It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.

Which is why I’m not doing that.

P.S. I’m not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won’t save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.

I don’t think you disagree with the parts where I say people will suffer.

With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.

I don’t think so? My comment is generally aimed at “the situation is grim, but tech just got awesome, so let’s save the planet people!” optimism-filled pieces, much like this one. Forgive me if I come across as affronted when, as temperatures reach new and dangerous heights in certain regions, I am put out seeing someone say market forces are on the cusp of saving us.

For what it’s worth, I hope you’re right.

Discoverability is a huge barrier to entry in the Fediverse, and they’re not helping.

It’s hard for me to judge them too harshly, though. Fediverse devs do things I disagree with all the time, and users too. Maybe, in a different world, something else could’ve taken Mastodon’s place… but its forks stick close, Pleroma has the charm of a brick, Misskey is too 日本, and Misskey forks got Messy, and—

…Oh. That’s it, isn’t it? Mastodon is the best that ActivityPub has to offer most microblogging fans.

Thank you.

Whenever using this trick, I’d suggest using DDG instead of Bing if possible.

The subtle ways having a toxic community affects unconscious design decisions. It’s a message.

…joking, to be clear. Could be a raindrop.

I believe that’s incorrect. The reporter who started this rumor either misunderstood the meaning of the chart or was lying through his teeth. I’ll find the original source and share it here later.

Linux Foundation Report.

This is the actual source. If you simply scroll through it, you’ll see they’re investing in many things that move the Linux ecosystem forward. Open standards, open hardware, security in the software stack, providing for latest market needs, keeping an eye on legislation that could affect Linux, staying in touch with important entities in the industry, and so on.

Scroll down near the bottom and you’ll find where the reporter got their information from. It’s an expenditure chart and, sure enough, it says “Linux Kernel Support 2%” Note, however, that it also says:

• Community Tooling 5%
• Training and Certifications 7%
• Project Infrastructure 9%
• Project Support 64% (!)

Note that it doesn’t say how any of them is further divided. Remember all the things I mentioned earlier? All of that is value for Linux as a whole.

Software projects aren’t just about programming the big thing. Working on a large project will show you this. Could the foundation spend more on Linux? Maybe. But saying they only spend 2% on it is disingenuous.

The reporter doesn’t mention this in his clickbait piece, either because he doesn’t get it in the first place, or more likely because he just wants to push his views.

This is yet another example why Lunduke isn’t a credible source of news.

There’s a chance duckduckgo does something similar, but sadly I can’t check at the moment.

Leaving a comment so I remember to try it later—unless anyone reading is willing to do so.

Yes, people chase content, which means chasing where many people are, but why did Bluesky become a mainstream alternative and Mastodon didn’t?

I’m saying marketing doesn’t cut it, and it’s not just about where most users are either, otherwise everyone but Threads would be irrelevant.

People bounce off both Threads and Mastodon, and there are platform-related reasons for that.

That may be true for some people, but isn’t a valid generalization. See the Brazil blocking Twitter situation.

Millions decided to give Bluesky a chance and a graph showed daily user activity quadrupling. Now, a not-insignificant portion are saying they refuse to return to Twitter because:

• It feels less toxic and healthier
• They have more control over their experience
• They’re finally having fun with social media again

Sound familiar?

And I’m pretty sure Misskey has more features. Hell, Mastodon as well probably. Bluesky doesn’t even support video yet.

The first sin of the Fediverse isn’t being small, that’s the second. First is being a pain in the ass.

This was one of the reasons I left, and I assumed most disliked the official app, but weren’t willing to part with the content.

Now, I think I was too close minded. Stuck in my bubble. If it’s not in a discussion about reddit sucking, chances are people don’t care that much.

App sucks? Didn’t think about that, it’s just an app. App really sucks? Whatever, they already use 5 other apps that are worse.

The medium shapes the experience, but isn’t an experience unto itself. Not that important to the average person.

With modern internet speeds, there’s no reason you can’t have full UHD-BR quality streamed over the internet.

Cost is a prohibitive reason for many (hardware, internet).

I do believe files are better than physical media, simply because with the proper setup they’re easily backed up and won’t degrade or break.

Always sweet to see folks incentivize each other to engage with content!

For anyone still daunted by the article, I expect the DEFCON channel will upload this talk soon, which might be more up your alley.

I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.

• High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
• Just as many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
• The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.

As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.

Your comment convinced me to finally take a look at his profile and see what the fuss is about.

I didn’t see anything that’d make me scream fascism, either.

But there’s definitely stuff that’s off. Things that, in isolation, would be one thing, but when you analyze them all together, it wouldn’t be weird to say there’s a pattern. A picture starts to form, and it’s one that I’ve sadly seen many times before.

So I went back and grabbed a few tweets:

• Andreas’ take on… political leanings of contributors?
  • Spoiler: he thinks the left doesn’t contribute, apparently, and I have no idea how he measured lurkers.
• Andreas is, according to himself, something like a centrist?
  • What does he consider a “purity test” from either side?
• See this measurement of his political leanings. Rest assured, he shared it in jest.
  • Did you know the internet makes fun of these tests because it only takes a few progressive choices to throw you so far left, you’d think only through decidedly unwholesome picks it’d be possible to hit the right side?
• Andreas believes Twitter is full of positive energy.
  • I thought this was funny, because everyone I know—especially Twitter users—claim it’s become a far-right infested cesspit.
• Andreas’ neutral take and isolated opinion on pronouns in the office
  • The most liked reply: “[…] a red flag indicating that it is a woke workplace. […]” Many such followers. This is his bubble. Very positive.
• Andreas’ reaction to someone who didn’t like what they saw in a GH issue.
  • Multiple times now, when this issue was mentioned, I’ve seen people bring up how old it is. The age is irrelevant if he clearly still thinks the same. I stand by Lea’s arguments here, and seeing him double down and fail to understand the problem is worrying.

I barely had to scroll to find these, they’re all recent. There’s much more.

Individually, you could dismiss everything. It’s just humor. He’s neutral. Objective. Wholesome. But then, why does he keep hitting the same keys? You’d assume a wholesome centrist would have a little more variety in their stand-up routine.

You know what he reminds me of, after reading so many of his tweets?

People who dress up in a veneer of positivity, but you ask them what they think is negative, and they’ll say things like raising awareness of LGBT issues. Not in those words, of course, because that’s not positive. When they talk about it, they’ll put on this show about how they don’t take sides, and how they’re simply worried about the technical discussion, the actually important stuff, you know? They simply don’t like unhelpful noise, things like trying to foster an inclusive community.

It’s easy to seem like a positive figure when you never properly acknowledge any criticism. Position yourself as a factual, neutral voice of objectivity, even when that’s literally impossible. Paint those who disagree as non-contributing, unproductive, negative noise-makers. Say you agree with people on topics they care about, but then turn around and tell them they’re all doing it wrong. Cover it all up in emoji and a “Let’s do it together!” attitude, but reject anyone who reaches out with the wrong greeting.

And there you have it, Andreas reads like a man who’s either lying to himself or to others, and I don’t know which is worse.

I went into this thinking, “I have to avoid baselessly criticizing people. There’s surely nuance to this man’s real beliefs, people on the internet are too quick to attack without evidence.” Which is why I’m honestly surprised to say that I came out with a mildly worse opinion of Andreas than when I started. What the hell.

I sincerely hope he can reflect on his behavior and grow out of this strange mindset. Andreas seems to be a great software developer and Ladybird can be an enormous boon for the web, so it hurts to see him acting this way.

Again, I genuinely don’t think he’s on Twitter because he’s a “weird fascist tech bro” who likes a fascist platform (what is even meant by weird?). I find it more probable that he’s comfortable there, realizes that it’s not going anywhere, that it remains the most popular platform, and therefore doesn’t think Mastodon is worth the effort.

Why he’s so comfortable there and doesn’t like Mastodon is worth thinking about, though.

All the more reason to use Firefox with uBlock Origin if you can, which despite concerns regarding Mozilla are still much more likely to align with users’ best interests and help you avoid being tracked all over the web.

Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.

What does this even mean, Google?

We need to get our politicians to do a lot more, a lot faster.

So we’re still doomed, then? I’m sorry, I’m sure lots of this is meant to be incredibly uplifting, but it reads an awful lot like “green is cheaper, trust the market! Numbers go up, up, up!” when you consider that:

• Climate change is impacting countless people in horrible ways
• Climate change is still getting worse

The important thing to note here being that, even if a brighter future awaits beyond, the worst is yet to come. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Yes, that the science to save the human race exists is nice. Really nice. There was a period in which I genuinely wondered if there was any chance humans wouldn’t extinct themselves. But that was years ago. I’ve since learned that “saving the human species” is a terrible, disgusting metric. The future of what I consider humanity remains grim.

Now, if the worst is yet to come, and we can’t yet even accurately predict how much worse the worst really will be, take a moment to reflect on this: which part of humanity is better prepared to weather the incoming changes, and which part is more likely to be labeled “climate change refugees?”

Humanity isn’t only the richest. It’s not merely the wealthiest and most developed nations. Humanity is also a lot of people who will suffer, people who I’m unconvinced will receive the aid and support they need and deserve.

Because the root cause of these issues, the systems that govern our society, have led us here and are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Because these systems have shown incredible prowess at protecting select groups of people from certain issues, while failing at completely fixing them, despite not struggling due to a lack of resources and continuous technological advances. If the pattern holds…

Then humans will survive. Many will live well.

Humanity is still pretty screwed.

TL;DR:

“The tools are here, we’ll be alright, just need political will!”

Who’s we? And if getting politicians to do what’s right was that simple, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

P.S. I’m not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won’t save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.