[…] but the profitable parts (algorithmic indexer and the app view with advertisements) are very much still in the hands of BlueSky the company.

Yeah, we’ll have to see if/when they fully enable third parties to run their own indexers and app views to see how committed they are to all this, and even then as the thread you linked indicates, there would remain many questionable architectural problems to AuthTransfer.

I came away from reading over the AuthTransfer protocol and its handling of moderation/enabling users with a very major sense of, “We outsource almost everything!”

As L. Rhodes writes:

[…] One effect of ATproto’s structure is to multiply the number of administrative relationships for which each user must decide for themselves—often on little to no information—who deserves their trust. The complexity of its infrastructures seems like it would sometimes make it difficult to assess when that trust has been betrayed, and by whom.

So Bluesky may redistribute some technical power from host admins to users, but it also gives them much more to navigate. It makes their need for power more desperate, and I’m not at all sure that the power trickling down to them through those other layers of infrastructure will be sufficient to the need. No doubt many will compensate by sticking to the parts of the network operated by Bluesky itself—apparent choice, de facto lock-in.

Yes, however without experience with Lemmy’s implementation, it wasn’t clear what the differences were. From what I’ve read of Lemmy’s basic implementation, i.e. submit a reason with your registration/application, this didn’t sound that far from it.

As I read it, Pixelfed’s request for more information form is a good addition (better than the awkward roundabout way you’d have to handle it otherwise, as I think I recall seeing come up with Lemmy), albeit as it’s optional we’ll have to see how well it’s used in practice.

Is there something more to it that’s not highlighted in the linked blog post?

Thanks for the update! The discussion on private communities is definitely an interesting one. Lots of small details to work out, but I think they’d be a great addition. Sort of surprised there wasn’t already an instance-level default sort setting, but that should be interesting to see if instances experiment with it more.

Also linking that post reminded me, hopefully somehow a smoother way to link posts across instances can be worked out (albeit that’s a general federation quirk from what I’ve seen, Mastodon runs into similar stuff sometimes).

ty, be sure to tend to u and ur pets’ bone-connected (if so) eating assistants

But I don’t want to seek out shows. There’s very little interesting stuff being released anymore. They ignore making products for groups in favour of making products for everyone, which results in products for no one. I cannot cope with that.

It seems like some other replies are glossing over this, and here’s the thing: you gotta seek out interesting stuff. Many of the big tech algorithms are focused on the latest, hottest things, sure with some personalization tossed in related to your interests, but still more related to new and popular.

You want a heap of interesting stuff, you can’t keep following what’s trending, you gotta set out and seek out stuff related to your own interests. Not in a physical sense either, but poking around online.

Follow a Wikipedia rabbit hole. Find a director/artist you like, look at what else they’ve been involved with or done creatively, check that out however you can, then look at those they’ve collaborated with and if you like their stuff, check out their collaborators’ work, follow the influences and inspirations. You will hit some duds, but you may also find some real gems the algorithms never woulda served up anytime soon.

What’s more, the further back you dig, the likelier you are to come across that really weird niche work that some folks started out with, that got eyes on them before they may have “sold out” by working on bigger, more mainstream work.

Ah, thanks, those were our predecessors. We just go by people now. Appreciated all the same though!

Sorry, I think I may have timeslipped, I take it this isn’t the stream of advanced face prostheses, my bad!

Get a mirror that doubles as a sort of magnifier to view the area around your nose closely & carefully. You’re looking for seams around the nose with which to gain leverage to gently pry off the nose to get better access to the nostrils within & beneath. Once the nose has been popped off your face, you can rinse both it and the exposed nostrils out with some warm water, which should get rid of the dry, compacted mucus.

You may want to take a soft, thin brush while you’re at this for a more thorough clean. Once both the removed nose and exposed nostrils are cleared to your satisfaction, realign your nose with the seams you found at the start and gently squeeze & press your nose to reconnect it with your face. A light splash of warm water and scrub should help reseal the nose to your face and make the seams less noticeable.

Hope this helps!

This is going to sound dead obvious, but I’d honestly recommend some Intro to Philosophy/Logic/Ethics books, e.g. Logic: A Very Short Introduction or The Logic Manual. I know you’re not necessarily looking at logic specifically, btw, but it’s one of the regular recommendations with philosophy more generally, especially if you branch out to other thinkers.

Also a somewhat common introductory text that I personally didn’t care for is Sophie’s World, which acts as a narrative historical overview of Western philosophy. If you want that sort of thing you may be just as well with a text like A Little History of Philosophy, which might be available via your library.

Finally, for ethics, you might look to Hornbook Ethics and/or Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Besides A Little History of Philosophy, if memory serves all of these I’ve linked to have at one point or another been required texts for different philosophy and ethics courses depending on where one attends, so in reading these independently you’d basically be getting some intro level course education on the cheap.

Honestly though, I’d say reading the primary texts as you’re doing isn’t a terrible way to go about it, as that’s what many philosophy courses would have you do anyway. What I would recommend alongside that is the same as I’d recommend for any older text then, which is to read up on the historical context to get a better sense of what may have influenced their writing, how they were received by their peers and broader community (if they were noticed at all during their life), and develop your understanding from there.

Sorry if this is a bit much, but I hope it helps! Be sure to check your local libraries for any of these before buying them btw, as they may have hard copies available despite not having digital copies. Also remember that college/university libraries may be an option too, albeit likely more costly if they do offer a library card to borrow materials.

I dunno which may be easiest, but if you’d like to know some of your options, this Wikipedia page may be a good place to start.

The trails or the things leaving the trails? In either case I think they may be aircraft contrails, but I’m not sure going off the image alone.

We’re not in /c/technology nor a tech themed instance, it’s a showerthought post (so the vibe should be casual), maybe learn to read a room?

Edit:
Also, it’s not as if I was speaking authoritatively, I was speaking to my experiences and I was upfront about the limits of my knowledge. Instead of bothering to constructively correct me, you flatly went, “Yeah, no.” and your entire entry into the convo was pretty condescending for no apparent reason.

I think it’s less to do with tolerating stupid questions and more to do with the fact it was against their rules…Rule 5 in particular. If you waited, you might’ve been able to eke by on their joke/troll question day.

From my perspective, if we want a smarter society, we need a society willing to do the work of actually being smart and informed.

That may help, but also you need a society that values education, gives people the time to do that work, and has schools that preserve people’s curiosity rather than gradually extinguish it.

You absolutely can. I did, and plenty of other people do all the time about a variety of systems, search engines included. That’s not to say they’ll be good critiques, but that’s irrelevant to whether or not they can.

And in that vein, I’m not suggesting mine is a good critique. However it is reflective of my opinions from my experience with their system and my admittedly rough knowledge of it at the time of writing. Instead of adding to dismissive replies, how about we all get together and read the PageRank wikipedia page and learn together.

Yep. Some of the replies here are getting tied up in Google/search engine history, which doesn’t matter as much with how the space is now and how Google’s being better in the past wasn’t necessarily entirely good given that it destroyed competition and/or has deterred much competition.

Ideally there would have been some check to address the rise of their pseudo-monopoly on search to ensure the service it provided remained decent so we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but “free” markets go brrr.

To be clear, when referring to a reasonably good product, which iteration of their attempts are you describing?

Fwiw I was aware of a number of those, hence why in the OP I mention: “and few really good competitors.” That wasn’t to suggest there were few total competitors, only that there were few really good competitors, which I think is generally the case any time you have a large number of, well, anything tbh.

May be rather dismissive, but it’s not a new observation by any means.