Indeed, but it didn’t stop them from trying to use cats. Thankfully it failed spectacularly while costing a certain 3 letter agency many millions of dollars in the 60s.
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It will also come with an open source “For You” algorithm. I’ve been wishing the fediverse do this since I joined and it took literally banning TikTok for it to happen in the span of a few months by dansup for Loops, who thankfully has a favorable outlook on the use of algorithms on the fediverse.
Between Pixelfed, Sup, Loops, FediDB, fediverse.info, PubKit, all that comes with developing those, his main job, and whatever else he has cooking, I don’t like being so heavily dependent on the whims of one dev. I have mad respect for him and everything he has done, but this situation is definitely limiting the growth of the platforms, contributions to those platforms, and his general decision making on what to develop and how to prioritize.
I try to be optimistic because in the end what he’s doing is a net positive, but we’re going to need more than one man’s raw coding talent. That’s why although I’m exited for Loops, I’m tempering my expectations and expecting a cap on the popularity and adoption of Loops like with Pixelfed unless something changes.
Remember the NSA director back when all the Snowden stuff happened? Keith Alexander? He joined Amazon’s board of directors in 2020. Not to mention Bezos is a particular fan of the DoD and was on the Pentagon’s advisory board.
Why anyone would trust Amazon is beyond me. And I don’t like feeling so damn watched just for walking down a street with a bunch of Ring cameras. I can’t believe it’s so normalized to constantly watch your neighbors with a corps eyeballs.
YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it....
Wtf… Cops in riot gear arresting students before 10pm, and fucking SNIPERS intimidating in a peaceful one night protest on a college campus. And a university spokesperson saying “demonstrators exercised their first amendment right for several hours and then were instructed to disperse” like yeah, that’s enough first amendment right for you guys, go be quiet now.
Nope. Just nope. You are not free. Burn it all to the ground before it’s too late or we’re actually fucked.
That’s what inevitably happens when you give a mega corp like Google all of that power over you, your life, and your data by simply using their products. Ultimately, they then get to decide who you are and how you act. And it’s in their benefit to shape everything, including you, in their corporate image.
People don’t notice how much they’re getting fucked on an individual basis until the consequences of the actions of millions or billions of people adds up and comes back around in the form of something stupid and obvious like Manifest V3, SEO everywhere, WEI, or the doublespeak “privacy sandbox” comes to bite you in the ass. Enshittification everywhere and even then most people still don’t care.
We’re their cattle and we’re choosing to walk into a slaughterhouse with our eyes wide open. In more ways than one. As fun as the game is, I really do not want to actually live in Cyberpunk.
I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn’t the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I...
I’m just trying to use independent search engines with their own index/crawler. I used DDG for many years but the fact that it’s basically a front end for Bing and Microsoft started to bother me, particularly since they put ChatGPT into Bing.
I only know of Brave Search, Mojeek, and Kagi to be independent and private at this point. I don’t want to pay for Kagi, Mojeek has its uses but I wouldn’t use it as my main engine, so that left Brave Search. The company and CEO is sus, I don’t use their chromium browser, and their search results seem to emulate and optimize ranking based on the big guys (Google and Bing) but in 2024 search is hard to come by and it’s more important to me to be fully independent of big tech.
Tldr: I like your ranking algo. Feels like a breath of fresh air reminiscent of the old days of search and internet
Long version: When I want to get results for a query, not for an intent per se, I use Mojeek.
It works best for certain types of queries. When I want to get out of the commercialized, centralized, sanitized, SEO-ridden bubble that is every other search engine, Mojeek let’s me find way more potentially obscure, unique, and satisfying results per query that likely wouldn’t rank favorably with the modern page quality criteria used by Google. Plus, compared to the same 5 websites you’ll see for every query on other engines because of that very criteria, Mojeek has way more diversity in sources.
With all these corporations incentivized to further commercialize and consolidate the internet and with the rise of AI as a source of knowledge, Mojeek is one of the places I hang onto to explore a web of humans instead of a web of reputation and money.
Worth the effort to obtain a copy of MS Office on the high seas? *SOLVED
It’s for my mother, who so far cannot stand LibreOffice.
„If companies were to do the right thing, they would lose the most valuable customers on earth, preteen kids” (english.elpais.com)
Firefox Power User Keeps 7,400+ Browser Tabs Open for 2 Years (www.pcmag.com)
Two rules. (i.ibb.co)
Gnome's Adwaita team is breaking icon compatibility (cullmann.io)
Democrats reintroduce federal CROWN Act legislation to ban hair discrimination (www.cnn.com)
can't stop won't stop (mander.xyz)
I diagnose you with dystopia (lemmy.world)
@pixelfed: Loops is a new platform for sharing short videos, and it's open source + federated Using #ActivityPub (mastodon.social)
FTC issuing over $5.6 million in refunds from Ring security issues (www.ftc.gov)
YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads'' (www.androidauthority.com)
YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it....
Possible snipers seen at OSU. Administration says they're not snipers but should be treated like they are. (midwest.social)
Update, yes there are snipers:...
A web search tip to avoid AI generated SEO junk (lemmy.world)
Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient (www.nbcnews.com)
Safest way of using WeChat
I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn’t the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I...
How the Media Treat Linux (www.youtube.com)
Just sharing this really well produced video on Linux’s public perception (since this channel has suprisingly not a lot of subscribers)
YouTube puts third-party clients on notice: Show ads or get blocked (arstechnica.com)
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The whole internet loves Kagi, a lovely paid search engine that can find things! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the CEO is an unhinged narcissist who will harangue you in email (hackers.town)
Florida woman shoots interstate drivers, says God told her to because of the eclipse, police say (abcnews.go.com)
Battlefield V now broken on Steam Deck / Linux with EA anticheat live (www.gamingonlinux.com)