Hi, we're a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.
We're not a newspaper, we're a content portal.
We're not a taxi service, we're a ride sharing app.
We're not a pay TV service, we're a streaming platform.
We're not a department store, we're an e-commerce marketplace.
We're not a financial services firm, we're crypto.
We're not a space agency, we're a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
We're not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we're a large language model generative AI platform.
Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.
But we're totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.
And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don't apply to us.
Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections... They totally don't apply to us.
Even copyright laws — as long as we're talking about everyone else's intellectual property.
We're going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.
We've also raised several billion in VC funding, and we'll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.
Once we have a near monopoly, we'll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.
You won't believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.
We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.
By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we're doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.
By the way, don't forget to check out our latest innovation. It's the Uber of toothpaste!
You have been rated 3 stars or lower by our toothbrushing partners in the last 14 days. For this reason we are closing your Tøøther account and revoking your toothpaste access. This decision is final and there is no appeal process.
I wrote this blog post to inform the people I know who aren't as tech savvy or otherwise don't put any thought into their choice of browser. Another goal is to help get enough awareness on the topic and make sure it fails.
The reason for Android's Notification system being better than iOS, is solely due to the ability to turn off individual aspects of an application's notifications.
Google, the poor multi-billion dollar scrappy startup that maintains Android, made a payment app that has one notification setting, "Google Pay". So all the ads, promotions, everything.
3rd party apps like PhonePe & Paytm have a better system.
Good point about dynamic channels (even though it sounds bad if you consider the notification channel’s purpose) but not true in that particular case: I’ve talked to a bunch of people using Viber and it still has only one active “call” channel
Probably bad coding - should create notification channel when there’s no existing one atm somehow. Probably disabling notification channel also triggers recreation
I would too but gotta get these “good morning” and “celebrate the day of lightly salted cucumbers” pictures/post cards from my grandparents somehow haha
That’s true. I’m unemployed, I’d probably take a job working for him. Doubt it would last long because I have a dumb mouth that can’t stay shut when it should
Gravity is not just attraction to the closest thing but also the heaviest thing.
As the galaxies “pass” each other, all stars will be attracted to the dense cores of each galaxy. That is going to change the trajectory of individual stars and, as an aggravate effect, the overall shape and distribution. Unless the galaxies are aligned on the same angle, this is going to drag stars off the primary plane.
As the galaxies approach, the arms will stretch out to each other. As they pass through each other, the planes will tug on each other, and after they “exit”, the arms will reach back.
All this new motion will disrupt the natural shape and trajectory of the galaxy as a whole. Depending on the momentum, it could get pulled back and the whole process could happen again ( and again ) with greater disorder each time.
Just an update because I just figured what happened: I booted the iso through Ventoy, and just saw today that by default Ventoy injects register entries to bypass the online account requirement (as well as the hardware checks). Good to know.
Why wait for Microsoft to catch up with what we've been doing for decades?
Get Plasma, a modern, fully functional, clean, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive operating system now, regardless from where you live and ditch Windows for good.
You generally need to get software and hardware that is compatible with your operating system and processor architecture. It’s true that the most used platforms will have the best support, but you have that problem with any OS.
And it’s also not like games with anti cheat generally don’t work with Linux. Proton+Steam does support Valve Anti-Cheat, Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye. It’s just that developers have to explicitly enable Linux support for EAC and BattlEye.
I've been buying these little boxes from AliExpress for years to use as firewalls and routers. My oldest one is almost 9 years old now! OpenBSD installs just fine. Just a BIOS tweak to always boot up after power is restored.
Openwrt works great for gigabit networks with simple firewall rules and no IPS. But used 10-56gbps enterprise equipment is getting pretty cheap, and more complicated firewall configurations need more powerful hardware than the typical openwrt router.
And 56gbps on a home LAN might be overkill, but that's not important.
Prominent "free-speech absolutist" threatens to sue Jewish anti-hate group because it engaged in free speech he didn't like.
"Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
"The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by 'falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic'."
If your list of enemies includes the ADL, then there's a more-than-reasonable chance that you're an anti-semite.
Whoopsies! "Free speech absolutist" "accidentally" suspends the accounts of journalists who are critical of him, and people whose political views he disagrees with.
He seems to have quite the habit of firing or banning people he disagrees with, doesn't he?
Via Gizmodo:
"X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, purged an unknown number of prominent accounts over the last 24 hours with little to no explanation, and then restored the accounts minutes after this article was published.
"The list includes popular accounts belonging to journalists, writers, and podcasters. Among them are Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept, writer and podcaster Rob Rousseau, Texas Observer correspondent Steven Monacelli, the account for TrueAnon, a left-wing politics and news podcast, and a number of others.
"One thing the accounts have in common is recent criticisms of the Israeli government.
...
"Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist” has previously said no one should be banned from X unless they break the law.
"Update, 1:12 p.m.: Shortly after this article was published, Musk responded to a question about the issue from far-right influencer Jackson Hinkle. Musk promised to investigate, and the accounts went back up soon after. Musk later blamed the “mistake” on X’s spam algorithms. The Hamas account is still suspended."
After putting my account into "hibernation" for the past few weeks, I finally closed it. But I'm still looking for work. Thankfully I can still find positions (SRE and software dev) by just going directly to the company's site and finding a Jobs page.
Good luck to everyone else out there looking for work!
I agree that going fedi doesn't automatically solve the issues.
However, moving it away from a multi tiered paid platform (they really tailored it so they could do this) and controlling the bots/scam accounts would be a completely different experience.
I think fedi would at least solve the first one, and I'd expect would help controlling the second.