeks ago:
If I saw this question posted the first time I visited Lemmy (some months before the Reddit app drama) with "popular" being defined as the current level of activity, my clear answer would be a loud and clear "probably not".
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
That's super interesting, thanks!
I find the last point particularly fascinating - that memes might have been replaced by God somehow. I feel like this resonates with an impression I already had, but that I haven't thought consciously about before now. Tucker Carlsen's demon attack story seems symptomatic.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
I find this to be incredibly interesting. It's like 2016 saw online polarization, but it happened on the same platforms. Today, there's a polarizations of platforms - we exist in different realities online.
I wonder if this split would have happened anyway, or if it was motivated by American politics. And I wonder what the consequences are.
It seems like a pretty fundamental development in how our information channels work, and I haven't seen it been discussed much by commentators.
Maybe my question cannot be answered because 'online' today just means something completely different than it did in 2016.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
For sure.
In terms of rallies Trump seems to attract comparable crowd sizes, but at much fewer rallies. The number of rallies can probably be explained by age and energy.
How energized the crowd is compared to 2016 I have no idea.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, this is a solid insight maybe we're all just locked off into our walled gardens now. But the Fediverse crowd is a bit of an extreme case - surely there must be some sort of vibe going on on the more popular platforms? Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, I don't even know any more.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
I don't think that's the question I try to ask, though I probably struggle to formulate myself well. It's not really about comparing to Harris.
It seemed that Trump engaged a lot of people who would not usually bother with politics in 2016. He ran a campaign that completely dominated the Internet. People seemed to have nothing better to do than to create right wing memes in half serious, half joking support of him.
I don't see that any more. What I see is a more normal campaign ran by a guy frequently making fascist talking points. He could still win, and maybe it's still a successful campaign, but it feels very different to me from the 2016 one.
But then again, I have changed my Internet habits so that I wouldn't see it anyway. Maybe there's still hordes of 20-something incels posting frog memes for the masses to be offended by, it's just off my radar.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 2 weeks ago:
I can't even enter Truth Social from Europe. I see Wikipedia estimates 600 000 monthly active users, which is of course a lot. But I struggle to wrap my head around how important it can be. Isn't it potentially a bit self defeating for them to close themselves off in a closed forum?
The Trump subreddit in 2016 seemed to have a cultural impact. Truth Social seems to be more of a footnote?
In a way Twitter is bad enough, but my impression there before deleting my account was that most of the Trump spam was Musk posts that appeared on my profile for no good reason.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to [deleted] | 38 comments
- Comment on Do PhDs HAVE to use Dr? 3 weeks ago:
I have a PhD, the only time I use my title is when booking tickets for trains or planes with German companies.
I'm a social scientist. Nobody hears the word "doctor" and thinks of a person like me.
- Comment on Want to buy jewlery as a gift for the girlfriend, I know nothing about jewlery, where to start? 3 weeks ago:
I guess Etsy could be a good place to look. It has gotten annoying in the last few years, but sadly it's still the best place for a lot of people to sell their crafts.
She might enjoy a unique handmade piece by a silversmith there just as much or more as a high-end necklace, and unique hand-made designs can be cheaper than diamonds. Maybe you can even reach out to a silversmith and design something together.
I tried searching for #jewelry on mastodon.social, and @kosmimatis@handmade.social was the first thing to pop up. Of course you probably want to look around more, but their latest post is not necessarily a terrible starting point.
In short, I think it's possible to go about it looking for a silversmith rather than a jewellery store. What it lacks in expensive stones it makes up for by being potentially personal. :)
- Comment on Washington Post Says It Will Stop Endorsing Presidential Candidates 3 weeks ago:
Not exactly the most mainstream, but ProPublica strikes me as pretty solid. I'd encourage anyone cancelling their Post subscription to donate monthly to them instead - journalism needs funding.
- Comment on Why am I seeing "plan your voting day strategy" so often? 1 month ago:
Studies have shown that if you ask people to make a plan for voting, they are more likely to actually go out and vote.
So we ask people to make a plan because it's an efficient way to make them more involved and more likely to actually go out and vote when the day comes. Not because it's so hard that they need a plan (unless you live in certain states of course), but because it forces you to think actively about it rather than just passively.
- Comment on What prevents Linux from being installed on mobile devices? 1 month ago:
Here's a GNOME blog post from a couple of years ago. But really it's about GTK4 - apps designed for GNOME are made to be adaptive. So if you're using a GNOME desktop you can experience it yourself by simply making windows of the core apps smaller, be it GNOME Web, Maps, Weather, Calendar, or a huge range of other apps. Apps like Spot (Spotify client), Tuba (Mastodon), Shortwave (radio), and Podcasts are also perfectly adaptable for mobile devices. Basically apps in the GNOME Circle should work well on mobile, and many of them have screenshots that illustrate how they look in different form factors.
Also, this.
- Comment on What prevents Linux from being installed on mobile devices? 1 month ago:
More than anything, the problem is apps. I installed Ubuntu Touch on an old device I had lying around (after replacing the battery to bring it back to life), and I ended up liking it more than my daily driver. It worked, the interface was snappy (no pun intended), and there's a lot of solid design choices. I found myself trying to navigate with gestures on my android phone after.
However, I could not talk to my friends, who unfortunately use WhatsApp. I could not install my banking app. There's a bunch of small thorns in the side that makes changing difficult for most users - kind of like in the early days of desktop Linux.
As in the early days of desktop Linux, the solution might lie in a compatibility layer (like WINE). Android emulation within at least Ubuntu Touch has gotten quite good, I believe. Unfortunately my device is too old to support it.
Those interested should also check out Postmarket OS.
GNOME, a major desktop environment, is also moving towards all apps being designed for all types of devices. But as long as people can't use their banks, switching is hard.
- Comment on Is martial arts really that useful? 1 month ago:
If you want something that could actually be useful in real-life situations, pick up running.
- Comment on I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield. [Opinion] 1 month ago:
For real. His complaint is not that they spread dangerous lies about migrants - he's all aboard with that apparently - where he puts his foot down is when they attack his migrants, who he need for the local economy to thrive.
As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.
He cares about himself and his city, but he wouldn't give a shit if the same thing happened anywhere else. As it is: in the very next paragraph he's complaining about the Boden administration not being inhumane enough at the southern border.
Scum.
- Comment on Men: What sequence do you fellow to dry your body off after showering or bathing? 2 months ago:
Yup! There's that thing you can hang the towel from, I consider that side "up".
Devices this system as a child, I have honestly never stopped to think about whether it's reasonable or not.
- Comment on Men: What sequence do you fellow to dry your body off after showering or bathing? 2 months ago:
Top to bottom-ish. But I consistently use one side of the towel for my face, and the other side for my junk. I know it doesn't matter as I have cleaned up everywhere anyway, but I like to keep it separated anyway.
- Comment on How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers 2 months ago:
Honestly, the gift part always made the people of Troy look a bit naïve. It would perhaps have made more sense if they paid good money for the latest and greatest gigantic wooden horse made by the finest Greek artisans.
- Comment on Ohio Woman Says She Regrets Sharing False Rumor About Haitians on Facebook 2 months ago:
Except maybe RFK, of course.
- Comment on What's going on at Mozilla these days? 2 months ago:
The hatred is partly fuelled by people in the open source community getting really riled up when they find out some open source projects are developed by organizations that need to earn money and pay their employees, be it Red Hat, Canonical, GNOME, Mozilla, or anything else. Female leadership will tend to push people over the edge.
In addition to the usual rage-fuelled misogyny of open source forums, there is however also valid concern out there. It can be hard to hear through the noise.
Mozilla's job listings provide some insight to what many consider to be a red flag for the way forward. To work on FireFox, they are looking for:
- Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Gen AI
- Senior Director of Product, Firefox Growth
- Principal Product Manager, Generative AI
- Senior Software Engineer - Layout (CSS and ICU4X Support)
- Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Gen AI
- Staff Full-stack Engineer - Generative AI
- Senior Front End Engineer, Gen AI
- Senior Front-End Engineer, Firefox
- Front-End Engineer, Firefox
- Staff Software Engineer - Credential Management
- Staff Software Engineer - Release Engineering
- Senior Front-End Software Engineer, New Tab
For fairness I include every position, highlighting in bold the ones I think are likely to do more harm than good. This is not the direction I want FireFox to take, and I believe Mozilla are misguided to try to place themselves as the ethical AI actor. That said I'm not 100% against it all of the time - I do think the local in-browser machine translation feature of newer releases is great. But I don't think I want much more than that, and even this feature should probably have been an optional plug-in.
There's also some former empolyees voicing valid concerns.
In short, I think the legitimate criticism boils down to:
1. Buying into the AI hype
2. Flirting with "more ethical" ads and tracking, rather than being unquestionably on the user's side of just blocking it all
3. Doing too many things nobody asked for, arguably while not paying enough attention to FireFox
4. Appearing distant from the community and unresponsive to its preferencesI don't really buy into point 3 personally. I use FireFox every day and it's by far the best browser I have ever had. It never gives me any problems at all, and password sync with Android is really useful. I wish it would support JPG XL, but that's pretty much it in terms of complaints on my end.
- Comment on Ohio Woman Says She Regrets Sharing False Rumor About Haitians on Facebook 2 months ago:
Holy shit. Maybe she's the one who has been eating all those pets.