@constantine that's a difficult one, frankly. It's basically denying the neutrality of the protocol to users, but because it's private (insanely large) companies doing the gatekeeping, there's no recourse. And spam is a never ending problem no matter where you are.
The only way to fight it is to insist on still using those small independent mail servers, and still acknowledge that you will need to keep a Gmail account to communicate with those who refuse to leave. Kindof like having a Fedi account but still communicating with people on Facebook who refuse to get a Fedi account. Or just refuse you communicate with people who won't come outside the enshittification matrix. It's shit but those are really the only options.
Hilarious, I love a good debunking. Apparently those hallowed areas where people routinely live over 100 are explained by... pension fraud! So much for the breathless Netflix doco about 'blue zones'.
Blue zones: The myth of the paradise for 100-year-olds
BEVs are functionally unfixable if the battery dies. The cost of battery replacement exceeds the cost of the car itself. As a result, they are going to lead a huge shortfall in available transportation options for the lower class. In reality, BEVs are toys for the rich. They are not serious transportation ideas.
@Hypx I am a relatively poor person in Australia, but I've been into electric bicycles and following BEV developments for years, and while I'm poor I'm still reasonably good at saving money. I imported a second hand 10yo EV from Japan. The battery it came with still had years of life in it, but I upgraded for range and will use the old battery in an offgrid home system. Overall my investment beyond the cost of an equivalent ICE vehicle will pay itself back in about 5 years, and beyond then I'm continuing to benefit from massively cheaper "fuel" and the vehicle will likely last another decade and beyond (an Aussie owned Tesla recently broke 700,000km, with a battery swap at 666,666km).
A brand new BEV from a different Japanese auto co is slated for this year with a brand new battery, which will be about 2/3 the cost of my 10yo BEV + upgraded battery. I'm considering upgrading to that.
Keep trying to tell people BEVs are not for poor people... I'm proof that is absolutely not true.
@Hypx which part(s) of the above do you claim are gaslighting? Are you saying I can't possibly be poor simply because I own a BEV? In global terms, sure, but compared to the average Australian, I'm in the bottom quarter.
@Hypx no, they probably won't. The chemists who work in this area absolutely disagree. Hydrogen may yet have breakthroughs, and in that case, I'll definitely be promoting them. But not at this stage. The new tech that Toyota recently unveiled where you just fill the car with water and the hydrogen is created onboard is may have potential, for example. It reminds me a bit of the Delorean powered by garbage in Back To The Future, haha. But the way hydrogen cars work currently, they are not cheaper, and they are nowhere near as practical as a BEV you can charge at home. You can get a BEV and be completely fairly independent even in a country without infrastructure, which is why Ethiopia has already banned import of ICE vehicles. Hydrogen vehicle tech and infrastructure as it is currently will continue to have the same (& worse) issues as ICE tech & infrastructure.
I think a simple change in nomenclature could help Mastodon incredibly. Servers is an inaccurate term and instance is unfamiliar and vague. Both create tension for new users.
Why not simply call Mastodon instances what they are: Communities.
Ask users which Mastodon community they'd like to join. Have community rules, community policy, and community leaders. Not server rules, instance moderators and administrators.
@espyeen@ajsadauskas@chad@Gargron@mike And here's the social in social media. It is more complex than email, or even instant messengers, in that the communications are more public. So it's far more a community issue when inevitable conflicts occur.
Having said that, my Fediverse experience so far has been completely unproblematic, maybe just luck, or down to a stable instance? I guess you don't know what you don't know.
@onepict@anildash I wasn't in fandom on LJ, was in the #goth community, which thrived there in the early aughts.
While people have survived and found friends again after the split, it wasn't a good time. It was the same, probably worse really, with G+.
Interestingly have found some people from both spaces have migrated to Fedi, but it's still hard to find folk, and many who were on LJ in quite tight knit communities that I speak to in other places (Discord, Signal) still have the opinion that Fedi isn't worth their time as their networks are not here (yet). The fragmentation was deeply damaging, most people just went to Facebook, and even now, far too many can't see the importance of Federation to our social health and safety.
I feel the only way things will truly change is for legal intervention, which is coming to the EU, and why Threads, I think, was built, in anticipation of this legal hurdle for monopolist players.
@onepict@anildash absolutely, the communities were so key to LJ's success at the time (and I maintain to this day, they screwed up by not adding events functionality and this is an area I'm actively watching Fedi for a genuine FB killer, and nothing quite works as needed yet...)
I have watched the process of #Rexxit with interest too, while I was never a big Reddit user, the sense of community there is a little similar to LJ back in the day, and I follow one Rexxit community (#Melbourne on aussie.zone) through my Mastodon account and occasionally contribute even though the functionality split of Fedi means it doesn't quite work 100%. Not sure if this is something that can actually be achieved with different features across Fedi, but my gut tells me we'll have something more functional take the place of Mastodon as a leader in this space (I just hope it isn't Threads 😑), something with both communities and events, but nothing I've tested makes the grade, though there are some contenders.
@onepict@anildash WordPressMU tried. G+ actually did a reasonable job, I think Diaspora might have as well, but of course now we know in hindsight, G+ was only created to destroy the nascent Fediverse, which actually had a shot at that time of taking a serious percentage of eyeballs from Facebook before it got split by G+. It was a fucking shame. And I was one of the mugs.
At the time Google spouted the same bullshit #Meta and #BlueSky are spouting now about planning to be interoperable, but I think Meta is definitely bolder now, and know much more about how to lock in users. They want to slurp up the ex-Twitter addicts, they don't really care about Fedi, we're still peanuts to them. The concern about Threads is only relevant while people don't learn the lesson many of us active in Fedi now learned back then.
Fool me once, shame on you. Many are wiser now... I hope. I still think legal requirements for interoperability are necessary to protect against the monopolists though most plebs still don't understand why it's imperative for a functional society.
Side quest:
Social Media tshirts I have:
LiveJournal
Diaspora
"NO I'M NOT ON FUCKING FACEBOOK"
... really need a cute #MastodonTshirt to add to my collection, recommendations welcomed 😊
A more creative take on the sad repeated failures of #hydrogen, as I've said often I'm not against (green) hydrogen but so far it seems far too many oil industry shills, and only getting worse. The only potential use that looks promising is a proprietary solid hydrogen technology from Norway, and it's not going to be used in cars, it's sensible for home electricity / space heating because of the waste heat created.