• 49 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • There are people who would be okay if it were Sony making the acquisition, but I want to believe that most people who are against it feel that no large company should be allowed to buy another large company.

    It’s like, does no one remember what Microsoft did in the 90s? They were literally forbidding PC manufacturers from not selling any systems that didn’t include windows.

    This deal is bad. It rewards shitty individuals and shitty companies, and hurts consumers and employees. This deal will be a calendar marker of when the gaming industry started to fall. Like when Disney bought Marvel and LucasArts.






  • I used Joplin for a while but found that it was a bit too clunky. Also, yes it does store the notes locally, but they weren’t in a plain text format. My notes were fragmented across different files.

    I switched to Obsidian after that and will never switch back. Yes, people make Obsidian complicated, but it’s honestly only as complex as you make it.

    For me, all it does is text and sync. All the files are stored locally in complete markdown format. That way I can read them in any program that can process text. My personal workspace syncs to an S3 compatible service, while work synced to Google Drive.

    I loved Joplin and felt so conflicted when I found Obsidian. But now I would recommend it over Joplin any day.






  • It’s because you can’t “kill” a the AP protocol. XMPP didn’t go away when Messenger and GChat removed support for it, it just went back to how it was before hand, a fraction of tech enthusiasts using it for private communication. It would probably be the same with AP. A separate collection of sites using it to federate information.

    … even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

    Granted this leaves out how Google used it’s influence to control and stagnate the XMPP protocol, but that’s another can of worms.





  • It’s using ActivityPub. It’s interesting because Bluesky (basically, former Twitter) explicitly stated that they didn’t think AP was robust enough and created their own shitty protocol. Facebook might be one of the first traditional SNS platforms to experiment with AP. I would’ve been happier if it were Tumblr, who said they were working on implementing AP last year.

    I wonder how much of the recent Twitter drama has influenced Facebook’s decision to release Threads so soon after its announcement. It’s probably going to be shit quality and just try and monopolize on people leaving Twitter but not wanting to jump to Mastodon.





  • That’s one trend I hope doesn’t spring up over here. I hated the fact that 95% of the subs on /r/all were literally the same thing. Like, what was the difference between MadeMeSmile, DamnThatsInteresting, NextFuckingLevel? Just all the same clickbait trash, and then, as you say, some “organic” marketing campaign for the latest Marvel movie.

    Edit:
    Mastodon handles this by not having an algorithm. In order for a toot to gain traction, it actually needs to be boosted around so that people can see it. A great example of how this prevented “organic” marketing was with @Raspberry_Pi.

    When they first joined, their SNS team tried the same easy brand tactics that they used on Twitter, trying to force engagement. It had the opposite effect, and the community backlash was fierce. They have since changed their messaging and become more genuine.

    Since link aggregators usually need some kind of algorithm for a “front page,” I think the most important thing is to have it be transparent and static. No changing it every 4 months to increase engagement.

    Most importantly, the community should also have a shared opinion on what kind of stuff they are okay with, and this can be more localized per instance.