This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.

It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.

Honestly I'm using, and especially posting on, Lemmy much more often now that I have sync back.

I had been using Sync for Reddit for so many years that it became muscle memory. Now I have it back and things just feel right.

Additionally...

Uyghurs when they're detained sent to a concentration camp free job training program:

Chuckles. I'm in danger immensely grateful to the glorious Chinese Communist party for graciously offering me this tremendous opportunity.

It's kind of alarming how smoothly Apple made the transition to being a bank.

They're slowly transitioning into the type of megacorp you usually only see in science fiction.

Honestly that strikes me as perfectly reasonable of Beehaw.

Maybe a little kneejerk to de-federate preemptively, but given their stated moderation goals I totally get it.

IMO there are big risks consuming news & opinion from any single source.

Whether it's the CCP manipulating the TikTok algorithm, Russia buying ad space on Facebook, or American conglomerates pushing narratives on western mainstream media, there will be implicit biases everywhere.

The only real answer is to get news from multiple sources with diverging perspectives, try to find where facts overlap, challenge your own implicit biases, and form a perspective in line w/ your values.

Seeing America blame TikTok for pushing propaganda is the pot calling the kettle black -- and honestly more of a distraction than anything else.

The real important issue is that people are dying, and the existing power structures are doing jack shit to stop it.

Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power

MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control

Are these not different words for the same fundamental concepts?

I fail to see how "the state" and "capitalism" aren't just a more developed form of "structures" and "agreements". And if the community decides punishment is an appropriate response to breaking an "agreement", how is that any different from "coercive control"?

And if you're community gets large enough (say even like a couple hundred people), how are any decisions gonna get made even remotely efficiently?

Feel like you're a hop skip and a jump from a representative democracy. And as soon as bartering becomes too inconvenient, I'm sure a new "agreement" still be made to use some proxy as a form of current and boom now you've got capitalism too.

Star Trek is the only reason I'm paying for Paramount+.

If Lower Decks and/or SNW go, I go.

This.

I think of buses as the caterpillar to a tram's butterfly.

You can start with a comprehensive bus network, and as a particular route stabilizes and the bus starts struggling to meet throughput needs, that is an indicator that a tram may be worthwhile.

Starting w/ a tram line is a pretty big financial bet that it will be useful/needed, as once you build it, you're locked-in to that specific route.

I fully recognize I'm in a position of relative privilege, but I am more than happy paying an annual subscription of <$20 for an app like this.

Building an app of this quality with this level of polish is a massive time investment, and I'm more than happy to reward that time with less money per year than I spent doordashing lunch this afternoon because I was too lazy to make myself a sandwich.

I know I've been commenting a lot more w/ sync.

No, but there are copyleft licenses that require anyone using a fork of some open-source project for for-profit purposes to subsequently open-source any changes they make.

Man I would love to see Chicago Amtrak get some much needed love.

The way they structure the platforms to force passengers to sit in a waiting room and then line up and get funneled through a single door before they can board is so inefficient and backwards.

Bad design and execution has made the Amtrak just as inconvenient as flying and slower than driving, when it should be the opposite.

LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as "bad" after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).

Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.

A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn't really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say "I'm sorry" at one point which was pretty meme worthy.

The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.

Different people have different conclusions -- some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.

But that's just me -- I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.

Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don't know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.

Most of the comments here are talking about the x% of time Linux gets messed up it can be really intimidating for new users and getting the right help can be a challenge, or simply more time than it's worth.

I think this is true, but I think there's another thing that irks people:

Software Compatibility

The general public primarily interacts with their computers through established applications that commonly aren't available on Linux w/o intimidating work around (if at all).

A noob who switches to Linux isn't going to know the limitations up front, and the second they decide they want to learn Adobe Premier for work, they're kinda fucked. They'll either spend hours/days of online research trying to figure out if it's even possible, or they'll ask for help only to have someone tell them they're wrong for trying and to use some FOSS alternative because Adobe is an evil megacorp.

It's a recipe for frustration.

I never really had problems with Biagi when I heard her talk, or explain her goals for CDOT, but it was abundantly clear that her department wasn't doing enough to prioritize transit modes other than the car. That's a failure, no matter how you slice it -- either Biagi was less than transparent about her goals/motives regarding pedestrian safety, she fundamentally misunderstood the problems that arise from car-centric design or she was unable to affect significant systemic change in her department.

Here's hoping whoever replaces her is willing to acknowledge de-prioritizing the car-centric transportation model as their #1 priority, and has a clear plan on how to move the city in that direction.

Why does a car manufacturer have to care about theft at all?

This argument doesn't make any sense to me. Why bother with keys and locks then? Is it more practical to expect society to eliminate literally all crime?

I'm sure there are good reasons to dislike this lawsuit, but this isn't one of them.

I like A a lot, reminds me of the early iPhone days of tasteful skeumorphism.

B is probably my favorite tho -- definitely the cleanest.

C looks off to me, something about the goggles.

Love to see it.

Seems like Detroit has been doing a lot of great stuff recently -- need to leave Chicago and pay them a visit.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have sync on the Fediverse, and will happily pay for a yearly subscription to help ensure LJD has sufficient compensation to keep the app up-to-date with whatever changes come to the Android/Lemmy APIs years down the road.

The problem with (even excellent) free apps for platforms like this, is they require consistent maintenance to keep up with both the platform they run on (Android), and the platform they serve content for (Lemmy). That is not a trivial amount of work, and is absolutely deserving of continued, recurring compensation IMO.

A one-time payment might make sense for a simple native game that gets produced once, has no web component, and never needs another update for its entire lifetime, but not for this. You aren't paying for a singular product, you're paying for a service. You wouldn't go to the barber and winged about needing to pay every time I get my hair cut.