Not to be confused with helix the TUI text editor
I expect someone will start a business to remove that aftermarket
I get that he earns money from people watching the video. But 26 minutes is pretty rough when I really just want a text dump of the results. Did anyone spot a list somewhere?
I’m really not sure if “Failed to load media” is a voyager error or the real post 🫠
Well that’s foreboding to say the least.
I listened to a bit of the speech to see if the context helps at all. It doesn’t. He was just asking people to go vote, which is totally fine. But that’s it. Nothing else to warrant a comment like this one. And it sure sounds like no more voting is the plan. Literally. Maybe it’s a thoughtless comment? Yikes
Proton is obviously promoting their own product: proton pass. I tried it and found that it needs a little more development time. Just a little polishing.
In the meantime, Bitwarden is fantastic. I also hear good things about onepass. Don’t use chrome’s password manager.
I spent several weeks thinking about this exact idea.
Federation is cool. You could set up each instance to only federate with instances for nearby towns and cities. Maybe a “2 district” radius. Users would only see content for their local communities. Local news stays local. Local government could officially participate if they wish. People you talk to are actually neighbors you might see in person. Larger regions like counties, states, provinces, or even countries, could also have dedicated instances and federate similarly. I think this is the big appeal and it sounds awesome!
There are a few problems 🙂
First is a little bit of confusion with posting. Let’s say that I see a post about a cool new restaurant in my town. I share it with a friend who lives a few towns away and that’s outside the “federation radius”. I can’t share the post with that friend very easily. Maybe the tools could be enhanced to make this viable?
Second is a matter of privacy. How do you know that new accounts belong to people associated with the geographic location of each instance? If you don’t validate, the system will certainly be abused. If you do validate, then users need to supply some real info! Home address, ID, etc. that’s a big deal for users and instance admins.
Third. What happens if you move? Do you have to abandon your old account and start over? Again, the system itself can be developed further to solve this. But that’ll take time and money.
Next is the operating costs. You would need to build thousands of instances to build this system up. And each one would have to be tied to a geographic region. You need new features to handle signups this way. You have the simple cost of running these servers. You probably need a lot of staff to manage it all. This is an expensive platform for one party to run. Alternatively…
It doesn’t have to be one party running this entire system. That’s the point of the Fediverse, right? The operational costs go way down if anyone can run their own instance. But how do you enforce the rules of federating with instances for geographically nearby locations? I don’t see a reasonable way to solve this one.
I could probably keep listing issues. But these are the big ones IMO. If you solve these, the system is viable and could be amazing.
At first, I found this funny. Then I realized how scary, sad, etc. the reality is.
Companies typically prefer users to use a native app for two reasons. First, the software is sometimes easier to build. Second, they are capable of scraping a vastly larger and more valuable set of data from the user.
Browsers can hit many differs sites, many of which are dangerous. Thus, web browsers have to be as secure as possible to protect users from malicious sites. This includes Facebook, TikTok, every medical site you’ve ever logged into, etc.
I know a lot about software. Personally, I view every installed app as a means of attacking my privacy. If you have the choice and your experience isn’t diminished, use a web browser instead of a native app.
Edit:
Something else to note. The larger companies are almost always much worse. Take a look at Facebook on the Apple Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215
Go down to App Privacy and View Details. It’s absolutely terrible how much data they collect. Unethical at a minimum. Now compare to Voyager for Lemmy: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voyager-for-lemmy/id6451429762
“Data Not Collected”
This is regulated. And there are penalties for violating those regulations. But it’s just not enough. Even a class action lawsuit won’t help the victims. Most of that money goes to lawyers.
Honestly, I don’t expect any of it to change until the penalties are so severe that major companies go under. Aka a corporate death penalty (which the US used to have). But even then, good software security is extremely hard. Almost everyone screws up something.
Head nod regarding the ranked choice voting
Yes, unity costs money to develop and a fee is reasonable. But I think the are a few risks with this model.
How do they track installations? Metrics from steam and other platforms? Connecting to a license server at install time? Or maybe at runtime? I don't know the answers but they all seem to have implications for users regarding privacy and/or offline gaming.
It's also a variable fee to game developers. A single user can install a game on multiple devices despite buying the game once. Similarly, a game can be installed repeatedly over time. This is a financial risk to game development companies. I could see them mitigating this risk in several ways. First, they can pass the fee to the end user. So every install costs the user $0.20. Secondly, they can limit the number of installs per user. You want to install more than 5 times ever? Buy the game again! Thirdly, they could simply shut down the download service after a certain amount of time, making new installations impossible. None of this is good for a gamers.
And what happens to games made by companies that shut down entirely? Today, games remain available through steam, etc. But with this new pricing model, Unity based games will continue to cost money over time. Who pays the bill after the company is gone? This reminds me of Worlds Adrift, a game that used a licensed library. When the developer company shutdown, they were unable to release their server source code because the third party couldn't can't send bills to the open source community. Thus, the servers were destroyed and running the client today (still vailable via steam!) just gives the user an error message about license issues or something. Users paid for a game that they are now unable to use.
A thing I really did not expect to say… Good job Anthropic? Are they really taking a stance based on morality?