abbenm

joined 4 years ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Psst you're literally on the fediverse right now.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oof. I want to cheer this project on as much as anybody, but there's no two ways around it, those terms have every appearance of being extreme and expansive. Just to copy it here for others to see:

When you post Contributions, you grant us a license (including use of your name, trademarks, and logos): By posting any Contributions, you grant us an unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, fully-paid, worldwide right, and license to: use, copy, reproduce, distribute, sell, resell, publish, broadcast, retitle, store, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), and exploit your Contributions (including, without limitation, your image, name, and voice) for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, your Contributions, and to sublicense the licenses granted in this section. Our use and distribution may occur in any media formats and through any media channels.

This license includes our use of your name, company name, and franchise name, as applicable, and any of the trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos, and personal and commercial images you provide.

https://loops.video/legal/terms-of-service

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I've just blocked one spammy russia apologist who is extremely prolific. Although I am disappointed that the community tolerates them. I feel Lemmy has an unresolved Russia apologist problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Understood, you are exactly right about that. What you've described filters out third parties. I think most conceptions of ranked choice voting by contrast would give them more of a chance, but granted that's not how it works everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Low effort shitposts like this that ignore the point of the person you are responding to, that is what makes the internet a bad place.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

But Firefox good…?

Yes! They are the most important alternative to major corporate backed browsers, helping sustain a diversified browser ecosystem so that no one company can monopolize the web, and push it toward standards that reinforce their monopoly. Google has tried to lock down the phone, app market, browsing experience that sustains their ad networks, and regularly pushes new standards that de-emphasize things like RSS, and that break ad blocking functionality to sustain their monopoly and invade privacy.

Firefox reverses or mitigates most of those and are explicitly driven by a mission of sustaining an open web with standards that don't bend the web to corporate dominance. Google's cheeky dont be evil mantra was in reference to exactly the things they are doing now, and it's a little too on the nose to their actual behavior so it's no longer a slogan of theirs, cheeky or otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

huh? no one’s asking them to fix firefox, we’re asking that they just ship the latest version.

Huh to your huh? What's significant about the latest version, other than that it includes requested fixes? This is 12 of one, a dozen of the other.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That means that until and unless a 3rd party candidate manages to completely overshadow one of the major political parties, which is effectively never going to happen,

It could happen sometimes, although it's admittedly rare. Maine has an independent senator, Nebraska has an independent senator who's running a strikingly close race against the Republican. In Alaska a couple of years ago the same thing happened although the independent didn't win. I think Jesse Ventura was an independent in Minnesota. But they are one-off cases and not a systematically viable across the whole system.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

but for me all the downballot third party candidates are eliminated in the primaries.

What do you mean? A primary would be where Democrats narrow their choices to one nominee, and Republicans do, and third parties do and so on. You seem to be suggesting that primaries filter out third party candidates? Maybe I'm just missing something but my understanding would be that a primary would just be a way that a third party chooses a single nominee, same as the first two parties.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

If states can override ballot measures regarding legal cannabis, and they have repeatedly, they can override this.

Has that happened? I'm not doubting you, but overall the trend has overwhelmingly been in the direction of adoption. It's also just a bizarre example to choose since it seems to me like most of those initiatives have been successful and if anything have illustrated the connection between voting and noticeable change.

Which, come to think of it, it's probably why trolls don't use it anymore as an example of an issue pretend to care about when they search for reasons to tell people to disengage from democracy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

You said to not vote third party, so you can’t vote for rcv.

Not only did they literally not say that... actually no, let's just pause on this. This is so confused it's actually kind of amazing. Explaining how first past the post works is not saying don't vote third party. You could still like a third party the most independent of electoral concerns. And explaining the strategic reasoning for choosing one of the two major parties isn't the same as saying you "should" vote for them in a moral sense.

Voting to enact a ranked choice voting system isn't the same as voting for a third part. You could want rank choice voting even if you favored one of the two major parties but don't want them to lose narrow elections when they might be the winning coalition. You could hate the third party and still want rank choice voting. You can both support a third party and support rank choice voting and understand that they are two entirely separate things.

And I suppose the cherry on top is you referred to them as "you" like it was a single person in a comment chain where it's three comments by three different people.

Truly a magnificent multi-layered piece of confusion, chefs kiss, five stars, two thumbs up, etc etc.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The great thing about this topic is this exact argument has already played out in a very recent historical example. You could, and many people did, make this exact argument in 2016, and it produced the very decisions we're talking about. And now, evidently having not followed that thread of cause and effect at all, you're back saying the same argument again.

It's precisely because SCOTUS appointees lock in long term consequences that impact multiple future administrations that they are important, and a clear example of where differences in power lead to different outcomes.

This has always been the obvious weak spot in the "both sides are the same" argument. The only answer anybody has come up with is to constantly change the subject. Which is the tell.

 

I don't know if you have heard, but Loops.video is a Reels/Tiktok like app from the creator of Pixelfed. I recall it being announced, and checked just now on a whim. All of a sudden, it appears pretty close to ready to launch!

 

What are Lemmy's feelings about the best cloud storage options these days, if you really want to break into the 1-2TB range? I'm not there yet, probably not even halfway there, but I like the peace of mind of potentially having the space if I need it. And I think subscribing to something in the Netflix price range is maybe something I'm ready for.

My thoughts so far:

pcloud - Intriguing because you can pay for a "lifetime" plan of 2TB of storage. But it's $350, which is a lot, and I don't know that I love the interface or usability, and I don't know if I trust them.

iDrive - Super affordable. 5tb for "just" $80/year. It might be the best deal, but nothing about their identity suggests to me that they are "good guys." By which I mean, I'm not sure I trust them to make long-term promises for any specific plan.

Mega - I like its very anti-google, very encrypted attitude. Born from the ashes of megaupload, they built encryption and zero knowledge into it. I LOVE that you can connect to it through the android app Solid Explorer and therefore don't even need the mega app if you don't want it. I hear bad things about it though? And it's pretty expensive at $115 per year for 2TB.

My personal thoughts/reasoning/caveats:

Homebrew stuff: I don't quite trust myself to use a homebrew setup like Nextcloud or Syncthing correctly. There's too much in terms of labor, upkeep, catastrophic single points of failure where you could lose everything. I feel like I'm 70% of the way to being smart enough to do this.

Avoiding the Bad Guys and the Free Stuff: I've tried the free version of just about everything, from Google to Onedrive to Dropbox to Mediafire to Mega. There's even an android app that offers 1 free terrabyte?? But I don't want something from the bad guys where I'm going to be integrated into their closed source death drap: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and I don't want a too-good-to-be-true free service where I'm the product.

I also would prefer to avoid something from the upstarts who kinda-sorta imitate the bad guys: Dropbox, Mediafire, Box. Because I'm not sure how much I can trust any specific long term promise from them.

It sounds like you're saying nothing is good enough! What exactly do you want!? Something from good guys, not bad guys. Something like Standardnotes, but for file storage. They emphasize privacy, good governance principles and longevity of their service. Or Linode, with their independence, sense of mission, love of Linux & free software, all of which tells me they are good guys.

Probably the correct answer is (1) here's this magical perfect source I never thought of, or (2) I'm thinking this much about it, I should probably do Nextcloud or syncthing given all the constraints that I'm putting out there.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on cloud storage. What are yours?

 

Here's a pattern you've probably seen:

  1. Racists/nazi shows up and says racist/nazi things
  2. Get called out for it and/or banned
  3. They claim they are unfairly banned "for disagreeing." They completely leave out the part about them being a racist nazi.

You know, that move. I've seen it more times than I can count and I bet you have too. They call disagreement with nazism "opinions you don't like", leaving out the nazism part. Any way of framing disagreements with them while subtracting out the actual content of what they say.

It's so common that I think it deserves a word. I know there are generic descriptions: e.g. "being a troll", but I think something specific to this particular behavior deserves its own word. That way it can just be identified and dismissed for what it is and not argued with.

 

I like discovering new things. So I went through the entire list of games in the Bundle For Racial Justice and Equality. I found some I liked, and wanted to share.

What I don't want to share are the relatively widely known games: Oxenfree, Celeste, Oneshot, A Short Hike, Pyre, Octodad, Hidden Folks, Night In The Woods. Games that already have over a thousand reviews on Steam.

Here are some of my obscure gems:

Cromwell - Clearly inspired by Reigns, and I loved Reigns. A story based card game with swipe-left or swipe-right decisions. Reigns was amazing, I was sad when I finished all the Android Play Store versions of the games, but am glad there's another one in the spirit of that series.

A New Life - It was made by Angela He, creator of Missed Messages. The atmosphere, the aesthetic, is just so awesome to me. Why can't other creators make games so lush with feels and beauty as Angela He? There's just no comparison imo.

Elsemir - a really well done 2d graphical point + click fantasy game. Click through to the itch.io page and check out the reviews and screenshots.

I could go on, but I'll pause there. What did you find in the itch.io bundle?

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