Reddit alternatives seem to attract people who were banned from Reddit. I think that explains a lot about the general vibe on here. I was never on Voat but I’m aware of its reputation, and a lot of the time Lemmy feels like how I imagine Voat was, same personalities, different politics.

I'm getting two points from the article. One is addressed handily by the Fediverse, the other is not.

First the centralized (I prefer to say "urbanized") nature of social media means a handful of companies control all the conversations. The Fediverse is a decent (though not perfect) solution to that problem, and I think everyone on here knows that.

However, the article also talks about the problems with the format of social media, not just who's hosting the platform. On traditional forums, conversations can last for years, but on Reddit, Discord, etc. new topics quickly bury old ones, no matter how lively those old topics are. Sure, you can choose to sort by "last comment" which replicates the traditional forum presentation with topic bumping, but it's not the default, even on Lemmy, so 90% of people won't bother.

I get to know people on traditional forums, even miss them if they leave, but on Reddit, comments are just disembodied thoughts manifesting in the ether. That may be due to the size of the community rather than the format, though.

Texan here. We learned Mexican Spanish (seseo, yeismo, ustedes for everyone, etc) It's been years since I had to use it for my job but IIRC there's a difference in the subjunctive verbs as well.

There are also distinct varieties of Spanish spoken in the US that differ from Mexican Spanish. As a general rule, if a common word has a similar-sounding English cognate (often false cognate) the cognate will be used. truck = troca instead of camión, concrete (as in cement) = concreto instead of hormigón, carpet = carpeta instead of alfombra, to park (a car) = parquear instead of estacionar, and so on. This is from my years working as a bilingual call center agent.

For those who are saying I shouldn't have bought these half-baked smart appliances, I agree. But I wasn't always this aware of the privacy issues involved. The washer and dryer were purchased before I grasped how problematic cloud-connected always online IoT devices are, and as mentioned in the OP the ability to tell me when my laundry was done seemed like a genuinely useful feature. In the case of the fridge it was an emergency replacement and we took what fit the preexisting niche in our kitchen, and the complete lack of output on the fridge itself necessitated the app.

Handheld two-way radios, apparently

That's what I warned everyone about during our weekly net. We're tiny fish compared to the telecom giants. Everything above 6 meters is in jeopardy.

This looks interesting.

Seems like it's still early days yet, but are there plans to add things like namespaces and categories?

While I can appreciate the desire to maintain order in the midst of chaos, and I can certainly see why radio is essential for that, I'll never understand the people who say they're into ham radio because they don't want to be censored or intercepted in a time of crisis. Ham radio is insecure by design. Your dox yourself every time you give your call sign.

Oh this screenshot was taken years ago. I got my extra ticket in 2021 (first licensed in 2019). I just keep coming back to it because of how on the nose it is.

I've actually been away from the hobby for the most part for about 2 years, and am trying to find ways to get back into it.

Easy hosting isn't quite the issue. Dokuwiki is trivial to self host. What I'd like something that's a happy medium between requiring account creation to edit pages and letting literally every rando with an IP address go to town.

Nothing pops a vein quite like companies acting like a one-time expense should be a monthly fee. Paying monthly for heated seats in certain cars is where I first heard of this. They already put the hardware in the car. I guarantee they already charged you for the parts and labor to put in those heated seats when you bought the vehicle. No way they're losing money on it in the hopes you start paying them.

But I'll get off my owner's rights soapbox now.

I was on Reddit from mid 2012 to mid 2023, across a few accounts and with a hiatus of a few months here and there. I had been passively looking at less centralized forms of personal interaction on the web, trying to find traditional forums to replace the subs I frequented. Like a lot of people here, the API issues and the news of Reddit courting investors left a bad taste in my mouth.

I deleted my account, but I still lurk on a few subs, and my IT job means I have to dig through reddit posts on a regular basis for troubleshooting purposes.

Washer dryer and fridge are TCP only

The name means nothing to today’s youth

Story time: When I was a kid in the late 90s, there was a fad for toy walkie-talkies at my school. I was obsessed with seeing how far I could get my signal, which wasn't very far given the likely minuscule power.

The teachers decided to capitalize on this trend by inviting a representative of a local ham club to speak at our school. I was absolutely floored when I learned you could talk around the world. Two things kept me from pursuing my license at the time. There was still a code requirement, and nobody for the life of me could tell me what lunch meat had to do with wireless communication.

If it exists, a ham will try to bounce radio waves off it, or use it as an antenna.

She’s been through multiple cancers over her years, 2 of them with us, and she always seems to make a comeback to where I keep on thinking she’s going to be here forever

Thank you. I've been on that roller coaster. That was by far the hardest, seeing her decline only to bounce back, then decline again. When she retired I would jokingly say "Remember, you can't die on me, you'll just have to live forever." Toward the end I started telling her she could go if she wanted. I know she neither knew what I was saying nor did she have much control over when she passed (though I'm still mystified by how perky she acted for the hour or so before her death.)

It still kills me how brief a time we have with such loving creatures. I've tried to look at it from the dog's point of view. We humans are effectively eternal and immutable constants of love and comfort, present from nearly the time they are born until they draw their last breath, and that makes me a bit happier.

I know this is obnoxiously pedantic but the link you provide says the 666 meats come from the same animal.

I just checked this out. It's not quite what I'm looking for right now but it does answer my question as asked. I can see it coming in handy later.

Thanks!

A wiki is probably what you want. I was going to suggest tvtropes, which is great for, say, a list of every superhero with X-ray vision, or every work of fiction containing dwarves, but I'm not sure that fits what you want.