I keep a small list titled “illegal heroes”, and these hackers are on that list. It’s bullshit that they’re being hounded like this.

“it’s just postponing the problem!!1!one” The thing of including a “one” to make the irony of your exclamation abundantly clear is a delightful bit of internet-ese. I always find it funny when I see it

Which is your project?

As an aside, your comment has hit me in a surprisingly profound way. I think it’s because it can be too easy to forget about the people behind the software we use. This is especially the case with proprietary software from big companies, but it can also happen with open source or smaller projects from individual devs. I think that it arises in part from thinking about software as a product, which neglects the messy relationality of how things are actually made, maintained and used.

It’s sweet to see such a serendipitous exchange of appreciation. It makes the world feel smaller, but in a good way.

I ended up wading into the world of WINE prefixes when I tried to mod some older games. I got it working in the end, but it sure made me grateful for how easy I have it with Proton

I share your enthusiasm. I wanted to learn Linux because so much scientific computing in my field relies on it, but when I dual booted, it was too easy to just retreat to Windows as the path of least resistance. I decided to fully make the switch to Linux as an attempt to force myself to learn stuff, but the big thing that held me back was nervousness about gaming.

Turns out that this fear was completely unfounded, and I have been utterly astounded at how easy gaming on Linux was. It wasn’t completely pain free, and there were a couple times that I needed to tinker somewhat, but it was no more difficult or frequent than I needed to do similar stuff on Windows.

I get what you mean about logging on feeling like home. Besides the scientific computing, a big part of what pushed me to Linux was how ambiently icked out I felt by using Windows — it didn’t feel like mine. Running Windows feels like renting a home from a landlord who doesn’t respect your boundaries and just comes in to make changes while you’re sleeping. Like, it’s not even about whether those changes are good or bad, but how weird it feels to constantly be reminded that this home is not truly yours.

“if you can accurately call it “scraping” then it’s always fair use.”

I think you make some compelling points overall, but fair use has always been more complex than this. The intent is taken into account when evaluating whether something is fair use, but so is the actual impact — “fair use” is a designation applied to the overall situation, not to any singular factors (so a stated purpose can’t be fair use)

I saw a paper a while back that argued that AI is being used as “moral crumple zones”. For example, an AI used for health insurance acts allows for the company to reject medically necessary procedures without employees incurring as much moral injury as part of that (even low level customer service reps are likely to find comfort in being able to defer to the system.). It’s an interesting concept that I’ve thought about a lot since I found it.

Ugh, Andreeson is such a creep.

I am glad that he tried to assassinate 418, because the massive outcry that led to 418 being saved is something wholesome that I love.

Link with context for anyone unfamiliar with the context: https://save418.com/

Something that I have enjoyed recently are blogs by academics, which often have a list of other blogs that they follow. Additionally, in their individual posts, there is often a sense of them being a part of a wider conversation, due to linking to other blogs that have recently discussed an idea.

I agree that the small/slow web stuff is more useful for serendipitous discovery rather than searching for answers for particular queries (though I don’t consider that a problem with the small/slow web per se, rather with the poor ability to search for non-slop content on the modern web)

With respect to the presentation of your site, I like it! It’s quite stylish and displays well on my phone.

It’s baffling to me how customisable some fruit features can be. I know someone who works in plant genomics and cultivation and it’s really cool how they can use genomic analysis alongside selective breeding to select for traits. I imagine that imported papayas are cultivars that are easier to transport internationally.

I agree. I replied to Kris elsewhere saying this, but I am super glad to have been a part of this instance because it feels like a nice balance of being large enough to be robust and diverse, but small enough to have a distinctive culture. I don’t often interact with the communities that were on the instance, but I always enjoy seeing my peers crop up in the comments of various posts — it’s one of my favourite parts of Lemmy being federated (db0 is another example of an instance that has such a distinctive vibe that seeing it as someone’s instance is often useful metadata that affects how I parse their comment)

(speaking as a slrpnk user): Another backup communication strategy (once things are backup) might be to designate somewhere on a non-slrpnk instance as a place where people can check for updates if things go down; when I first discovered the outage, I wasn’t sure where to go to check for info/updates.

Unrelatedly, I hope that this unexpected outage isn’t causing you or other admins too much stress. Whilst the extended nature of this outage is unfortunate, I respect that you’re using this as an opportunity to migrate to a more robust solution. This kind of resilience focussed response is a key part of the solarpunk ethos, in my view.

Some people have said that such a long outage seems likely to kill an instance, but for my part, this community is worth waiting for — I have enjoyed having an account on this instance because it feels like the perfect blend of small enough to have a distinct culture and ethos, but is large enough to be robust and diverse.

I really appreciate iFixit and how they help bring the discussion of repairability to the forefront.

An interesting component here is that it’s possible that the video creator is responsible for this silly level of ads, but it’s impossible to know. Creators can select points in the video where ads will happen, which they can use to preserve the video’s flow as much as possible. In theory, you can even select to not monetise your video at all, which is a useful tool if the topic is something particularly dense or sensitive. In practice, I’ve seen plenty of creators apologizing when an inappropriate ad plays at a sensitive part of the video, despite them having tried to disable ads on the video. It must suck to have so little power over one’s own work.

In your case, I suspect this was a creator choosing to maximally monetise their video, given the regularity and number of ads. However, it’s possible that this is a 100% “Fuck Google” situation, given how opaque they are. I find it frustrating that when we have poor experiences like yours, we don’t even have a clear target to get angry at. It leads to accountability so diffuse that it’s like homeopathy. Getting angry doesn’t necessarily help change things (at least individually), but it can be incredibly cathartic even then

It often does, yeah. Not always though. I got one of the adblock warnings last night, and it refused to play the video. I fixed it by heading into ublock settings and manually updating. It always makes me laugh how rapidly the ad-blocker arms war progresses