My experience using discord for technical projects and communities is largely similar to IRC. I jump in, ask a question in the appropriate channel, someone answers quite quickly, i say thanks, I leave.
I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.
I’m all for universal benefits and doing away with means testing but doing so without fixing our regressive tax system it truly is just a gift to the wealthy.
It's not. Fixing the tax system is a good idea that I'm all in favour of, but universalising benefits and eliminating means testing is a good idea even if we don't wait to do that first.
That's the case now, yes. However, EC2 and S3 were started by using idle compute for .com, which they had boatloads of due to their size, and Windows Azure was originally meant to be an app hosting platform for .NET apps running on Windows.
The only other companies I can think of that tried being/are trying to be _just_ cloud provider are Rackspace (which has been barely hanging on as the CSPs are eating their lunch) and Hetzner (who seem to be doing okay), but both of these companies lean more towards "hosting provider" (i.e. renting compute is their business) rather than "cloud provider" (i.e. providing platforms for many use cases).
Yes I agree there is no pure hosting/cloud company that comes close to the scale of the big 3 who also use their cloud infrastructure expertise and inventory to subsidize all the other parts of their businesses. Maybe it’s only possible to be reach the top if you already have all the money and infrastructure in the world, but just pointing out that for the top two cloud providers these platforms are at the core of their business and are their most profitable units.
I was able to find a decade old video via llm with the prompt “YouTube video of a french band on a radio station with a girl wearing orange jumpsuit”. I had tried many google searches without success trying to remember the video but the llm came right out with the correct video of The Dø on KEXP first try. 99 times out of 100 I prefer normal search though.
Modern reddit behaves like social media unless you limit yourself to very niche insular subreddits that do not reach r/all.
Overall the site has become social media. Any sub that reaches critical mass gets absorbed into the slop hivemind. Browsing r/all is almost indistinguishable from browsing public facebook posts nowadays. Just loads and loads of bot slop catch-all subreddits like r/interestingasfuck or r/woahthatscool and drama subreddits like r/amioverracting. My filter list is over 100 subs long at this point.
When i log on to an actual classic forum like tacomaforum.com the difference is stark.
I tried it during the summer between 8th and 9th grade after discovering a Datura Stramonium plant growing at a beach on Cape Cod. Fortunately the plant was growing in sand, and the alkaloid content of the plant was very low. I boiled an entire pod down in a soda can and gave it a try. In terms of effects, I did not become delirious, but my perception of gravity was greatly enhanced; I felt like I weighed 600lb. My eyes were also completely incapable of focusing on anything close-up for several days. I never tried Datura again, and I never will. I was lucky I didn't wind up dead, in jail, or in the hospital.
The other advantage of fibre is subtlety if you can't (or don't want to) run it through walls. 0.9mm diameter and light enough to attach it with occasional dots of glue instead of needing cable clips.
You’re asking for a hundred million people to personally overcome engineered manipulation rather than addressing the manipulators. What you say is true for the individual but it’s not a solution at scale for our societal issues.
It’s much akin to suggesting that poor people should not blame the system that keeps them poor and instead should focus on their education and getting themselves out of their current situation. Sure it’s accurate for the individual but, it’s not an actual solution to the problem at scale.
Heroin addicts quit aided by the intense and direct efforts and support of the people around them. Whether that’s hospital staff or family. And you often do tell heroin addicts it’s not their fault. You tell them addiction is a disease. That their addiction is not a moral failing.
There's room for a yes-and approach, it's not either-or.
Some people can make the change, and since social media is social, that small vanguard causes others to switch as well.
One can blame the system for keeping them poor, while also doing as much as possible to change their own position within the current system, those are not in opposition to each other! In fact, discouraging people from getting educated because of the system is its own form of oppression.
Highlighting people's own agency to make changes for themselves also highlights how the engineered manipulation of social media is not inevitable. These are complimentary things to do.
> In fact, discouraging people from getting educated because of the system is its own form of oppression.
Who is doing this? Did I suggest that addressing the systemic issues with the cycle of poverty precludes individuals pursuing education? No, I said it doesn’t on its own resolve the issue of poverty as a whole.
> Only if we keep repeating things like this.
I still think the answer to this problem will not hinge on individuals choosing to interact with social media less and more intelligently. The vast majority of us know social media is manipulating and dividing the population. We all know we should use it less. We already have these discussions and have been for years and it shows to have very little actual effect on the overall situation we find ourselves in.
You are right in that it can be a yes-and type situation but my worry is that bringing personal responsibility to the forefront of the conversation mostly serves to diminish the responsibility we face as a society to reign in these monstrous (in both ways) companies that are actively destroying our social fabric in pursuit of profits in the most charitable view, or in pursuit of bringing us into a hellscape of a new world order, re Thiel et al.
I find managing the system to be more tiring and stressful than just driving to be honest. I do not like when my vehicle behaves in a way I didn’t anticipate.
Maybe I just need more time with it but, my toyota had adaptive cruise and slammed on the brakes one time and I did not like it. On a one lane highway the car a decent ways in front of me slowed down and started moving into the shoulder to take a right turn into a driveway. As i came up on him he was almost all the way over, just his driver side wheels on the line. I moved to the far side of the lane with plenty of room to clear without slowing down and my toyota slammed on the brakes going from 65 to like 40 and it scared the shit out of me. It was a greater level of surprise and fear than I’d experienced in probably the last 20k miles of driving and was completely avoidable had I been using dumb cruise control.
Driving my mom’s Honda insight with lane assist also made me nervous when I would be near the edge of a lane on purpose and it would move the wheel on its own.
I’m not opposed to fully automated driving, but what I don’t want is to be in a situation where I need to remain alert and responsible for managing a system that does the driving. I’d rather just do the driving myself. I’ve driven for almost 20 years now, some of that professionally, and it’s second nature at this point and doesn’t require active thought outside navigating new routes and finding parking. Managing the system requires more effort for me.
I now drive a standard 33 year old truck and it’s bliss. No software updates, no bs, just a machine that takes my inputs and gets me from A to B. That said, without airbags, crumple zones and abs I’d have to get something more modern if there were children in the picture.
I’d prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC but I can’t say the experience is that onerous.
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