I agree. I’m tired of always blaming the end users for everything
I agree. I’m tired of always blaming the end users for everything
Yeah :( I love my 2017-2018 phone to death (it’s a Pixel 2 XL, and in the ~€400 phone market they are still trying to beat its camera quality 6 years later - and since it’s a Pixel it’s still more fluid than several phones I try in store, like €400-500 Samsungs, that display evident stutters that mine does not), but it has started with the random crashes and “dying” (boot loops followed by not turning on anymore) for a few minutes / hours before coming back to its senses occasionally
Yeah. That’s the same reason why I use Sync.
We get a lot of flak for it but… listen. I’m a Linux user. I don’t even use Windows or Mac anymore at all. I try to use as much free software as possible. But I am also incredibly off put by the sheer jank that some FOSS solutions have.
What causes this situation is that Jeroba had to start from scratch and FOSS from the start, but Boost and Sync are based on the code base of two of the most popular Reddit clients, which have also been profitable enough to allow the respective devs to work on these apps as a part-time job, not a hobby project.
And… it freaking shows. All the polish has been ported over to these apps. Countless hours of work, and Sync is just as much of a joy to use as it has ever been - it even seems faster than when it was on Reddit.
I am going to say something that is a bit on the unpopular side here: while I get the fact that some people are irked at a developer profiting from a free project like Lemmy with a paid client, my response to that is - you don’t have to use it. Nobody forces you to use Sync or Boost. The fact that Sync or Boost exist does not limit your freedom in any way. And the second thing is that it’s right for someone who has poured a lot of time into a product to sell it and have a reward for it. I already know all the arguments: “How about making the source code free and the binaries paid?” - same as what happens to every Android app that tried this: F-Droid publishes the free binary, nobody will pay for the app, they will hide under the “but but my F-Droid build is completely free from Google trackers” excuse - but will conveniently forget to donate to the project… most people don’t donate. Hell, most people who argue that a project should survive on donations don’t donate.
The ad privacy stuff is something that should be sorted - but it’s well within their rights to use AdMob. It’s not a hobby project - it’s a job. And again… I’d use the FOSS clients, but there simply isn’t anything good that isn’t full of jank and incredibly unpleasant to use.
As a last point: the Fediverse and Lemmy are already super niche and unpopular. Part of the problem is that they suffer from a flaw that Linux used to suffer before the more mainstream adoption it’s beginning to enjoy: what are, simply put, low-quality UI/UX. You would be surprised how little people are going to put up with shitty UX if there is an alternative. Even the FOSS types. When the UX is janky and bad, you’ve already lost plenty of people. Linux is, again, a great example: many people are only migrating to it now, because their previous attempts had been a total fluke due to shitty UX - between ugly user interfaces, general X11 jank and tearing, overall instability etc. they just couldn’t get used to it. Now, their experience is vastly different. I’d rather people join the Fediverse through proprietary clients with good UX for now rather than use mainstream social media - while the community behind FOSS clients polishes them out, and makes them viable alternatives. Maybe not quite as beautiful, but not as janky.
“But you should stick to your values and help improve it!!” - true, but when you are involved in FOSS… you kinda have to pick your battles. My area of interest here is desktop Linux and more open / repairable hardware that has better Linux support, which I buy voting with my wallet even if it’s the worse deal in a pure price to performance metrics. I’m starting to find the time to learn to and make contributions to the Linux desktop projects I use, I’ve taken up maintenance of a popular package repository and successfully identified and reported several kernel bugs that were then fixed recently and working my way up from there. This is “my” battle. “Improving free as in freedom Lemmy clients” is not my fight, but I encourage those who keep ragging on Sync / Boost users and don’t yet have a “battle” they picked in FOSS to put their money where their mouth is, and consider contributing to this ecosystem themselves! Everybody will benefit, you will even get a nice entry in your resume for that, and you will polish out the jank and thereby make FOSS clients easier to recommend and much more attractive.
It’s time to dust off Terraria and go on a nice run again.
Edit: I will, of course, be first in line to buy any new games they release. They donated $100k to a FOSS project I use and love, thus to me as well indirectly, I can give some of my disposable income back to then.
Like the entire fediverse, I also feel like it’s much easier to reach other people here. What you write actually gets read. On Reddit, you either piggy back off one of the top comments, comment on a thread within minutes from it being posted or you are basically shouting into the void
It was at 7/10 because the iPhone 14 introduced a repair-friendly design that made it, in theory, easier to repair than most competing high-end smartphones. However, the fact that there is a software DRM on the parts you install makes this repairable design completely useless for the end user, it just makes repairs cheaper for Apple themselves, thus adding insult to injury.
That about wraps it up
Twitter as well. Two of the major social media platforms fucking up this badly roughly at the same time was nothing I would have ever bet any amount of money on, and the best advertising the fediverse could ask for.
Uni! We were just friends, though very good friends. But still firmly just friends, she was actually in a relationship for a good part of our friendship and I had zero interest in going beyond good friends with her in particular, and I especially knew better than fall for a person in a relationship - I’ve never seen one of these end well. I haven’t been interested in dating for most of my life. But I think that’s because my social life and self esteem has been seriously eeh in middle and high school, while I started really working on a social life in uni. Before jumping to dating I wanted to get a few basics down - a good friend group (ended up being several of them!), a real social life and some 1:1 close friends. Plus my own personal world of hobbies, ambitions and interests. You know - a good world to introduce a person to. At one point, I was feeling finally ready for a relationship and excited to try and accept this possible direction in life. I started acting as someone who’s interested in dating: worked on my appearance and self esteem, got more social and made it a point to socialize with everybody at events. That friend I mentioned earlier actually was on a small personal “Do not date” blacklist, because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship (read: be rejected and see the other person go cold on you until you lose them completely… I had already made that mistake) and she was the person with whom I naturally vibed the absolute best - it was effortless. Who wants to lose the effortoess friend who doesn’t drain their social battery at all?
I guess it was so effortless that when it was supposed to happen it happened, things happened, our friendship was starting to develop in a “dangerous” direction (which was making me feel wary to be fair because I was definitely starting to catch feelings), then at one point she made a move and it felt like an impossible dream come true, like the best case scenario that was so good I was not even considering it as a valid option coming to life. Easily one of the happiest moments of my life. And the rest is history.
I’ve read enough horror stories about this that I have started eating out much less. With friends or partner to have fun sure, I don’t want to give up or reduce my social life (even then I try to pick “safe” food, and definitely cooked food), but unless I am like super tired or really didn’t have a second to go buy groceries, I will cook my own food and not order take-away any day of the week. At least I trust what I am cooking.
First things first, throwing people away and online dating are in two different camps entirely. For the throwing people away it’s something that I have seen a lot: the Reddit dating advice is also more and more common and spread on social media, and it’s becoming to be eaten up by people. Ask random friends in your social circle in general, and you’ll find that - at least the younger ones - are susceptible to this trend.
As for online dating: we can meet in the middle and say that I think it would be a net pro on something that is structured differently than Tinder, which represents the embodiment of what I think is bad about it. There is, of course, value in being able to have access to a wider pool than “your friend group and social circle”. This is how I would structure my own dating app:
Yes, I am aware this would not work for open relationships or stuff like couples looking for a third unicorn for kinky stuff, but that’s by design, as existing apps already work well for that. Tinder, for example, is more widely used for casual sex that it is about building romantic relationships, and it is perfectly adequate for that.
Yes, you are pointing to combines marriages - but I am not suggesting we go back to the 50’s, I am talking about the past few years. Capitalism has already been an upgrade over feudalism, I agree. My point is that, lately, we have been overdoing it and everything that started off as a positive innovation, like social media and dating apps, is starting to lose its soul and become more Draconian or anti - capitalism.
Greed is what a lot of this is, and yes capitalism is all wrapped up in that but I don’t think if you somehow took it away that every problem goes away.
I have a question for you: why is it that billionaires and big capitalists have been amassing more profits and pushing this more intensive version of capitalism? I know this argumentation all too well, I have once had a long discussion with a friend who argued capitalism or not wouldn’t change anything because greed exists. My counter point is that, while greed exists and has always existed, it’s never been quite that bad in recent times and, for second, greed and capitalism feed and reinforce each other. It’s an endless loop that keeps reinforcing itself.
Also, do consider the fact that while I was highly upvoted here on Lemmy, the same wouldn’t be true at a random table with some friend group out there in the world. These opinions of mine that are popular here are fringe in the real world, so if you get the impression my comment is disconnected from reality and what people think when you touch grass, yes, that is precisely the point why I wrote it. This is my own little grumpy old man yelling at a clown view of a lot of modern things that I talk about in spaces like these online, but mostly shut up about when I’m out there having a drink.
Capitalism is growing, it has successfully seeped through every aspect of our life, creating consensus and effectively becoming more and more the norm in the social fabric. Right now there are many opinions against capitalism that are beginning to become almost taboo.
I absolutely look like a boomer typing this, and I am fully aware of this. I hate absolutely everything about contemporary culture, except for the much higher attention to mental health, broader acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, more attention on the problems of feminism and a few other things that I think are a net positive to out society. I think capitalism is fully to blame for most of the things that are going to shit right now.
Here’s mine:
I’m 24 and a lot of people in my friend circle are definitely using it. I’d say it started off niche but it’s becoming mainstream.
It’s the only social network I don’t hate right now
Is it? Don’t like to play devil’s advocate but I’m pretty sure my Instagram is pretty much alive and my BeReal feed is an at all all-time high, with several new joins lately too.
I agree that it’s much worse, that on anything that isn’t BeReal it’s harder to find your friends posts, that the ads got way too many - but at least here people are absolutely not stopping to create content for them.
I hate Google as much as the next guy but I don’t think switching to the product of an even more capitalistic company, one that is completely locked down and doesn’t allow you to install your own OS, is actually a good solution…
To be fair, community’s beloved repairable and sustainable Fairphone doesn’t have one either…
Huge +1 on this. Much more aligned to the philosophy of the Fediverse not to rely on a centralised service for announcements
In my country you have to pay €10 every time you reset your phone to download the esim.
Think I’ll pass.
You get it. This is why Reddit isn’t going anywhere and people are just downloading the official App or patching Infinity or Sync with ReVanced Manager. I’m an advanced user, FOSS advocate, die-hard Linux user and one that gets 90% of their mobile apps through F-Droid. I love the idea of the Fediverse, but I am struggling to use it for my own needs without all the defederation stuff getting in the way and becoming very hard to get around. If someone like me is having problems, then it absolutely isn’t ready for prime time.
In fact, I still use Reddit through a patched 3P client because my non-techie and non-political communities aren’t moving at all. As an example of something more mainstream: I’m a heavy Stardew Valley player. The Stardew community on Lemmy is dead, but on Reddit it’s very much alive and new posts gets thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments daily. What seems to be alive here is the kind of content tech-savvy people are more likely to consume: tech, politics, news, that’s it.
It reminds me of the Linux desktop back in 2017. It was promising and it was beginning to get more interest and traction, but still when you tried using it was eh. Almost there. But not quite there. My laptop would boot and run my Firefox and development tools fine, but then the audio codec would die and display “Dummy output” until I rebooted (in the best case, I had to reinstall Ubuntu in 2 cases where audio permanently died), or my Bluetooth earbuds would stop working properly or at all seemingly at random, and when I woke my laptop up from sleep there was a 1/5 chance that GDM would hard lock and force to me to SIGKILL my entire GNOME session if not SysRQ reboot to gain back control - and this was on Ubuntu-certified SKU running a certified ISO in a state that I had left so default desperate to see it working properly that I had not even changed the default wallpaper. There would always be something a touch too inconvenient. For me, it was audio and sleep not working properly. So you would eventually image your laptop back to Windows and go with it, while knowing in the back of your mind you shouldn’t, but you want to actually get stuff done and play your games, which actually launch without Wine crashes or GPU driver errors - this is how I feel using Reddit now. Linux has matured way past this point and it can now act as a main system no problem and be a reliable performer with a scope that covers 90% of use cases well, the dream was achieved. I hope the Fediverse will follow a similar curve with time, but after months of trying the Fediverse out a way or another it still can’t stop reminding me of that older stage of Linux: promising and growing - but not quite there, and unreasonable to use exclusively.
I think the fear mongering on Steam is excessive. The games stay offline on your disk, and most of them don’t have a DRM. Gabe Newell has also said that, in case Steam ever shutters, an exit plan will be provided. As for the Steam native DRM, there are already open source implementations that can be used to bypass it and Valve hasn’t done anything against it in years - so the only problematic DRMs are Denuvo and similar, which Steam does not control.
GOG used to be a valid alternative, but it isn’t anymore. With CDPR themselves publishing games with DRM on GOG, on top of starting to be lenient on DRMs, they are literally having something similar to a DRM that is required for some games, a GOG Galaxy API that is completely closed source. And it doesn’t support Linux, the FOSS operating system.
The fact that after years GOG still doesn’t seem to care about Linux, CDPR releases their games for Windows only (and more often than not with DRM), and Cyberpunk 2077 only runs on Linux thanks to Valve’s efforts is also worrying from a game conservation and ownership standpoint: Windows is a Proprietary operating system completely controlled by Microsoft, who can perform modifications remotely and is allegedly planning to popularize a model where people are sold very low spec PCs that only need to stream a Windows computer from the cloud with more powerful specs… not the platform I want to entrust the future of gaming to.
All in all, Steam is still the mainstream gaming platform I dislike the least and trust the most. If I’m going to buy a game and hope it’s going to be playable decades into the future, it used to be GOG, but now it’s Steam from me.