ampcold

joined 1 year ago
[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 4 points 7 months ago

Cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says.

Do they mean https://xkcd.com/538

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 22 points 9 months ago

How can anyone with a straight face call these things pro-life? It has become a death cult fueled by hatred against women.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 57 points 9 months ago

He isn’t being censored. He has the right to say these things , but everyone else also has the right given by free speech to criticize him. That is not censorship or being cancelled. That is simply how free speech works. Having the right to free speech doesn’t protect anyone from criticism

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or both ? It is not either or. There is no single thing that can drop suicide to zero, but plenty of well known measures that can reduce it. Seems weird to blatantly ignore one of the most effective ones.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The path of least resistance from thought to action is very important. I wouldn’t actually know of an easy way if I wanted to kill myself right now. Having a gun in my drawer could easily make a bad day into a final day.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Well, there is also this news https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-up-q2-earnings-1235673960/ showing that apparently many people just pay up to keep their access.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I don't understand why any journalism site will advertise that they are using AI. It just says they don't care about facts, research or quality in writing. Journalism is not simply spewing out a handful of paragraphs of text about a random subject. It is research that can take weeks or months, double checking facts, verifying sources and putting it all together into a well written article. AI texts have none of that. Quite the opposite.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have been experimenting with this week and while I like it, I am still not sure I like it enough to find it worth paying. It is still mostly using Google and Bing as a search provider, so I haven't so far found drastically different results than what I get from DuckDuckGo. Having a limit on searches also makes me a bit anxious when you are used to just searching for all kinds of stuff simply because I am lazy and don't want to type in full URLs or go to my bookmarks. Lots of muscle memory that needs to be revamped. I do see the potential in how it can be customized with personalized lenses and lowering/raising specific domains. And the people behind it seem really nice on Discord, so I expect to see a lot of innovation in search that we haven't seen from Google in years.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Totally agree on the news and journalism part. I subscribe to three different publications, which gets expensive, but it is worth it. Many newssites have also started to hide their articles behind paywalls, which is understandable, but also make sharing and discussing news with others on social media harder. And since most people can't afford to subscribe to several news outlets, they will be limited in their exposure to different viewpoints - unless that particular newspaper is really good at challenging its readers and not just giving them what they think they want.

 

We all know the saying of if you are not paying then you are the product, which again became relevant with how Reddit is dealing with its business model and trying to get everyone into their dataharvesting for more ads ecosystem. It is really sad how many of the worlds brightest techminds are building technologies that in the end all leads to show more ads.

I have been online for over 25 years, so it is a hard expectation to break that everything should be free. Free email, free search, free news, free social media etc.

Given how much time many of us spend using various online services, paying a little seems reasonable. Yet I often tend to think way too long on even smaller digital expenses, like an app for €2, but I will happily pay €10 for a coffee and a croissant at a train station like it is nothing.

I have seen many saying they wouldn't mind paying a bit for a good Reddit experience, and I think I could even be persuaded to pay for Facebook if it removed all the ads and let me control my feed again like we could in the beginning. Yet these companies don't really seem interested in providing that option.

What services do you find worth paying for - even though free alternatives exists?

I have a neutral email provider, a todo app (Todoist), a journal app (DayOne), a podcast app (PocketCast) - as well as the usual plethora of streaming services. I have considered trying Kagi for a paid search engine, though that is really a hard pill to swallow when good search have always been there freely available. Though Googles quality have really gone down in recent years.

 

We are all here and sort of excited for trying a new platform now that Reddit have turned from bad to worse. Still, I have a good deal of dejavu from the 2015 AMAgeddon. Back then plenty of subreddits also locked down in response to Victoria getting fired as manager for the AMAs. Back then myself and many other redditors swore we were done with the site and tried to goto other sites. I think Empeopled was the main choice back then and it was fun there for a little while. And then everyone came back and Reddit only grew with millions of users until today.

Is this time going be different? Is the blackout bigger and more widespread this time? I am thinking the big difference is that this is has more direct consequences with many (and very active) users losing their apps and tools, but I am not sure it will really matter much in the end. I am hoping Lemmy will get momentum, but I also see myself and many others saying the same things about Reddit as in 2015.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that will turn out to be really important in the long run. The gamification aspect of karma score let to posts and comments leaning more to the quick and funny, and less to long and thoughtful. Especially in bigger subreddits. And then bots started to just repost and reuse previous highly upvoted stuff to boost their numbers even further.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It would not crash and burn but rather be messy and decrease in quality gradually over time. Sort of like Twitter.

[–] ampcold@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I am really conflicted on this. I agree in principal that Reddit shouldn't benefit from my years of comments and posts, but I can't count on how many times I have searched for something and found an old Reddit post or comment that was just what I needed.

Most of my Reddit comments or posts are probably not very useful, but some of it might be and I am not against other random people can find and read what I have written through the years. Reddit as a whole is a vast collection of good advice and insight that is valuable to preserve. Sure it might be archived on archive.org but that is hardly searchable for most people.

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