FWIW there’s a way to bridge Bluesky accounts to Mastodon

https://fed.brid.gy/

my point is that “if there’s an obstruction, stop” means these cars are going to be stopping and requiring human intervention all the time. That’s semi autonomous at best.

I don’t know if you’ve encountered intransigent geese in your driving adventures, but the only way to deal with them is to slowly drive through the flock until they move out of your way.

fully autonomous cars are never going to happen without major changes to our roads. we’d be better off investing in more busses and trains.

I realized self-driving on roads is impossible for so-called when someone pointed out what human drivers do when there’s like a flock of geese camped out in the middle of the road.

We know that we should slowly move forward until they get out of the way, including bonking then with the car (gently). Do we want cars deciding that some obstruction in the road is “ok” to hit? I don’t. So what’s the solution? Something other than pure autonomous self driving.

We can probably have some very high level driver assist. Maybe.

What I don’t get about this is why in this day and age with all the analytics tools we have do companies continue to just happily pay for simple eyeball exposure?

The only time they seem to have any pause at all on this model is if people post screenshots of ads for their products next to posts literally praising Nazis.

These so called AIs (LLMs) can learn to tell the difference between positive/happy/uplifting posts, neutral posts, and angry/sad/disturbing posts. The advertisers should be asking for their products to be featured next to the first and second groups of posts.

People engage based on anger, sure. They click posts and reply and whatnot. But do they click the ad next to a post that pisses them off and then buy the product?

Or is this purely a subconscious intrusion effort? Do the advertisers just want their products in front of eyeballs regardless of what’s around the ad? It seems like the answer is “no” when they’re called out. But maybe it’s “yes” if they can get away with it?

Well to be fair if we just go full ham with crypto mining and so called AI, we’ll belch enough GHGs into the atmosphere that the actual climate apocalypse will come within 20 years or so, wiping out most of human so called civilization, which will put the climate on a path to resetting over the next couple hundred thousand years.

Solved!

Hmmm maybe we should ignore #1 and focus on #5 then

This is Zuck’s characterisation. No direct quotes. No attachments (that I’ve seen). He calls it pressure. He says they wanted to censor “satire & humor.” In fact this BS letter is what the original article quoted.

If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.

All these other “like Twitter but ______” micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they’re profitable.

If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they’ll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can’t kill it.

I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.

For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a “just do this part for me” option, probably automatically enabled.

#3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.

#4 is hard… Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the “early” Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That’s some very strong “lizard brain” stuff.

So… let’s get going y’all! :)

I love how he just uncritically and with absolute credulity accepts excerpts from a letter written by Zuck with no supporting evidence, no examples of what “pressure” looked like, etc.

I can’t believe these people are still so butt hurt about the perfectly reasonable actions taken by the US and State governments and governments worldwide in response to a once in a century global respiratory DEADLY pandemic that killed millions and millions of humans.

And as far as FB (and other social media) goes, fuck em. And fuck the users. Types of speech can be illegal. Defamation (lying about someone) and false advertising (lying about a product or service) can be illegal even though it’s definitely speech. These have “lying” in common, which to me implies there must be something about lying (specifically misrepresenting reality) that weakens typical 1st Amendment protections.

But it’s clear what this guy is most sad about is the traffic he got while his article about Woodstock going on during a lull in the comparatively mild pandemic that was “active” at the time (no meaningful H3N2 activity in the US at the time) went away when FB rightly changed the algorithm to not boost his stupid irrelevant “analysis.”

But people like the writer of this article are either too addled by conspiracy galaxy brain or too committed to lying for money to care that they could really hurt people with their bullshit.

This guy needs to go to something less harmful like selling homeopathic tinctures or lying about the moon landing or flat earth or something.

Слава Україні!

I’m guessing they mean like in the absence of energy, right? Because can’t massless photons warp spacetime as the get to higher and higher energies?

Probably with a FOSS alternative but with the owner class working is to death for below survival wages who has the time?

Every time I install Windows the first thing I download is total commander. I can’t function without it.

It looks like midnight commander with some upgrades

I’m confused, are you claiming the US is a tyranny of the majority or authoritarian? Or are you saying there are tyrannies of the majority in some state or local governments?

Nationally, we’re definitely neither of those things. The presidency is determined by a minority because of the electoral college. In 2020 it was just a happy coincidence that it also lined up with the popular vote.

All through 2021 and 2022 the desires of the majority were stifled by the Senate because of the minority rule that’s enforced there by the 2 senators per state part of the Constitution.

Looking at the House, it’s minority rule there, too. Thanks to gerrymandering by state legislatures, a lot of Republican representatives are representing 60/40 districts and a lot of Democrats are representing 90/10 districts. You can see it by adding up the total votes by party. The Democrats would have a significant majority if seats were apportioned by the popular vote.

Now maybe it’s the case in some states and counties and cities that you have tyranny of the majority. That definitely sucks if they’re being abusive. But it’s not the only alternative to authoritarianism.