PAKSstan?

IAPAKSstan

Mullvad no longer supports port forwarding.

And that sample size is pretty small. I wouldn’t count on the US losing a war.

Programmers who maintain code get laid off, programmers who create new code get promoted.

These kind of lay-offs always result in more bugs and more fucking up shit for no reason.

Small Gods is indeed a great choice. I never thought of it as a “book for atheists” and it’s quite unlikely to turn someone religious into a non-believer - but it’s clever, funny and one of my personal favorite Terry Patches books. So, worst case scenario: you’ve read a highly entertaining book.

“The Bible” is the book that ultimately turned me into a convinced atheist. If you actually read it, without having it filtered and read to you by religious people with agendas, it’s hard to continue believing in any of its insane ramblings. But it’s a really tough, slow and often immoral and revolting read. Mostly, it’s just really stupid.

“The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” is the opposite. It’s a funny, light and often silly read. It’s not exactly deep, but neither are the books it’s parodizing. As a satire of other religious text it works reasonably well in putting the finger in the wound.

“The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever” is just that: a collection of texts and letters on the subject by some brilliant minds: Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Lucrecius, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and many more … collected and edited by Christopher Hitchens. As an anthology it allows you to dip your toes in and read the texts you are interested in. Maybe my first choice as serious “atheism for beginners” literature.

Of course. But on the other hand: Who else would?

It’s not like Bob from Des Moines is going to find $100 billion behind the sofa cushions to buy it. There aren’t that many companies with much higher valuations.

Isn’t that the plan, though? Crash the economy, let the billionaires buy what’s left of America in a fire sale.

… nobody ever says Italy.

The writing was on the wall for this one, development had effectively ended two years ago and had already slowed down significantly before that.

It’s a bit pricey (and likely only going up in price with the upcoming licensing changes), but by far the best there is.

I was going to make a joke by posting an obviously stupid and AI generated answer, but I’m genuinely surprised by the insightfulness of Gemini’s answer:

Dealing with bots and AI-generated “slop” (low-quality, repetitive, or irrelevant content) is an ongoing challenge for any online platform, including Lemmy. Here’s a breakdown of strategies and considerations: Challenges:

• Federation Complexity:
  • Lemmy’s federated nature means content comes from various instances, making centralized control difficult.
  • Moderation efforts need to be distributed, which can lead to inconsistencies.
• AI Advancement:
  • AI-generated content is becoming increasingly sophisticated, making it harder to distinguish from human-created posts.
  • Bots can mimic human behavior, evading simple detection methods.
• Balancing Freedom and Control:
  • Lemmy values user autonomy and free speech, which can conflict with aggressive moderation.
  • Overly strict measures might stifle legitimate contributions. Strategies:
• Instance-Level Moderation:
  • Individual Lemmy instances play a crucial role in setting their own moderation policies.
  • Instance administrators can implement tools and rules to filter out unwanted content.
  • Blocking known bot-infested instances is a common practice.
• Community-Driven Moderation:
  • Empowering users to report suspicious activity and content.
  • Implementing robust reporting mechanisms and clear guidelines.
  • Utilizing community moderators to review and take action on reports.
• Technical Solutions:
  • Developing algorithms to detect patterns of bot behavior and AI-generated content.
  • Implementing CAPTCHAs or other verification methods to prevent automated accounts.
  • Enhancing Lemmy’s software to provide better moderation tools.
• User Filtering:
  • Lemmy itself has user level settings that allow for the hiding of bots. As shown in the search results, there are settings that can hide bot activity.
• Community Education:
  • Raising awareness about the dangers of bots and AI slop.
  • Educating users on how to identify and report suspicious content.
• Development of Lemmy Software:
  • As shown in the github issue, there is development discussion regarding excluding bot comments from sorting algorithms. This type of software development will be key to combating bot influence on the platform. Key Considerations:
• The fight against bots and AI slop is an ongoing process.
• A multi-faceted approach is necessary, combining technical solutions, community involvement, and responsible moderation.
• Maintaining a balance between control and freedom is essential for the long-term health of the Lemmy network.

Bob

Do not taunt Superhappyfunland!

I’m able to see any news that would be relevant as quickly as any other social media,

That’s not what I use Reddit for and that’s sadly the only Reddit (and other social media) thing today, that Lemmy mimics successfully.

I’m using Reddit mostly for the niche and special interest communities. For specific tech advice and troubleshooting. For all the stuff that once used to be home on newsgroups and bulletin boards and can now only be found in subreddits and, even worse, Discord communities.

And a lot of these smaller tech communities were super motivated to move to Lemmy, but Lemmy’s complete inability to surface anything but the most popular posts in the most popular communities (there’s still no equivalent for multireddits and there was no weighted popularity until 0.19) rapidly killed and suffocated virtually all of them.

That’s the reason why you can type “obscure technical problem Reddit” into Google and almost always get a relevant answer, while that will likely never be the case for Lemmy.

I can discuss things in communities that feel welcoming to me as a queer socialist that I could hardly find on Reddit.

I’m not saying Lemmy doesn’t have good communities, it certainly does, but once you go beyond news, politics and memes there’s neither enough content nor enough users to keep anything else alive.

Lemmy is very much a viable alternative

Oh, how I wish that were true. Alas, stats keep showing that Lemmy is not continuing to grow, on the contrary. There is close to zero activity in anything but the most main stream communities and Lemmy is only now making very, very slow and tentative steps to actually surface more niche communities after effectively burying and suffocating them in every release up to and including the current stable.

Yeah, until the printer engineers took over from the sewing machine engineers in around 2020. Even Brother is evil now, rolling out firmware updates that render third party toner useless or do even more evil shenanigans via firmware:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

I don’t think there’s a good brand left these days, Brother was the last bastion of “not shitty” and now they, too, were enshittified.

Sadly, they are also evil now. Latest firmware (~2020) outright blocks third party cartridges or, even more evil, accepts them and then secretly and intentionally, prints like crap:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Everything until ~2019 is awesome, though. Just disable firmware updates.

Here too, just don’t update your firmware (and turn off auto-updates). Brother went evil around 2020, too.

Euuhh does nobody realize Brother has existed for like 20 years and doesn’t pull all this HP shit?

You were right until around 2020 when Brother, too, started to roll out firmware updates outright blocking third party toners or even worse, making the printers intentionally print like crap with third party cartridges:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Now, that even Brother has turned to the dark side, I really don’t know what printer to recommend other than older/used Brothers with firmware updates disabled.