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Why is End of Life of an OS bad for an average user?

I get that there won't be any security updates. So any problem found can be exploited. But how high is the chance for problems for an average user if you say, only browse some safe websites? If you have a pc you don't really care much about, without any personal information? It feels like the danger is more theoretical than...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

It's not reasonable, but it is understandable. This is why FOSS is the only viable alternative for sustainable computing.

aasatru ,
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Fascinating how the federated Bluesky spam came from Nostr. Dorsey's lovechild vomiting crap all over his disowned brainchild. Clearly he bet on the right horse.

aasatru ,
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A dominant market position will do that to you, it seems.

aasatru ,
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I was paying for Kagi until recently, but they keep working on functionality I'm not interested in rather than lowering their prices. Other than that it was a fine experience, but too pricey, and the argument that that's the cost of running a search engine doesn't hold when they choose to develop all kinds of extra stuff.

I wish I liked SearXNG better, but the results are sadly not that great for me.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I think there's a lot of us who would ideally want to avoid both Microsoft and Google, and now that Bing is having problems it's more relevant than ever. I don't really see how the comment is braggy or patronising.

That said, I'm not comfortable using Brave either. I wish Mozilla or the Internet Archive would launch a search engine. Maybe both in cooperation. Then again, it would require Mozilla to bite the hand that feeds it.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Yeah, fair enough. I read the post more favourably, as a "at least my alternative is still working well for me", but then also being aware that every time Brave is mentioned someone jumps on and reminds everyone that the CEO is a jerk, so it saves us the time by addressing it right away.

Both interpretations are valid I guess. :)

In our post-AI era, is job security strictly mythical? Or How to believe in careers as a concept worth doing?

With the lastest news of AI layoffs, I'm struggling to understand how the idea of a career still holds. If careers themselves effectively become gambles like lottery tickets, how do we maintain drive and hopes in the longterm endgame of our struggles?...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Is it possible that I miss out on valuable insights by immediately dismissing the opinions of anyone who refers to machine learning as AI?

Sure.

Will I stop doing it?

Sure as hell not.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Love them! When the male has much more efficient camouflage than the female, is this because it has a greater responsibility for gathering food, while she stays in the nest more? Or is the red colour better camouflage for somewhere else outside the tree?

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

That's amazing! Fascinating that there's so much variation within the species yet next to none between the genders.

Thanks for the answer!

aasatru , (edited )
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I think a good approach could be to think about how you could reach users of different platforms.

A lot of Mastodon users follow hashtags, so including relevant hashtags ( and seem like good starting points) might be a good idea. Tagging groups, such as @accessibility, might also help.

I think Kbin/Mbin might be better suited for this than Lemmy, as it integrates better with other federated networks. You can follow microbloggers and boost content, which in turn makes them likely to follow you back and creates a community beyond which Lemmy community you choose to post in. Your Mastodon followers will see your posts, but it won't matter to them which community you post it in.

It's hard for content to make the jump from Lemmy to Mastodon as Lemmy does not make itself discoverable, but as soon as content reaches Mastodon users nothing stops them from interacting with it (by boosting or replying).

Sadly Kbin.social lacks sufficiently active moderation these days, so you might be better off with an mbin instance. I also have no idea how accessible Mbin is to blind users.

Edit: I over-emphasized the point about reaching a broader audience. If you want to discuss a narrow topic but you don't want most ActivityPub users to see it because you don't value their input, I guess Lemmy is as good as it gets.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I appreciate your efforts!

In an ideal world it would always be possible to credit the photographer, but I guess that's sadly unrealistic.

If there's an interest for fakes I guess the could be a "Fowl Friday" or something like that every month, where fake owls are allowed/encouraged if properly tagged. I guess the value would be educational, showing people how to tell that impressive-looking wildlife photography is fake. You're an expert of this, and it's very much appreciated that you share your insights. :)

Will I ever be seen as truly British?

My family immigrated to the UK from Poland when I was six. I'm 20 now, speak much better English than Polish and feel like this is my land/culture. However I have a Polish first and last name, Polish passport and "unique" accent everyone picks up on, so despite this I'm usually perceived as an outsider. It makes me really sad...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Well, imagine you meet a guy travelling through the US. He's wearing lederhosen, has a freaking feather in his hat, and speaks with a heavy German accent. You ask where he's from, and he says he's American/Italian, as his maternal grandfather was born in the US and his grandmother on his father's side is Italian. However, this is his first time outside of Germany, and he speaks no Italian and hardly any English.

This is what Americans tend to look like to Europeans.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

If anything, this proves that forking Mastodon is a great idea. Not because any useful software would come out of it, but it would distract some of the annoying armchair managers out there.

The biggest problem with Mastodon isn't the lack of feature X or the presence of feature Y; it's those exact assholes, draining the energy and enthusiasm from anything that crosses their path while scaring away anyone looking for a meaningful conversation.

I hate to break it to you, but if you genuinely think you've figured it all out, chances are you're a fucking moron.

How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals

I constantly see angry mobs of people decrying "woke", "critical race theory", ""grooming"", and whatever other nonsense they made up this week. They march around with guns, constantly appending lib as a prefix to any word they can use to denigrate. They actively plot violence and spew hatred in the open....

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

This. Conservatives tend to themselves be the victims of a failed system, hating them for failing to address it in a useful manner is hardly constructive. I reserve my hatred for billionaires.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia is a solid philosophical foundation for a lot of right wing thought. If you want to engage further you can follow up with Michael Otsuka's critique in Self-Ownership and Equality: A Lockean Reconciliation.

Nozick provides an underpinning for what many think of as traditional conservative American values, without basing it in Christianity.

Then of course there's the Chicago school of economics (Friedman et al), which is just a somewhat naive and more it less completely discredited take on how the economy works. It's fundamental for understanding American politics the previous half century, but their ideas are not really worth interacting with unless you're particularly interested in economics. It's not like the idiot politicians who push it in front of them understand the theories either.

Thsee theories is not far right; there's no salvaging the far right, and their ideological basis is mostly just bigotry. You could read Ayn Rand to try to understand which hole these idiots crawled from. Or better, don't waste your time.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

Yeah, you're probably right it's worth reading if you want to understand the American right. I just don't think Atlas Shrugged is anywhere near as interesting as Anarchy, State and Utopia from a history of ideas perspective, but that might not be the relevant dimension. :)

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I guess technically that's neither romance nor a scam. Still messed up in more ways than one.

aasatru ,
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Yeah, just don't set up a competing business and you're fine.

aasatru ,
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I think that's mostly food regulations, but I'm not an expert of the field. Might apply more broadly as well.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I have posted some pictures I've taken from hikes, and check in now and then when I feel like posting something or looking at pictures.

My experience is very different from what other people here seem to report. I am just posting into the void, I have posted 11 pictures to date, and I never linked the account to anything or told anyone about it. Still I have more than 50 followers, only from people who stumbled over my content and decided to follow. I'm only following half of that number, so it's not a politeness thing.

I've also gotten a few comments, though mostly people just click like and/or boost. It seems every time I post something I gain at least a follower or two.

So overall I'm pretty impressed by PixlFed. If you have something to share it's a good platform to do so. And there's nice landscape photography on there, at least.

An update regarding the future of m/AskKbin (where we are headed towards) - AskKbin - kbin.social ( kbin.social )

Hello everyone, check out my announcement post linked above and if you don't know who I am, check out my past post to learn more about me and It would mean a lot of you show your support for my future iniatives inside the fediverse!...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

PieFed is also a nice project, though it doesn't do microblogging so it's more of a Lemmy alternative.

I guess the whole point here is that people come from different platforms - I'm not sure it makes too much sense to include the platform in the community name at all. General names like 'AskFedi' or AskAround' would make a lot more sense in my book. I don't really care all that much which software a community is hosted on.

Ubuntu Touch progress on VoLTE and 5g

“Marius showed videos of both voLTE and 5g running on UT devices during Q&A 138. A big step forward but not fully resolved yet. We are now using the proprietary Sailfish ofono binder pluging for voLTE and more work and testing is needed. Of the two by way of a sort of happy accident 5g should be available first, and has been...

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

That's huge!! It's such a fundamental part of the future of the project, and such a gigantic task. Amazing to see it's working out.

aasatru ,
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Also it's a bigger market of lawyers, so probably easier and cheaper to get high quality legal help against bullshit like this.

aasatru ,
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In a favourable reading, "killing" a billionaire is as easy as taking their money away.

That said, I think the biggest catch-all instances of Lemmy should be defederated from Lemmy.ml and hexbear. The users of these sites just ruin the experience for anyone with half a brain and a less than spectacular appetite for bullshit.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

I remember checking out Lemmy in December 2022, it was barely even a proof of concept. Now it's a whole ecosystem.

it's incredible how far it has gotten in a short time. And while commercial platforms will only get worse with time, open source platforms will only get better. Growth might not always be a linear process, but I'm feeling optimistic. :)

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