Lanthanae

Well...

1. Target once used small amounts of shopping data to accurately predict women were pregnant before they themselves knew.

2. A Nebraska PD got data from Facebook to prove a woman had an abortion recently and prosecuted her.

3. you don't know what will become illegal

So, even small amounts of data can predict lots of things about your life. The government has a track record of using that data to prosecute you. And you cannot trust the Government will always align with your morals (assuming it even does right now).

And that doesn't even consider other entities & organizations in the world.

What if an insurance company wants uses public data about you to deny you coverage? What if someone is searching for people in the area with ideal houses to rob and you're on vacation? What if they use a deepfake of a loved one to scam you? Steal your identity and ruin your credit? What if they make and sell deepfake porn made of you or a loved one? What if they create meticulously engineered political psyop campaigns hand-tailored to exploit your psychology? What if this list of "what ifs" could go on nearly forever, and some "what ifs" aren't even things we're capable of knowing about?

Because that last one is absolutely true, all the rest of those are true for someone, and at least one of them is probably true for you already.

Ok, but what if you don't care?...well someone else in your life does. And even if they have impeccable data privacy habits, if enough of their friends and family don't, then they're just a single missing puzzle piece, and everyone can still see their shape.

Not to mention, you contribute to a pool of data that's used to perform these kinds of analyses on society at large, meaning you contribute in some part to each and every instance of malicious data use towards anyone, anywhere.

Is that a good enough reason to care?

You're right and you should say it.

People meme on electron, and I think most of it is deserved, but it does make a lot of stuff way easier for devs, and that means more software for users. There's a reason it's so popular.

(note: this ended up being long, but I promise it's worth it to read)

Learning to use Linux is as easy (if not easier) than when you learned to use Windows, and you probably did that when you were younger, even less experienced with technology, and didn't have the benefit of comprehensive online help resources.

To start, the main thing to know is that unlike Windows or MacOS, the Operating System "kernel" (the bit that actually handles the core tasks of an OS which allows software to run on your hardware which you don't ever need to understand) does not have many of the usability features you associate with Windows or MacOS such as the Desktop Environment, default programs, apps store, etc.

Instead, Linux comes in different **"distributions" ("distros")**which facilitate all these things. So it's more accurate to think of a Linux distro as analogous to "Windows" or "MacOS" rather than just Linux.

The awesome thing about this is that while they're all similar enough that almost anything you learn will be applicable to all of them, the variety of options means you can find one that works well for you. So when it comes time to try Linux, here's what to do

1. Pick a Linux distro that is super non-tech user friendly. If you want to have it chosen for you, just "Linux Mint" (but also look into "Pop OS." Both are very user friendly)
2. Search for "How to install " on the Internet
3. Follow the most official guide you find
4. Done.

Then, once it's installed, any time you want to learn how to do a thing on it that isn't intuitive to you, try the following in order until you get useful results:

1. Search for "how to do on Linux"
2. Search for "how to do on "
3. Make a post on a distro-specific subreddit, Lemmy community, discord server, etc asking how to do the thing

Realistically, #1 & #2 should solve all your problems unless you're doing complicated stuff, but #3 will almost always solve the rest.

Also, welcome to the club! You won't wanna go back, trust me :)

I don't recommend this if you're looking for a good hobby to not be depressed haha. Something outside or at least away from screens is probably better.

Very solid answer. Just make sure to watch a couple YouTube videos tutorials on how to throw correctly so you can quickly make.progress toward being good enough such that you don't just lose your discs every time you throw them. It's a lot more fun when that annoyance is less frequent.

"Don't make me tap the sign"

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat

Lemmy is still fairly new to most people here and most of these new people came from reddit. A group of people who majorly are having a single, shared, novel experience (moving from reddit to Lemmy) are gonna talk about that thing until it stops being novel.

It's already getting considerably less meta so I'd just enjoy it for what it is, contribute content to the communities you like, and just allow the meta conversations to naturally subside.

Homie, which states have ever actually implemented communism? Calling yourself "Communist" means about as much as North Korea calling themselves a" Democratic People's Republic" if you don't actually implement it's ideas.

Additionally, all attempts at democracy, and all instances of capitalism, have resulted in tyranny, because it's just really hard to build a society that doesn't do that no matter what governmental system and economic system you set out to establish.

Even places like New Zealand or the Nordic countries which are much closer to a social democracy are tyrannical insofar as they participate, propagate, and benefit from a global network of capitalism that is only possible through the exploitation of hundreds millions, if not billions of people. Outsourcing your tyranny and exploitation to other places on the planet is still tyranny.and exploitation: it just has better PR.

That doesn't make any sense though. Communism isn't when you "give power to the state." It's a word used to describe a specific economic system that China does not have. The word that best describes what I think you're getting at is "authoritarian." Words mean things, and if a thing doesn't fit the definition of a word, then it isn't that word.

That ignorance makes them pretty shitty.

I'm not saying they're fundamentally and permanently shitty, but they are being shitty. Refusing to become a more aware person is shitty.

Honest question, how can we ever get out of this? Is it just human nature for most of the population to not have critical thinking skills? Is it possible to reach a world where the majority of people have even just a little empathy?

It's just so sad. It's so clear to anyone even kinda paying attention that we possess the technical capacity as a society to meet everyone's needs and eliminate so much human-caused suffering at the detriment to absolutely nobody. We could be working toward a society where everyone has community, safety, security, opportunity. We could do so much if all we did was kind of give a shit about each other.

But no. Let's elect the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, encourages white supremacy, committed treason, etc.

Donald Trump is just a guy. A shitty guy, but just a guy. He's not what is ruining the world, but the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person, and fuck if that doesn't just burn up all my hope for this world.

If you and your partner have vastly different political opinions, you also have vastly different systems of morality and probably won't work out.