As He died to make men holy
Let us die to make things cheap

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 8th, 2024

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  • Again, what exactly are you talking about?

    Which computer software is ever not implemented on a “code level”?

    The lead developer recently started a thread in the Piefed meta community specifically to open for people to ask questions about these things. In full:

    I have received word that there are people combing through the PieFed code looking for anything that might be harmful. This is excellent and can only make PieFed better and less harmful.
      We appreciate their interest in PieFed and look forward to answering any questions and showing people around the code. Please join us at https://chat.piefed.social/ or https://matrix.to/#/#piefed-developers:matrix.org.

    There’s no need to listen to rumors and amateur speculation when we’re right here and happy to help. Come on in, the water’s fine!

    Nobody in the thread managed to come up with an even remotely critical question. I’m not in the chat so I’m not sure if there were any interesting discussions there, but it’s safe to say it’s hard to find the weird conspiracies floating around reflected in the actual development.

    If you have an issue, ask in !piefed_meta@piefed.social. If the community agrees your concern is valid I can guarantee you it’ll be addressed.

    There’s also the question of what exactly would constitute controversial moderation. If we could hard code out fascists, stalinists, and misogynists, I would be entirely in favour. There’s no need to supply these people with tools for their nonsense. My only issue with it is that it’s not realistic without generating false positives. I don’t speak for Piefed here though, just my personal opinion.




  • Because I thought you were obviously wrong about the 7000 years thing, here’s a history of trademarks by some guy named Olivier Pierre:

    Since ancient times, merchants have been using signs or marks in trade to distinguish their products. Registrations came much later, in the 18th century with the establishment of Intellectual Property Offices.

    […]

    The use of trademarks dates back thousands of years, however we can’t date their origins with precision. Some of the earliest forms of identification of marks date from Prehistory. For instance, the Lascaux cave paintings in France show bulls drawings with marks on them. Experts believe that people were using personal marks to claim ownership of livestock, long before literate societies. That was about 15.000 years ago.

    The Egyptian masonry from some 6,000 years ago shows distinguishable quarry marks and stonecutters signs, to identify the source of the stone and the laborer who carried out the work to claim their wages. There were creative entrepreneurs who marketed their goods beyond their localities and sometimes over long distances. Wine amphorae marked with seals were found inside the Tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun who reigned between 1336 a.c. to 1327 a.c. over ancient Egypt.

    I’ve gotten so used to think of trademarks as registered trademarks, but it makes sense that it has existed much longer in the literal sense. The earliest known law however dates back little more than 4000 years, and there’s nothing about trademarks there, so I think it’s fair to say trademark law is a lot more modern. :)

    Sorry for being entirely off-topic.



  • I find the disagreement between Cohn and Stewart towards the end to be fascinating. I find it hard to agree or disagree with either. Cohn is looking out for places like the Fediverse - she knows that if the platforms are subjected to regulation that is impossible to live up to for small actors, this will only serve the capitalists. In the US the law would for sure end up serving this purpose because it would be designed by the billionaires themselves, and they would design them in a way that monopolizes the internet even more as they discuss earlier on.

    On the other hand, Stewarts is also right. An Instagram feed is not free speech, it’s brain rot and propaganda and ruins society and lives. It needs to be regulated. Just letting then go on as they are while promoting alternatives misses the mark as to the threat posed by these platforms. Cohn seems to have a blind spot here.

    I think the EU has reached a reasonable compromise. They regulate very large online platforms - platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU - separately from smaller platforms. So your obligations increase with your number of users. Furthermore, EU regulation has exceptions for open source not-for-profit development, to avoid regulation aimed at big tech from hurting free software.

    Interesting enough I keep seeing people on the Fediverse attacking the Digital Services Act as though it’s gonna mean the end of the Fediverse, even though the Commission is actively posting about it on their own Mastodon instance and the EU is actively supporting the development of the Fediverse through NLnet. It seems to me that even in these spaces people fall for big tech propaganda.


  • I guess they had the opposite development of Twitter, banning hateful content and trying to keep their house clean. Compared to Zuck and Musk whoever runs Reddit can probably be argued to be a great humanist.

    Not saying it’s a good platform. It’s still a cesspool in my experience, and their approach to moderation produces a wild amount of false positives while bots are roaming free. It seems to me very far from a place for genuine human connection.

    Nevertheless, for someone who sees social media as being Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, Reddit, and Snapchat, I can see how Reddit stands out as the better option.

    It’s too bad Cohn didn’t get to talk more about Mastodon.


  • I paid for the lower plan for a while. It didn’t have nearly enough searches included for my use, and the higher plan was too expensive. Especially since I just wanted search, none of the other products they were busy developing.

    Search results were good. Recently I’m using Qwant and I’m happy with that as well, so right now I don’t miss having access to Kagi at all. With the limited number of searches it was more of an inconvenience than a benefit the period I was using it.

    There are some questionable things about Kagi. A few years ago the CEO reeked out this tweet showcasing how their AI could call out the BBC for being too mean to Elon Musk, which is honestly enough of a red flag for me to steer clear.




  • I know this has been picked up before, but he’s not telling people to “stay woke” as in “have woke opinions”, but rather as in “stay alert/awake because people are out to get you”. Seems like a stretch to say the modern use originates from Leadbelly, it just originates from the English language.

    Love Leadbelly though. The song this is from is Scottsboro Boys.

    Warning about unsafe places for black/poor folks is not so uncommon in Blues music, and it makes sense as a way of spreading the news. Leadbelly warns about Houston in his version of Midnight Special, though he probably wasn’t the first to do so:

    If you ever go to Houston
    Boy, you better walk right
    And you better not squabble, and you better not fight
    Benson Crocker will arrest you, Jimmy Boone will take you down
    You can bet your bottom dollar, penitentiary bound


  • I like the idea of keeping track of my hikes using GPS to be able to remember exactly where I’ve been, but I don’t trust the kind of data gathered by a smart watch with any company out there, and I don’t want to drain my phone by keeping the GPS on constantly. If this has good battery life it sounds interesting to me.

    I’m generally sceptical of introducing another screen into my life though. Something about smart watches just seems inherently intrusive even if the software itself isn’t spyware.