Probably posted lots before but it’s the first chapter of “Ministry for the Future”, which describes the tipping point. It’s uncomfortable reading. https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/

Why are men running women’s sports?

Happy you’re happy with Windows, but Linux is absolutely not “prone to failure”.

Lemmy’s new user retention rate is considerably better than Threads.

better yet, why couldn’t someone design a printer that can be 3D printed and use open source firmware?

I like Lemmy and Mastodon. No ads or manipulative algorithms. Somewhat social and usually polite. Turns out that when you don’t automate the incitement of anger and invective in clever ways that people can actually be pretty civil. Whoda thunk?

recently bought 2 of the beelink mini PCs - they seem pretty solid so far - they are quite a bit more expensive than the pi but I think they offer pretty good bang for the buck for a small form factor server.

War! What is it good for? It’s good for business! – Billy Bragg (“North Sea Bubble”)

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/9780531

I did not know until now that it is possible to embed external images within posts and replies. I thought the only option was to upload to your instance.

this is bothersome, but if you use a VPN then at least there’s that.

otherwise it’s feasible to track captured addresses based on which posts they read by posting an external image in the post or a reply.

if you are seeing images in this post, then your client address is visible to any external image hosts.

no. the remote server will log the requests based on the client address. it is a good argument for using a vpn.

Given that they know exactly who you are, I wouldn’t get too personal with anything but it is amazing for many otherwise time-consuming problems like programming. It’s also quite good at explaining concepts in math and physics and and is capable of reviewing and critiquing student solutions. The development of this tool is not miraculous or anything - it uses the same basic foundation that all machine learning does - but it’s a defining moment in terms of expanding capabilities of computer systems for regular users.

But yeah, I wouldn’t treat it like a personal therapist, only because it’s not really designed for that, even though it can do a credible job of interacting. The original chat bot Eliza, simulated a “non directional” therapist and it was kind of amazing how people could be drawn into intimate conversations even though it was nothing like ChatGPT in terms of sophistication - it just parroted back what you asked it in a way that made it sound empathetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

is your router’s dns definitely pointed to the pihole and was the router rebooted after that was set?

Not sure if this will help. It’s a searchable list of communities sorted by newest created community. Refreshes daily. https://lemmyfind.quex.cc/

Interesting read. Thanks.

About time. Well done. More to follow, hopefully.

The BBC just set up their own Mastodon instance: https://social.bbc/@BBC_News_Labs

what an amazing site - thanks!

they don’t get ad revenue from you, they get it from the firms they will be selling your data to. If you are commenting and you have a profile then whatever info they have or can guess about your demographic will be monetized.

It’s good to see Lemmy getting some love, athough I did get a chuckle at the “this whole fediverse concept is so hard to get your head around” stuff. They are so used to being fed what the algorithm delivers that they are lost without it. It’s so touchingly Orwellian.

1. After you log into your own instance, you don’t need to remember any other url, so instance urls don’t really matter - it’s just an address for the instance.
2. Less sought-after domain suffixes are significantly cheaper to register than .com and you can usually get what you want for a prefix (main reason)
3. Lemmy instances are not dot coms by nature so they may as well be something else.

Very simple. They will use water from their cloud vaporware.