But that expropriation of the Third World—has been going on for 400 years—brings us to another revelation—namely, that the Third World is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich—only the people are poor. But there's billions to be made there, to be carved out, and to be taken—there's been billions for 400 years! The Capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries—these countries are not underdeveloped—they're overexploited!
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
I’m currently reading Blackshirts & Reds and will also read others from your reading list. It’s an amazing book and it’s helping deprogram the US propaganda that I’ve been taught all my life and teaching me new things/ideas. I’m new to socialism/communism, even though I’ve been adjacent to it the last several years so I appreciate you making the list!
Thank you so much! I made that list exactly for people like you, based on what I would have wanted when I was first starting out, so hearing that people are using and enjoying my list really does make me happy. Blackshirts and Reds in particular would have fast-forwarded my radicalization process far earlier had I been exposed to it, and not taken the many years it has. Let me know if you have any questions!
There's been more than one time me and my bud have come home after a few beers and a few more only to put on yellow parenti on the box to drink just a couple more to
I only play games in my living room. I can't stand Big Picture mode. It's awkward and has a lot of useless stuff in it. Just make the regular UI controller usable, Valve. That's all you need to do. There's no reason to have two different UIs.
Is this a new version of BP though? Edit: looks like they have changed it a little. It's definitely more useable. But there doesn't seem to be a way to access the workshop. Why is everything so freaking big? Do they not know that TVs aren't CRT anymore? They don't need giant icons for everything anymore.
Edit2: Big picture doesn't show nonsteam games. Not using it. Half my games are not from steam.
DPI scaling of the regular steam GUI can also be wonky if you have different monitors. For example, I mainly use steam on my lower DPI secondary monitor, but it wanted to scale based on my 4k main one. Could be fixed with an override though.
Valve completely redesigned Big Picture Mode for Steam Deck and SteamOS. They've been porting those changes over to Desktop Steam and even changing Desktop Steam's UI slowly to match and make everything more consistant.
Non-Steam Games:
Steam Workshop:
Disclaimer: I have a theme mod installed which changes the color of some elements. Layout is the same though.
Yeah, but they're coming to Desktop stable soon. Or you can switch to Beta and try them out. It's up to you. Just wanted to show that Valve is addressing the issues with Big Picture Mode.
In case it is helpful: Big Picture Mode does show non-Steam games. Go to the library and there is a tab for them. They'll also show in the recent games list on the home page.
While the Steam Deck is a huge success, the portable console truly owes its appeal to SteamOS, the operating system developed under Linux. We were able to speak with Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the Valve developers dedicated to this extraordinary project.
If you've been happily using your Steam Deck for the past few months, you owe it in part to this man. Pierre-Loup Griffais is one of the developers in charge of SteamOS, the operating system that powers Valve's portable console and allows it to be as easy to use as a traditional console. Present at CES 2025 to accompany the release of the new Legion Go S, the first device "Powered by SteamOS", the developer was pleased to answer our questions to look back on the past of the OS, establish its short-term plans, but also talk about its future. What did you do in the development of SteamOS? “For us, this is a long-standing initiative. And at CES, it’s a return to our beginnings when we were here in 2013 to announce the first version with the first hardware partners. Today, we’ve come a long way behin
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While the Steam Deck is a huge success, the portable console truly owes its appeal to SteamOS, the operating system developed under Linux. We were able to speak with Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the Valve developers dedicated to this extraordinary project.
If you've been happily using your Steam Deck for the past few months, you owe it in part to this man. Pierre-Loup Griffais is one of the developers in charge of SteamOS, the operating system that powers Valve's portable console and allows it to be as easy to use as a traditional console. Present at CES 2025 to accompany the release of the new Legion Go S, the first device "Powered by SteamOS", the developer was pleased to answer our questions to look back on the past of the OS, establish its short-term plans, but also talk about its future. What did you do in the development of SteamOS? “For us, this is a long-standing initiative. And at CES, it’s a return to our beginnings when we were here in 2013 to announce the first version with the first hardware partners. Today, we’ve come a long way behind the scenes.” "I've been personally busy managing this, since the creation of SteamOS in 2012. In the meantime, we developed Proton to increase compatibility, and then the Steam Deck with SteamOS 3.0. Since the release of the Steam Deck OLED, we've done a lot of work to expand the compatibility of SteamOS."
ROG Ally, Legion S… Is this just the beginning? “All of this work is broadly applicable to the PC platform, and it’s going to continue to expand over time. Supporting multiple platforms, multiple chipsets, controllers for different machines that are out there and even ones that aren’t out yet. It aligns pretty well with what we were already doing. Here, Lenovo approached us because they were working on their new product and were looking to improve the software experience.” Console ergonomics in the PC universe, the great mark of SteamOS 3 "There's been a lot of feedback from the press and users since SteamOS 3 came out that SteamOS is very well-suited to these new console formats. We're excited to bring these improvements, this immediacy, to other products. We're super excited to bring this experience to all the platforms that exist while still being able to access the desktop, third-party software installation, and the customization that the PC brings." “This was our goal from the beginning, but our own hardware has kept us busy. Now that the Steam Deck OLED is well underway, we have some time to prioritize this development.”
One of the promises was to release SteamOS for everyone, how difficult is it to release it now? “I think there are a couple of factors. One is that on some platforms, the support is still very basic. Intel, it works a little bit better than before, but our driver teams and Intel are working on it. NVIDIA, the integration of open source drivers is still pretty nascent. There’s still a lot of work to be done on that side… So it’s a little bit complicated to say that we’re going to release this version when most people wouldn’t have a good experience.” “And then there’s the ease of installation. We had an installer for SteamOS 2, but here we started with the Steam Deck so everything came straight out of the box, so the process right now is basic. Unlike some community alternatives that add this layer of installation that accompanies users. We haven’t done that yet.” “It’s just a matter of priorities.” In this label, who takes care of support? The manufacturer, as usual, or Valve, as Chrome OS does?
You're still basically a PC "There you go! It's true that thanks to the good reception of the Steam Deck, some developers are giving priority to this kind of development, but everyone benefits in the end."
It still seems like fun to work on SteamOS, right? "There's passion behind it, we're Linux users. But system development is also less fun in some ways than working on a game or something like that. There are advantages and disadvantages." “The fun is to see where we are, compared to where we were at the time.” You are developing an open source product in a private company that is free for everyone, which is rare. "Yeah, I'm pretty happy that we've managed to find a balance that's beneficial to everyone, while still being able to help this PC ecosystem in this way. I'm really happy about that."
Pretty sure I remember this guy on a Linux gaming discord server a couple of years before Steam Deck released asking people who were gaming on low end PCs how well things were working for them.
Looking back, I think I know what that was about now.
Flera personer dömda till fängelse för narkotikabrott. Södertörns tingsrätt har dömt fem personer för synnerligen grovt narkotikabrott, grovt narkotikabrott, grov narkotikasmuggling och medhjälp till grov narkotikasmuggling. Den aktuella chattgruppen ska ha haft en koppling till Foxtrotnätverket.
It is more important than ever that the social web is not controlled by corporations. Today, Mastodon is taking another step towards its founding ideals: independence and non-profit ownership.
We need to grow our annual operating budget to €5 million in 2025.
What for?
How many active users are going to be served by mastodon.social and mastodon.online? Is the infrastructure being provided by the companies counted as part of this budget?
How many more users are going to join the Mastodon network of servers thanks to the missing features that are planned to be released this year?
there's a big difference between running a service on volunteers, and having full-time folks to keep things running / answer the regulation discussions / keep maintaining / keep adding the features that folks are looking for. This is not primarily an infrastructure spend. There's also an amount of legal work involved, unfortunately. So, those are some of the elements we're looking at.
Sure. But at the end of the day, economics is just a big game of resource allocation. 5M€ can get you quite a long way, and I'm wondering if we could have better use of those resources than by putting it on Mastodon.
Can it? Because I wouldn't try to run a social media company with less than that. It's kind of shocking they make do with a tenth of it. Which I guess is helped by being staffed by the equivalent of a mid-sized McDonalds franchise.
If I was going to spend that much on anything beyond servers and full time employees I would spend it on marketing, though.
The goal is not to "compete" with social media companies. The goal is to build tools and digital infrastructure that can let people communicate with each other (a) cheaply, (b) without intermediaries and (c) with robust protections against malicious actors of varying scale.
Give me 5 million euros and one single year, and I can definitely build it. Fuck, give me half a million and I'll do it.
I did not, in fact, make a social media company. Rochko did.
And hey, I mostly agree with the diagnosis in your link. As always with business pitches, I'm more skeptical of the leap in logic from the diagnosis to the proposal for an alternative.
Also, if a software developer tells me they will have a project done in a year I immediately walk away. Show me a production plan or don't give me a deadline. But hey, that's just me and you're not actually pitching.
For now, if Flipboard gets there with Surf we can revisit and talk about whether they needed 5 million and a year or not. I don't think it's a terrible idea, but also don't think it's going to explode. I'm ready to be proven wrong, though.
December 18, 2024–Palo Alto, CA–Today Flipboard, Inc. is opening a beta for Surf, a new way to discover, create and share custom feeds that combine people and sources from across the social web for any interest.
Nobody wants to spend money on legal work, but at a certain point it becomes necessary. It's not like they met up in a board meeting, discussed where money could best be spent, and decided that lawyers should be a priority.
However, if Mastodon goes down this path and does it well, they can create legal precedence that might benefit all open/federated social media organizations that follow. Especially in the current climate we could benefit a lot from having a strong social media actor representing the interests of an open web, in opposition to the armies of lawyers hired by the fascists of commercial social media.
Of course, when I donate to Mastodon I imagine all my money goes to developers. But rationally I'm aware that this might be a bit utopian.
Yes, I am saying that we would be better off by having this money put somewhere else.
I get the notion, however social networks do have an inordinate effect populations and how they think. Spending 5M€ on say, poor communities would help those poor communities (short or long term, dunno), but they could still be influenced by a shoddy social network (or multiple). Whether that sum effect is positive or not is debatable.
It's very difficult to make a judgement on utility of such a (comparatively) small sum and its target.
To be honest, I'm much more concerned about how people spend their money when they go shopping: buying non fair-trade goods like chocolate, clothes, coffee, phones, and so on, where they spend sums orders of a magnitude larger than a paltry 5-10€/month on mastodon.
Surprised to see you of all people question why a project needs money to pay for things.
What for?
They said what for in the previous section, improving Mastodon's "usability, discoverability, and trust & safety". They tried to fundraise for a head of trust and safety last month, but failed. My impression is this is them trying to raise general donations to the project to pay for things like this, instead of individual campaigns for individual things.
Is the infrastructure being provided by the companies counted as part of this budget?
I thinks so, given the previous paragraph links to their sponsor page and says as such.
Surprised to see you of all people question why a project needs money to pay for things.
What for?
They said what for in the previous section, improving Mastodon's "usability, discoverability, and trust & safety". They tried to fundraise for a head of trust and safety last month, but failed. My impression is this is them trying to raise general donations to the project to pay for things like this, instead of individual campaigns for individual things.
Is the infrastructure being provided by the companies counted as part of this budget?
I thinks so, given the previous paragraph links to their sponsor page and says as such.
Thanks to your incredible support, this Giving Tuesday we’ve raised $10,438 (13% of $75,000 goal) for our ✨ Trust & Safety Lead ✨ hire!
There’s still time ⏳
Every contribution brings us closer to building a safer, more inclusive, open & free community-led platform where people, not profit, shape the future.
Thank you for donating, spreading the word & being part of this journey! 💙
Surprised to see you of all people question why a project needs money to pay for things
I am not questioning the need for money. I am questioning the amount.
And yes, the reason I am asking this is precisely because I don't believe the "not-for-profit" leads to better outcomes than any for-profit one, and I do not share the belief that all for-profit endeavors are bad.
To illustrate the point: I'd take good old Craigslist making more than $600 million per year as a tool against Big Tech and unethical corporations than any of these feel-good initiatives from Mastodon.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see the relevance of this not-for-profit vs for-profit diatribe. If you mean that things like culture and structures matter more than the a project's legal status, then I agree, but unless you're going to point to particular issues you have with Mastodon's then, again, I fail to see the relevance. The things Mastodon (the company) is seeking to improve are highly technical and specialised, where people working on them need good cross-disciplinary knowledge and experience, and understandably demand a high wage.
but unless you’re going to point to particular issues you have with Mastodon’s then, again, I fail to see the relevance.
The "particular issues" I have with Mastodon (or rather, with its leadership) are rooted in its cultural values.
I think that presenting itself as the saviors of civil online discourse is ineffective. It sounds good for this tiny majority that is already here, but does nothing to bring the masses that are still stuck inside the walled gardens of Big Tech.
The difference between for-profit and not-for-profit firms is not whether one makes money and the other one does not. It's what's done with that money. The difference is whether the net income is given to the firm's major shareholders or kept within the firm.
You are confusing cause and effect and you are making a pointless distinction.
If all it took to qualify as a non-profit was to eliminate profit redistribution, we would have every sole proprietorship or small LLC entity turning itself to a 503, and then distributing its excess profit as salaries.
I’m definitely not doing that. I’m pointing out that the commenter above is correct and you appear to have a misconception about what non-profit means.
They are also the main developers of the Mastodon software. It is not just hosting the service. The software needs to be able to compete with Bluesky and right now it quite simply does not. The only way to get the quality needed is to have some full time lead developers. Also they need some proper admins to run the websites. Mastodon social is at 250,000 active users right now, but it is also fairly likely to grow fast with what Elon is up to with Twitter. Just to compare Twitter used to have 7500 employees, with a 1000 today.
The software needs to be able to compete with Bluesky and right now it quite simply does not.
Mastodon has a 5 year headstart over Bluesky. Bluesky has more users, large players already getting into it and is raising money and is not ashamed to to be actively looking for a business model.
Meanwhile, Mastodon completely blew the opportunity it got when Musk bought Twitter and keeps repeating the same mistake of preaching to the converted.
What makes you think that more money would solve it? Their problem is not a lack of money, but a lack of ambition.
Well the fact is yes, Mastodon is still relatively small compared to Facebook, X or Bluesky. Mastodon has actually 7,616,908 users total: fedidb.org/software/mastodon. Which is a huge number, but most likely a lot of bot accounts and non-active account to be honest.
Now the reason why is Mastodon is not as large as Bluesky is debatable. I actually blame ActivityPub protocol and the complex nature of trying to become a federated platform.
Let's be honest now, most people do not care (or don't have the technical knowledge) to understand federation or decentralization. Hence people will just jump to the easiest solution: A big centralized server, aka X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky. Same for search engines like Google.
Given the concern, it would be good to be explicit in the blog post. What other assets does it genuinely need? The code is open source, people are free to host instances
The existing US-based non-profit entity, the 501(c)(3), will continue to function as a fundraising hub.
Wait, is the money transferred to the US then back to the EU? And will the US-based non-profit still continue to exist or will it be replaced by a truly European one?
The 501(c)(3) is a fundraising entity, and will continue to exist. There will be a new independent European non-profit that will "own" (for the want of a better word) the other entities. Legal structures and things are not my forte (IANAL), that's my understanding of what is happening in so far as I'm involved in the discussions and what I'm able to tell you.
No, I'm not saying he depriortized it. The problem is he won't implement it.
By search I mean I should be able to search for a keyword or URL on all instances. There is no support for this. And, again, the issue is not technical. Its Eugene blocking it because he personally does not want the feature
"not sure downvotes make sense" -> it might not be a good fit for what the app is -> so maybe it would not make sense to implement.
I should be able to search for a keyword or URL on all instances
We're working on this. It's part of Fediscovery. Optional opt-in discovery across instances, if a user wants their content to be discoverable across instances.
That's a strange take... But even if that logic follows, it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that's what ALL users want, and Eugene is the sole opposition. You and I may want global search, but lots of Mastodon users actively loathe the idea.
Personally I think it'd be a better platform for it, but I get why there are folks who don't like the idea. I also wish they'd implement quoting people, but again, I understand why some folks don't like that idea. Downvotes don't really make sense on microblogging to me.
Yes, and my impression is that there are also a ton of people who very much don't want to be indexed or findable through inorganic means
I don't disagree about implementing it and letting instances decide, but they've opted for a different compromise of letting people opt in. Having opt in vs opt out be an instance option would be nice, but open source projects aren't always gonna align 1000% with the priorities that you have personally, unless it's personally your project
If the user didn't make their posts as discoverable, then no, they will not be returned in a search. The search is opt-in. It is not ideal, but it is a way to respect user privacy. I was making the point that search exists now, even if it had previously been rejected as a feature to implement, so it is not impossible for folks to change their opinions on including features.
That basically defeats the whole purpose of the platform
One time I saw a fire truck drive by and I searched twitter for "fire" and the city name. That's the day I fell in love with Twitter. I only use it for searching for people talking about stuff.
He is stepping away from the CEO role to focus on the product. That means you are not getting anything he doesn't want, if anything he has more control over the functionality of Mastodon.
Regardless of the team dynamics, what I was getting at is simply that a CEO runs the company, and is generally not involved in minor decisions. But he is moving into a product strategy role, one that by definition is focused on what the product (mastodon) does.
Good riddance! We are finally going to be free from that chinese spyware used to influence people minds and create an addiction stronger than drugs on people of all ages but especially in minors!
Now we can go back to having only american spyware apps doing that.
There is a fundamental difference between a chatroom and a social media feed. The second one is painfully easy to hijack to do some damage, the first one not so much.
TikTok isn't "Chinese social media." China has social media, and TikTok isn't it; TikTok is American social media that the Chinese control. It's an engineered product, and the function isn't showing you videos.
Both sides are correct. Or at least, half correct. They should both be banning both.
The function of no social media is to show you content. It once was to generate revenue, but recently x and meta have become the same propaganda machines as tiktok, just owned by different megalomaniac fanatics
So it's a social media, made by China, making it Chinese social media. If you want to argue that its not the social media used by the Chinese, that's different and should be phrased more clearly.
I could say exactly the same thing to you! You clearly understand the distinction I am making. But you have nothing to say about that, you just need to express your OCD. You're being noise. Do it to someone else.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is a front for the Chinese Communist Party. It's being used by the CCP to spread agit-prop and self-destructive crap.
Other countries use their "social media platforms" the same way, but that's no reason to make it easy for other governments to destabilize your society.
Tom Cotton had asked Shou Zi Chew, who is Singaporean, multiple times about his residency, nationality and relationship with the Chinese Community Party.
No, China does not control TikTok in the US. TikTok transferred control of the US instance to Oracle (and subsequently the US State Department) years ago.
The US doesn’t want to ban TikTok. They want to force a sale of TikTok to a US entity, as has been openly stated by the billionaires behind the political push. This is partly to make sure a US oligarch is profiting from the platform’s popularity, and to decrease transparency as US authorities increasingly combat growing leftism and anti-imperialism on the platform among Gen Z.
A MintPress News investigation has found that dozens of former officials from the State Department, CIA and FBI are working in key positions at TikTok and affecting the content that over one billion users see.
As soon as the algorithm is deployed, a lot of damage will be done. Doesnt mattwr what the US is controlling there. Brainrot will still happen in those kids, giving them a harder time in School
The premise of this meme is overly simplistic. Effectively equating a social media platform with a website hosting specific beliefs.
Here are, from the top of my head, some ways Big Social is different, regardless of country.
Hosting a platform with millions or billions of users.
Exploiting algorithms that mine sensitive data to an invasive degree.
Control the flow of information, to a very granular degree of precision.
Experimentally collecting behavioral data in response to said control of information.
Modeling user's life expectancy, sexual orientation, political beliefs, consumer patterns, terminal illnesses.
Selling said data and model outputs to private insurance companies as well as police states.
Addicting users to withdraw from real life, and get hooked to their screen where they can happily serve the company for data mining.
I hardly think that any of the above should be gauged by the standards of individual rights to free speech. Even corporate entities viewed as individuals with a rig
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The premise of this meme is overly simplistic. Effectively equating a social media platform with a website hosting specific beliefs.
Here are, from the top of my head, some ways Big Social is different, regardless of country.
Hosting a platform with millions or billions of users.
Exploiting algorithms that mine sensitive data to an invasive degree.
Control the flow of information, to a very granular degree of precision.
Experimentally collecting behavioral data in response to said control of information.
Modeling user's life expectancy, sexual orientation, political beliefs, consumer patterns, terminal illnesses.
Selling said data and model outputs to private insurance companies as well as police states.
Addicting users to withdraw from real life, and get hooked to their screen where they can happily serve the company for data mining.
I hardly think that any of the above should be gauged by the standards of individual rights to free speech. Even corporate entities viewed as individuals with a right to free speech.
This is something else entirely, and whoever owns it, out of whichever country must have their ass regulated off.
Even harder than the EU did.
Operations of this type and size should be eventually dismantled. They are inherently antisocial, corporatist, and totalitarian in their conception and daily function.
Sometime ago I started a discussion about the "Role of Attrition" in the effort to dismantle Big Social enterprisesHere it is
*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personal, Kid is a copypasta commonly used to mockingly caption photographs of young men wielding katanas or other bladed weapons. The word "personal" is often intentionally misspelled as "personnel" or "personel."
Coldsteel the Hedgeheg is a fan-made character from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. It is notorious for being a stereotype of an overly edgy OC, as well for its hilariously bad portrayal, which is full of grammar errors and 4th wall breaking descrip…
To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty, also known simply as the Rick and Morty Copypasta, is a copypasta that fans and detractors of the animated television series Rick and Morty use to sarcastically respond to crit…
Theoretically the instance should not matter so much, as any instance can access content on any other instance. You are picking more for things such as speed of software updates, which admin policies you want to be governed by (otherwise you can create your own instance...), including which other instances are defederated from, and so on.
I think trying to be on the most active instance is more a spillover effect from Mastodon bc there, that's what you NEED to do, whereas on Lemmy it's irrelevant - but people who have heard the former don't realize that it doesn't also hold for the Threadiverse.
What tankie instances has sh.itjust.works de-federated from? And any discussions as to why? I moved here from lemmy.world, specifically because they were too ban/block/defed happy.
Piefed might work a bit different but on Lemmy there is one key aspect where instance matters, and that's community discoverability. Discoverability works only on local communities and for communities that my instance is already aware. The way to make the instance aware of a community is by knowing about it beforehand and doing a direct search. So for example if we take a completely unknown community like mediashare@piefed.social and I just searched "mediashare" on lemm.ee I wouldn't find it. For anyone testing on lemm.ee that's now discoverable because I also searched "mediashare@piefed.social" which is a direct link and made it discoverable for everyone else. In that sense lemmy.world probably has the best overview of all communities because more people equals more people checking out different communities which makes the instance aware of more communities which makes the search for communities more functional.
IMO this is a downside of Lemmy and should be fixed. All instances should have a list of all the communities other federated instances have. It would significantly
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Piefed might work a bit different but on Lemmy there is one key aspect where instance matters, and that's community discoverability. Discoverability works only on local communities and for communities that my instance is already aware. The way to make the instance aware of a community is by knowing about it beforehand and doing a direct search. So for example if we take a completely unknown community like mediashare@piefed.social and I just searched "mediashare" on lemm.ee I wouldn't find it. For anyone testing on lemm.ee that's now discoverable because I also searched "mediashare@piefed.social" which is a direct link and made it discoverable for everyone else. In that sense lemmy.world probably has the best overview of all communities because more people equals more people checking out different communities which makes the instance aware of more communities which makes the search for communities more functional.
IMO this is a downside of Lemmy and should be fixed. All instances should have a list of all the communities other federated instances have. It would significantly improve the search functionality.
You also make some fair points but I would change the wording a bit. Instead of "THE" most active instance, pick ones that are AMONG the list of the most active. These two that Blaze mentioned were chosen with exactly that in mind by starting from the top 20 and eliminating those run only by a single admin, or have database corruption issues, or have names that could be off-putting to some (shit works yo dawg), or other themes (ranging from tankies to LGBTQIA+ to Star Trek, or region specificity like feddit.uk is a great instance but most people from e.g. the USA, or Australia or such may not feel fully at home there, unlike Discuss.Online that while it is based in the USA does not really have that anywhere as its "theme").
And having the "most" content is a VERY loaded concept. Lemmy.ml for instance is defederated from no major large instances (it is how instances retrieve the list of all communities across the Fediverse), and yet those admins are notorious for banning people from communities that they have never even heard of, much less visited or commented in. (Edit: also
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You also make some fair points but I would change the wording a bit. Instead of "THE" most active instance, pick ones that are AMONG the list of the most active. These two that Blaze mentioned were chosen with exactly that in mind by starting from the top 20 and eliminating those run only by a single admin, or have database corruption issues, or have names that could be off-putting to some (shit works yo dawg), or other themes (ranging from tankies to LGBTQIA+ to Star Trek, or region specificity like feddit.uk is a great instance but most people from e.g. the USA, or Australia or such may not feel fully at home there, unlike Discuss.Online that while it is based in the USA does not really have that anywhere as its "theme").
And having the "most" content is a VERY loaded concept. Lemmy.ml for instance is defederated from no major large instances (it is how instances retrieve the list of all communities across the Fediverse), and yet those admins are notorious for banning people from communities that they have never even heard of, much less visited or commented in. (Edit: also several other reasons too, another big one is how its default sort method is Local rather than All, thus a visitor without an Account or knowledge of how to switch that yet will see primarily the most highly charged tankie shit, and none of the wonderful content from elsewhere across the Fediverse like the memes from !tenforward@lemmy.world.) So I don't think directing people to it is the right way to go. And now similarly to Lemmy.World for its own controversial stance, as per their announcement that was so poorly received, possibly merely bc of being poorly explained, that every word is struck through.
And I cannot in good conscience recommend hexbear.net either. Neither can many hexbears themselves btw - you can read more here. Therefore by extension I personally refuse to recommend instances that even federate with hexbear, bc their trolling is THAT onerous to an uninitiated newbie who is not aware of such. Which is why I petitioned Discuss.Online to block it first. TLDR: yes I want ALL of the content across the Fediverse, subject to the constraint that it is offered in good faith. But I don't want to be constantly trolled, nor will I recommend that experience to others either. The can choose it for themselves if they wish, I'm just talking about my own response here.
Also, Beehaw has cut itself off from the largest instances including Lemmy.World. So that's another reason why it does not follow from "largest instance" (i.e. the one with the largest number of user accounts) that it will have the most content, or be the most reliable one. The one with the most content and highest reliability mixture is surely lemm.ee, though with so very many honorable mentions there that could easily rise to the top given the slightest of tie-breakers, like lemmy.dbzer0.com is damn impressive as well. But the one that seems most geared towards (I mean best matchup to, as in not speaking to intentionality but it certainly does work) "mainstream normies", particularly centrists coming from Reddit i.e. quite a bit more right-leaning compared to the rest of the world and so would be highly turned off by all the "kill all landlords" content here (and yet we still want to help these people get away from Huffman and Musk... don't we? To clarify I do NOT mean Alt-Right MAGAT extremists, as the opposite of our own Alt-Left tankie extremists here, just centrists is all, which is like 90-99% of all human beings on the planet) seems like Discuss.Online. And then also sopuli.xyz for generic, possibly also former Redditors, but based in Europe and therefore wanting ever so slightly a different experience including network latency and governmental rules where the server is based.
There is such a web resource but I haven't bookmarked it and couldn't easily find it offhand so I will leave that to you to do, but I do keep seeing it pop up in various discussions like this so it won't be terribly difficult to find - it's very likely mentioned in this exact post already:-).
There are multiple meanings to "discoverability", one being how a new user coming from let's say Reddit or X finds content to consume. This is where PieFed's Categories of Communities really shines through, the chief alternatives on Lemmy being sorting by All, or communities where new communities are discussed, or the aforementioned webpage. Every solution has its disadvantages as well as advantages, e.g. PieFed's Categories require admin approval to change, though custom user-defined collections are being discussed to be added to the 2025 Roadmap. Still, Categories of Communities existing in the first place is already a huge step ahead, compared to Lemmy, in that one narrow regard. And yes, on PieFed someone can also still sort by All.
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There is such a web resource but I haven't bookmarked it and couldn't easily find it offhand so I will leave that to you to do, but I do keep seeing it pop up in various discussions like this so it won't be terribly difficult to find - it's very likely mentioned in this exact post already:-).
There are multiple meanings to "discoverability", one being how a new user coming from let's say Reddit or X finds content to consume. This is where PieFed's Categories of Communities really shines through, the chief alternatives on Lemmy being sorting by All, or communities where new communities are discussed, or the aforementioned webpage. Every solution has its disadvantages as well as advantages, e.g. PieFed's Categories require admin approval to change, though custom user-defined collections are being discussed to be added to the 2025 Roadmap. Still, Categories of Communities existing in the first place is already a huge step ahead, compared to Lemmy, in that one narrow regard. And yes, on PieFed someone can also still sort by All. The best solution that I have heard of that comes close to such topic collections is to have multiple accounts possibly across multiple instances and use each one for a different purpose - like News, Memes, Technology, Movies, Science, Programming, etc. What a pain... but it does work, according to Blaze who does it.
And the second as you stated well is the interconnection between PieFed and Lemmy, plus also Mbin, Sublinks, and some people (not me!!) may say Threads too, plus perhaps more besides in the future, and also perhaps Mastodon, Friendica, and other services altogether besides. I highly doubt that the Lemmy developers, the same ones who run lemmy.ml, are going to care about such - they made a Reddit replacement for themselves, and that's all they really wanted. If someone wants differently, then it's up to others to make that happen on their own. But who knows, I could be wrong:-). Then again, just how much do leftist extremists want to hear from the Alt-Right MAGATs on Reddit?
Not everyone wants to maximize the amount of people using the Fediverse. And in particular these kinds of across-instance collaboration tools are the least well developed parts of Lemmy, e.g. right now reports are not even federated to a mod on some other instance than where the community is located (although this is planned for possibly as soon as 0.19.20).
Beehaw has defederated from Lemmy.World btw, and Lemmy.World has defederated from hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Lemmy.ml is defederated from none of the largest instances, so ironically it likely has the largest collection of communities, despite how many people routinely get banned from that instance despite never having even visited those communities or even heard about them before. One rule for thee, while a different one for me... the ultimate authoritian communist mantra. Still, so long as instances are too afraid to defederate from it, that fact (that it has the most comprehensive listing of communities across the Fediverse) will remain true.
IMO this is a downside of Lemmy and should be fixed. All instances should have a list of all the communities other federated instances have. It would significantly improve the search functionality.
There is such a web resource but I haven’t bookmarked it and couldn’t easily find it offhand so I will leave that to you to do, but I do keep seeing it pop up in various discussions like this so it won’t be terribly difficult to find - it’s very likely mentioned in this exact post already:-).
Easy enough to scroll past. Hexbear was a bit annoying with what looked like brigading sometimes. Don't recall anything too egregious from lemmygrad and don't recall beehaw being tankie. Awful.systems is very toxic, but I'd rather just choose not to participate myself than my home instance making that decision for me. On that note, lemmy needs tools so users can block users/communities/instances; I think some proprietary apps support it, but I'm not going to use proprietary software if I don't have to.
Researchers at Stanford’s Internet Observatory found that child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has become widespread on the Twitter alternative Mastodon.
The top 4 among the Top 10 Most Active Servers (by total posts) are: Lemmy.World, Hexbear.net (twice for some reason) and Lemmygrad.ml, but I would not recommend any of these.
Beehaw also features prominently but if we are talking about wanting the most content across the entire Fediverse, then its having defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works discounts it as well.
I would also argue that there's a huge difference between an instance that encourages trolling behaviors, one that allows that, and one that does not. So people's experiences of "Lemmy" on the likes of hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml vs. "Lemmy" on the likes of Lemmy.World or Lemmy.ca that defederate from the former pair are extremely divergent, and then the likes of lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works are somewhere in-between.
None of this is visible from that webpage, and so I think that Blaze's analyses and interpretation of the situation is more helpful to describe the major factors that people, especially those on Reddit, are going to most care about. i.e., "most content" isn't the only or even one o
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The top 4 among the Top 10 Most Active Servers (by total posts) are: Lemmy.World, Hexbear.net (twice for some reason) and Lemmygrad.ml, but I would not recommend any of these.
Beehaw also features prominently but if we are talking about wanting the most content across the entire Fediverse, then its having defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works discounts it as well.
I would also argue that there's a huge difference between an instance that encourages trolling behaviors, one that allows that, and one that does not. So people's experiences of "Lemmy" on the likes of hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml vs. "Lemmy" on the likes of Lemmy.World or Lemmy.ca that defederate from the former pair are extremely divergent, and then the likes of lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works are somewhere in-between.
None of this is visible from that webpage, and so I think that Blaze's analyses and interpretation of the situation is more helpful to describe the major factors that people, especially those on Reddit, are going to most care about. i.e., "most content" isn't the only or even one of the primary factors, especially for a federated platform where the vast majority of instances will allow access to the vast majority of content regardless (except Beehaw).
Lemmy.World, aside from its very controversial (and now seemingly retracted) announcement a few days ago, has a problem contributing to the over-centralization of the Fediverse. As in, regardless of whether its good or bad to be on any particular instance based on its own merits, it is not good for everyone to be on the same instance. Which is what was happening, where ~80% of all user accounts across Lemmy were on Lemmy.World (in the last few months the proportion of active accounts there has fallen by more than half, but this at least was true several months ago). It also is still running 0.19.3 like a year after it came out, while other instances are running 0.19.8.
So for those reasons people have been recommending that new users should join some other instance than Lemmy.World. And yet we can still see all the awesome content there, like at !tenforward@lemmy.world, without needing to have an account on that instance directly.
Discuss.Online for instance is one of the
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Lemmy.World, aside from its very controversial (and now seemingly retracted) announcement a few days ago, has a problem contributing to the over-centralization of the Fediverse. As in, regardless of whether its good or bad to be on any particular instance based on its own merits, it is not good for everyone to be on the same instance. Which is what was happening, where ~80% of all user accounts across Lemmy were on Lemmy.World (in the last few months the proportion of active accounts there has fallen by more than half, but this at least was true several months ago). It also is still running 0.19.3 like a year after it came out, while other instances are running 0.19.8.
So for those reasons people have been recommending that new users should join some other instance than Lemmy.World. And yet we can still see all the awesome content there, like at !tenforward@lemmy.world, without needing to have an account on that instance directly.
Discuss.Online for instance is one of the most active instances, thus has high likelihood that a more technical person has subscribed to communities on other instances already (plus there's another, automated solution to that particular problem anyway), is well managed, has defederated from Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and is for general discussions rather than themed.
There is nothing else in the USA (where most Redditors are located) that even comes close - e.g. Midwest.social has an admin that reportedly bans people just for downvoting their own posts, which is the type of thing that people don't want to recommend that new users join such a server and then become frustrated and end up leaving the entire Threadiverse or at least have to endure the hassle of picking another instance. Discuss.online is quite a solid recommendation.
Blaze also has also shared longer listings elsewhere, but it gets super complicated to describe all of this stuff - tankie and admin drama, defederations, networking and related issues causing delays in posts and comments appearing for people across the Threadiverse, the database corruption issue of programming.dev that was probably fixed here in the last couple of days, it's a LOT for people to try to absorb!!! And the effects that any ONE of those issues will have upon the frustration of a new user to the Threadiverse could be enough to send them back to centralized Reddit whenever it begins to go wrong. Especially imagine a content creator who doesn't use Arch btw and just wants to share their comics with us, but it gets too difficult to navigate all of that, especially compared to the much smaller audience than Reddit or X or Facebook offers.
Hence why he has made the list so very simple, to make it easier for new people to ignore all of that and just join an instance to jump onto the Threadiverse immediately.
Yeah that's the thing: 100% of people that I've told that I use "Lemmy" seem to have Googled it, see the top instance result of that being Lemmy.ml, which very notably has its default feed (i.e. that someone would see without an account) set to Local rather than All and not only noped out, HARD, but they chided me for even having mentioned it to them.
Me who blocks that instance had no idea... plus I use DuckDuckGo anyway rather than Google, but that's not what THEY (non-tech-savvy people) want to do, and that's fair that they should be free to do as they choose, the same as me.
So beware of that association: you might literally lose the possibility of a relationship with someone (colleague at work, personal, whatever) over telling them that you use "Lemmy", which so many people seem quite likely to translate into "the tankie version of Reddit". Maybe you are okay with that, I just wanted to warn you so that you knew in advance...
Facebook has always been removing posts and comments containing links to Fediverse. At least they did a couple of years ago. But it doesn't happen all the time, so there is some kind decision making algorithm.
Förbud mot bottentrålning i marina skyddsområden. Regeringen har föreslagit ett förbud mot bottentrålning i marina skyddsområden från 1 juni 2025. Eller rättare sagt så föreslår de att lagstiftning och regelverk ska ändras så att förbud mot bottentrålning är det normala när marina skyddsområden inrättas.
The way you wrote this, I thought you meant that if it required a cloud service you would turn it off. But now I think you're just saying you wouldn't use this feature.
I share the confusion over your definition of "active". You got all defensive when someone asked, so now no one really knows what you meant.
This means that they most likely went for lighter AI models that use fewer resources, so that they run smoothly without putting too much strain on the machine.
Pretty good. Captions are one of the legitimate uses of "AI".
I'm not impressed by the subtitles themselves (they're just ok) but rather by how accessible it is. Like it being an option rather than it being a "tool for creators" or limited to premium or something
Or maybe youtube has added so much dogshit features recently (like ai overviews, automatically adding info cards for anyone mentioned, and highlighting seemingly random words in comments to search it outside of context) that it makes me appreciate these things more lol
I've been messing with more recent open-source AI Subtitling models via Subtitle Editor which has a nice GUI for it. Quality is much better these days, at least for English. It still makes mistakes, but the mistakes are on the level of "I misheard what they said and had little context for the conversation" or "the speaker has an accent which makes it hard to understand what they're saying" mistakes, which is way better than most YouTube Auto Transriptions I've seen.
They're helpful to my deaf ears, even when they're wrong (50% of the words) they do give me a solid idea of what is being said together with what the audio sounds like.
With it, I get almost everything correct. Without it, I understand near to nothing.
This only goes for English spoken by Americans and sometimes London Britons, sadly, nothing else get detected nearly as good enough, so I can't enjoy YouTube in my native language (Dutch), but being able to consume English YouTube already helps a lot!
It is probably good that OS community are exploring this however I'm not sure the technology is ready (or will ever be maybe) and it potentially undermines the labour intensive activity of producing high quality subtitling for accessibility.
I use them quite a lot and I've noticed they really struggle on key things like regional/national dialects, subject specific words and situations where context would allow improvement (e.g. a word invented solely in the universe of the media). So it's probably managing 95% accuracy which is that danger zone where its good enough that no one checks it but bad enough that it can be really confusing if you are reliant on then. If we care about accessibility we need to care about it being high quality.
While good quality subtitles are essential VLC can't ensure that, it's the responsibility of the production studio. AI subtitles on vlc are for those videos which doesn't have any sub (which are a lot). The pushback shouldn't be for vlc implementing AI, but production studios replacing translators or transcriber with AI (like crunchyroll tried last year).
Also while transcribing and subtitle editing is a labour intensive job, use of AI to help the editors shouldn't be discouraged, it can increase their productivity by automating repeatative tasks so that they can focus on better quality.
Agreed that the studios need to be held more accountable and their usage of AI is more problematic than open source last resort type work. I have noticed a degradation of quality in the last five years on mainstream sources.
However, the existence of this last resort tool will shift the dynamics of the "market" for the work that should be being done. Even in the open source community. There used to be an active community of people giving their voluntary labour to writing subtitles for those that lacked them (they may still be active I don't know). Are they as likely to do that if they think oh well it can be automatically done now?
The real challenge with the argument that it helps editors is the same as the challenge for Automated Driving. If something performs at 95% you actually end up deskilling and stepping down the attention focus and make it more likely to miss that 5% that requires manual intervention. I think it also has a material impact on the wellbeing of those doing the labour.
To be clear I'm not anti this at all but think we need to think carefully
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Agreed that the studios need to be held more accountable and their usage of AI is more problematic than open source last resort type work. I have noticed a degradation of quality in the last five years on mainstream sources.
However, the existence of this last resort tool will shift the dynamics of the "market" for the work that should be being done. Even in the open source community. There used to be an active community of people giving their voluntary labour to writing subtitles for those that lacked them (they may still be active I don't know). Are they as likely to do that if they think oh well it can be automatically done now?
The real challenge with the argument that it helps editors is the same as the challenge for Automated Driving. If something performs at 95% you actually end up deskilling and stepping down the attention focus and make it more likely to miss that 5% that requires manual intervention. I think it also has a material impact on the wellbeing of those doing the labour.
To be clear I'm not anti this at all but think we need to think carefully about the structures and processes around it to ensure it does lead to improvement in quality not just an improvement in quantity at the cost of quality.
Cause we can no longer sit back and allow AI infiltration, AI indoctrination, AI subversion and the international AI conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
VLC always had a ton of applications, network device playback, TV, streaming server, files, physical media, music player, effects, recording, AV format conversion, subtitles, plugins and so on.
"Do one thing well" is what gives you software like sendmail, which requires several other programs to be actually useful, all of which have to be configured separately to work together, with wildly different syntax.
This is not by default bad thing, if it is something you only use when you decide to do so, when you don't have other subtitles available tbh. I hate AI slop too but people just go to monkey brain rage mode when they read AI and stop processing any further information.
I'd still always prefer human translated subtitles if possible. However, right now I'm looking into translating entire book via LLM cause it would be only way to read that book, as it is not published in any language I speak. I speak English well enough, so I don't really need subtitles, just like to have them on so I won't miss anything.
For English language movies, I'd probably just watch them without subtitles if those were AI, as I don't really need them, more like nice to have in case I miss something. For languages I don't understand, it might be good, although I wager it will be quite bad for less common languages.
There's a difference between LLM slop ("write me an article about foo") and using an LLM for something that's actually useful ("listen to the audio from this file and transcribe everything that sounds like human speech").
Exactly. I know someone who is really smart and works in machine learning and when I listen to him in isolation, AI sounds like actually useful thing. Most people just are not smart like that, and most applications for AI are not very useful.
One of the things I often think is that AI makes it possible to do things that shouldn't be done very easily and fast, that would had previously been too much effort or craft for some people, like now they can easily make website for whatever grift they are pushing.
The whole knee jerk reaction against anything AI related is tiresome and utterly irrational. This seems like a perfectly legitimate use of technology. If I have a movie in a language I don't know and I can't find subs for it, then I'd much rather have AI subs than nothing at all.
Im curious What makes what VLC is doing qualify as artificial intelligence instead of just an automated transcription plugin?
Automated transcription software has been around for decades, I totally understand getting in on the ai hype train but i guess I'm confused as to if software from years past like "dragon naturally speaking" or Shazam are also LLMs that predate openAI or is how those services worked to identify things different from how modern llms work?
Llms are a very specific Gennerative AI subset. Not everything AI is LLM, especially stuff like Shazam is pretty traditional AI. It's been around for a while already, and studied for even longer (even back in the 1960s we were already starting to have a field of study in this domain)
There are a number of open weight open source models out there with all their data sourced from the public domain. Look up BLOOM and Falcon. There are others.
JetBrains' AI code suggestions were only trained on code where authors gave explicit permission for it, but that's the only one I know from the top of my head. Most chat-oriented LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini...) were almost certainly trained using corporate piracy.
Personally, I would be happy even if it didn't translate it but were able to give some half decent transcription of, at least, English voice into English text. I prefer having subtitles, even when I speak the language, because it helps in noisy environments and/or when the characters mumble / have weird accents.
However, even that would likely be difficult with a lightweight model. Even big companies like Google often struggle with their autogenerated subtitles. When there's some very context-specific terminology, or uncommon names, it fumbles. And adding translation to an already incorrect transcript multiplies the nonsense, even if the translation were technically correct.
It won't be better than human translated ones but begter than no subtitles. I don't think even humans can make subtitles correctly without knowing context
Honestly, if it can generate subtitle files it'll be a huge benefit to people creating subtitles. It's way easier to start with bad subs and fix them than it is to write from scratch.
Bomb i Mölndal riktad mot fotbollsagent. I början av december 2024 sköts det mot en fotbollagents lägenhet. Igår morse exploderade en bomb på en bil i en carport i stadsdelen Eklanda i Mölndal sydöst om Göteborg. Även bomben var riktad mot en fotbollsagent.
According to The Korea Economic Daily, cited by The Liberty Times, South Korea’s semiconductor sector is grappling with a severe talent drain as Chine...
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Amazon går samma väg som X och Meta. Amazon har deklarerat att de går samma väg som Meta och X när det gäller moderering. De tänker sluta med att stoppa hat och hot. Det betyder att även deras sociala mediesajter kommer att spåra ur på samma sätt som X redan gjort. Och som Metas sajter och program, Facebook, Instagram, Threads och WhatsApp, är på väg att göra.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on CovertAction Magazine in June 2024. Written by: Aidan Jonah Censorship and persecution of anti-war and anti-imperialists in the U.S.
The best solution that I have heard of that comes close to such topic collections is to have multiple accounts possibly across multiple instances and use each one for a different purpose - like News, Memes, Technology, Movies, Science, Programming, etc. What a pain... but it does work, according to Blaze who does it.
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