Gave up on Windows fully on my desktop/laptop over a year ago after running numerous Linux servers for years (starting with a Raspberry Pi in 2016). I used to dual-boot for several years, and now I have a Windows VM I keep around in case I need it for something… but in practice I don’t actually need it for anything and haven’t spun up the Windows VM six months or more.

So why not just not subscribe to news focused (especially US news focused) communities?

I don’t understand why people have such trouble with this. I have curated my own feed of subscribed communities and I already only see stuff I want to see. Is this really that difficult? Don’t want US news? Don’t sub to US-centric news communities (whether in name or not). Don’t want furries? Don’t subscribe to furry communities? Don’t want anime? Don’t subscribe to anime communities. Don’t want politics? Don’t subscribe to political communities. Don’t want memes? Don’t subscribe to meme communities. I genuinely don’t understand why that’s not enough for people.

I thought drones were just going to be a fad, but they’ve become huge, especially in terms of government and corporate surveillance. I should have realized the way it was going when America started using them militarily. American military inventions almost always end up becoming popular consumer products/applications.

Man I think all of us mistakenly thought this. The early internet had such promise.

https://mander.xyz/communities?listingType=All&sort=TopMonth&page=1

I count 25 serious communities just on the first page of your instance showing all communities from all instances (37 on the second page). This is the primary way to find new communities, and it’s relatively simple to use, imho.

Look, people have explained it to you several times in here and at this point you’re being purposefully obtuse. Go subscribe to non-meme communities, only look at your subscriptions, and maybe stop bothering people demanding they cater to how you want to communicate. Your life and experiences aren’t a universal experience, let other people be.

The only memes I see are from meme communities, and I see a bunch of communities dedicated to thoughtful discussion, because I’m subscribed to them. I never look at the frontpage, I only look at my subscribed communities, and I’m only subbed to a minimal amount of meme communities. If I unsubbed from them, I wouldn’t see memes at all.

Also, the world is fucking dark and shitty. Sometimes people would rather make jokes about it than talk deeply about it because they’re trying to not go crazy and end up suicidal from facing too much darkness. Humor is often used as a release valve for painful subjects. Why not let the people who don’t have it in them to get into lengthy discussions just handle it in whatever way works for them.

Just… don’t connect them to the internet? Or if you must connect them for dumb shit like system updates, put them behind some access control where the only access they have is the server they get updates from.

This aspect of it being decentralized is so important to remember.

People sometimes give me quizzical responses when I point them to the repository for the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin because it’s hosted on a Russian git site (gitflic.ru). The plugin was chased off the Firefox add-ons site/Chrome add-ons site, it was chased off of Gitlab, it was chased off of Github, all over DMCA takedown requests. People act like “well it must be shady because it’s not on a well known git site” and yet is hosted in a country that doesn’t respect the US copyright cabals control over media literally because that’s the only safe harbor for it. The developer even has this snippet on his description of the plugin:

PS although the add-on was removed from Mozilla’s add-on store (AMO) (because of DMCA Takedown Notice) it’s still signed and manually checked for security by Mozilla (hence the delay in signing).

Yet it’s super common for people to be absolutely suspicious of it. Including being suspicious of the traffic leaving the plugin when it’s not being used which turns out to be the plug-in checking for updates every time.

Using alternative gits is so important and is literally what allows programming and especially open source programming, to thrive.

We need a world that recognizes this reality and does everything possible to ensure that there is a very low limit to the amount of power that a single person can accumulate.

And how do you achieve that in a flat structure? That’s basically relying on local communities to all be self-correcting which feels to me like that hippie shit “why can’t we all just hold hands and get along.” Oh I don’t know because some people are going to grow up into Nazis and I am not sure that in itself is a solvable problem about humanity.

Small communities are more likely to make exceptions for people they know closely. Like church groups absolving abusive men in the clergy and grouping around them to pray for them. Groups allowed to self police rarely police themselves successfully.

So to me it sounds like you need power structures to help control the populace and stop them from doing that, and power structures invite corruption.

I am pro-decentralization but the problem I always come to is education: education is inherently a power discrepancy where on person must teach another something. Some people are just bad at teaching, so leaving education in the hands of just anyone means you end up with less educated population, and a less educated population can’t be counted on to be independent enough to be a reliable citizen that can contribute competently, which perpetuates the cycle even further if the uneducated are expected to teach the uneducated. Flat structure is a noble goal, but I’m not sure we’ll ever truly be able to escape power discrepancies existing at all. Children are simply at mercy of the people educating them. Like you said, power corrupts, and plenty of people use that power over children toward selfish and controlling ends.

2. All posts must end with a ‘?’

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

I understand this vent, but unfortunately this is not the community for that, as this post breaks rule 2.

!goodoffmychest@lemmy.world might be a more appropriate community for this kind of generic vent.

They’re learning the hard way that it’s a big club, and we ain’t in it. Rooting out corruption is hard because you basically have to have people to replace literally every person in government literally immediately. Also, you have to make sure those new people can’t be bribed or threatened into complicity. Trying to rely on people who seem to have good credentials isn’t a solution if they’re still surrounded by corruption at every level. How are the small number of trustworthy people going to handle an endless stream of corruption running interference and doing their damnedest to make sure no one is held accountable.

Maybe the old battle cry “don’t trust anyone over 30” wasn’t so wrong at all. Anyone who is already invested in the system as it exists probably can’t be truly trusted to get the job done.

Anyway, quite tragic and I feel for them.

For real, the EU needs to stop playing up this dumb fantasy that the US is still somehow reliable. Rip off the bandaid. I say this as an American. US is cooked, someone else needs to take the reigns and Europe is the best shot of a group of nations that generally want to take care of their citizens and prioritize human rights.

Are we getting the housing bubble in tech hardware now too?

I mean, yes. It sucks for sure, and is absolutely wrecking the consumer market… But it’s not like we can magically change it. Scarcity drives up prices, that has always been the case, and on top of that we have tariffs impacting a lot of these items too.

All I can do is hope these AI companies fail as hard as they seem to be set up to fail.

To be fair they weren’t saying they think it’s fine, they were implying that I do. They are obviously aware of inflated prices.

They’re out of stock at both Canakit and Vilros, but an original Pi Zero is still just $10 for the board.

Sure, that’s well beyond the inflation rate ($5 then would be about $6.89 now), but remember these are licensed resellers of official Pi products, so they have to mark them up at least a little to make a profit, especially now with tariffs affecting the imports. I wouldn’t call being marked up just over 30% all that insidious.

I didn’t compare the board to the full price of a mini PC, I was giving the information for context.

Further the raw power of a Pi 5 with 16gb of RAM is genuinely equivalent to a lot of thin client desktops with a lot more extensibility. I think you’re getting what you pay for, honestly.

I’m not going to say they shouldn’t be a little cheaper, but the Pi 5 is kind of a powerhouse compared to older Pis and you have to push for the 16gb of RAM version to make it actually expensive.

Once again the 4gb kit is $140 and with a lightweight Linux distro that’s honestly more than enough for basic desktop life of web browsing and email.

Chris Hughes sucks almost as much as Zuckerberg. He fucked up his tenure as owner of The New Republic. He’s just as much of a worthlessn rich dickbag.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic

He also literally killed a story on Apple’s tax dodging calling the story tone deaf in response to Tim Cook coming out as gay as though those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.