A browser is not like a social network though. There’s barely any difference in practical terms between Chrome and Firefox. Once you’ve switched there’s no reason to go back.

I think they have some areas where they’re very useful, but beyond those areas they’re only OK at best. They don’t come close to living up to the hype, which is mostly based on “the next version will be mind blowing!”.

They are a new type of app, nothing more. New types of apps can be extremely useful, and make a lot of tasks easier, e.g. spreadsheets. I would say at best generative AI is as game changing as spreadsheets were, but maybe less.

The hype machine wants us to believe they are as revolutionary as the PC itself, or the car. In fact 10 times as revolutionary! I just don’t buy it… at least not in the foreseeable future.

Yeah, it’s a fricken nightmare… Windows is ok in a well managed corporate setup where all the crap is uninstalled

I bought a laptop recently which came with Windows. I was going to setup dual boot because I need Office365 for work… but in the end I just gave up, deleted windows and installed Ubuntu.

I hear lots of people used to using Windows saying “I tried Linux and couldn’t get anything to work”… it’s not that I don’t believe them, but I really struggle to understand it. Windows is so much worse!

Codeberg is at least non-profit. Gitlab.com is for profit and has (or will have) the same problems as GitHub.

There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command

I’m not sure what you were doing to break apt, but it was probably something pretty funky (or at least adding a bunch of repos without really thinking about it).

The thing with Linux is that it doesn’t stop you doing stupid shit as much as Windows. If you know what you’re doing, that’s a really good thing. It’s really annoying when your OS stops you doing something for your own protection if you know that you’re not going to break anything. Simple example: Windows locks any file that’s open, Linux doesn’t. That’s really convenient, but you can screw things up badly if you’re not careful.

If you’re a beginner, I would suggest sticking to the GUI, i.e. control panels, software installed, etc. in Ubuntu. If you ever go into command line, be really careful, and understand what you’re doing. Definitely do not copy and paste commands you find online without understanding them reasonably well. Ubuntu puts in pretty good protections in its graphical tools. You’ll be able to do whatever you need to do, but shouldn’t break anything. Over time, you’ll pick up some knowledge and be able to do more in the command line (etc.) without breaking things.

Nah. There’s fuck all there.

That’s why it’s called “space” and not “interesting shit”

I struggle to see why I shouldn’t wear a mask in certain situations. e.g. the supermarket, where I’m not there too long, am hardly talking to anyone, it’s indoors with lots of other (unmasked) people. There are almost 0 downsides to wearing one in that situation (for me at least).

COVID is still killing a lot of people, and even if it doesn’t kill you, it sucks to get it. So yeah, makes sense to me to mask when you can.

Every language starts out as beautiful, then it becomes popular, a whole lot of new features get wedged into it, and everyone who’s watched a 5 minute tutorial video starts coding in it.

I remember the days when Python, Java and even Perl were considered beautiful.

Yeah, that will probably help. But I also feel like it just trying to get upvotes makes people compete to post popular but not necessarily good quality stuff. Getting a highly upvoted post is a big dopamine hit in itself.

Upvotes are not so important here, part due to no karma, but partly just because it’s quieter. Hopefully, if activity does pick up, the federated nature of Lemmy means some of that can be avoided. If you’re interested in a topic, you can choose between a very popular community on one instance, or a quieter but more thoughtful community on another instance.

Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. There’s no point posting something in the big Reddit subs most of the time because someone else will have already posted the same thing.

To get noticed you have to be early and/or say something witty or superficially inciteful. There’s no room for nuance.

It just becomes a competition for karma, and if you don’t play you’re screaming into the void.

They can decide for themselves. They can run their own server or join a server that has few rules (although that server may get defederated by others).

That’s way more freedom than you get on non-federated social media.

People have been “worried about that” for the Fediverse for years. It hasn’t stopped it growing.

The main question is “what is the alternative?”. The only alternatives are corporate social media (e.g. Reddit), where you’re even more at the mercy of the admins, or some kind of peer to peer approach which may take off one day, but hasn’t really got going yet.

Yes I do. You’re welcome to find or create instances that do tolerate Nazis. But I think most people want them defederated immediately. Saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to have that option is ridiculous, and technically impossible.

“What if the Nazis are actually good people who are misunderstood” is certainly a take

I agree that BeeHaw defederating seems stupid, and is negatively affecting the growth of Lemmy.

But I think it will sort itself over time in one way or another. Either they will refederate, or they’ll lose popularity and new communities on other servers will overtake theirs.

Then join a server that federates with everyone no matter what

It’s their server they can do what they want. That’s the beauty of the fediverse. If you don’t like how a server is being run, join another server.

What I actually DID say is that allowing mods admins to defederate entire communities is stupid. If you want to talk about THAT, fine.

I think you’re really misunderstanding a lot about the fediverse if you think everyone must federate with everyone. Choosing who you federate with is a fundamental part of the design. It means communities can choose their own ways to operate, and we don’t have to apply universal rules to everyone.

If a bunch of nazis want to run a server and post racist shit all day we can’t stop them. But we can (and should) defederate from them. They can have their own private island. If someone wants to run a “safe” server for (e.g) LGBTQI+ and defederate from some of the big instances, they should be able to do it.

If you want to be in a community that allows almost everything except racism, and other horrible shit, and federates with almost all servers then there are plenty of servers that support that. You are free to choose that. That freedom to choose is a massive feature (not flaw) of the fediverse.

You can argue it should be user-level, and again that’s something you can choose. But there will be servers almost everyone wants to defederate from, and don’t want to leave it up to user-level blocking because new users will see horrible shit as soon as they log on for the first time.

Yeah, admins need the power to block communities for all users on their instance. You don’t want to have a list for new users of “communities you might want to block”. They should be blocked for you, and the list of blocks should be publicly available.

it’s a major flaw and I hope it gets addressed as lemmy/fediverse evolves, or else it’s not going to work

Defederation is an important tool for admins (e.g. if a server full of nazis appears, we want it to be defederated immediately).

Hopefully admins realise over time it’s stupid to defederate over trivial stuff, and it causes users to revolt and possibly a decline in your server’s activity.

Also, make sure you complain to your admin if they do this, or just leave and go to a new server.