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Cake day: November 4th, 2023

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  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todaytoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    19 days ago

    Yes, but quality over quantity. I was a redditor back in the early days, pre Digg migration. Being a redditor meant something back then, almost universally meant you were tolerant, usually but not always somewhat liberal, and with a very strong sense of fairness. I remember a good friend of mine started dating someone and when they mention their new partner was a redditor I am immediately thought oh good, that means they are very likely a good person (they ended up married). Reddit has of course grown since then, but not all of the growth is good. I used to go there for engaging discourse, knowing that I was surrounded by other relatively smart people and we could have respectful discussion on almost any subject. Those discussions are few and far between now.

    So yes I would like Lenny and the fediverse to grow, but I am more interested in what kind of people we attract than simply growing numbers. When I would rather do is create a reputation that the fediverse is a place to come before respectful discourse and sharing of ideas, not just scrolling through page after page of mindless content like on a big tech social platform (FB / Insta / TikTok / etc).


  • Eventually, we will just have to accept that photographic proof is no longer proof.

    There are ways that you could guarantee an image is valid. You would need a hardware security module inside the camera, which signs a hash of the picture with its own built-in security key that can’t be extracted and a serial number that it generates. That can prove that an image came from a particular camera, and if you change even one pixel of that image the signature won’t match anymore. I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Not mainstream at least. There are one or two camera manufacturers that offer this as a feature, but it’s not on things like surveillance cameras or cell phones nor will it be anytime soon.



  • If the Democrats lose, there is not going to be any soul searching. There is going to be a lot of finger pointing and blame. And most of it is going to be at Republicans, at the media, at Trump idiots, etc.

    I am hoping that Trump loses if only because I think they’re actually be some realignment within the GOP. Unlike the Democrats, there is some actual question of direction within the GOP currently from what I’ve seen. Not everybody over there is happy with Trump. Many who just want power see him as too divisive and cultish, a Trump win is a win for Trump not necessarily for the GOP. There are some actual conservatives in the GOP who feel (IMHO correctly) that Trump is more of a cult of personality than a reflection of conservative values.

    If nothing else, if Trump loses this time, he is probably finished. At least I hope so and I think there’s a good chance of it. Look at the younger generations, how many people under say 30 do you see waving Trump flags?

    At least I really hope that realignment happens. And I also hope it comes with a realignment of message. I think there are a lot of conservative positions that could have mainstream appeal, that deserve a voice in politics, but the GOP has abandoned a great many of them in favor of harassing gay people and immigrants. That’s not a good way for us to go as a country.



  • There’s currently no way to delete an uploaded image.

    That’s especially problematic since pasting any image into a reply box auto-uploads it. So if your finger slips and you upload something sensitive, or if you want to take down something you uploaded previously, there’s no way to do it.

    What should happen is whenever you upload an image, the image and delete key get stored in some special part of your Lemmy account. Then from the Lemmy account management page you can see all your uploaded images and delete them individually or in bulk.

    So it seems you can now do this- Profile, Uploads shows you all your uploads. Go Lemmy!



  • Casey Neistat. Back when he was doing his daily vlog thing a lot of it was really interesting, covering him and his wife trying to make shit happen in the city as he was running and riding his powered skateboard around Manhattan. At some point his audience started drifting younger, way way younger, and I don’t know if it was him or me but I just kind of lost interest. It didn’t feel new anymore.

    That might be me to be honest. I actually don’t watch YouTube that much at all anymore, unless I’m looking for something specific. Their recommendation algorithm is garbage and it is so obviously going for raw time suck engagement that it leaves me with a bunch of unfulfilling clickbait / ragebait where I could watch it for an hour and then just want my hour back so I end up not returning. The whole platform used to be more full of interesting genuinely entertaining and educational videos, now it just feels like a giant time sink. And every other video is now some paid sponsorship or plug where the creator is basically just whoring out their own influence. Case in point, look up reviews of laser engravers. Every single one that I could find, especially of a couple major brands, the creator got the laser hardware for free. Some of them are just advertisements that reuse the manufacturer’s own stock footage, and some seem more like real reviews, but for one or two brands I literally could not find one video where the creator wasn’t sponsored by the laser manufacturer.


  • It’s a very simple answer Apple has guaranteed that your data will stay on your device and stay secure. This is generally trusted because Apple has a track record of keeping user data secure on the device or encrypted in the cloud even in ways Apple cannot access. Point is, when Apple says they are going to do this in a way that respects privacy, and they outline the technical details of how it will work, people trust that because there’s a track record.

    Microsoft has no such trust. They have a recent track record of being intrusive and using dark patterns to persuade users to give Microsoft their data, for example in Edge there have been new feature pop-ups that require data sharing with Microsoft and the two options are ‘got it’ and ‘settings’ so accepting requires one click and rejecting requires 4 going into the settings menu and changing a few things. Microsoft is also heavily pushing Copilot which is mostly cloud-based. Furthermore, Microsoft recently showed a system that would basically screenshot your computer at very regular intervals and store them in an insecure manner. Granted it was on the device, but the way they were going to be stored meant they could be stolen with two lines of code. And let’s not forget that Windows 11 cannot be set up without a Microsoft account, so to even use your computer you have to share your email address with Microsoft. In this and many other ways they just do not act like a company that respects privacy at all, they act like the typical big tech give us everything or we will make your life difficult type company that nobody trusts.


  • This 100%>. It’s why Reddit is way more fun than Twitter. Twitter is like yelling into the void and sometimes the void yells back. It’s good for publishers and content creation, bad for real conversation. Reddit supports real threaded conversation with voting to highlight the good parts of the conversation.

    The other thing is interest following. Twitter you have to follow people, and a person may be posting on things you have interest in and other things you have no interest in. Reddit you follow subjects, and you see good content regardless of who posts it.

    Mastodon and Lemmy are just decentralized Twitter and Reddit.


  • the top end models of the good brands are just scams, they just look a bit nicer and have some shitty “AI powered” app you’ll never use.

    This is literally a scam.
    There was an article a while back which I can’t find right now, a few of those product designers were saying that past $100-$150 they really weren’t sure what benefits could be added so they just throw a bunch of useless whiz bang shit in that serves no useful purpose but they sell it for $300 or whatever and enough people buy it to make it worth building another SKU.

    In most cases the super top end one has the same motor as the midrange or low-midrange one, and takes the same brush heads, which means it does exactly the same thing. Buy that one for $85 and be done with it.