It seems to me that a carrier should be able to lock a subsidized/financed device until it's paid off. That makes it possible for people who would otherwise not qualify for financing to have relatively up-to-date devices.
A carrier should not be able to lock a device that's paid off for any length of time.
I suppose it depends on whether you think regulation should be used to dissuade poor people from buying expensive phones. That seems like a reasonable enough goal, though I don't believe that's the proper role of government.
I've always bought phones outright, used when finances so dictated. I agree that's the wiser approach.
Subsidized devices blur the line between a fee for terminating service early, and paying off the cost of the device. Perhaps the former should be banned to encourage competition, and the cost of the device and the service clearly separated. That way it's clear when the device is paid off and (in my imagined ideal regulatory scenario) must be unlocked.
a poor person would have to pay BOTH. An early termination fee AND then go buy a new phone
They probably don't have to pay the fee. They might owe it legally, but the likely consequences for not paying are some impact on their credit score and inability to get service from that carrier under their own name for a while.
I’m sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn’t have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform
There's no shortage of options; the problem is getting the people you're talking to to agree on one you like. I find Signal strikes a good balance between goodness and ease of use, and many people I know who aren't tech or privacy nerds use it.
Google had the chance to make its Hangouts messaging app dominant when it was, briefly the default SMS client on Android devices. They threw that away following pushback from carriers.
I'm glad Google doesn't have the dominant messaging service, but I find it bizarre anybody still uses SMS when there are so many internet-based options. I have six, and if somebody really wants to use another, I'll probably add it.
Do you think Threads (Meta's Product) will add such a feature that allowed anyone to migrate their account to their own server? I have no belief that they'll do, but I can only hope, as I love that feature on Fediverse platforms (mastodon comes to mind)....
My (self-hosted) Mastodon server seems unable to view profiles on Threads. As far as I can tell, there's nobody to talk to about that.
I don't have high hopes about Meta having good intentions here, but I am eager to see platforms that would have previously been walled gardens open up to the federated model. I do think we have some work to do on the open source side to manage the potential massive increase in exposure once Threads users can follow users of other software.
Of course you can pick a server that blocks Threads if you just don't want to deal with that.
This is a ranked method that's different from instant runoff, with its defining characteristic being that the winner would beat every other candidate in a two-way race. The biggest downside is that determining the result is more mathematically complex than other methods, which makes it harder to explain and might lead people to mistrust the result.
Condorcet methods benefit candidates few voters hate, which is the inverse of the current and past two US presidential elections. Given a situation where two dominant parties run widely unpopular candidates, a Condorcet method would create a very strong probability that any palatable third-party candidate wins, though over the long term a system using such a method probably wouldn't have two dominant parties.
The Dutch system is open list proportional representation, with the twist that lists may overlap between districts.
I think Condorcet methods are better suited to voting for individual candidates. It's certainly possible to have multi-member districts (and I think that's a good idea), but probably doesn't pair well with proportional representation.
It seems to me people collectively decided to stop caring about COVID even though most of the risks that were present two years ago still exist. I would therefore ask the inverse: why stop protecting yourself before the danger is over?
That's correct; the omicron variant that became dominant a bit over two years ago was more contagious and less deadly than those that preceded it. Current variants are similar to omicron in those respects.
I'm inclined to think this should be illegal because it could lead to a situation where insurance is unavailable to or unaffordable for anyone who doesn't opt in to fairly invasive tracking.
It's also illegal in most jurisdictions. My point isn't that anyone should drive without insurance, but that allowing insurance companies to offer discounts for accepting spying will lead to the spying being effectively mandatory for most people.
I've been self-hosting email with Maddy for a bit, but haven't shared any of the addresses widely yet in part because I haven't set up a spam filter. I'm pleased with Maddy; there's much less to learn to get a server up and running with sane default behavior than with the email software of old....
That's a valid point, though it looks like Popfile's installation instructions call for manually installing libraries, presumably current ones. I think it processes only text, not PDFs or images, which are traditional sources of vulnerabilities. I'm fairly certain it doesn't attempt to execute Javascript. It is, itself written in Perl, which is memory-safe.
It's worth considering security because there's so much malware out there trying to spread indiscriminately, but Popfile is less vulnerable than an Android app (which bundles its dependencies) or anything written in C (which is subject to all kinds of memory management bugs).
According to a memory snapshot from Firefox 126 devtools, with uBlock Origin, immediately after a fresh page load:
old.reddit.com: 52.54 mb
new.reddit.com: 93.48 mb
lemmy.world: 54.44 mb
old.lemmy.world: 20.25 mb
I imagine both versions of Reddit would be worse without the adblocker. There are multiple frontends for Lemmy, and I did not test them all. Other browsers might differ slightly.
[UPDATE] Thank you for your comments but I found that Write Freely was well on paper but not funny to set up (self hosting) and maybe a little dead. I found that https://bearblog.dev met the specifications well. Although it is not integrated into the Fediverse, it is free and respectful of privacy!...
Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts....
They're using loaded language to say that without access to the source code and the ability to modify it, Cara could start behaving in a way you don't like and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
I think it would be great for new social things like this to just speak ActivityPub. They can build up their own user experience and culture while joining a larger network. I don't have a problem with the software itself being non-free if the protocols are and they commit to supporting account migration.
I've lived under a rock for 10 years. I did Metro ages ago while most were still on contracts. Surely we've reached true capitalist open market freedom by now. Is it still total closed market, noncompetitive, privateering corruption?
Instant message apps just got replaced with Whatsapp, Signal, etc.
Alternately, Whatsapp, Signal, etc... are instant message apps. I'm a little surprised none of the messaging apps that had been popular on PCs managed to stay popular on mobile.
Even if somebody wanted to make an unmoderated ATProto app, I guess they could? Good luck with the app stores and regulators and users
ActivityPub provides the option to do just that. Anybody can spin up a server running Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma, etc... and moderate it however they like. There are a multitude of clients in app stores and an unmoderated server won't affect that because they're generic clients like web browsers. There are countries such a server could be hosted in with minimal regulations.
As for users... you'll probably get some and they'll probably be horrible. Most people will probably block your server.
It seems like there are some good ideas in there. Are there third parties out there running servers for each component that are open to the public yet?
In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape
Yes, a code-oriented one meant to be very fast and responsive. It's pre-alpha on Linux but compiles without any fuss for me. I haven't spent much time with it, but the only bug I've seen so far is an uncommanded theme change when switching between files.
Lemmy search works pretty well on larger servers, and they're indexed by major web search engines.
The microblog side of things is worse, with Mastodon long having near-useless search because it might "encourage negative social dynamics" or some such. Some other software, such as Akkoma has had better search, and Mastodon has recently improved somewhat for accounts that opt into being searchable. Mastodon directs search engines not to index most pages.
Some people get very upset about attempts to build general-purpose fediverse search tools.
I think it's a small, but very loud minority who have unrealistic expectations about how other people will use data they share in a manner that's inherently rather public. I kind of see where they're coming from, but ActivityPub with open federation doesn't work that way.
The history of the internet is full of examples of companies taking data about or creative output from people and trying to make money from it without permission, in ways the original creator might not like. Nobody has gone there with a Fediverse scraper or search project that we know of yet, but it's going to happen if the Fediverse gets big enough.
Some people want to be able to easily share things with a certain audience without them being easily discoverable by a different audience. There are of course privacy settings to control visibility and software like Matrix that provides not only access control by cryptographic security, but those add friction. It's only possible for this group to have it both ways if nobody develops good search tools, which turns some of them into bullies.
The proposed solution of an intermediate server caching embeds is needlessly complex. The first server a link is posted to can fetch the embed, then push it out to every server receiving the post.
In this case, generating fake excerpts is not something a user on a server controlled by someone else can do; they have to operate a malicious server themselves. Defederation is a good solution to malicious servers.
Certainly someone very determined could spin up a bunch of malicious servers and put out a bunch of posts containing fake excerpts, but they'd need followers to get any reach on the microblog side of the fediverse. They could spam Lemmy communities, but users would notice and downvote/report the posts.
So I think "just defederate" probably is an adequate solution here, at least as things currently sit. Were the fediverse to grow by an order of magnitude, I think it would need a reputation system to add a bit of friction to a brand new server or user getting a lot of reach quickly.
I think they mean like IRC, Matrix, or Discord: real-time chat rather than asynchronous. They may mean such a thing integrated into a Lemmy client, but it's pretty unclear in the original question.
Have the admins of lemmy.world ever given a reason for this decision?
Yes. This post gives their thoughts around the time Threads started talking about federation and it's pretty much "let's wait and see if this results in problems". They note a high probability of problems leading to defederation if a significant number of Threads users start posting to Lemmy communities.
I am happy with this approach. I want my Lemmy server to federate with every compatible server unless and until that server becomes a source of problems. I do not want it to preemptively or transitively[1] block anything. The great thing about federated systems is that people who are not happy with that approach can join a different server with policies that better match their preferences.
[1] A transitive block is blocking a server because it doesn't block a third server.
If Lemmy.world denying Meta potential access to its 18600 monthly active users was likely to have a meaningful impact on Meta's revenue or even hurt Mark Zuckerberg's feelings, maybe I'd feel the same way.
I often use a commercial VPN service, which I suspect is not rare among Lemmy users. Most of the time, I'm able to post to lemmy.world, but on occasion I am not. The default web UI provides zero feedback, just a spinning submit button forever, but if I look in the browser dev tools, I can see it's being blocked....
What's really bizarre is that Google had the chance to be a dominant player in messaging when they made Hangouts the default SMS client on Android. Instead, they backpedaled and let Hangouts wither into obscurity. I'm mostly glad they screwed that up, but also puzzled.
Google is probably trying to get around the cardinal rule of network security: you can't trust the client.
Their RCS client probably doesn't make sending a huge volume of messages (i.e. spam) easy, and more automation is possible with root. Yes, it's stupid, but it's not completely without purpose.
I'm a hardliner when it comes to user control of their own devices, so I'm not going to agree with Google's behavior here even if it, on average results in a benefit to users.
I don't think it provides a net benefit to users though. I think Google wants to be lazy about building spam-mitigation solutions, and wouldn't be sad if it results in fewer users blocking ads and tracking. If Google was positioning its RCS client as a hardcore security product, maybe it should warn both sides of the conversations that there's a risk of compromise, but even Signal, which is far more dedicated to security doesn't do that.
Zero-click exploits are a more common attack vector than modified operating systems in the real world, and I'd be willing to wager my up-to-date LineageOS install is less vulnerable to them than the average person's phone.
FCC proposes 60-day unlocking rule for all mobile phones ( www.androidauthority.com )
Apple finally adds support for RCS in latest iOS 18 beta | TechCrunch ( techcrunch.com )
Threads Self Migration Feature...
Do you think Threads (Meta's Product) will add such a feature that allowed anyone to migrate their account to their own server? I have no belief that they'll do, but I can only hope, as I love that feature on Fediverse platforms (mastodon comes to mind)....
Meta is connecting Threads more deeply with the fediverse ( www.theverge.com )
What is the superior voting methodology? To whom does each alternative benefit
I'm not very well-versed on all this but it seems...
What's the reason for the empty comments, lately?
In the last few weeks, I frequently see some empty comments. It's just the username and no text beneath....
People who still wear masks (and aren't immunocompromised)...
How long do you plan on wearing a mask for? Will it be for the rest of your life? What will change your view?...
Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored? The insurance industry, hungry for insights into how people drive, has turned to automakers and smartphone apps like Life360. ( www.nytimes.com )
Recommend a server-side email classifier
I've been self-hosting email with Maddy for a bit, but haven't shared any of the addresses widely yet in part because I haven't set up a spam filter. I'm pleased with Maddy; there's much less to learn to get a server up and running with sane default behavior than with the email software of old....
Which is more ram efficient Lemmy or Reddit?
I was wondering if old reddit+res+ublock origin is comparable to lemmy?
Blogger Alternative for the Fediverse
[UPDATE] Thank you for your comments but I found that Write Freely was well on paper but not funny to set up (self hosting) and maybe a little dead. I found that https://bearblog.dev met the specifications well. Although it is not integrated into the Fediverse, it is free and respectful of privacy!...
A social app for creatives, Cara grew from 40k to 650k users in a week because artists are fed up with Meta’s AI policies | TechCrunch ( techcrunch.com )
Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts....
I built the first 100% private, on-device "For You" feed on the fediverse
Hi all,...
Does the USA have any open market cellular options that are legitimate pay-as-you-go and only for what you use options like Europe yet?
I've lived under a rock for 10 years. I did Metro ages ago while most were still on contracts. Surely we've reached true capitalist open market freedom by now. Is it still total closed market, noncompetitive, privateering corruption?
Kyle Rittenhouse Tells Native Americans They Can ‘Leave’ If They Hate America ( newsone.com )
Online Content Is Disappearing ( www.pewresearch.org )
Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is 'repeating all the mistakes' he made at Twitter ( www.engadget.com )
Zed editor: Linux when? ( zed.dev )
In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape
is there a search engine for the fediverse?
Since big part of the web is drowning in AI junk, including Reddit, is there a good search engine to find answers in the fediverse?
The Fediverse has a DDoS problem ( aumetra.xyz )
I was recommended to share this article I wrote a few days ago on here, too; so here we are!...
Is there an app available that allows chatting with people about technology or various other topics?
FTC fines Razer for every cent made selling bogus “N95 grade” RGB masks ( arstechnica.com )
Please stop blocking VPNs for established accounts
I often use a commercial VPN service, which I suspect is not rare among Lemmy users. Most of the time, I'm able to post to lemmy.world, but on occasion I am not. The default web UI provides zero feedback, just a spinning submit button forever, but if I look in the browser dev tools, I can see it's being blocked....
Does anyone know of any free-speech oriented Lemmy instances?
I’m interested in an instance that only blocks illegal content and spam.
Google is silently blocking RCS messages on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs ( www.androidauthority.com )
TL;DR...