Tech-savvy power user's experience exposes Quora being led like a sinking ship. Hundreds of millions of users are at risk of having to find a replacement. Fediverse to the rescue?

Quora has been going down for a while already:
slate.com/technology/2024/02/q…

I remember two downturns:
- 2012 stagnation of development about that time when the other co-founder was fired or something
- 2018 beginning of the gradual removal of valuable features, I assume to "save money on maintenance now, suffer consequences later"

There is Trust Café,
trustcafe.io/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Ca…

...as of November 7, 2019, [the founder Jimmy] Wales stated that he had just learnt about ActivityPub and was looking into it.

"Sounds interesting. Reading! Not likely to do anything like this soon as we are underfunded and just getting going. But it sounds interesting! [...] Ok. I am always interested in decentralization as a principle. I don't know of anything I could actually use in this case though. [...] Also, to be clear, I'm not being dismissive. I'm reading up on ActivityPub to see if there's a way to support it natively. If real tools are being built that I can interoperate with, that's a clear win all around."

Alberta broke housing construction records in 2025 and led the country in housing starts per capita — a massive upswing in homebuilding that comes after a period of similarly massive population growth.

...

Some of Alberta’s advantage comes down to geography. Cities in Alberta tend to be a bit more spread out, said Moffatt, which means you can build outward more easily (though that can come with its own challenges, such as the need to build new water infrastructure to service far-flung suburban neighbourhoods).

In Alberta, developers also don’t need to contend with provincial sales tax, he said, which makes it cheaper to build.

And, generally, development policy is also friendlier at a municipal level in Alberta, said Moffatt.

...

Some federal policies and programs have also helped move the needle — both in Alberta and elsewhere — such as the federal government’s removal of GST on purpose-built rental housing, and a CMHC program that offers discounted mortgage insurance on certain multi-residential projects.

An emerging model is quietly turning Canadian patient medical records, and patients themselves, into lucrative commercial assets — often without patients’ explicit knowledge or consent. The practice, documented in a recent Health, Tech & Society Lab analysis, urgent concerns about privacy, transparency and trust in our health-care system.

The sale of de-identified and anonymized personal health information isn’t new to Canada. In the conventional business model, data brokers act as middlemen, purchasing and pooling de-identified data from clinics. Brokers then conduct analytics for third parties or sell access to the data for research, marketing or product development.

A new “vertically integrated” model is expanding and changing this practice.

Instead of third-party data brokers buying de-identified datasets from clinics, for-profit companies that own chains of medical clinics have become data brokers themselves, with access to identified data and closer control over clinical workflows. The value of patient data held by these chains is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Because this closer integration “internalizes” patient data within the same ownership structure, data brokers have direct access to patient data as the data custodians. When using this data to develop specialized tools — such as clinical decision support tools — for third parties, companies may avoid regulatory oversight otherwise applicable if data were shared externally.

The most financially lucrative application of this model comes from pharmaceutical companies which pay clinic-owning data brokers to develop algorithms that identify patients who may be eligible for their drugs. These algorithms, called clinical decision support tools, are then embedded into the electronic medical records systems used in broker-owned clinics, shaping how clinicians prescribe. This is occurring without the explicit consent of patients, relying instead on the permission of physicians and clinics alone. Many physicians may not fully appreciate the risks this poses.

As Canada finds its sovereignty repeatedly threatened by the United States, it’s Donald Trump who plays the villain. The president seizes the spotlight by openly proclaiming the United States must dominate its geographic “sphere” that includes all of North America.

But it is Big Tech that truly rules the world and poses its own threat to Canadian sovereignty. And nothing the Mark Carney government has proposed to date is likely to blunt its efforts.

Yes, Carney has named the battlefront by declaring that Canada must have its own, sovereign, Canadian data infrastructure. What could that mean? That Canada has control over the chips, algorithms, data centres, models and data that comprise cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

There’s good reason for Canadian data infrastructure to be a priority. We don’t want a menacing United States snooping on our private information, and we don’t want our digital systems to be vulnerable to being scrambled or unplugged by a tantrum-throwing president.

Unfortunately, there are also good reasons that establishing data sovereignty has not yet become an actual project to be supported by the Carney government’s Major Projects Office. Many obstacles stand in the way.

Most major tech companies in Canada are U.S. owned and controlled and subject to U.S. laws. Sixty per cent of cloud capacity is owned by three hyperscalers (large-scale cloud service providers that operate massive data centres to offer vast computing power, storage and networking capabilities to large customers): Amazon Web Services or AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. A third of Canada’s nearly 300 data centres are U.S. owned.

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/7485174

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/2346…

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

---

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

thelastaxolotl [he/him]

2026-01-28 18:58:59

After Trump Declared Gaza War ‘Over,’ Media Lost Interest

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/2346…

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

---

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

Israel Is Turning the Yellow Line Splitting Gaza into a Physical Barrier

Last month, the Israeli military began constructing earth berms in areas along the yellow line, physically cutting off Palestinians from the Israeli-controlled zone and the rest of Gaza.

^{Forensic Architecture (Drop Site News)}

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/2346…

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

---

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

rss

2026-01-28 18:30:27

After Trump Declared Gaza War ‘Over,’ Media Lost Interest

Since President Donald Trump declared that “the war in Gaza is over” on October 3, 2025, US news outlets’ interest in the occupied territory has plummeted. In a FAIR search of US-related news sites using Media Cloud, a news media database, coverage of Gaza post-ceasefire agreement averaged just 1.5% of the news hole—significantly less than the level of coverage before the agreement.

From July 2 through October 1, 2025, mentions of Gaza appeared in 2.3% of news stories in Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 248 online outlets. Starting October 2, the day before the ceasefire agreement, coverage in the next three weeks jumped to an average of 4.5%. For the following three months (October 23–January 22), that average dropped to 1.5%. That’s less than two-thirds the level of coverage it received prior to the agreement.

It’s also the lowest three-month average at any point since the current crisis began on October 7, 2023.

Weekly online news articles mentioning “Gaza,” January 2024–January 2026

Source: Media Cloud.org

As FAIR (10/21/25, 12/18/25) has pointed out—along with many others—Israel did not cease firing after signing the ceasefire agreement. It has killed more than 480 Palestinians since then, including more than 100 children. (Israel claims three of its soldiers have been killed since the agreement—Washington Post, 1/8/26.)

And despite the agreement—and multiple binding orders from the International Court of Justice—Israel has kept in place the near-total blockade of Gaza that perpetuates the genocide (Amnesty International, 12/17/25; UNRWA, 1/21/26).

Israel has treated the line it committed to withdraw to in the agreement—the so-called Yellow Line—as a license to kill Palestinians who cross it, thereby ethnically cleansing more than half of Gaza (Al Jazeera, 1/26/26). Israel has begun treating the line as a new permanent border (Drop Site, 1/23/26).

Gaza is at least as newsworthy as it was before the ceasefire deal was signed. The general US media decision to back off covering an ongoing genocide, apparently because Donald Trump declared the conflict over, is both cowardly and complicit.

---

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

Israel Is Turning the Yellow Line Splitting Gaza into a Physical Barrier

Last month, the Israeli military began constructing earth berms in areas along the yellow line, physically cutting off Palestinians from the Israeli-controlled zone and the rest of Gaza.

^{Forensic Architecture (Drop Site News)}