Indonesia assigns $1.3 billion to BRICS-led New Development Bank
Indonesia assigns $1.3 billion to BRICS-led New Development Bank
The country expects its contribution to help fund sustainable development projects. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
The Fediverse and Content Creation: Monetization
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PeerTube, Loops, Bandwagon, and other platforms in the Fediverse that are geared around artists. I might get flamed for this, and you’re welcome to disagree, but I think the network is in dire need of having support for commerce.
Not “Big Capitalism” commerce, but the ability for people to buy and sell things, support projects, and commission their favorite creators to keep making more stuff.
The Fediverse and Content Creation: Monetization
One thing that I've been thinking about for a while: the PeerTube platform is somewhat limited in providing tools for video-makers to receive financial support. At best, PeerTube offers a "Support" button on videos, but all this really does is provide a lightbox with links to various donation pages.It's better than nothing, but not by much.
I actually think this is a bit of a problem when it comes to getting creators to use platforms such as PeerTube or Loops. A lot of people don't really see a point in joining a whole new ecosystem when they're well-established on YouTube or Tiktok to begin with, and a lack of financial incentives might make this seem like an exercise in futility.The majority of this post is going to be focusing on financial support mechanisms specifically, but I want to be clear that this alone is not a silver bullet solution. It's just something that I think requires a lot of attention first. I'm going to talk about a few things the Fediverse ecosystem offers to mitigate this problem, with some thoughts on how we can better support video makers on federated platforms.
Payments, Access, and Friction
There are a few sticking points here that are worth thinking about. First and foremost is that, historically speaking, most Fediverse platforms don't offer good mechanisms for providing access to special paid content. From my limited understanding, there are two parts to think about:
- Payment Systems - payments in the Fediverse is still kind of a nascent, fledgling thing. A few systems offer the capability of buying or selling things through one or two major payment processing systems, and it's usually Stripe or PayPal. Part of the headache here is that this situation inherently props up a few monopolistic platforms, rather than allowing people to use whatever payment system is available in their own countries. Some of this can be worked around using cryptocurrencies – famously, the Mitra project leverages Monero for this very purpose, although I'm told it now can accept other forms of payment as well.
- Account Access - Historically speaking, the lion's share of Fediverse platforms lack a granular system for granting permissions to remote accounts. Most platforms in the Fediverse emulate Mastodon's privacy scopes, which don't do the best job of delegating which groups of people can see or interact with something. Either everybody can see a post, or just your mutuals can. Complicating things even further, there's not a great way to set something visible to a specific someone and let them know about it, unless you're specifically sending them a Private Message directly.
What's Available Today
There are a few cutting-edge attempts to solve this problem, and I think they might offer different pieces of the puzzle.Premium Users
One PeerTube plugin I have a lot of admiration for is simply called Premium Users, and it does exactly what you'd expect. PeerTube channels that have this integration set up offer a special paid subscription button on their pages, and it does two things:
- It takes a Stripe transaction to process payments.
- It takes note of which Fediverse accounts made this transaction, and adds them to a special group that can see videos intended specifically for them.
On paper, this is great! We at least have a proof-of-concept to say that hey, this thing is in fact doable. Unfortunately, there are a few shortcomings:
- Limited Utility — people can only get this special access by clicking the button on PeerTube. If they tried to pay you out of band, through something like Patreon or Kofi, there isn't a way to easily set up their Fediverse account as Premium Subscribers. The payment system has no concept of what their Fediverse identity is, and the manual way for adding people is kind of messy and confusing.
- Rigid Scope — the plugin basically has to get set up by an admin, and use their Stripe account. Users then upgrade their own PeerTube accounts to add payment, and they get upgraded to a special user type. Anyone with that user type can see "Premium" videos from anybody on the instance, and the money only goes to the instance admin. This is less than ideal.
- Vendor Limitations — it only works with Stripe at the moment, which is not necessarily what other people are using to make simple donations. Trying to account for multiple vendors might be challenging, as it means that such an integration has to abstract away the specific vendors in another layer. This is not impossible, but can be somewhat cumbersome if you're trying to just offer a simple plugin that's easy to set up.
Unfortunately, this is kind of a deal-breaker if you wanted to create something similar to YouTube's "Channel Membership" feature for the Fediverse. It's less Patreon-like, and more like a way to see all the exclusive paywalled media in one place.
At the very least, we have a proof-of-concept on how to at least broker access to special content on PeerTube using payments. It's not perfect, but maybe it could be a foundation to build on?Granular Permissions / Circles
Some of the most impressive development on this front comes from the Bonfire project, because their system actually lets people put their contacts into special collections.
Circles, which are Bonfire's concept for addressable groups, and Boundaries, which are the permission sets that can be assigned to them.
While it can be a little bit tedious to set up manually, the main thing to understand is that this works really, really well. You can have as many collections as you'd like, they can all have special rules applied to them, and you can decide which collections can see which things you post.
This can easily get super, super comprehensive. The UX definitely still needs some love to make it easier to manage.
From a technical perspective, I see Bonfire as a shining example for what all Fediverse platforms should follow: we need to think about access, permissions, and addressing for posts, all at the same time. You can create special custom presets today, and scope it to a specific group of people.
While I think the UX behind this is still complicated, I think the concept is solid, and a simplified version could be a very powerful way to create special scopes of friends or followers.Paid Circles
The Emissary project has been thinking long and hard about this problem by offering Circles, which are the very user collections we've been talking about up to this point. For their Bandwagon application, the lead dev has been thinking a lot about music sales, as well as different ways to support artists. As a result, the UX is very much simplified, and more user-friendly.
Examples of how different Circles can be set up as support tiers for artists.
Bandwagon does something neat by allowing musicians to turn membership of a specific Circle into a paid subscription. This allows artists to create special private things.posts, share events for secret shows, and even offer special tracks and albums to the people supporting them.
spectra.video/videos/embed/eod…
The lead dev, Ben Pate, has gone on the record in stating a desire to support many different payment providers in order to avoid monopolization of just one or two big vendors. He gave a really good presentation about the subject back in August for FediCon 2025, and it's worth watching.CrowdBucks
CrowdBucks is still a relative newcomer to the space, and offers a few novel approaches that are worth thinking about. It's open source, and you can host it yourself, and the project acts as a wrapper around payment integrations to provide payment status, as well as subscriber information. That includes Fediverse handles!
A demo of a CrowdBucks fundraising page.
What really sets CrowdBucks apart is this: you don't actually create an account, in the traditional sense. Instead, you log in with your existing Fediverse identity, which then allows you to financially support whoever you want, while also allowing you to do fundraising for yourself.
One other benefit I see to having services like CrowdBucks is the benefit of decoupling payment infrastructure away from Fediverse instances. Rather than trying to get a bunch of different platforms and instances to try to juggle Stripe and PayPal API keys for admins and users, it would probably be way easier to just handle the actual payment action on a separate layer outside of the social platforms themselves. Instead of every creator trying to sign into a bunch of different services, they could just authenticate against their CrowdBucks payment server instead.
Honorable Mention: Mitra
Although the project isn't as well-known as some of the other efforts on here, it's important to acknowledge Mitra and what it has pioneered. In a nutshell, this is a simple, stylish Fediverse platform that has paid subscription capabilities built in.
Subscribing to an account results in a dialogue to determine how much you're supporting a creator per month.
In a lot of ways, Mitra predates almost all of the other attempts to incorporate payments into the Fediverse. The lead dev behind it, Silverpill, is very active in the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals community, which aims to help extend ActivityPub capabilities in a somewhat standardized, grassroots way.
Posting to just your Paid Subscribers works out of the box!
Mitra has experienced some friction in being adopted by the wider Fediverse due to an ideological divide: historically, the platform has only supported Monero for payment, and the wider Fediverse itself doesn't generally hold a positive view on cryptocurrencies to begin with. A recent release no longer strictly requires Monero, but some glue code would still need to be written to support payment processors.Putting It All Together
So, we have all of these different pieces. Can we use them together to accomplish what we want?Let's say that we use CrowdBucks as the middleware that wraps around potentially many different payment solutions. It offers an API, can capture information about who is paying you for something, and can potentially even denote what thing they're paying for specifically. Great! Upon initial payment, a special follow request could get forwarded to the creator's account, which automatically gets approved upon proof of payment.
A plugin or integration could directly hook up to CrowdBucks, and then automatically put that paid subscriber into a dedicated Circle as a permission scope that can see stuff intended just for them. Additionally, this special follow request could also enable special notifications that tells the subscriber when new stuff is available to them.
A lapse in payment or cancellation could also be handled automatically through CrowdBucks, resulting in the Subscriber being automatically removed from the Circle after a set period of time.
Limitations
This concept is not without a few different headaches. Let's talk about them.Currency Support
While a fair amount of payment processors are set up to handle international currency exchanges, the experience could be messier for platforms that aren't set up to handle it.This is particularly glaring in situations where one person might want to pay with cryptocurrency, and the recipient doesn't actually accept that.
What might make sense is for CrowdBucks to allow people to plug in a multitude of different payment providers, defaulting to a "path of equilibrium" where the payee and recipient both go through whatever payment system they both have in common. The alternative is to basically establish some kind of escrow/transfer service for money in various forms, and that can get pretty complicated.
Fediverse Identity
Identity in the Fediverse is still somewhat flaky and non-standard. The secret sauce that CrowdBucks uses for Fediverse Login is really just a series of platform-specific integrations, such as "Sign in With Mastodon", "Sign in With Pixelfed", and "Sign in With PeerTube".Good concept overall, but lack of a uniform solution is killing us. Source: GreatApe
This isn't a great experience for anyone that's not using those specific platforms. Theoretically, we should all be using the ActivityPub Client-To-Server API for platform-agnostic Identity Login, but the biggest players such as Mastodon have yet to really embrace C2S in any way, shape, or form.If we could all rally around C2S for at least this singular use-case, we might be able to have a universal login system for the entire network.
Ecosystem Support
Finally, the biggest headache here is buy-in. It's very challenging to get a bunch of different groups of people to align to a common set of goals, implementations, and methodologies.My thinking here is simple: if we can get some level of integration working for PeerTube, Pixelfed, Loops, and any other federated platform where such a thing might be handy, we might be able to make major strides in solving this problem.
I'm Still Optimistic
While I think we still have a long way to go before we get to a place where there's a clear-cut "standard experience" on how these things should happen, it's evident that there are a lot of pieces being developed that could be made to work together.I hold the view that commerce, understood through the lens of "the marketplace or bazaar at the center of town", could be extremely beneficial for the Fediverse. If we are to build this thing, it's going to require a lot of careful consideration, with different builders comparing notes on how they're currently doing it.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
What is PeerTube? | JoinPeerTube
A free software to take back control of your videos! With more than 600,000 hosted videos, viewed more than 70 millions times and 150,000 users, PeerTube is the decentralized free software alternative to videos platforms developed by FramasoftJoinPeerTube
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Email client that imports labels as tags instead of folders on Linux (and Android)
Problem Statement
I'm in the process of de-googling, and I'm about 60% there, but I still need gmail for the things that I cannot or have not yet migrated.
I've also recently experimented w/ the Thunderbird app for both Linux and Android, and it's okay. One thing that really irritates me is the fact that when I import my emails from gmail, all my labels are handled as folders in Thunderbird. This is an issue b/c I have rules to help organize incoming email by assigning one or more labels. I believe Thunderbird has the concept of tags, but by default Thunderbird routes gmail labels to folders instead of tags.
Question
Is there a mail client on Linux (and Android) that handles labels from gmail as tags instead of folders? Alternatively, is there a setting in Thunderbird that will use tags instead of labels that I'm just not aware of?
I've tried searching DDG, but came up with nothing useful beyond other posts on other social media websites asking similar questions.
* offlineimap in case you need something to fetch your IMAP emails.
* gmailieer is a tool which uses Gmail API to fetch emails.
* notmuch is a tool which indexes your email. You can assign whatever labels you want and rather than folders it uses tags.
* For notmuch you then need a front-end which can display the emails. I use Emacs for that. And since notmuch uses tags, you can then create whatever ‘folders’ by making saved searches.
Labels/Tags are a product feature, not part of email standards. Meaning: it's not a thing when looking at the raw mail server data.
Each product handles this in their own way, and the tool being used to export your mail from one host/product to another would be what is handling that, if at all. Gmail probably just uses folders because that is part of the structure a mail server would have.
I believe Proton's import tools handles this correctly from Gmail using both labels as folders and preserving tags, but I believe Thunderbird just puts them in folders as is standard.
You can double check by looking at the raw data exported from any mail service. You could probably easily write a quick script to handle getting tag info and applying it yourself, though it could be quite slow.
Labels/Tags are a product feature, not part of email standards. Meaning: it's not a thing when looking at the raw mail server data.
Thanks for the info. This helps me understand why things are the way that they are. It has me rethinking the use of tags altogether and leaning more toward reviewing my labels in gmail so I can tweak the ones that are still useful and remove any that are obsolete.
That's a solid plan.
If you want a deeper dive, just make some stuff in Thunderbird, then export and view it. It'll give you a bit of a look into how email standards servers organize data.
i don't use rules but fairmail has an option about gmail labels in rules ☞ m66b.github.io/FairEmail/#faq7…
I've been using fairmail for some years. I'm on tuta now but i may end up getting a mailbox.org just to have fairmail as my main mailer again
I went þrough þis years ago. My ultimate solution was offlineimap and notmuch. Þere are several clients which can work wiþ notmuch, but my favorites are TUI tools, which it sounds like may not be your bag.
About a year ago I switched to mbsync, and more recently to imapgoose, which does bidirectional sync'ing, differential updates, and push notifications.
Regardless of how you sync, notmuch is þe secret sauce, as it performs full text indexing and tagging. Þe downside is þat þere's no good solution for syncing notmuch DBs across servers, which means tagging is bound to a single computer; and notmuch indexes can get enormous - since þey're binary databases, diffing and keeping versions is non-trivial. However, it's about as close a solution as you can get to þe far superior gmail "tagging" and search-based email organization approach.
An alternative is mairix. It's far faster at indexing þan notmuch and þe index is smaller, but it's far less powerful. I actually use þem in conjunction - notmuch on my PC and mairix on þe mail server, because þey boþ understand email IDs - so you can e.g. search for "tag:spam" on a PC wiþ notmuch and dump email IDs, þen pipe þose to þe server and look þem up wiþ mairix and run "dspam learn" on þem. It's all a bit convoluted, but once you get it set up, a couple short shell scripts is enough to manage email using þe far superior paradigm of tags.
GitHub - gburd/isync: isync/mbsync - a mailbox synchronization program
isync/mbsync - a mailbox synchronization program. Contribute to gburd/isync development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
th → þ replacement going on in your text? Trying to bring back the thorn?
Heck yeah - it's just a configuration option!
Settings -> Languages -> English (assuming þat's your language setting) and turn on symbols. It shows up in þe long-press pop-up option for "t".
I don't know how many mails you have. But if that is what you want, then do the work... Import it into Thunderbird, select all mails in a folder, give them a tag, and move them where you want them. It might take a little time, but my guess is, that it will take way shorter time, than trying to find different programs to help you do it your way.
Oh, and maybe you could come up with a different system, than that google put on you... Just a thought here.
Agreed, this is where I'm at as well.
What I've had in place for the last decade or more made sense to me once upon a time, but it's over engineered and of limited usefulness.
Despite the potential technical solutions offered in other comments, I've resolved to go through and clean up my email history, including deleting stuff I no longer need and reconfiguring how I assign labels to incoming messages in gmail in order to make sense to my current self and play nice with the folder system, which seems to be more industry standard anyway.
Filen free plan. Any good?
I was looking for a Google Drive alternative. Its mainly for storing small documents. 10GB is Filen's limit on their free plan. Its more than enough.
But I am concerned about their privacy. Have anyone used it? I am ready to pay for a really good service but if they are giving it for free than I why should I pay if they are private enough?
They also have paid ones but they are an overkill for me. I mainly use offline HDD backups. These are for some quick access files. I don't need an app or anything. Simple web login would be fine.
Filen – Next Generation End-To-End Encrypted Cloud Storage
Filen – Next Generation End-To-End Encrypted Cloud Storage. Get started with 10 GB of free space.filen.io
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I use it and their free plan works fine but I've quickly upgraded to a paid tier. They claim zero knowledge E2EE, that's all I know. Free and paid plans offer the same level of privacy, as far as I know. But, if you plan on sharing files (I don't) make sure the free plan still offer that feature as I think I remember it was removed awhile ago (but I may be wrong).
I also think most our governments will sooner than later decide those kind of fully privacy-respecting cloud storage should not be accessed by mere users like ourselves (because 'think of the children' and the usual bullshit). So, I don't rely on it as my sole backup, I have another online backup solution (not cloud) and also keep a copy of all my files on a fully encrypted disk drive (two of them, as a matter of fact).
(deleted: an affiliate link that seems to not be working anymore)
Edit: typos.
I use it as my cloud backup along with 2 drives. It’s pretty good, smooth, open source, and claims e2ee just like proton and mega, and no bugs that I’ve found. I would put it on the same level as proton just newer. But just like how Libb said, if you worry about the future governments or want more privacy, maybe consider using cryptomator and this goes for any cloud storage. I use it with Filen and everything has been good so far.
Also you sadly just missed their last lifetime pro plans sale but doesn’t sad like you need it. Hope this helps!!
Pay for stuff if you want something reliable and supporting your privacy. Sure test the free tier to make sure it fits your requirements but please do consider not sticking to it.
Might be Filen (don't know of it) or Hetzner Storage Box (~10e/month for 5TB iirc) or Proton Drive (Visionary customers have a large quantity, e.g. >6TB) or whatever else you prefer but if you do not actually help people providing services by funding their work they you are supporting BigTech and their "free plans" that comes precisely at the cost of our collective privacy.
I have been playing around with it. Ended up buying more recently of the lifetime stuff. Tried their android app and windows/web interface. Web interface has been 100% rock solid. Android app not so much:
- Camera sync sometimes doesn't sync all the pictures. Sometimes it doesn't show synced pictures either, I have to manually navigate to the folder. Not sure whats up.
- Android app has a long delay on starting up sometimes.
- Poor battery optimization comparatively speaking to alternatives (nextcloud & gphotos)
- App occasionally crashes, but that's stopped recently.
Also, just full disclosure I am on Graphene, so sometimes things are a bit different. Recently, I have started to setup their rclone connection to use it as an offsite encrypted backup of ~ half a terabyte of important shit. Its my 2nd offsite backup and I am planning to regularly test that repository (using Kopia). While I am happy with it so far (outside the android app), I am still a bit wary on how reliable they are. They have been around for a few years now, so I feel more confident, just overall being cautious until I see a public audit of their backend. The client code is all OS (supposedly, I haven't confirmed beyond the rclone code), so you can check that if you like (which should at least confirm local encryption before transit).
Pete Hegseth's use of Canadian character Franklin the turtle in post about boat strikes prompts anger, mockery
Franklin the turtle is a Canadian creation beloved by generations of children, so when U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth turned him into a bazooka-wielding soldier in a social media post Sunday, many people were alarmed.
Hegseth's post featured a mock cover of a Franklin children's book titled "Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists." The image shows a smiling Franklin wearing a military helmet and vest and an American flag on his arm. He's standing in a helicopter, firing a weapon toward a boat carrying packages and a man holding a gun.
"For your Christmas wish list," he wrote above the post, an apparent attempt to make light of deadly U.S. military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
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Quietly stacking courts and gerrymandering in Alabama or Oklahoma isn’t front page news, but will affect the lives of countless people in the future
Big bomb go boom distracts from the machinations. Anyone who still has a shred of respect for their oath of enlistment should put a round through Hegseths forehead as punishment for war crimes.
Every new low in casual cruelty sets back the date when America will be trusted on the world stage a decade further out. I’m confident I’ll be dead before an American leader would be held in the same regard as other leaders on the world stage.
My kid is growing up in this reality and distrust will be their generation’s default sentiment.
Why The Flag Is Backwards On Uniforms | Medals of America
Have you seen a reverse American flag on a military uniform and wondered what it meant? This guide will answer that question and more.Joshua Williams (Medals of America)
Princess Aiko's popularity sparks calls to change Japan's male-only succession law
Japan’s beloved Princess Aiko is often cheered like a pop star.
During a visit to Nagasaki with Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, the sound of her name being screamed by well-wishers along the roads overwhelmed the cheers for her parents.
As she turns 24 on Monday, her supporters want to change Japan’s male-only succession law, which prohibits Aiko, the emperor’s only child, from becoming monarch.
Along with frustration that the discussion on succession rules has stalled, there’s a sense of urgency. Japan’s shrinking monarchy is on the brink of extinction. Naruhito’s teenage nephew is the only eligible heir from the younger generation.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-princess-aiko-monarchy-succession-12eb5163a88d22f292ae79e4407f1edf
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If she chooses to abolish the monarchy? totally.
If not, this just seems like royalty PR campaign.
The Japanese Imperial family is still in power because the US found them a useful tool for controlling the Japanese population after the war. Also she is not responsible for the sins/crimes of her grandfather.
If the Japanese people wish to idolize her and make her the Empress who are we to deny their wishes?
I mean... yes, thats true, but its more complicated than that.
At the end of WW2, elements within the Japanese military and government executed an ultranationalist coup attempt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%AB…
In broad strokes, the Emperor was planning to surrender, after the Potsdam Conference, after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.
A significant number of military higher ups, many various officers... decided that was bullshit, and concocted a plan to take the Imperial family hostage, destroy the Emperor's recorded speech that was to announce the surrender and urge all Japanese people to actually surrender.
This plan ended up failing, but maybe now you can see that significant portions of the Japanese military wanted to keep fighting, literally to death.
So, if you're trying to make sure that something like this coup does not reoccur in the years following surrender... it makes some sense to try and support the people who wanted to comply with you, wanted to end the war, who would and actually could ensure stability.
Consider an alternative example.
Iraq, 2003-6.
The US basically just wholesale dismantles the Iraqi government, including its military, which was a significant source of employment for a lot of people.
Those former Iraqi military members then go on to be a very significant, effective and capable element of the Iraqi "Insurgency"/Resistance, for... what, 10, 15 years?
Can you not imagine something like that playing out in Japan, up into the 1960s?
I'm not trying to endorse or defend anybody's policies or actions here... I'm just trying to point out that it's more complicated than how you summarize it.
There is a pretty damned good movie that climaxes with the Kyujo Incident, called "The Emperor In August", came out in 2015.
It's basically the Japanese equivalent of "Downfall".
Its genuinely an intense and gripping story, nearly unbelievable story, ... it's fucking insane, and its more insane because that movie is quite historically accurate.
A lot of the minute details of what happened actually were recorded in significant detail, so ... there's really a minimal level of 'artistic intepretation'.
Maximum possible recommend seeing this movie.
Also she is not responsible for the sins/crimes of her grandfather.
She's responsible so long as she benefits from his power.
who are we to deny their wishes?
Err... nobody is denying anything. They are allowed to worship and we are allowed to criticize.
Japanese conservative monarchists are wild.
Look up the Google Maps reviews of the imperial palace. For some context, the majority of the imperial palace is completely off limits to the general public (in stark contrast to most developed countries), and the royal family does a new years greeting.
The reviews are monarchists unironically saying things like that they travelled for days, lined up for hours, caught a glimpse of one of the royal family, were temporarily transported to heaven, and will dedicate their lives hoping for the forever prosperity of the royal family.
were temporarily transported to heaven
Makes sense, the japanese monarchy is one of the few that still claims divinity and Shintoism still says they should be venerated.
Aiko has gained admirers since debuting as an adult royal in 2021, when she impressed the public as intelligent, friendly, caring and funny.
Oh yeah? The Spanish princess is learning to fly fighter jets:
But France feels like an exception though. I wouldn't say tourists are flocking to Albania or Austria to see the relics of their monarchies like people do with France.
There's a real appeal behind having an active monarchy in place, even if it's just symbolic. Take the UK as an example of this. One of the bigger draws to the country is that you get see all these monarchy related things places that are still occupied and used by a real royal family that has real historical depth and influence.
Canadian air passenger traffic to U.S. down for 9th consecutive month
For the ninth consecutive month, fewer passengers at Canadian airports are heading to the United States amid the trade war.New data from Statistics Canada shows total Canadian air passenger traffic in October was up by 4.5 per cent to five million travellers from the same time last year, but the number of people on U.S.-bound trips is down 8.9 per cent to 1.2 million travellers.
Canadian air passenger traffic to U.S. down for 9th consecutive month
The drop comes almost a year after U.S. President Donald Trump first started musing about making Canada the 51st state, a threat he has repeated throughout the trade war.globalnewsdigital (Global News)
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The world should follow Canada's lead and nobody should visit from anywhere.
I’m American living in Germany and married to a German. I brought him to meet my family last November, because I suspected trump would win or there would be a more significant version of January 6th. People keep asking when we’re coming back, but why the hell would I endanger my husband like that? It’s simply not safe for anyone right now, but especially for noncitizens.
I miss my family and friends, but they can come visit us. We’ll even help them get started learning German and help with their visas and housing if they want to stay.
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The world should follow Canada’s lead and nobody should visit from anywhere.
I think a lot of the world absolutely is, a few months ago I saw similar numbers from Europe, with Denmark and Germany among the biggest declines.
viewfromthewing.com/new-data-s…
Denmark is not in the chart, but it is very noticeable here, and although we are a small country we have higher tan average level of traveling and economic interaction with other countries.
New Data Shows Europe to U.S. Fall Travel Plunges Up To 12.5% — Expect Fares To Be Slashed To Fill Seats
Advance bookings for fall travel from Europe to the U.S. are down as much as 12.5%, a sharp drop that could push airlines to cut fares in order to keep planes full.Gary Leff (View from the Wing)
There will always be FFFF* tourists, but I have refused business travel to US. The world does too much unnecessary business travel.
*Fat Fucks with Flip Flops
Well, you can't see or eat the AI the Americans are spending all their money on.
You can experience it from home. It's underwhelming.
Air traffic to USA down 8.9% is very significant, and way beyond any statistical variance or uncertainty. Numbers at that scale tend to change slowly, so by that perspective 8.9% is a lot.
And ironically the Canadian economy is up 2.6% in Q3, and industrial production is up 3.3%. And inflation is down to 2.2%!!
So Canada is doing very well on major economic markers despite the sanctions from USA.
USA on the other hand is not, and Trump is so embarrassed he won't even allow his fudged numbers to be released.
I call them fudged because he fires people who release "bad" numbers, because Trump claims bad numbers are fake.
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none of this apparent success is helping cost of living in Canada.
Except lower inflation is doing exactly that.
Most of the world has been through a period of increased inflation, but Europe is getting it under control now, and apparently so is Canada. So yes this should definitely be helping.
My in laws have a second home in the US and have been faithfully going back and forth pretty regularly to maintain it.
Now we’re finally getting to the point where they’re uncertain about going and talking about selling it.
I think there’s a lot of people coming a bit late to the party. I don’t think we’ve stabilized those numbers yet.
It's always been stupid how CDNs spent billions in the US for vacation travel.
However, all this has made vacationing in Canada unaffordable, especially with Boomers gouging on AirBNB for their shacks by Mosquito Lake. Finding cottages for summer 2026 has already ended by September 2025.
Everyone considering visiting the US should ask themselves some serious questions: is my visit so important that it’s worth the risk of being jailed for years? What if I unknowingly break an insignificant law and catch ICEs attention? Do my skin color/religious beliefs put me at greater risk of abuse? What are the possible repercussions for the people I’m visiting, and my loved ones back home?
They can talk about numbers being “down”, but frankly, 1.2 million is WAY too fucking many.
How I discovered a hidden microphone on a Chinese NanoKVM
Telefoncek.si • How I discovered a hidden microphone on a Chinese NanoKVM
NanoKVM is a hardware KVM switch developed by the Chinese company Sipeed. Released last year, it enables remote control of a computer or server using a virtu...telefoncek.si
and runs a heavily stripped-down version of Linux that lackssystemdandapt.
Ok, that's a plus in my book. Probably Alpine (often used in containers) or something.
Edit: cut the first question into another one, since this one here likely derails into a System discussion.
Scope creep and not-invented-here syndrome; replaces a lot of unix/gnu tooling/specifications with poorer ones, while shitting on some that made nix great. Which is why your distro is either Systemd or not, and not-Systemd distros still need wrappers and shims, because Systemd *also enforces some things in apps.
Then there was only hackjob SysV scripts or Systemd, so it's understandable that most big distros switched to it but now there's s6, runit, Dinit and you need to create a extra distro for them for above reasons. I'm using Artix btw.
Can't speak to him, but I have used unix-like software since the 1990s.
The entire UNIX philosophy boils down to one simple fact. Everything is a file.
This makes maintenance a breeze as no special tools are needed.
You don't need to install anything to read log files.
You can pull a hard drive from a dead system, and just read all the logs.
Most of systemd is just a solution in search of a problem.
Apalrd has done some great "popular computer science" videos on the various remote KVM devices that is well worth looking up. One of them specifically goes into the ridiculously sketchy methods that are used to fetch and execute unsigned code in random buckets to handle firmware updates.
But as for the mic? Honestly, if you open up a LOT of consumer devices you are going to find random microphones. Not because they are all secretly spying on you. But because they use "off the shelf" chips and boards that already have those embedded. Especially since microphones and speakers are kind of the same hardware in most cases and we ALL love a good beep.
I 100% agree the software stack shouldn't be on there. But, as the blog post points out, there is a LOT of developmental code and packages in that image that shouldn't be. It is likely just a case of not removing unnecessary packages from the base image.
Because... the entire point of a device like this is that you plug it in somewhere you aren't. MAYBE JetKVM corp can hear me muttering profanity or wondering where I left that USB c splitter when I am trying to assemble it the first time. The rest of the time? It is plugged into the back of a server that I am booting up so that I can install proxmox without having to drag a monitor over. And while you can potentially get some juicy info out of that? It is not at all worth the hassle to set up fake companies and market a fake (moderately high demand in the right circles) device.
Yeah you 100% have the right of this. Not a secret at all and very clearly documented on their github.
github.com/sipeed/sipeed_wiki/…
GitHub - sipeed/NanoKVM: Affordable, Multifunctional, Nano RISC-V IP-KVM
Affordable, Multifunctional, Nano RISC-V IP-KVM. Contribute to sipeed/NanoKVM development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Note: Out of the 256MB memory in SG2002, 158MB is currently allocated for the multimedia subsystem, which NanoKVM will use for video image acquisition and processing.
To summarize: the device is riddled with security flaws, originally shipped with default passwords, communicates with servers in China, comes preinstalled with hacking tools, and even includes a built-in microphone - fully equipped for recording audio - without clear mention of it in the documentation. Could it get any worse?I am pretty sure these issues stem from extreme negligence and rushed development rather than malicious intent. However, that doesn’t make them any less concerning.
Slop everywhere. As far as the eye can see.
(though JavaScript JIT must be enabled)
How did they manage this? Is there a JS command to check that?
I disabled JIT/ion in my FF profiles, because js got so complex that it only speeds up the heavy webapps i avoid and has huge security concerns otherwise.
I had several IOT smart plugs that have GPS built in.
why? why would it need to know its exact geographic location?!
after that I created an entire hardware segmented network that's specifically used for IOT and cameras.
last I checked the router/firewall it's on has blocked over 11million requests a month trying to access the outside.
I will never have a "smart" device in my home that's connected to the internet. I'll live like it's the 1930s if I ever have to.
Yeah. Believe it or not but the sex pest who actively didn't warn his contemporaries about the impact of the honey plugin and who now advertises on kiwi farms might be kind of a piece of shit who will say anything for a buck?
And now for a word from d-brand!
Obviously never rely on a single source before buying something, but this isn't news. See the other dude's comment lemmy.world/comment/20879776
Yeah you 100% have the right of this. Not a secret at all and very clearly documented on their github.
github.com/sipeed/sipeed_wiki/…
GitHub - sipeed/NanoKVM: Affordable, Multifunctional, Nano RISC-V IP-KVM
Affordable, Multifunctional, Nano RISC-V IP-KVM. Contribute to sipeed/NanoKVM development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
I had a server that was off, when I booted it the bios was in Chinese. Although someone did say that motherboard had a flaw that would do that, I wasn’t Sure if it was the KVM or the motherboard, but still…
It could probably change the language selector.
If I'm an elite hacker spy who works for the hacker spy division of the Chinese army, am I going to change the system language of the thing I am hacking to Chinese and forget to change it back?
I wish they implement hashtags lists
Was requested 4 years ago with over 300 possitive reaction
github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…
Ability to add hashtags to lists
User can subscribe to hashtags adding them to the lists. I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.gelav (GitHub)
It is, but maybe they mean they want no limit whatsoever on post length.
which, well, if your instance starts sending out megabyte-sized text posts I don't expect it to stay federated with many others for very long.
I mean, just set the limit to a ridiculously high number then? I'm not aware that Lemmy has any in-built limits, but I could be wrong.
I believe that Mastodon instances with limits only link to external posts that exceed the limit, they don't display the whole post.
Of course you can always run into network limits if you get huge posts, but that applies to everything and doesn't have anything in particular to do with Mastodon.
Make character limit configurable by lambadalambda · Pull Request #5697 · mastodon/mastodon
This adds a character limit configurable by setting and environment variable. It also adds the character limit to the initial state and instance endpoint, so clients can use it to set the correct l...GitHub
Samsung reveals first tri-fold phone
Samsung Announces its First Tri-Fold Foldable Phone
Samsung has announced the Galaxy Z TriFold, a foldable phone comprised of three ultra-thin (~4mm) panels and two sets of hinges, that unfolds into a 10-inch tablet. When closed, it resembles a standard smartphone with a 6.5-inch display that is 12.Rich Brome (Phone Scoop)
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Well phones already vibrate so they're ahead of the curve in that regard.
I'm waiting for the twelvefold myself.
I'm waiting for the twelvefold myself
The Samsung Origami
6 little Samsungs twirling on a branch
Eating lots of iPhones on my uncles ranch
You know that old children's tale from the sea
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You had me and then you lost me.
Samsung’s Most Versatile AI Phone, Powered by the Largest Screen
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When you try to look at a spreadsheet and there are too many columns even in portrait mode, I open up the phone.
For some reason nobody figured out "zoom all the way out" functionality on the phone yet
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Honestly I feel this was always the goal (one of several), but R&D is expensive. Shipping an odd phone that people still buy keeps the shareholders happy while the multi-year research process can eventually produce more usable results.
Single-flip phones were the awkward teenagers, now this phone can be the 18-20 age young adult, fully featured, but needing refinement. Next gen or the one after this will add a lot more robustness.
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Sales figures and market trends suggest most people do not, in fact, want a keyboard.
You might want a keyboard on your phone. Lots of people here might want a keyboard on their phone. People on Lemmy are not most people.
people want a keyboard on a phone not more foldsI don’t give a shit what most people want
🤔
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Statement with no substance. What do you desire that's not there?
Aside from the screen being softer and easier to scratch, name a practical difference between this and another 10" Android tablet...
If a 10" tablet meets your desires, and your desire to fold it and put it in your pocket, what's left?
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A lot of the issue with foldable is the non-standard aspect ratio. This gets to a standard tablet aspect ratio, so should run out of the box with most apps without additional modification.
Also DEX support on-device means it can run fully windowed applications and use mouse and keyboard natively, which is a big boost in functionality for productivity applications.
DEX is actually pretty good when used with a keyboard and external monitor. I also dont love thr Samsung walled garden, but I end up buying their products because I use my phones for several years at a time before replacing them so top end hardware specs are a priority and especially cameras.
I would go Sony but the data band support in the US is incomplete, and I can't get caught out by poor cell service while traveling.
I am considering going Pixel next but Graphene hasn't been announced for Pixel 10 yet so I'm a bit on the fence, I guess I could buy an older model and give it a try wifi only for a bit to see how I like it.
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No word on if it's coming to the EU 🙁
My pixel 6 is dying and I'd like to get something for graphene or another less monopolized distro but there's no support for phones released this year as far as I can tell from most distros so I'm looking for one more normal phone until hopefully that ecosystem is better off.
Even the new pixels look weak from several angles
It was hard to get want them after all the reviews came in.
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all the modern features I want
What are those? Because the difference between midrange and top of the line has been shrinking from year to year.
the best processor
What do you do with your phone that needs the best processor? Maybe you have some special use case, but the vast majority of people don't need the best processor - often that's a case of chasing the shiny new thing.
I mean I don't have a laundry list but like:
- all day battery, doesn't seem Fairphone hits this exactly. When I'm vacationing I'm using my phone constantly to map and translate and record so it's the single biggest thing I want in a phone.
- a great camera, until I get a standalone shooter this is what I got. This is a great argument for a Fairphone because it's on the cheaper side.
- a large screen, ideally the largest I can possibly get. I joke that I won't be happy until I can unfold a 72 inch OLED from my pocket. So bright, colorful, OLED, fast refresh and variable refresh, and big.
- wireless charging. I really like the idea of the pixel snap feature. That would be a big selling point for me.
- great processor. I don't play phone games a ton but my current phone turns into a toaster on an idle game and that's unacceptable. Would like to not worry about performance.
- USB C, think everything has this these days.
- dual speakers, I listen to things when cooking so good speakers are actually nice. All the casting that used to be so easy seems like it's gotten harder these days.
- if someone other than apple would offer the lidar camera setup they've got, or whatever allows them to get a good topographical scan that would be a big selling point.
Again, not really exhaustive, but I'd consider myself a pretty normal consumer with a larger budget and a recognition that I use my phone more than any other device in my life so I might as well make it good.
Fair phone is compelling, especially compared to getting an expensive folding phone, but I'm not sold yet. You guys have definitely given me something to think about though as my screen continues to dim.
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It's comments like this that make me worried about literacy rates and reading comprehension.
I want to replace my Pixel with a cutting edge phone that is user friendly, repairable, highly private, has all the features I like, and whose company is owned by its workers and not evil.
That phone doesn't exist.
So now we talk priorities. With Google looking to close down android, I want something more open than stock android. My options are very limited. Graphene only works on the pixel line and not even the newest pixels, which are very underwhelming, so that's not a great fit. LineageOS doesn't seem to support any new phones albeit I didn't cross reference every phone. The nothing phone, and every other competitor, seems lackluster as well.
So I've resigned to settling for any phone that's cutting edge. If this is going to hopefully be my last mega evil corpo phone, I've been flirting with going with multiple screens because I doubt in 3 years there will be a non-corpo folding phone option if the normal slabs are still struggling. Samsung only "comes to mind", and this might surprise or confound you, because we're commenting on a thread about a Samsung phone.
If anyone has better recommendations for a last corpo phone out now or on the horizon, I'm all ears. And if someone wants to try and convince me there's a great phone out there that can run a non-stock OS and still be a largely enjoyable experience I'm also ready to be wow'ed. But I've looked around a bit and failed to find anything.
So I've resigned to settling for any phone that's cutting edge.
If you drop the "cutting edge" condition instead, you could grab a Fairphone, which ticks all the other checkboxes.
Unless you game on your phone, you won't notice a thing between modern high end and low end phones as long as they put enough RAM in.
Samsung is the opposite of everything you mentioned besides cutting edge.
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They could have also reread my original message. They could have also commented something meaningful even with the wrong initial reading.
They could have asked for clarification, additional context, or anything else useful.
Instead their comment was... Idk how I would describe it. An attempt to insult? An unhelpful observation?
Its the opposite of being an ally, of helping people break from their chains, to misread their position and then write something snarky. Idk, I think people who make online spaces exhausting or worse deserve a few more insults in their life. Especially if they're not being helpful.
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Considering everyone I know with a folding phone has had a fault with the folding part of it - I don't think its the best idea from a durability standpoint to add yet another folding part.
If one screen or fold point breaks, you're now left with two unusable (but perfectly functioning) screens. Seems like an expensive gimmick to me.
Mine grew a visible line at the foldy bit that you can see at an angle.
I like the phone though, just know what you're getting into.
From the moment I saw it, I knew what the problem would be, and surprise! That's the problem.
BTW, I'm a musician, not an engineer. If I saw that obvious issue, what is their fucking problem?
If I saw that obvious issue, what is their fucking problem?
The engineer's problem is that the marketing and sales department started running all of the companies two decades ago. So, they're constantly overruled.
The foldable phone are fine, yet expensive and not so widely used.
And who asked for it? They very well know that nobody will buy that.
Just get a tablet at this point.
If it didn't cost so much and the hinges and screens were as reliable as a phone without them, I'd buy it.
Having a big screen in the size of a normal phone would be great.
At the current prices and reliability though, the market is sure to be small.
Same here. I didn't understand why anyone would want a double thick (or now triple thick 🫨) phablet that folds out into a full tablet.
The razr I bought two years ago is the first phone that comfortably fits in my pocket in like a decade.
damn! I love my fold 5, but only cause the front screen is slim. not a fan of the standard screen size on the front of this one but a 10 inch tablet in my pocket is intriguing....
ill wait for the second or third generation to come out before I consider this
You want 2-3 phones instead of a folding phone. Light pocketable phone for actual mobile purposes. Can get a data only esim phone with voip to supplement voice/text phone, and have independent enabled data. independent charging. Backup when broken/lost phone. I suggest:
1-2 lightweight phones for mobility.
1 large possibly rugged phone for video or rugged adventures. Can be steam deck on a stand that is better setup as a dashboard. email + web tickers/discord. samsung and other phones also have a "desktop multiwindow mode"
3rd phones, can help with having 2 separate phones act as bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. Keep banking/secret stuff seperate/more secure during travel. Keep one in a locked tilt/swivel stand near bed most of the time. mod to alternate os.
2 or 3 phones is much more storage/ram and audio quality than including a tablet, with better portability options in both packing and daily use. It's also much less $, and can leapfrog upgrades.
Can't speak for the TriFold, but I easily get a full day out of my Fold 7, even with Battery Protection set to 85%. I usually end my day with a 40% charge, which is considerably better than my last phone (Fold 4). Easily over 1.5x more battery life.
That said, I miss the pre-Android/iOS days; back then I was charging my phone maybe once a week.
I don't need origami for a phone. Just bring back classic flip phones or stop. FFS
Yeah, even as a foldable enthusiast, I see no reason for this to exist. A second hinge is just another failure point.
Wake me up when the first cylindrical, rollable phone comes out. Until then, I'm happy with my Fold 7.
Imagine the possibilities!
- Heated camping mattress
- Sausage roll warmer
- Car windscreen defroster
This would be the coolest shit ever if these phones didn't have a reputation for breaking so easily. I had the Z Fold 4 and after I left it partially folded for about 30 mins in my car while I was driving, something went wrong with the hinge and it could no longer open fully flat. Unacceptable for a device at that price range.
I want us to go back when it comes to smartphones, not forward. Bring back the holy trinity of removable battery, headphone jack, and SD card slot.
Yawn. Samsung can have more money and attention from me when theyhave something i want. Give it 5 years.
A few ideas: A) projector! They are like $99 on Amazon now, put in phone. B) and app that pairs w Google glasses to count calories and nutrition of everything I eat all day. C) faraday cage setting D) no bloatware C) idk, im content... anyone else have ideas?
An flashlight concentrates it's light in a small cone, a projector must spread it over a larger area, while still being brighter than the ambient light if you want to use it as a projector. Take a guess why any good projectors cost more and use expensive hardware, instead of "hurr durr let's just juse a 10 cents flashlight LED!1!!"
There are YouTube channels who review cheap temu tech, and some of them also did cheap projectors, with the expected results.
The outside display is just about 21:9 and internal about 4:3, sounds like it's an ultimate retro gaming handheld. Lack of SD card support is a pain though
For folds, I like the old flip phone style flips better. The only puzzling thing with those ones are why keep the front facing camera when the rear cameras have a display on that half on the phone. The outer display on this is 6.5". It's not a compromise in size at all like the flips/razrs. Internal screen shouldn't have a selfie camera either
I know a person who has some Samsung foldable phone that is as of right now (2025.12.03) about a year old. According to them, everything was fine since February when the phone was bought. But last week we got below 0C weather, so the fold line on the screen got layers separated.
Z Fold 7 is 2000 euro. They might have Z Fold 6, I am not sure. Regardless, that is way too expensive of a phone to breaks under a mildly cold weather.
It's really not. The screen is 4k OLED. It's a perfect display. The tech had one tiny downside when it first launched which wasn't the crease was relatively noticeable, that's a long since fixed issue.
The only people who think folding phones are a gimmick are people who have never had them. Or and apple users who want one but can't get over the fact that Apple doesn't make them.
Who wouldn't want a phone that can change size on demand. How is that not a useful feature? Sci-fi is full of transparent screens which are objectively terrible, but folding is useful.
After reading through the comments and seeing the majority of people are commenting negatively but have never had a folding phone. i feel like i should chime in.
I have owns a fold 3 a fold 6 and now a fold 7, my wife has a fold 5 and we have never had one fail on us. No broken screens, no scratches or bugs. There are also several people where i work who have had at least 2 generations of these phones and also have never had issues.
I know these things break, but so does any phone. Phones breaking tend to be a user problem and not a hardware one. If you dont handle with care then you are the problem.
In fact i have only ever broken 1 phone in my 20+ years of using them and it was entirely my fault. I put it on a book on a table, then without thinking i lifted the book and it slid off and landed in a bucket of water. Pixel 1 not waterproof. My bad.
I guess i just think people are quick to judge these phones without ever having used one and i think thats so short sighted.
I had my fold 3 for 4 years and my wife used it to get a feel for them after me and she very quickly got a 5. I had some of the paint chip off in places after a few years and one time that i got scared by something and jumped a bit and threw it out of my hand to the ground with the inner screen open (only cosmetic damage to the body) it survived a lot. A hell of a lot of engineering went into the hinge so its pretty much the strongest part of the phone. Jerryrigeverything on youtube has tried to snap these phones and they are very strong and so far have not broken in one of his tests.
Any phone can break, but i say if you care for your phone it should last. The 3 onwards have been really solid phones and the fears around them, to me, seem made up.
Pretty soon Samsung is going to release a foldable that can become an imax screen. You just need to unfold it 1000 times, and you're set. It also needs to be unfolded 4 times to be able to answer a call, or use the 1.2 back screen to do that.
When in doubt, just add more fold.
Also AI will fake all your pictures and you can gloat that it’s “better.” Fuck Samsung.
Before you downvote, consider this shit.
Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon
A Reddit post has revealed just how much post-processing the Galaxy S23’s camera applies when it detects it’s taking a photo of the Moon, inserting extra detail that isn’t present in reality.James Vincent (The Verge)
This means that there is a wrong way to fold the phone, but the phone has automatic vibrating and visual alerts to keep you from doing that
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Lemme know when they are able to fold a phone 13 times and break the record.
I do love the idea of having a 10" tablet that fits into my pocket.
I'm still waiting for the tech to mature more, come down in price, and increase in durability though.
China’s $1 flu shots show price squeeze for vaccine makers
China’s $1 flu shots show price squeeze for vaccine makers
Once riding high on the Covid-19 boom, China’s vaccine industry now faces a reckoning. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
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Still not a "big" one...
I think it was late 1800s America got hit by one that allowed unpowered telegrams to be sent nationwide for like, a while. If we got one that strong in the modern era, it would blow every single electric transformer on that entire hemisphere. Not just hit the safety and cut out, like actually explode and be permanently destroyed.
Those things are already difficult to produce for multiple reasons, and losing them on that scale would take over a decade to recover. And it would obviously happen in the wealthiest places first, and global demand would mean other places can't afford to replace any from normal breakage, along with driving up the price of a lot of materials used for other electronics.
We won't see it coming either. Like, the article says we're predicting more the next few days, but that's because these are always happening, and when there's one big one, there's likely to be other big ones.
It's one of those things you can't unlearn once you realize we're at a constant risk of something that would basically ruin society. At least it's a coin flip if it hits anywhere specific when it happens. Because eventually it will happen
Thanks.
Lasted about two hours, batteries were frying them so they took out the batteries trying to shut them off, but they just kept working due to ambient current on the lines.
It also brought up how much more random it is, it's not like a hand grenade that expands equally. It's more like someone threw a bunch of loose bottle rockets in a camp fire. They're all going to go off, but the chances of hitting one specific spot is low. Obviously we're all spinning and hurtling thru space too, so it truly is just random fucking chance.
i searched this topic a little bit to see what could be the worst consequences at ground level and the worst I found
((much smaller than what was described by another user @givesomefucks here)) was this :
::: spoiler spoiler
Ground-induced electric fields
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_we…
Magnetic storm activity can induce geoelectric fields in the Earth's conducting lithosphere.[26] Corresponding voltage differentials can find their way into electric power grids through ground connections, driving uncontrolled electric currents that interfere with grid operation, damage transformers, trip protective relays, and sometimes cause blackouts.[27] This complicated chain of causes and effects was demonstrated during the magnetic storm of March 1989,[28] which caused the complete collapse of the Hydro-Québec electric-power grid in Canada, temporarily leaving nine million people without electricity. The possible occurrence of an even more intense storm[29] led to operational standards intended to mitigate induction-hazard risks, while reinsurance companies commissioned revised risk assessments.
[30]:::
Here, the collapse of the power grid was not caused by terribly energetic phenomena(s) but rather, lack of oversight about ground fault protection devices ... that has been corrected since then.
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Yay! More Auroras!
Fuck, I love the sun. I hope it kills us all.
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Deloitte allegedly cited AI-generated research in a million-dollar report for a Canadian provincial government
Deloitte allegedly cited AI-generated research in a million-dollar report for a Canadian provincial government
In a healthcare report aimed to address a nurse and doctor shortage, Deloitte cited several fake studies with real researchers’ names attached.Nino Paoli (Fortune)
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But they will kick back to me 30% of a fat contract. And when things go south I will blame Deloitte. So why would I change my highly lucrative for me behavior?
I won't.
Yeah fuck these guys wasting our money on this hot garbage.
""The revelation comes on the heels of news last month that Deloitte leveraged AI in a $290,000 report published in July to help the Australian government crack down on welfare. But a researcher flagged hallucinations in the 237-page study, which included references to nonexistent academic research papers and a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment.
In the revised study, which was quietly uploaded to the Australian government’s website, the consulting firm admitted it had used the generative AI language system Azure OpenAI to help create the report.""
Yeah fuck these guys wasting our money on this hot garbage.
It's ok, we'll just cut cancer research, again.
Whew.
The thing about these incidents that I find most interesting is that they basically reveal a widely held suspicion among many people that these government contractors are over-crexentialed bullshit artists.
This just shows what we've all suspected: they've been cutting corners, claiming underserved authority, and making up shit for years. But now some folks are checking and reporting on it.
I hope we demand a refund and fire them.
What a waste of money, I hate these companies and I hate that our government keeps using them.
I get they’re all scared of fixed costs but at this point how much have we wasted on these companies? They could have hired 7-10 full time employees at $80-$100k for a year for the cost of this one report. They could have hired 4-6 highly qualified professionals for that cost. They could have hired some really good term employees.
How many reports like this are we wasting resources on?
Newfoundland and Labrador is the province involved.
Had to read far too deep into the poorly written article to find that important bit of context.
ipv6now.com.au/primers/IPv6Rea…
Basically, Legacy IP (v4) is a dead end. Under the original allocation scheme, it should have ran out in the early 1990s. But the Internet explosion meant TCP/IP(v4) was locked in, and so NAT was introduced to stave off address exhaustion. But that caused huge problems to this day, like mismanagement of firewalls and the need to do port-forwarding. It also broke end-to-end connectivity, which requires additional workarounds like STUN/TURN that continue to plague gamers and video conferencing software.
And because of that scarcity, it's become a land grab where rich companies and countries hoard the limited addresses in circulation, creating haves (North America, Europe) and have-nots (Africa, China, India).
The want for v6 is technical, moral, and even economical: one cannot escape Big Tech or American hegemony while still having to buy IPv4 space on the open market. Czechia and Vietnam are case studies in pushing for all-IPv6, to bolster their domestic technological familiarity and to escape the broad problems with Business As Usual.
Accordingly, there are now three classes of Internet users: v4-only, dual-v4-and-v6, and v6-only. Surprisingly, v6-only is very common now on mobile networks for countries that never had many v4 addresses. And it's an interop requirement for all Apple apps to function correctly in a v6-only environment. At a minimum, everyone should have access to dual-stack IP networks, so they can reach services that might be v4-only or v6-only.
In due course, the unstoppable march of time will leave v4-only users in the past.
SIDN - Het bedrijf achter .nl
In 8 years' time, Czech government websites won't be accessible using IPv4. From then on, people without IPv6 won't be able to reach the nation's IPv6-only sites. No absolute requirement to use IPv6 yet exists in NL.SIDN
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I'm not an expert, so somebody may be able to give better responses.
It looks like IPv6 addresses have access to all 65,000 ports, whereas IPv4 addresses need to 'forward' them. I don't know about other VPNs, but the one I'm using only allows forwarding 1 port at a time and I don't get to choose it.
With IPv6, I hope to be able to have multiple ports open to make it easier to host multiple services.
Port forwarding is a function of NAT. It’s only needed because there aren’t enough ipv4 addresses for every device, so in most networks a lot of devices share a single ip and specific ports are forwarded to specific internal hosts
IPv6 has a large enough address space that this isn’t needed. You can still do it if you want. But mostly you just need a firewall without any NAT.
There’s more to it than this but you should get the idea.
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You responded to a question with an incorrect answer. I was correcting that.
VPNs shouldn’t need to forward any ports when using ipv6. They can provide an entire ipv6 subnet to you.
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The main benenfit is not having to deal with NAT. You get your own address and your traffic is not conflated with other people's.
You also get privacy extensions. Your device generates a temporary address for making outgoing connections. The address has no listening sockets. This means that you cannot get portscanned by every website you visit.
You don't need to try and figure out your external IP address. There's no differentiation between internal/external addresses. They're all global, as the internet was intended.
You can throw as many IP addresses on an interface as you want. If you want to run two web servers from one machine, you can have multiple addresses with different services on port 443.
You might also try asking on !ipv6@lemmy.world .
Be advised that even if a VPN offers IPv6, they may not necessarily offer it sensibly. For example, some might only give you a single address (aka a routed /128). That might work for basic web fetching but it's wholly inadequate if you wanted the VPN to also give addresses to any VMs, or if you want each outbound connection to use a unique IP. And that's a fair ask, because a normal v6 network can usually do that, even though a typical Legacy IP network can't.
Some VPNs will offer you a /64 subnet, but their software might not check if your SLAAC-assigned address is leaking your physical MAC address. Your OS should have privacy-extensions enabled to prevent this, but good VPN software should explicitly check for that. Not all software does.
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From what I've read, he primary concern with VPNs that do not support IPv6 is leakage. If a user’s device tries to access an IPv6 resource while connected to a VPN that only routes IPv4 traffic, the IPv6 packets can escape the VPN tunnel. This exposes the user's real IP address to external servers, undermining the privacy that the VPN is supposed to provide. Some servers have moved to strictly IPv6. Some servers only accept IPv4.
Some of you networking gods set me straight.
Reddit was the playground for ai slop long before commercial LLMs existed. Subredditsimulator was like 2014 or 2015 and people were fucking with markov chains and other shit that dated back to like the 90s or even 70s but that also had some people experimenting with rudimentary neural networks, though obviously none with the computing power of shit like chatgpt or gemini. And obviously that whole experiment was inspired in part by the fact that botted comments were becoming increasingly common and obvious on reddit in the years leading to it, so why not make a subreddit where everyone participating is a bot?
There’s no proof but openai researchers may have been fucking around on that sub. There was a fairly drastic increase in quality of posts in that sub around the time openai would’ve been making gpt1 (2018ish) and then they began aggressively scraping the entirety of reddit, quora, etc for content. Could just be a coincidence though and they’ll never confirm it even if it’s true bc redditors will flip shit
Technology reshared this.
Right now I don't have a reddit account and I just lurk there, but if I really wanted to talk about, say, a specific TV show I like, or a Movie, or Anime, or a Book... that would not exist on the fediverse. It's either just Reddit or maybe Discord.
If I wanna talk about stuff from a non-white perspective, the best place I'd really find my people outside the great firewall is Reddit.
I mean I the amount of Cantonese-speakers on Lemmy is like... single-digits
but there are nearly no niche non-tech communities here.
And if they do exist, there are 4 subscribers and zero posts in the last 6 months.
I use redlib to lurk.
I find the drama subs like /r/AITAH entertaining. I know its all fake, but the groupthink responses are intriguing.
For all the criticism of AI, this is the one that’s massively overstated.
On my PC, the task energy of a casual diffusion attempt (let’s say a dozen+ images in few batches) on a Flux-tier model is 300W * 240 seconds.
That’s 54 kilojoules.
…That’s less than microwaving leftovers, or a few folks browsing this Lemmy thread on laptops.
And cloud models like Nano Banana are more efficient than that, batching the heck out of generations on wider, more modern hardware, and more modern architectures, than my 3090 from 2020.
Look. There are a million reasons corporate AI is crap.
But its power consumption is a meme perpetuated by tech bros who want to convince the world scaling infinitely is the only way to advance it. That is a lie to get them money. And it is not the way research is headed.
Yes they are building too many data centers, and yes some in awful places, but that's part of the con. They don’t really need that, and making a few images is not burning someone’s water away.
you should feel ashamed but not for resembling an AI...
there is no reason to ever use a semicolon
And fuck his weird teeth.
That one always rung a big hollow to me because of the timeframe of it. At the time he was made a mod there, invites didn't exist. Folks could just be added to subs- it was actually a method for trolling. At the time, I could add Steve to r/SteveLovesDiddlingKids, for example, and he'd have no say in it. They changed it to an invite system after a subreddit called r/CrabBucket heavily abused it to force folks to stay.
That said, one can quite readily say that spez implicitly supported the jailbait subreddit when he left it up for several years knowingly (Including it being a subheader for reddit on google searches, and it getting nominated for subreddit of the year along with several votes for it.) and only got rid of it when Anderson Cooper did a report on CNN about it.
a subreddit called r/CrabBucket heavily abused it to force folks to stay.
That's absolutely hilarious.
spez implicitly supported the jailbait subreddit when he left it up for several years
spez did not work at reddit between 2009 and 2015.
I don't especially want to be in the position of defending either spez or r/jailbait, but I was on Reddit at the time and I do think I should explain how 2008 was a different time on the web.
There had been a number of attempts to censor and age-gate the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s. People involved in creating internet tech and building its culture were almost universally against anything that even smelled like censorship. Much of the early userbase migrated from Digg in response to Digg censoring a leaked DRM key. The only sitewide rule on Reddit was "don't break Reddit".
When r/jailbait finally did get banned in 2011 and Reddit's first content policy was imposed, that decision was unpopular among Redditors even though most thought sexualizing young teenagers was disgusting. It signaled a change to what Reddit was, and people rightly feared that it would lead to significantly more restrictions. Now I have to enforce a rule on r/flashlight that people can't sell flashlights designed to be attached to guns, and I don't want to make or enforce such a rule.
one of the most human spaces left on the internet
Journalism once again demonstrating they are about 10-15 years behind on the times. Did they forget reddit completely broke back in 2016 when the_donald left the place in a permanent troll state.
I'm not going to read the article on account of time right now but I'm guessing it's written as if reddit was invented yesterday and the prior 20 years of reddit history is didn't happen.
It hasn't been human since the early 2010s. Reddit was botted to death long before LLMs.
Yes it did. Making up variation of the same story in order to farm upvotes used to be done by humans.
But the strategy of throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks has now been industrialized with AI, because the machine can produce tons of cheaper, faster, smellier shit.
Reddit and generally socials are basically the perfect application for AI. Unreliable results are not a bug but a feature. You have thousands of humans helpfully training it for free by up or downvoting the result. And the AI companies get a machine trained to persuade large groups of people of any made-up story.
Reddit was one of the most human places on the Internet, until King Steven the Turd decided that it's human interactions were a valuable resource that he could sell.
Now, it's all just bots talking to bots to learn how to sound human.
peppering my comments with inane remarks to draw a reaction
They're here, too.
I occasionally see comments to the effect of, "Oh, really? Can you tell me more about that?" That seem pretty likely to just be bots trying to generate data on certain topics for AI training. Thankfully, most people seem to ignore them.
I occasionally see comments to the effect of, "Oh, really? Can you tell me more about that?"
Fuck. Am I a bot?
Repost bots should be built in to Reddit tbh
Just take whatever was the top 5 a year ago and repost it at the same time
Karma guaranteed
Lately there's been someone chopping chives every day and posting a photo of the result.
There was a bit of a drama when someone noticed that the same photo was reused from a couple of weeks back.
The poster said they didnt have time to do it that day but wanted to keep the streak so they just re-posted an old one hoping no one would notice.
It was just such an amazing and engaging sequence of events and I feel fulfilled having been able to follow this roller coaster of emotion /s.
We can absolutely blame AI for everything. The reason AI took over Reddit is because Reddit fired their human moderators in favour of AI moderation. It’s basically a vicious circle of bots learning how to avoid being banned, and auto moderation learning how they’re avoiding being banned…repeat.
…the obvious problem being that bots are valuable to Reddit because they increase real engagement…if there weren’t bots, Reddit would make its own bots to do basically the same thing. Reddit only wants to restrict bots to a certain proportion of the population, rather than eliminate them.
Letting gallowboob "moderate" the basically the whole front page was an insane decision. Some of those guys were selling product placement.
The centralization of power to few mods was always a problem, but smaller communities got by.
The huge quality drop came when Spez felt he missed the IPO wave around 2018 and decided to growth hack the site. Then they finally killed most of them too with the API drama.
Popular and moving away from hot to best was also bad. They horribly failed to discipline abuse from the_donald for years...
New reddit is still not even usable from a phone. It crashes frequently and i swaer to God it only shows like 8 posts and just fucking loops through them (how have thry not noticed this, I only check 4 subreddits and its unbearable).
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Oh, I've looked back. It's hard not to rubberneck at such a horrendous train wreck. Especially when I was just a passenger on that very train.
I left reddit during the great API massacre as well, then I went back to only be taken out by the great Trump massacre of '24 where they banned a huge chuck of the community that had any anti-trump sentiments in their profile history...because Trump threatened them.
Now I have been banned 6 more times, just by AI detecting language it doesn't like and its catalogue of dislike only continues to grow.
They pretend that humans are reviewing ban appeals, it is clear that they are not. The AI is banning more people than they could possibly keep up with. Now, more often than not, there is no reply to ban appeals whatsoever.
Spez is a spineless coward who threw the reddit community overboard a long time ago and continues to do so whenever it suits him. Reddit exists only to shit money for him now.
It has been left twisted and corrupted in favor of the conquest for money and controlling public opinion
I'll be back to fight the good fight just as soon as I can create a new account and switch VPNs
Yeah, after reading the article, it was like, oh, so the same fake stories but actually grammar corrected?
Also, most people who sre like "i have this tells tl detect AI" would not know at all whether something is AI or not lol
This is key.
If there weren’t bots…Reddit would make its own bots. Reddit dances a fine line of allowing the population to be a certain proportion of bots because they increase real engagement by picking fights with its real users, as well as creating never-ending “content” for people to read and vote on. They only ban bots when real users notice they are bots - which is less and less frequently - even though Reddit has the tools and information to ban them long before that point.
Reddit could easy eliminate almost all of them, but that would be expensive and they’d lose real users as a result.
Exactly. This is like blaming rats and cockroaches for dirty town.
No, they won't be there (as much) in a cleaner town.
Yeah, I've noticed an uptic of AI generated content being posted outside the AI circle jerk subreddits. Places like the AoE4 and Bionicle subreddits have had quite a number of AI posts already.
Theyve become too courageous, with others going out of the way to defend the use of generative AI with weak arguments like "but cars also steal jobs".
The one subreddit that I've seen have a healthy response against AI generated content is the Bionicle subreddit. Doesn't really surprise me as the Bionicle community is full of creatives.
"stealing jobs" is a weak argument itself, that can always happen with new technology.
The real argument is that people create something uncreative and unthoughtful and therefore slop. AI doesnt make uncreative people creative.
Yeah AI had nothing to do with it. Ruined waaay before AI took hold. That's why I left.
The UI was becoming unusable, the policies were unreasonable, the greed got to them, etc, etc.
Let’s be real…Reddit itself is moderated by AI.
People who moderate subs should be called “hall monitors” or something. It’s rare to find moderators who are actually moderating with impartiality, rather that being petty and taking sides. They also have tools to exploit the Reddit auto-mod system.
It was enshitified ages ago.
There's no point in taking moderation seriously. It's a volunteer position and the tools to handle slop aren't there.
I hear they're bringing back digg.
I also hear it's a former Reddit C-suite that's bringing it back, so it'll probably be more of the same.
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Nazi sympathizing has already ruined Reddit.
That shithole has been sanitized for advertisers, which means banning anyone who talks about resisting the fascist slide America is currently in but allows /r/conservative to exist for foreign actors to spread misinformation from.
Fuck Reddit, fuck Spez, those Nazi fucks will get what’s coming to them if we’re lucky.
After a teddy bear talked about kink, AI watchdogs are warning parents against smart toys
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As a theoretical avenue of thought, I'm not sure there's much harm for 11-17 year olds to talk to "smart" toys with no internet connectivity (at all, in principle, no fucking way) about that stuff. Not much different from Elisa. They are seeking and finding pretty explicit things on the Internet, with their peers, in media. It's not a question of whether they should, it's a fact that they predominantly do.
I live in a big city, but I've been to a smaller town nearby a couple of years ago, sitting on a bench after one LARP event and listening to a bunch of teens (13-15 years old) discussing everyone they were seeing passing by, and, eh, it was pretty clear they don't just discuss sex. It's funny to remember some specific phrases, but it was pretty depressing to sit there then, because when they weren't talking about sex, they were talking about SCP and footy, and all the time I was thinking of a polite excuse to leave, until I just left. Made a friend, though.
You're assuming that whatever they're talking to is capable of giving only good advice with awareness and consideration of their living situation.
Sex education is beneficial if done well, but there is zero evidence suggesting AI can do anything well.
$16.7bn global smart-toy market
HOLY FUCK, I always though that the toy market was cheaper, since I mean, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT TOYS, I didn't even know that SO many people still pay for toys.
I didn't even know that SO many people still pay for toys.
There's not many alternatives for kids
I have a kid but he's at the stage where the greatest level of entertainment can be derived by sticking things up his nose.
I won't get him smart anything as a toy.
Anyone who works in IT wouldn't want that, like most cyber security professionals everything in my house is either analogue (door locks, fire alarm) or not internet connected, I have a smart TV but it's not connected to the internet and if I want to watch Netflix I just hook it up to the PS5 which basically is a media streaming service.
Veronica Explains why she doesn't stream (from Netflix etc) #algorithmic_helplessness_sucks
I'm one of those hipsters who doesn't use streaming services.I did, a while ago, but I quit using them because the experience is kind of awful, and I'm happier now for it. I collect physical media and watch it using Jellyfin on my Linux-based home theater PC, and I'm completely satisfied with how it works.
I'm making this video because I am really troubled by algorithmic helplessness, and I feel like corporate-centralized streaming media makes that worse. Maybe this video will encourage someone else to cut the cord and rediscover an appreciation for owning your media and being choosy about what to "watch next". Or maybe I'm just wasting time. Who knows? I suppose, you know, you're reading this description, right?
If you read the description, say "algorithmic helplessness sucks" in the comments. That'll make me feel better.
I stream nothing, and I am happy.
I'm one of those hipsters who doesn't use streaming services.I did, a while ago, but I quit using them because the experience is kind of awful, and I'm happier now for it. I collect physical media and watch it using Jellyfin on my Linux-based home theater PC, and I'm completely satisfied with how it works.
I'm making this video because I am really troubled by algorithmic helplessness, and I feel like corporate-centralized streaming media makes that worse. Maybe this video will encourage someone else to cut the cord and rediscover an appreciation for owning your media and being choosy about what to "watch next". Or maybe I'm just wasting time. Who knows? I suppose, you know, you're reading this description, right?
If you read the description, say "algorithmic helplessness sucks" in the comments. That'll make me feel better.
Oh right, I need to tell you about the things I mentioned in the video.
Software:
- MakeMKV: makemkv.com/
- To support MakeMKV and get all the advanced features: makemkv.com/buy/
- That LibreDrive forum post on the MakeMKV website which is hard to find (contains list of LibreDrive compatible drives): forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewto…
- Handbrake: handbrake.fr/
- Asunder: littlesvr.ca/asunder/
- Jellyfin: jellyfin.org/
- Kodi: kodi.tv
- Finamp (via GitHub): github.com/jmshrv/finampHardware I mentioned - not sponsored and no affiliate links.
(These drives might not be currently available at Micro Center, but I'm providing these links as they're probably the most helpful if you want to find one yourself.)
- My LG portable Blu-Ray drive, a BP60NB10: microcenter.com/product/607144…
- And my internal Asus BW-16D1HT drive: microcenter.com/product/435513…
- FLIRC receiver (I don't remember if I bought it here but maybe): pishop.us/product/flirc-rpi-us…Other links of note:
- 13 minutes of videotaped footage of the Wii Netflix app:
- Video about smart TVs by @[url=https://indieweb.social/users/lonseidman]Lon Seidman / Lon.TV ☑️[/url] :
- My PeerTube (watch this video without ads or tracking): tinkerbetter.tube/c/veronicaex…
- My blog post about how I use Handbrake: vkc.sh/handbrake-2025/Lastly, links to support my very unsponsored videos:
- Patreon: patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
- Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
- Bandcamp: thestopbits.bandcamp.comChapters:
0:00 My motivation for ditching streaming
3:21 Physical media is awesome
4:05 Ripping media
5:59 Serving with Jellyfin
7:09 Bookstores and libraries are lit (get it?)
8:10 I don't want an algorithm programming us.The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin
The volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached.jellyfin.org
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The thing I hated about Netflix was the stress of knowing i was being watched with my viewing habits and that affected how they decided to cancel or continue shows.
Imagine being a customer at a restaurant and the chef is in the back watching you eat, saying things like:
"well, if he doesn't eat the whole thing in less than 10 minutes that means he probably hated it and won't continue to buy more burgers, so we should just remove it from the menu now and never serve that burger again."
Who the fuck wants to 'relax' and watch stuff when i know if I start watching something and stop after episode 1 because I liked it, realize my partner might also like it, and I wait 3 months to watch it together (not within their 30 day or whatever window), knowing that might contribute to Netflix canceling a show that I fucking liked in the first place!
SO RELAXING GUYS!
So no, I don't stream stuff anymore. I'm sick of paying for content that constantly gets canceled, and also experiencing stress while doing so.
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I mean... that IS how restaurants work. If people don't order the fish of the day then they buy fewer and fewer fishes until it is no longer a thing. Even the speed people eat DOES matter since restaraunts tend to be designed around each customer spending a certain amount of time dining. Too short and they will never order a dessert. Too long and they are costing you money while they nurse that coffee.
And similar happens with even buying blu-rays. If nobody bought Master and Commander in 4k then you can be sure that experiment would be over. Instead? That thing sold like toiler paper during COVID and we'll likely see more "prestige" releases with a huge dose of FOMO.
As for up fronts versus long tails? Guess what is motivating all those revivals "nobody asked for"?
Don't get me wrong. I vastly prefer to rip blu rays to my NAS and watch via plex. But the idea that you are somehow no longer part of the marketing cycle is just... wrong.
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I'm commenting on literally being watched though, so let's say you get up to go to the bathroom after your first bite the chef marks that as 'didn't like his burger' because you took a bite (watched 1 episode) and didn't continue to binge eat the burger (binge the whole season by the end of the month), BAM because you had a life event you couldn't control, you now hate the burger and hate the show.
This is not a fun way to consume anything.
I mean... depending on how new an item is and what "tier" the restaurant is? They are 100% watching for stuff like that and probably making a note that you got up after eating only a quarter of your burger. Because if the burger were good, you would want to finish it. Is it too sloppy? Did you feel the need to wash your hands mid bite? Did it make you nauseous?
Same with taking out your phone. Does it look like you are telling a friend what a great burger you had? Or are you feeling bloated and trying to digest a bit before you eat more?
This level of market analysis is not at all new. Streaming services just have a much easier time automating it but... give it time until startups are selling cameras to monitor the dining area and automate analytics based on who ordered what and did what.
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Or you know, don't? And just live your life.
Because it only matters at an aggregate level. The restaurant won't change anything for one customer.
That was my polite way of ending the conversation, I disagreed with the person, but I got tired of arguing about the metaphore and burgers, etc with someone who was clearly not gonna let this go.
"I don't like being watched while consuming anything, really."
"Yeah, but bro, you're too stupid to realize why they're doing it, let me tell you why!"
Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data. And many of them are specifically designed to fulfill a role that industry standard tools aren't (or are too expensive for) and... guess where the data on that comes from?
The reality is that you cannot escape consumerism in the modern world. You can pretend you are but... you aren't. What you CAN do is focus on supporting tools and media that you want/approve of and making your own life better as a result.
And a big chunk of that involves actually thinking through consequences.
The reality is that you cannot escape consumerism in the modern world.
Didn't downvote you but, I guess what I was leaning heavily on was 'striving to be as self sufficient as humanly possible'. Sure, even though I grow my own food, garden crops, beef, chickens, goats, et al, I still have to buy things. I didn't mean it like I had transcended commercial consuming. But, do I really need a iPhone 17 pro max as much as AT&T says I do? Do I really need the cutting edge computer when the 14 year old one I built serves me just fine for what I do? That kind of stuff that people just seem to be compelled to purchase.
Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data.
I feel it is important to make a distinction here, though:
GitHub, the for-profit, non-FOSS, Microsoft-owned platform keeps track of the ‘stars of a repo’, not the open-source self-host projects themselves. Somebody hosts their repo forge on Codeberg, sr.ht, their own infrastructure or even GitLab? There’s generally very little to no algorithmic number-crunching involved. Same for MR/PRs.
Additionally - from my knowledge - very few fully FOSS programs have extensive usage/install telemetry, and even fewer opt-out versions. Tracking which couldn’t be disabled I’ve essentially never heard of in that space, because every time someone does go in that direction the public reaction is usually very strong (see e.g. Audacity).
That is a distinction without difference. It doesn't matter what mechanism is used to collect those metrics. The fact is they are there
And, at a glance: Forgejo/Codeberg definitely has stars and watches and fork tracking as well
Which is all fundamentally the supply and demand aspects of consumerism. It is the idea that people can identify what there is a high demand for and work to provide a supply. Which is not at all a bad thing and extends far beyond capitalism.
But it goes back to the previous poster's comments about how they don't like that netflix analyzes everything they do and greenlights projects based on that. That extends FAR beyond netflix and well into even open source projects.
Well, beyond organized legal avenues: national & local elections, writing your representatives, protesting, marching, I see no real recourse against a corrupted and compromised government, and my government is corrupted and compromised top to bottom, side to side. No one gets a pass. Not this administration, and none in the past. So, no matter who sits in the seat of authority, you will always feel the effects of a corrupt and compromised government.
It is not I you have to convince. It is millions of apathetic citizens, blown around by blustering, deceptive political winds, without compass or direction. Beyond not feeding the machine more than you have to while still scratching out a life on this planet like everyone else is, it is hard to make inroads that stick. This machine turns slowly. You see, there are still a majority of people in my country that are comfortable. Comfortable people do not illicit change....uncomfortable people do, but here is no change without pain. Pain is something that the citizens in my country are unwilling to put up with to a better goal. They do not act with the long term in mind. Their future is tied to once every 4 years, never contemplating that the legislation passed today, will be with us for generations, if not longer.
What's your take on scrobble services?
I don't like that one monopoly company gets all the data and abuses the system with it even further.
exactly this. i say PIR - Private Information Retrieval
offline everything, no middlehands
condition "the industry" as these are called to change the RND departement - live without dependency on fuckers
Side note, the restaurant analogy is exactly why I hate the seemingly American style of service where the waiter asks how the food is halfway through.
I guess that's a good analogy for how creepy surveillance capitalism is, it's like a waiter judging and recording your every move and reaction throughout the entire meal.
American style of service where the waiter asks how the food is halfway through
So that's what's going on! I was wondering why people are doing that everywhere I eat out all of a sudden. Bloody annoying. Me with a mouth full of food having to force out a "yhh shh rlly gwwd tnnk yww".
Gtfoutahurr
Not by reading pitchfork or rolling stone. Those are only for people who hate music.
Back in the aughts I would find bands because they were an opener for another band I was seeing.
I saw Joshua Ray Walker open for Marcus King and didn't even like his show but looked him up and found his recorded work to be incredible, THEN he found out he had cancer and that was part of why the live show was weak, nothing to do with his music, and says he is recovering now, but I felt so uncharitable thinking the show sucked when he was dealing with something so awful.
But anyway - I do use streaming but like you find bands other ways, opening acts, radio, sometimes Brooklyn Vegan, that site posts about bands I've never heard of, I listen and find stuff I like (and a lot I don't).
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but I remember finding the songs for mixtapes on… the radio
Back in the day, disk jockies would announce 'Alright, get your cassettes out, we're going to play the entire Led Zep - Kashmir LP, usually late at night.
But yeah. Crazy to think how quickly things changed.
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Music-Map - Find Similar Music
Music-Map is the similar music finder that helps you find similar bands and artists to the ones you love.www.music-map.com
NPR's tiny desk
asking your friends and aquantances
listening to dj sets
rutracker
I miss the days of people having their own bespoke collection of their favorite movies and shows. Everything is homogenized now. At least when I pirate, I'm still building my own personal media library. And I never have to worry about the show I like being removed later.
But I'm not gonna lie. The quality drop off in content caused by streaming services I think is a bigger issue
Netflix activity tries to make content that's not actually good enough to watch without browsing a phone. Second screen content, they call it. And I guarantee someone in a finance role realized they could make way more by doing just enough to keep people, rather than try to actively create amazing content, because it's soo much cheaper to not pay for good writers, or good set designers or actors when you could just find someone who's good enough. I think it's because the money people spend is recurring, linked to the service as a whole, and not linked to the individual work.. users have to vote by watching now, and some of the best stuff I've ever seen is also some of the least watched.
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I miss the days of people having their own bespoke collection of their favorite movies and shows
I don't miss the shelves to house all of it tho. Now, I have quite a collection of audio from my days of internet radio, that I ripped to flac a long time ago All of it sets on my shelf as a NAS.
Everything is homogenized now
I'm interested to know what you mean by this, because if anything, I've heard the older generations reminisce about ye olde monoculture when there was only a handful of good shows on a handful of television channels, and everyone would tune in weekly to watch and then talk about the next day around the water cooler. I feel like streaming has led to things being more fragmented, both because you need to be subscribed to the one service that carries the show and because there's so many more shows being made.
I’ve heard the older generations reminisce about ye olde monoculture
We old folks most often reminisce through very dark, rose colored glasses which often leave out important negative features of days past.
I feel like streaming has led to things being more fragmented, both because you need to be subscribed to the one service that carries the show and because there’s so many more shows being made.
I'm not who you were originally replying to, but I think two seemingly contradictory things can be true at once.
Yes, there is definitely more content nowadays, and less people watching the same things at the same time because of all of the variety of services and content and platforms, etc.
But that content tends to still be homogenous. The settings and costumes of the shows might be different, but most content cannot pass, for instance, the bechdel test.
For all of the emphasis on "eradicating woke" in the last few years, there really isn't a whole lot of actual diversity in most media. I could probably only name a single show that expresses, for instance, communist ideas, and I think it was cancelled in recent years alongside scores of lgbtq characters in shows.
Plotlines are typical, production values are stepped up but there's a large amount of, for instance, ideological consistency among all media produced nowadays.
If you're looking for a variety of typical genre shows, yes, you're spoiled for choice. But when you're looking for something that breaks the mold even slightly there are really only a handful of things from which to choose.
And that's leaving out how much derivative media exists. Vince Gilligan in recent interviews even lamented how he was one of only a few people that could get a new show with a new concept even started in the industry. Many shows are set in "universes" that are decades old. A lot of "new" movies are reboots or sequels of old movies.
There's a thread of choiceless variety that used to apply mainly to things like groceries that has now infected much of media as well. Whole political movements now push to eradicate the little diversity (ideological and character identity based) that exists.
All of this leaves out what happened to music btw, which is becoming so algorithm-driven that it's hard for those using streaming services to even tell if it was produced by a person.
I'll just leave this here as well:
nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-i…
Edit: I realized after a while that the easiest way to summarize the homogeneity you see in modern media is that it is supply-side oriented. Shows, movies, and music are made (or not) primarily based upon how easily the corporate marketing apparatuses think they can shove it down the public's throat.
Why Is Everything So Ugly? | The Editors
Dodging huge grilles we walk on, pulled by ugliness toward a gentrified retail strip. Here the violence of the new ugliness comes more fully into focus. The ruling class seized cities and chose to turn them into . . . this?n+1
I'm old enough to remember when this was a thing. TV didn't have a remote, 3 main channels. That era.
The thing that hasn't changed is people wanting to talk about their favorite media. What has is the arena. I don't know irl people watching what I watch. So I end up talking with other fans on Discord or watching youtubers geek out like I am.
The trick is not falling for parasocial relationships with these people gathered around the virtual water cooler.
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Bread on Penguins
I make stuff. Bread (me), on penguins (linux). If you read this, make a comment about a real-life penguin to confuse people :^) also, the only accounts I have are the ones linked: bandcamp, github, & patreon. anything else is not me.YouTube
I'm all for this, but acquiring the media outside of streaming services in the first place is difficult, likely by design. There's no GOG for movies and TV; there's not even a Steam. My wife is basically permanently subscribed to Peacock because she loves Law and Order: SVU, to the point that she basically has the whole series on loop while she knits. I started looking this time last year into how to self-host all that, but I didn't even get to the point of finding out what Jellyfin is before I realized that it was impossible to legally acquire all the seasons on Blu Ray or even DVD. They want me to either subscribe to Peacock or buy a "digital copy", which is just rental streaming by another name. I'm not a skilled enough pirate to know that my ISP isn't going to mind my activity, and being a skilled pirate isn't even something I'm interested in being. Plus, my past experiences with piracy is that beggars can't be choosers, and the bit rate could be awful, or it would have huge watermarks from whatever Canadian channel the pirate recorded from, and that's not a great experience when it's supposed to be a gift anyway.
Unlike the video author, I'm not even bothered by algorithmic recommendations for media. I actually like it. The main reason I want to self host my media is because I don't watch so much of it that a subscription price makes sense very often. If my wife and I are just watching the same couple of things over and over again, why do I need a buffet of content I'm not going to watch at monthly subscription prices?
yeah okay well your watchparties are increasingly going to get worse until you too hit your threshold: such is the business.
the rest of the world uses a VPN like MullvadVPN and qBittorrent to "digitally back up media we've already bought". without ads, in better quality, without telemetry, without serfdom-subscriptions. you may like AI offloading your decisionmaking, but keep doing it and you will be codependent on authority for choosing anything in life. what do you want in a cozy moment away from work? it frustrates me to read people are too anxioys to begin to do otherwise and accept the way things are. that's a rant in return
have a nice day, i won't make this into a chain of replies.
GOG gave up at the beginning of 2025.
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This is why the seedbox SaaS market exists. Providing turn key hosted solutions, the only heavy lifting is the configuration which takes some reading to understand.
Check out the Servarr Wiki, Ombi, Syncthing as a starting point for media discovery and curration tooling.
So bizarrely the best experience is to self host and pirate. That's what you get when the entire entertainment industry is hostile to consumers.
When Netflix first became big, it was popular because it was a one-stop shop for almost all your content. It was like a big library of content in one place, you pay a reasonable monthly fee and it's all there. Piracy dipped as a result.
Now all the content is fragmented into numerous walled gardens you have to pay separate fees to access. People can only consume the same amount but now they have to pay 4 or 5 fees as the content is spread out.
Unsurprisingly piracy is booming again.
Threads alternative
Threads have been gaining traction recently and I’m actually enjoying the atmosphere there. However it’s clearly on a growth phase where they don’t show any ads or paid content. This obviously won’t last, so I’m wondering if there’s a platform which I could recommend?
I tried Mastodon a couple of years ago but it felt a bit too technical even for me, so I’m a bit hesitant to explore that. Thanks for any input and my apologies if this has been asked too many times already.
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Mastodon has definitely improved, but more to the point, there's really nothing else. Particularly not anything that anyone is using. Unless you widen your definition to include Bluesky.
Honestly, I'd say that Mastodon's perceived complexity in the past was kind of an illusion anyway. The problem of choosing a server was really made out to be this huge hurdle, when in fact it was no big deal at all; I was a member of several different servers over time, and I didn't feel like my experience was substantially different on any of them. Just join one that seems interesting or is near you or whatever, and you'll be fine. After that, it operates pretty much the same as Twitter did. Following people on other servers can be a little bit trickier on web, but in the app it's pretty seamless.
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The answer is definitely Mastodon. We just need to make it work for you, OP.
I wonder if this helps?
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FYI check out pixelfed. Here's a preview: pixelfed.social/web/explore
It's basically a replacement for Insta rather than Threads, but the upside is it tends to be less technical. Also iirc it includes all the image posts from Mastodon. If you create an account, click on "Global Feed" and start following individuals and hashtags.
I’m frankly mystified by anyone who thinks Mastodon is “too technical.”
Please explain. Because the steps as far as I know are:
- Want a mastodon account
- Search for “join mastodon”
- Pick a server
- Create an account
- Enjoy mastodon
Because the steps for Xitter were :
1. Want a Xitter
2. Go to Xitter
3. Create an account
4. Enjoy(?) Xitter
Even one extra step that adds friction can lead to you just not doing the thing.
Mega-corpos spend billions to reduce the number of steps to your wallet, because they make it back tenfold.
you don't even need mastodon; you can also try wafrn, which is more like tumblr, misskey/sharkey, which is more like blogger or livejournal, or even piefed/lemmy.
they all talk to each other.
Sri Lanka and Indonesia deploy militaries as Asia floods death toll passes 1,100
Sri Lanka and Indonesia deploy militaries as Asia floods death toll passes 1,100
Millions of people affected by torrential rainfall in Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern MalaysiaRebecca Ratcliffe (The Guardian)
Israeli settlers attack and rob Italian and Canadian volunteers in West Bank
Israeli settlers attack and rob Italian and Canadian volunteers in West Bank
Group beaten in early hours of morning in village where they volunteered to help protect Palestinians from settler violenceJulian Borger (The Guardian)
This will probably get me whacked…
Or has the historical narrative been rewritten so thoroughly, and public opinion directed so well, that… well no no we can’t say that out loud.
But I mean has this been the behavior of millennia? Does capitalism even exist in its current form without usury?
At this point I am pretty comfortable saying glass Israel. If there was a vote right now I’d say just do it. You can’t just be complicit and benefit from these horrible things and expect complete absolution. That’s pretty extreme and a worldwide ban of Israel, dissolution, a ban on any sort of theocratic or quasi-theocratic state and anything looking like it would be mandatory. I don’t think that would work in practice though, just more lies would be the result. “God promised us this land” is a mental disorder at best and more likely a blatant “you can’t outright say I am lying” high school level lie in practice.
The embarrassment and shame of being Zionist like Germany had over nazism is absolutely necessary though. I’m just not sure that was as well placed as we think. Currently we discuss the nazis persecution of Jewish people as “that’s just crazy and sick, how could anyone do such a thing” while Zion exists and is shamelessly genociding a people while overtly manipulating the gentiles as if we are animals. Is this the behavior pre ww2? Was this telegraphed? I believe so.
As a complete aside, and I am very interested and empathize with the Romani people, I am fascinated by their ability to see non Romani as (insert however they actually see us here) and include their children in their hustles. Like how do you explain to kids that it’s us against the world(literally) and we are allowed to lie and manipulate them at all costs? This thought occurred to me when I was helping a nice family who apparently had ran out of gas. The kid was doing their part with the sad eyes and all that. I would love to chat with a gypsy(with all due respect) to get some insights on their culture.
I can’t help but draw a parallel there though. Nazi persecution of peoples who see themselves as apart and those two groups overt exploitation of those who are not of their culture. Zionists simply being much more successful as of now.
I kinda see extreme measures being required to get these people(zionists) to stop being necessary. And where is the line? How is that accomplished?
I dunno but more and more being disgusted with this farce in Palestine I can’t help but reflect on this…
Is e.g. Schindler's List an exploitative movie?
Hong Kong’s Response to Deadly Fire Is Squeezed by China’s Firm Hand
cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42837641
Web archived link...
On Sunday, thousands of people had gathered outside the charred buildings in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district to lay flowers and leave mementos and messages such as “rest in peace” and “Hong Kong be strong.” At a plaza at the complex, people manning a local relief effort collected donations and distributed essentials such as clothing, bedding, diapers and food to residents displaced by the fire.
By Sunday evening, the donation booths were gone, replaced by police command tents.
Government authorities have stepped in with official relief measures and sanctioned mourning activities, such as flying flags at half-staff and the establishment of designated condolence sites.
Beijing’s national-security office in Hong Kong warned that any attempt to exploit the fire to create disorder would be punished by law. The office said anti‑China groups and individuals were spreading false information, undermining relief efforts and inciting resentment toward the government and its leaders.
Alleged rabble-rousers are “attempting to use the victims’ grief to advance their political ambitions, pushing Hong Kong back into the turmoil of the extradition-bill unrest and reviving the darkest days of violent unrest,” the security office said.
“Darkest days” refers to the months of protests and violent unrest in Hong Kong in 2019 that were sparked by a proposed law that would allow the extradition of suspects for prosecution in mainland China.
...
A petition circulated online by activists demanded an independent investigation of the fire that goes beyond construction materials and addresses how Hong Kong is run. The list of demands in the petition echoed the protest chants of 2019.
The Hong Kong Centre for Human Rights, a group of rights advocates, said that the national-security laws may keep people from expressing opinions about what happened. “They fear questions regarding the cause and handling of the disaster could be deemed as sedition,” the group said.
...
Hakboard - Home Assistant Integration for Kanboard
cross-posted from: discuss.online/post/31434838
Reddit postHAKboard, a comprehensive Home Assistant integration for Kanboard, a free and open source Kanban project management tool.
- Roadmap
- Repo
- ScreenshotsFeatures:
Interactive Lovelace cards Integrates project, task and people data into sensor entities Documented entity schema aids in dashboard and automation development Supports multiple instances, enabling blue/green deployment Configurable replication and project filtering settings per Kanboard instance Zero YAML editing required
Functionality:In this initial release, it is a one-way sync of Kanboard data into HA, with deep-linking to Kanboard projects from the HA dashboard. It will create an entity for every project that provides aggregate data for tasks, task status, assignees, columns etc.. giving you an excellent birds eye view of your environment, as well as the ability to create automations from the sensor data.
A very near release (see Roadmap in the repo) will introduce the creation of entities for each task and person, and likely others. We wanted to ensure the core entity generation system is rock-solid before opening it up to potentially thousands of new entities and thought it prudent to stagger this functionality.
If you use Kanboard (or want to try it), this turns your HA dashboard into a real-time project hub.
Repo & Docs: github.com/aktive/hakboard
⚠️ IMPORTANT INSTALL NOTES: I'm still working through the HACS repo approval process. In the meantime, please follow these instructions if you would like to install (existing Kanboard server required):
HACS > ⚙️ (Top right) > Custom Repositories > Add: https://github.com/aktive/hakboard as type Integration Configure your Kanboard instance via Settings (Bottom left) > Devices & services > Add (Bottom right) > Search for HAKboard NOTE: If HAKboard does not appear (either as an integration or a dashboard card), please refresh your browser or restart HA.
GitHub - aktive/hakboard: 🔸 Integrate Kanboard projects into Home Assistant dashboards and automations
🔸 Integrate Kanboard projects into Home Assistant dashboards and automations - aktive/hakboardGitHub
Thinkpad Yoga X1 gen 6 pen not functioning
I need to aggregate a lot of details on what I've tried so far, but I figured I'd make this post now since I have time over lunch.
I purchased a used Thinkpad Yoga X1 gen 6 from a university surplus sale. Intending to move away from the data hoarder that is Microsoft I of course installed Linux. I decided on Linux Mint since I haven't touched Linux in about a decade and I've forgotten everything.
Everything that I need to use correctly for job applications, printing, etc is working just fine, but much of the reason I bought the yoga is to use the Wacom stylus pen for drawing and taking notes.
It was working in Windows, but now does not seem to be recognized in Linux. It's odd since the touchscreen does work.
I did find this post which I will try to follow tonight:
reddit.com/r/LinuxOnThinkpad/c…
If anyone has had experience with this or has some advice for a new newbie, I'd very much appreciate it!
Can you try live iso? If your tablet functionality wont work there I suggest making live iso of other distro as there are plenty. Many of them use Cinnamon DE which you can customise to look exactly like mint.
I rock cachyos like this but it's not as begginer friendly as minty
Europe's plan to use $105 billion of frozen Russian assets tantamount to war, says Russia's Medvedev
Europe's plan to use $105 billion of frozen Russian assets tantamount to war, says Russia's Medvedev
It follows fresh proposals by the European Commission to unlock $105 billion to support Ukraine.Tasmin Lockwood (CNBC)
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Thousands protest in Philippines against flood control fraud
Thousands marched in the Philippine capital on Sunday (Nov 30) demanding jail time for scores of officials, lawmakers and construction firm owners accused of pocketing billions of taxpayer dollars in a sweeping corruption scandal.
Thousands protest in Philippines against flood control fraud
MANILA: Thousands marched in the Philippine capital on Sunday (Nov 30) demanding jail time for scores of officials, lawmakers and construction firm owners accused of pocketing billions of taxpCNA (Channel NewsAsia)
India’s Desert State Reignites Coal-Fired Power Debate | The competitive cost of batteries is making clean energy a viable alternative to coal in parts of the country
India’s Desert State Reignites Coal-Fired Power Debate
The competitive cost of batteries is making clean energy a viable alternative to coal in parts of the country.Rajesh Kumar Singh (Bloomberg)
Pete Hegseth Is Seriously Testing Trump’s ‘No Scalps’ Rule | Lawmakers are finally waking up to the problems the defense secretary has created.
Pete Hegseth Is Seriously Testing Trump’s ‘No Scalps’ Rule
Lawmakers are finally waking up to the problems the defense secretary has created.Missy Ryan (The Atlantic)
Calls for accountability over deadly Hong Kong fire silenced
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46524461
ArchivedNot long before he was reportedly detained, Miles Kwan approached commuters outside a Hong Kong train station, urging them to demand accountability for the deadly inferno that tore through nearby apartment blocks.
"We all feel unhappy that (Hong Kong) has come to this and we want things to improve," the 24-year-old student said Friday, while handing out flyers that called for an independent probe into the blaze, which killed at least 128 people last week, with another 150 still missing.
"We need to be frank about how today's Hong Kong is riddled with holes, inside and out."Kwan and other organizers' demands turned into an online petition that gained more than 10,000 signatures in less than a day.
A second petition with the same demands has been launched by a Tai Po resident who is now living overseas.
“Hongkongers demand the truth and justice,” read one note in the comment section of the new online petition.
But local media reported Saturday night that Kwan was arrested on suspicion of sedition by national security police and the text of the online petition had been deleted, showing how under Beijing's watchful eye, dissenting voices in Hong Kong can vanish as quickly as they appear.
[...]
Reporters' attempts to reach Kwan by phone Sunday morning went unanswered.
[...]
Kwan was reportedly detained not long after Beijing's national security arm in Hong Kong publicly condemned "anti-China forces" for exploiting the disaster and "inciting social division and stirring hatred against authorities."
Asked on Friday if he feared being arrested, Kwan said he was only "proposing very basic demands."
"If these ideas are deemed seditious or 'crossing the line,' then I feel I can't predict the consequences of anything anymore, and I can only do what I truly believe."
Kwan and a handful of activists gave out flyers at the train station near the charred residential estate Friday, demanding government accountability, an independent probe into possible corruption, proper resettlement for residents and a review of construction oversight.
The demands reflected a belief that the fire was "not an accident" but a human-made disaster, he said.
[...]
Residents of Wang Fuk Court were told by authorities last year they faced "relatively low fire risks" after complaining about fire hazards posed by the renovation, the city's Labour Department said.
The residents raised concerns in September 2024, including about the potential flammability of the protective green mesh contractors used to cover the bamboo scaffolding, a department spokesperson said.
[...]
When Britain was grappling with public fury over the devastating Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which killed 72 people, the government announced a public inquiry.
Lawyer Imran Khan, who represented the bereaved and survivors in the inquiry, said "the lessons from Grenfell apply around the world" as all governments need to ensure high-rise residential buildings are safe.
Khan said a public inquiry with court-like powers was a better option for the situation in Hong Kong because "an internal investigation will not get to the truth and there will be no faith in it by the bereaved, survivors and residents."
Based on his experience with Grenfell residents, he said, "without justice they cannot grieve."
[...]
Near the site of the blaze a short walk away, a long queue snaked through a park as mourners brought flowers and handwritten notes of remembrance.
One unsigned note left on the ground read, "This is not just an accident, it is the evil fruit of an unjust system, which landed on you. It's not right."
Addition:
Reporting on the the deadly fires, Australia's ABC says that Hong Kong residents are asking hard questions about safety following last week's deadly high-rise tower blaze (video, 7 min).
Accountability sought after Hong Kong’s deadly apartment fire
Sarah Ferguson presents Australia's premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.www.abc.net.au
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Honesty, China only recently regained control of Hong Kong. Having not heard much about what ultimately caused it. Outside the complete lack of sensors and alarms. I could have dismissed it as a possible pre existing situation. But as always, the CCP continues to bully and behave guilty.
I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, this is a horrible tragedy. And right now, everyone's heart is going out to all the victims and those who've lost. But the CCP and local related governments are so incompetent and oppressive. They can't even take what could be a reasonable win for them and actually help the people they're supposed to be serving. Attacking the victims more instead. Really makes you wonder how many more tall ticking time bombs there might be. Throughout Hong Kong or the rest of China.
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China’s Missing Housing Data Sparks Fresh Fears After Vanke Bond Extension
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46523973
ArchivedChina’s already fragile property market took another blow this week as two of its largest private housing data agencies, China Real Estate Information Corp. and China Index Academy, failed to release monthly sales figures for the top 100 developers as expected on Sunday. This data blackout came shortly after China Vanke Co. a developer long perceived as relatively stable requested a delay in repaying a local bond, its first such move.
The agencies did not provide explanations for the delay, a rare deviation from routine reporting schedules that has triggered widespread speculation. The timing suggests a correlation between Vanke’s distress signal and the withholding of market data, reinforcing concerns that the November sales figures may be significantly worse than anticipated.
[...]
The absence of November figures adds opacity to an already uncertain environment. According to Kristy Hung, senior real estate analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, withholding the data “could increase uncertainty about the struggling sector’s condition” and likely reflects “steeper declines” in sales performance across the board.
The lack of transparency is particularly troubling as it undermines efforts by regulators to stabilize market sentiment. Investors are now left to interpret silence as a negative signal, which may accelerate capital flight and further impair refinancing efforts for developers already teetering on the edge of default.
[...]
Vanke’s request to delay bond repayment marks a critical turning point. As one of the few firms previously seen as weathering the crisis, its need for restructuring signals that even stronger developers are now succumbing to funding constraints and weakening sales. This suggests a causal deterioration of sector-wide liquidity, as refinancing options dwindle and investor confidence erodes.
While Evergrande and Country Garden have already defaulted or restructured, Vanke’s case sends a new signal to markets: no developer is immune. The Vanke episode has also likely prompted data providers to pause release to avoid further market panic, underscoring the depth of sentiment fragility.
[...]
China’s housing sector risks sliding further into a protracted downturn marked by fear, opacity, and investor disengagement. The Vanke episode may be just the beginning of a broader reckoning for an industry long seen as a pillar of China’s economic engine.
China’s Missing Housing Data Sparks Fresh Fears After Vanke Bond Extension - FastBull
Two major Chinese private data providers withheld November home sales figures following Vanke’s unexpected bond extension request, raising new concerns about the property sector's transparency and underlying stress....www.fastbull.com
Snow droughts intensify across the Hindu Kush Himalayas
Snow droughts intensify across the Hindu Kush Himalayas
A new study finds the frequent occurrence of snow droughts and their hotspots across 11 major river basins in the Hindu Kush Himalayas.Priyanka Shankar (Mongabay-India)
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics. reshared this.
How many times has Israel violated the Gaza ceasefire? Here are the numbers
How many times has Israel violated the Gaza ceasefire? Here are the numbers
Since the ceasefire took effect, Israeli attacks have killed at least 360 Palestinians and injured 922.AJLabs (Al Jazeera)
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But don't worry, it was totally justified. I heard some of those children they murdered had crossed the invisible yellow line, so they were fair game.
South Korea police say 120,000 home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage
Four people have been arrested in South Korea for allegedly hacking over 120,000 video cameras in homes and businesses and using the footage to make sexually exploitative materials for an overseas website.
Police announced the arrests on Sunday, saying the accused exploited the Internet Protocol (IP) cameras' vulnerabilities, such as simple passwords.
A cheaper alternative to CCTV, IP cameras - otherwise known as home cameras - connect to a home internet network and are often installed for security or to monitor the safety of children and pets.
Locations of the hacked cameras reportedly included private homes, karaoke rooms, a Pilates studio and a gynaecologist's clinic.
South Korea police say 120,000 home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage
The cameras were located in private homes, karaoke rooms, a Pilates studio and a gynaecologist's clinic.Gavin Butler (BBC News)
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- /pff what kind of idiot would do that/ *
Alexa, play despacito
- like 99% of consumers, probably
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what are the uses of aripriprazole?
Hello,
my pdoc has prescribed me aripriprazole and it's the only anti-psychotic I have been taking, does it related to schizophrenia or something else? currently my pdoc is only giving me some anti-depressant and etizolam to control my anxiety.
WW1 toxic compound sprayed on Georgian protesters, BBC evidence suggests
WW1 toxic compound sprayed on Georgian protesters, BBC evidence suggests
Anti-government demonstrators are likely to have been targeted with camite, our investigation finds.Max Hudson (BBC News)
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the evidence points to the use of an agent that the French military named "camite".The Georgian authorities said our investigation findings were "absurd" and the police had acted legally in response to the "illegal actions of brutal criminals".
Camite was deployed by France against Germany during World War One. There is little documentation of its subsequent use, but it is believed to have been taken out of circulation at some point in the 1930s, because of concerns about its long-lasting effects.
Couldn't make up anything more cynical than this.
Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless
Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless | TechCrunch
Limitless said it shares Meta's vision of bringing personal superintelligence to everyone.Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)
I will never understand how we as a society moved from normal life to scrolling TikTok while driving
Thousands march in Croatia against far-right revival and WWII revisionism
Several thousand people rallied in Croatia's capital on Sunday in an anti-fascist march protesting the rise of World War II revisionism and far-right views in the country.
Thousands march in Croatia against far-right surge and WWII revisionism
Several thousand people rallied in Croatia’s capital on Sunday, denouncing the rise of far-right nationalism and attempts to glorify the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime established during World War II. Similar marches took place in Rijeka, Pula and Zadar.FRANCE 24
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Because the slogan would be "Our Party In the middle of our street"
And whilst they have plenty of madness, they're too left to be in the middle of anything 😁
I'm glad the Greens stepped into the space to pickup the sincere left wing voters just as all this kicked off.
Asking the Self-Hosting Community to Take a Brief Three-Question Survey
Edit 2: Wow! You all have been amazing! I'm taking the survey down now because I already have more than enough responses. Thanks again!
This survey is for a Statistics course I'm taking in college and asks about your earliest computer usage and how much time you currently spend on a device. I appreciate your reading this post and will be grateful for your responses. Thank you!
Edit to add that the survey is 100% anonymous.
Computer Use Survey for College Statistics Project
Thank you for taking this quick three-question survey.s.surveyplanet.com
damn that looks like gordo and the boys made in the kill room
(halt and catch fire)
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Figured it was going be something in those regards. Thanks for the information.
I hope if that happens that ICE rounds them all up. They might remember that the USA will take their resources with composition.
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If you look what happened since 2013 when he took over. He is a dictator though. Trump is actually following his playbook, but in a lighter since. Some examples.....
Electoral Fraud and Illegitimate Power
Maduro's grip on power relies fundamentally on electoral manipulation. In the July 28, 2024 presidential election, Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE)—controlled by Maduro loyalists—declared he won with 51.2% of the vote despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The opposition collected 83.5% of voting tally sheets showing their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, actually won with approximately 67% of votes compared to Maduro's 30%. The CNE refused to release disaggregated results or conduct post-election audits, and its website remains inactive. International observers, including the Carter Center and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, documented widespread fraud throughout the electoral process. The government disqualified opposition candidate María Corina Machado, obstructed voter registration for millions, imposed restrictions on opposition poll watchers, and used state resources during campaigns. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded it cannot recognize Maduro's re-election as democratically legitimate due to the "severe disruption to Venezuela's constitutional order".
Following the contested 2024 election, Maduro launched "Operation Tun Tun" (Operación Tun Tun), a brutal crackdown described by experts as "state terrorism". Authorities conducted door-to-door raids to detain anyone with suspected opposition ties, creating what human rights groups call a "climate of terror" intended to terrify Venezuelans into submission.According to official figures, over 2,000 people were arrested in the first month after the election, including at least 129 children. As of July 2025, 853 political prisoners remain behind bars. These detentions are characterized by systematic torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention without warrants. Victims reported beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, and confinement in dark, overcrowded cells. Amnesty International documented that at least 198 children have been subjected to unfair detention, torture, and abuse, with four months passing before many saw their families.A 2024 UN fact-finding mission report concluded there are "reasonable grounds to believe that the crime of persecution on political grounds has been committed". Between 2015 and 2017 alone, Venezuelan security forces carried out 8,292 extrajudicial executions, with 22% of all homicides in one year committed by state forces. The UN mission has documented that Venezuela's intelligence agencies have used sexual and gender-based violence to torture detainees since at least 2014.
You're proving OP correct by responding with orgs like Directorio Legislativo:
Directorio Legislativo is a civil society organization based in Argentina and the United States that has been working for more than fifteen years to strengthen democratic institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean.Geographical area in which it works: DL has offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in
Washington DC, USA. We are a regional organization with projects both in Argentina and
other Latin American countries. We capture and share regulatory news and information from
the governments and legislatures 19 countries (Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela)
Directorio Legislativo
directoriolegislativo.org/en/w…
María Baron Global Executive DirectorReagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow
ned.org/fellowships/reagan-fas…
countercurrents.org/2022/05/th…
In 1991, one of the founders of NED, Allen Weinstein, stated that much of NED’s work involves doing what the CIA used to do. Some, in fact, refer to NED as the “second CIA.”
Just have to scratch the surface a little bit to see the imperialist connection here. I'd implore you to not just take the surface-level info from NGOs without understanding the interests they serve.
Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program provides support annually for a dozen or so democracy activists, practitioners, scholars and journalists from…NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
Yeah so American Imperial fronts like OAS and Directorio Legislativo and US Imperial non profits, got it
Yeah obviously the elections were not fair, that is not what I disagree upon, just that the main US backed opposition candidate Machado will sell off Venezuela to the US empire and be quite a lot worse than Maduro.
Calling Maduro a dictator that needs to be overthrown directly benefits the US in the current tense climate, something needs to be done but Machado is certainly not the way out, just even deeper into the ground.
These agree with you? Funny because they came from my OG post. Are you saying you agree Maduro is a dictator now? Lol. Regardless, you can have a position against Trump going into the country ( I do) but still realize that the dude is dogshit for the country.
directoriolegislativo.org/en/m…
oas.org/en/IACHR/jsForm/?File=…
humanrightsresearch.org/post/v…
latinoamerica21.com/en/venezue…
wlrn.org/americas/2025-07-28/h…
The problem is thinking you can have fair elections under extreme duress from sanctions. The whole purpose of those sanctions is to destroy as much as possible the democratic aspect, as the US itself admits.
From the official Office of the Historian US Gvt website, a key document regarding the logic behind the embargo in Cuba:
The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent). [...]Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate.
Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause.
The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.
If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.
The entire point of the blockade in Cuba, and by extension Venezuela, is that the people DO support their government, and the ONLY way to make them waver in their support is to make them literally starve.
Maduro is a popularly supported leftist president that was elected democratically. Machado is a fascist that directly asked the US Empire to invade, she's supported by the wealthy compradors in Venezuela while Maduro is supported by the working classes. The odds appear to be pretty damn high that Machado would have lost against Maduro, because in general she's a deeply unpopular fascist.
Under Maduro, Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication. I'm not sure on what basis you distrust him so much, Venezuela is building socialism under Maduro from the bottom-up, and Maduro is doing his part from the top.
It's incredibly unsurprising that the US Empire is manufacturing consent to invade Venezuela, and overturn their anti-imperialist president. Outside election monitors back up the results, and indicate that the Venezuelan electoral system is far more advanced than the US. I'd trust evidence more if it came from Cuba or Nicaragua than the heart of the empire. This is on top of your vague claims of Maduro being a "monstrous dictator."
Edit: Lmao the cryptofash on MeanwhileOnGrad got upset at this
The Maduro government’s first two years
April 19 marked two years since Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the same date on which Venezuela gained independence from Spain in 1810en.granma.cu
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They're valid sources and work well. Your sources are overwhelmingly from the US Empire and NGOs they set up or otherwise have strong connections to, like Directorio Legislativo:
Directorio Legislativo is a civil society organization based in Argentina and the United States that has been working for more than fifteen years to strengthen democratic institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean.Geographical area in which it works: DL has offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in
Washington DC, USA. We are a regional organization with projects both in Argentina and
other Latin American countries. We capture and share regulatory news and information from
the governments and legislatures 19 countries (Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico,
Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela)
Popular polling does support Maduro. I wouldn't trust those that claimed the US 2020 election was fraudulent, yet these same people are also saying Maduro was fraudulent.
It’s interesting that I agree with you, here. A major difference I see between Venezuela and the USSR is that the USSR generally tried to assimilate, arrest or murder the resistant capitalist classes (ie dekulakization), while Venezuela seems to be generally exiling or marginalizing them.
It’s my understanding that Venezuela has kept its political assassinations and imprisonments low and targeted, which was not the case in the USSR.
Agree wholeheartedly.
It should be obvious to far more people that this country should get to decide it’s own destiny. We have no idea what a Chavismo…or even Castro Cuba would have looked like unmolested. It should also be obvious that what’s feared most in the west is the success of those systems.
The thing that absolutely floors me is that Trump had a Bay of Pigs…and nobody (in the mainstream) talks about it.
reuters.com/world/americas/isr…
Netanyahu congratulated Machado on her Nobel win and commended her efforts to promote democracy and peace.
Machado has previously pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem if her movement comes to power, aligning her with other Latin American leaders who have taken pro-Israel stances, including Argentina’s President Javier Milei and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
I feel like a lot of people are missing the obvious conclusion that everyone involved here is awful.
Maduro? Brutal dictator.
His domestic opposition? Violent fascists.
His international opposition? Absolute war criminals.
It's really sad. My primary opinion is that the US needs to leave Venezuela the fuck alone. If you want democracy in Venezuela, you can't get it through sanctioning the population into starvation if they don't vote the way Chevron tells them to. Did Maduro steal an election? Yes! But his opposition at home and abroad isn't mad that it wasn't fair: they're mad because they think it's bullshit for him to steal it after they stole it first!
Get the fuck out and let them actually decide what they want. The US is the clearly the greatest villain in a story with no obvious good guys.
The problem is that all of the "evidence" for Maduro cheating comes from the same people that said the US 2020 election was rigged, and are using it as ammo for regime change. Machado and the like are fascists that are trying to topple a democratically elected socialist, just like Pinochet with Allende.
Under Maduro, Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication. I'm not sure on what basis you distrust him so much, Venezuela is building socialism under Maduro from the bottom-up, and Maduro is doing his part from the top.
Maduro is no dictator just like Allende wasn't.
The Maduro government’s first two years
April 19 marked two years since Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the same date on which Venezuela gained independence from Spain in 1810en.granma.cu
Troll, bot, russian, terrorist
Liberal ideology is very good at coming up with thought-terminating epithets that allow the user to avoid thinking about what other people have to say. After all, a religious devotion to avoiding non-sanctioned narratives is the only way it can protect itself. It sure as hell can't compete in the "marketplace of ideas".
Yes. Under Maduro, Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication. I'm not sure on what basis you distrust him so much, Venezuela is building socialism under Maduro from the bottom-up, and Maduro is doing his part from the top.
Edit: Lmao, you made a post on the cryptofash circlejerk about this, calling it "open fascism" to support a socialist leader against imperialist aggression. Do your buddies know that you defend slur usage, or is that something they agree with?
The Maduro government’s first two years
April 19 marked two years since Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the same date on which Venezuela gained independence from Spain in 1810en.granma.cu
Slurs are socially constructed; opposing its use affirms its existence. I'm saying there's no point in opposing it because that's not how you get actual social change! The slur use exists insofar as oppression exists. The slur CAN'T exist without oppression. What you're promoting is literal idealism that Engels critiqued.there's a large difference between marginalized groups disempowering the word and non-marginalized groups perpetuating its power.
There is something deeply racist about the idea that the only thing a white person can do by choosing to disregard a social construct is perpetuate oppression—and further that there be no nuance on the matter.
Maduro cheating comes from the same people that said the US 2020 election was rigged
Do you have a source for that? Because from what I can tell, the exact opposite is true, and the sources for these two claims are generally opposed to each other.
Maduro’s grip on power relies fundamentally on electoral manipulation.
All the "Maduro cheated to win the election" stuff comes from the same people insisting Biden cheated to win in 2020 and Obama cheated in 2008.
Following the contested 2024 election, Maduro launched “Operation Tun Tun” (Operación Tun Tun), a brutal crackdown described by experts as “state terrorism”.
Were these experts affiliated with Elliot Abrams?
described by experts as “state terrorism”.
“Experts” from the imperial core.
creating what human rights groups call a “climate of terror
Imperial core human rights groups. “Always the same map” human rights groups. Citations Needed podcast: The Human Rights Concern Troll Industrial Complex
intended to terrify Venezuelans into submission.
Which Venezuelans? The poor or the wealthy? The working class or the capitalist class?
Citations Needed: Episode 08: The Human Rights Concern Troll Industrial Complex
We discuss the cynical use of "human rights" to advance US interests with guest Glenn Greenwald. The conceit that the U.S.citationsneeded.libsyn.com
It's disappointing that for years the up/downvote rhetoric has been for what really adds to the conversation and I find this reply more according to the reality from the PV of someone that is not Venezuelan but has roots and friends there but most importantly that we're not part of the meme, just average people that don't wish for anyone what means to live there as the average or below.
I do remember when I was a child and had the joy of go to Venezuela and to have fun on vacations, now I it's not joy but the feeling of accomplish humanitarian labor and donations to average and poor Venezuelans that at first supported the socialism that Chávez sold them and later Maduro, Cabello and others continue in a nonsense of left political system.
If someone downvote replies citing sources from the Venezuelan diaspora, let me remind you that that diaspora is not 100% from the people of this post meme but real Venezuelans that have left/lost almost everything because of really bad politics and actions of Chávez, Maduro and others that surprise: the last presidential election didn't got official acts published.
Socialists who fight fascists are the real fascists. Only people who call themselves socialists while repeating war department propaganda as the US blows up fishermen every day are the real socialists.
Get a grip lmao
You say while defending Batista-esque dictatorships having nothing to do with socialism.
Ok CIA
Very funny from someone demonizing socialists, complaining of left-wing bias and dismissing sources that support left-wing views, and defended slur usage, even calling me an "idealist" for saying we shouldn't use slurs. You can think yourself a socialist, but your actions are consistently against socialists and socialism.
Slurs are socially constructed; opposing its use affirms its existence. I'm saying there's no point in opposing it because that's not how you get actual social change! The slur use exists insofar as oppression exists. The slur CAN'T exist without oppression. What you're promoting is literal idealism that Engels critiqued.there's a large difference between marginalized groups disempowering the word and non-marginalized groups perpetuating its power.
There is something deeply racist about the idea that the only thing a white person can do by choosing to disregard a social construct is perpetuate oppression—and further that there be no nuance on the matter.
I'm a leftist. And your arguments are troll arguments.
Once again, i don't feed trolls
None of my arguments are troll arguments, you haven't explained what you mean by that. I'm clearly genuine, I wouldn't put nearly this much effort into studying theory and the admittedly light organizing work I do in real life just to troll. You can believe that you're a leftist, but you're extremely bad at being one if you dismiss leftist sources as "too biased" and do things like parrot US Empire talking points on socialist leaders. You help manufacture consent for invasion, with no evidence of your own for your absurd claims likening Maduro to Batista.
Do some self-crit if you genuinely think yourself a leftist. Join an org, read theory, touch grass, stop parroting imperial talking points.
He is an authoritarien and the country went to shit.
Venezuela is not a nice place to live in.
Maduro is a corrupt dictator, trump aswell and the current opposition to maduro most likely will just be an authoritarian and fascist pupped goverment that will act in the USAs interest. So yeah multible things can be true at once, just because a nation is opposed to the american empire does not mean that it is automaticallly good.
Its quite sad to see that some terminally online leftist just automaticly replace siding with the imperialist systems that there born into( USA, EU Australia etc.) And just replace that with other imperial powers like russia and china.
Like why?? How about not bootlicking authoritarians?
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Under Maduro, Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication. I'm not sure on what basis you distrust him so much, Venezuela is building socialism under Maduro from the bottom-up, and Maduro is doing his part from the top.
Venezuela is a developing country, that is developing despite the US Empire's best efforts. It is regularly improving, which is why the working classes support Maduro.
Russia isn't imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies, and a tiny amount of global financial capital. China isn't imperialist either, it's a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy. There's no mechanisms pushing for imperialism within China, and this manifests in regular south-south trade leading to development of global south countries when trading with China, unlike the unequal exchange of trade with the west where the west charges monopoly prices for tech and places compradors in power to prevent industrial development.
Multiple things are true, correct. This isn't the grand own you think it is, though. You're passively parroting imperialist narratives.
The Maduro government’s first two years
April 19 marked two years since Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the same date on which Venezuela gained independence from Spain in 1810en.granma.cu
Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”
I’ve become very skeptical of the concept of “brainwashing.” Over the past few months this skepticism has boiled over into open and explicit disagreement with even well-meaning pushers within the Marxist-Leninist corner.redsails.org
Russia isn't imperialist
Why do you think they're invading Ukraine. Sparkles and rainbows?
You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power.
Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor and not because they conquered lands, but because they controlled lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.
The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just "big country invade small country".
In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism:
- the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
- the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
- the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
- the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
- the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
The question of "Is Russia Imperialist" isn't a moral one, it's a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that's a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist.
The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world.
As it stands now, I don't think that's currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It's a Bourgeois states, and there's financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism.
So when people say "Russia isn't Imperialist", this is what's being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it's worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren't all talking passed each other
aggression with an expansionist agenda.
especially by a country and especially unprovoked.
Economically or militarily.
D-day wouldn't be included because the goal wasn't expansion. Though I would be very surprised if the usa and Europe hadn't perpetrated many acts that should be included during the full course of the war.
And of course you can get into the argument of cultural imperialism as well
For sure, but there are a few problems with that definition. The first is that it doesn't apply to the Russian intervention in Ukraine that started this conversation, which is neither unprovoked nor being done to expand Russian territory.
The second is that it only includes atate actions meant to take territory in an official capacity, while many imperialist actions have been carried out under the auspices of private companies like Haliburton, Dole, the United Fruit Company, and the Dutch East India Company.
The third is that we already have the term Expansionist, which is perfectly fine and general enough for both capitalist and non-capitalist actions, while Imperialism describes a specific dynamic that arises from specifically capitalist causes.
The second is that it only includes atate actions meant to take territory in an official capacity, while many imperialist actions have been carried out under the auspices of private companies like Haliburton, Dole, the United Fruit Company, and the Dutch East India Company.
For the record, my stated definition does not limit it. When "especially" is used in definitions, it's not stated as a limiter but rather to show it primarily applies to as such.
which is neither unprovoked nor being done to expand Russian territory
This is a fundamental disagreement. Especially in regards to saying it's not to expand their territory as a goal.
One interesting thing I find with lemmy. Is equating ownership existing with capitalism. Presumably because that's how it's portrayed in communist literature.
Then it's not part of the definition? That's like saying the definition of "apple" is "a fruit from a tree, especially a fruit with simple uniform flesh and a thin skin" and then when I say this orange is not an apple you say "I said especially so it doesn't really count"
So your definition is now simply military invasion.
D-day wouldn’t be included because the goal wasn’t expansion.
Wasn't it? They intended to take German territory to expand France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.
Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is
Marxism isn't the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you're arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol
The general Marxist take is that when Yanukovych was offered an IMF loan that required austerity policies and privatization of safety nets, and a Russian loan that did not come with the same restrictions, he went with the Russian loan and was couped for it, including a western-supported Banderite false-flag shooting. Following the western-supported coup, the areas in the Donbass region seceded, as they supported Yanukovych, are culturally and ethnically Russian, and were unhappy with the Banderites taking over the government under the cover of "democracy." Said Banderites were also legally suppressing the Russian language in the Donbass region.
What ensued was a decade of fighting, 2 failed Minsk agreements that Kiev broke and admitted to never wanting to follow, and massive risk of NATO on Russia's doorstep. The Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics requested Russian assistance, and Russia complied, sparking the next stage of the war.
Russia purely wants the Donbass region and NATO neutrality. They want the Donbass region not out of the kindness of their hearts, nor for plunder or further expansion, but because it's a land bridge straight to Russia, the same route the Nazis took in World War II. NATO was building up because the West uses their millitary to threaten countries into opening up their economies to foreign plunder (like what's happening right now in Venezuela), a tradition employed since NATO was founded, destroyed Yugoslavia and Libya, etc.
This is the common Marxist take, shared largely by PSL's statement and FRSO's statement. Essentially, the war is tragic, should end as quickly as possible, and was provoked by the west.
Resolution Against the U.S./NATO-Provoked War in Ukraine - Freedom Road Socialist Organization | FRSO
This resolution was adopted at Freedom Road Socialist Organization's 9th Congress in spring 2022.andy (Freedom Road Socialist Organization | FRSO)
NATO expansion:
- George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
- Orinoco Tribune, 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
- Al Mayadeen, 2023: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine
NATO in general:
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023:
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
- Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discreetly Internationalized It - CounterPunch.org
When the United States entered WWII, the future head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, bemoaned that his country was fighting the wrong enemy.Gabriel Rockhill (CounterPunch.org)
NATO is the millitary alliance of the world's imperialist powers. This group of countries uses this alliance to prevent the global south from going against it and liberating themselved from foreign plunder via overwhelming financial domination. The way imperialism tends to work in the modern day is countries like the US, France, Germany, UK, etc expropriate vast wealth from countries in the global south, similar to how capitalists steal value created by the working class.
NATO is as "defensive" as the Iron Dome in Israel. These countries export genocide and terrorism on the third world, expropriate huge sums of wealth, and then "defend" against anyone that pushes back against that.
Yeah man ask Libya and Yugoslavia how defended they feel
Nato is a defensive alliance just like cops are there to help you
Projecting the actual ethnic cleansing done by the Ukranian coup government onto the Russians who stopped it
Many such cases!
Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication
I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies
I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela's Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it's often papered over in discussions about the country.
Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela (Jacobin) - Anna’s Archive
George Ciccariello-Maher [Ciccariello-Maher, George] A Journey Through Venezuela's Experiments In Radical Democracy, After The Age Of Chavez. Since 2011, Verso Booksannas-archive.org
Russia isn't imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies
Yeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas, or even Siberia or the puppet states like Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. Russian neo-colonialism is all over Africa.
China isn't imperialist either, it's a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy.
China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
They also have a mix of socialism and capitalism, sometimes getting the best of both, and sometimes the worst. They definitely dominate the state economy through control of banking and the use of capital controls to direct funding to national priorities. The current real estate crisis and "ghost cities" are a pretty obvious example.
Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocoloniesYeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas
Are you kidding me? The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine, which had been killing them since 2014.
- Reuters, 2014: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- Leaked recording between Nuland and Pyatt: | transcript
- Counterpunch, 2014: US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: 'I want to bring up a warrior': Ukraine's far-right children's camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
- Internationalist 360°, 2022–2024: History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
What is China doing to undermine local sovereignty or labor movements in Africa?
The current real estate crisis
What “current” real estate crisis? The Chinese state intentionally popped the real estate bubble over a year ago, making the capitalists eat their losses.
- Reuters: China Evergrande ordered to liquidate in landmark moment for crisis-hit sector
- Bloomberg: China Reiterates Stance That Homes Are Not for Speculation
- CNBC: China’s housing minister says real estate developers must go bankrupt if necessary
>“We will scale up the building and supply of government-subsidized housing and improve the basic systems for commodity housing to meet people’s essential need for a home to live in and their different demands for better housing,” an English-language version of the report said.
Compare that to Obama, who bailed out the private banks at the expense of people with home mortgages, banks that knowingly wrote those bad mortgages. Michael Hudson, 2023: Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over
The financial sector is the core of Democratic Party support, and the party leadership is loyal to its supporters. As President Obama told the bankers who worried that he might follow through on his campaign promises to write down mortgage debts to realistic market valuations in order to enable exploited junk-mortgage clients to remain in their homes, “I’m the only one between you [the bankers visiting the White House] and the mob with the pitchforks,” that is, his characterization of voters who believed his “hope and change” patter talk.“ghost cities” are a pretty obvious example.
Reuters, 2015: The myth of China’s ghost cities
Wherever you’re getting your information from, it’s dogshit.
Why the Bank Crisis isn't Over - CounterPunch.org
President Biden has done everything that he could to confuse the public as to what is happening. His Monday speech assured voters that the SVB “rescue” was not a bailout. But of course it was a bailout.Michael Hudson (CounterPunch.org)
I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.
The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine,
Sounds an awful lot like claiming Iraqis wanted the US to overthrow Sadam and would welcome it with open arms. It worked out about the same too, except for the Russian military embarrassing themselves. Even taken at face value, all you are doing is justifying the imperialism, not showing it doesn't exist.
China is the biggest debt holder nation in the world. Zambia just had to default on loans for infrastructure that largely served Chinese needs, and Kenya and Ethiopia are not far behind. Meanwhile, the DRC is falling into debt paying for infrastructure to ship Copper and Cobalt to Chinese. China has not been as abusive as the west was, but they aren't that much better either. It's still the same tactics.
New Labor Forum: Chinese Investments in Africa: Twenty-First Century Colonialism?
Chinese Investments in Africa: Twenty-First Century Colonialism?
China’s increasing presence in Africa has been the topic of many studies and publications in recent years. How Chinese businesses and investments on the continent impact African labor movements has, however, received little attention.Herbert Jauch (New Labor Forum)
I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.
Oh yeah, famous Chinese propaganda outlet: The Atlantic.
Fuck off; you're just using the word "propaganda" to mean "anything I disagree with. There is nothing that anyone could say to you to disagree that you wouldn't immediately say "that's propaganda and therefore wrong!" to.
It worked out about the same too
Are you stupid? Iraq immediately erupted into long term insurgency, a thing that categorically did not happen in Crimea or Donbas.
Evidence for that? Ukraine government - the same who sold the Ghost of Kiev, Russia collecting Ukrainian children like Pokemon, the Martyrs of Snake Island, the secessionists shelling themselves, Russia shelling itself, russian troops shelling themselves, russian timetravel technology deployed in Bucha and much more.
Is getting your intelligence insulted your kink or something?
including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
Notice how you have these facts in your brain that you're sure are true but can't actually identify why you think they're true? That's what being propagandized feels like.
Crimea and the people of the Donbass region both voted to join Russia. In fact, the Donetsk and Luhanks People's Republics, the ones being ethnically cleansed by the far-right Banderites in Kiev that have been in power since the 2014 western-backed Euromaidan coup, specifically requested assistance from Russia in 2022. Belarus and Georgia having close economic ties is not the same as imperialism. You also have no evidence of neocolonialism, trade with Russia is closer to south-south trade as it doesn't have a monopoly on the goods it exports like gas and nuclear power plants, and as such African countries are developing more via trade with Russia and China while being underdeveloped by the west.
China is a socialist country. They have markets, but that doesn't mean they have a "mix" of capitalism and socialism. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and the state is under the control of the working classes. There is no "real estate crisis," housing prices were kept low and no longer able to be used as an investment vehicle. The "ghost cities" are smart urban development, and most are habited after being developed. This kind of thinking ahead is possible because of socialism.
You also have no evidence of "debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty," or "undermining labor movements." China regularly forgives loans, doesn't requore privatization of publicly owned industry or force austerity like the IMF does, and has been doing huge work in developing and building up the global south with more south-south trade.
What's going on here is it's absolutely unacceptable for you to admit that the west is the worst, by far, out of that trio. China is genuinely a progressive state with mass popular support internally and internationally, governed by a communist party. Russia is seeing rising support for socialism internally, and is higher up on the list of candidates for new socialist countried because of it. The west is the indisuputed world empire, helmed by the US, and this empire is projecting hard onto other countries as it exports genocide and plunders the world on its way out.
You also have no evidence of “debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty,” or “undermining labor movements.”
Their evidence is that the TV told them this many times over years, enough times that it’s true.
Tell us what a non-authoritarian leader of Venezuela would look like to you and how they would resist the constant pressure and hostile actions of the US government, because it seems to me that leftist leaders are always denounced as authoritarian by North American and European based NGOs and governments.
The only way to avoid being labelled as authoritarian is to be friendly to the imperial core countries, i.e. being capitalist.
The question is whether government/people should get $60/barrel revenue before expenses, maybe $40/barrel after expenses, or $10/barrel but pump 5-10x as much, bribed to be loyal to US. Long term, obviously no corruption and high revenue/profit per barrel has its advantages. It's not as though Exxon/Chevron can't get access to Venezuela oil with fair deals, it's that pretending corrupt puppets are the legitimate leaders provides extortion oil costs.
When you understand the hoops the US government is willing to jump through to get cheap foreign oil, you should understand that similar policies are used to deprive Americans of their fair share of resource revenue.
Just and free while being secure: "authoritarian"
Unjust and unfree while being insecure and overrun by bears: Libertarian
Venezuela has had US antagonistic covert ops operating in country since at least 2007. That's almost 2 decades of needing to find the US spies and their allies to prevent sabotage, coups, false flags, etc.
That's just the military aspect. They've also been under worsening sanctions for almost as long, which has been driven by the US strategy to starve the masses so that they revolt. This processes causes increased desperation among the people, which increases crime rates.
All of these things require the use of authority and as they get worse require more invasive and obvious uses of authority. It's hard enough to find spies, it's even harder to find spies and neutaize them without ripping the US off as to how you're finding them, going even further and finding spies without ever being wrong is nigh impossible.
They were absolutely free, compared to the horrible brutality of prior systems and the vast expansions in democratization and social welfare.
As for the USSR, the 1930s famine was tragic, but was the last major famine outside of war time. After collectivization of agriculture, yields were greater and more stable, and the bourgeois kulak system was practically abolished. Adverse weather conditions, crop disease, and kulaks violently resisting collectivization were the causes of the famine, and replacing that system with a more effective one ended famine.
❤️Through the power of love ❤️
What are your real-world examples—bourgeois “democracies”? If it’s so easy, why hasn’t it happened?
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism — not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience — could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not.
Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency — which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack.
One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government.
"Bourgeois Democracy": What Do Marxists Mean By This Term?
By Scott Cooper Republished from Left Voice . In 1947, Winston Churchill famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.Scott Cooper (Hampton Institute)
It's absolutely possible to remain just and free while being secure. Skill issue.
Maybe read it again?
Those being anarchists, not socialists. There have been shitloads of anarchist communes working perfectly, until some external force fucks them up or reclaims the land or whatever.
I asked specifically for socialist ones.
The Russian RSFR, the Paris Commune, The Bavarian soviet Republic, The Rhine Soviet Republic, The Hungarian Socialist Republic, socialist Cuba, socialist Vietnam, socialist Laos...
Turns out you don't knwo what you're talking about! All of them were immediately invaded, their opposition showered in material support and sanctioned to hell and back.
Tell us what a non-authoritarian leader of Venezuela would look like
Presumably they would look not-authoritarian, a description that doesn't fit Maduro at all.
It could well be that, in the face of US policy regarding Venezuela, only an Authoritarian could hold onto the country. That still doesn't make Maduro not an Authoritarian.
it seems to me that leftist leaders are always denounced as authoritarian by North American and European based NGOs and governments.
That's a fair observation but, again, that doesn't mean they are wrong when they say it about Maduro. Maduro is referred to as dictator by Human Rights Watch, the Organization of American States, and other human rights organizations, including some inside Venezuela.
Maduro is a dictator. It's largely the fault of the US that Venezuela has a dictator. If the US succeeds in ousting Maduro, it will almost certainly replace him with an even worse Dictator. All of that can be true with no contradictions.
Presumably they would look not-authoritarian
And what does that even look like? Something like Allende, I'm guessing.
Human Rights Watch
The liberal Zionist western propaganda outlet?
This is a vicious cycle of falling back to dictatorship to avoid imperialism, or some of it.
A) The country opens up and holds free elections, leading to an American puppet winning and the country turning into a vassal state at best, a glorified colony at worst.
B) The country turns into a dictatorship to limit foreign influence and fight back against imperialism, becoming a similarly terrible place to live, but at least without giving anything to the empire. Also note that as time passes, it's quite likely that the dictatorship will forget why it was even created, i.e. it will no longer be about rejecting imperialism.
There are often the only two realistic scenarios for countries targetted by the American Empire. Both are bad and I'm not sure I feel like analyzing which one is slightly less bad for the average person.
Chavez in his first few months/year of being in office would be a good example of a non-authoritarian in that role.
My problem with Maduro and many of those in the post early days of Chavez taking over is that far too many seem to have a tremendous amount of money that they cannot explain how they came across legally. Executives at PVDSA, the state run petroleum company, seem to be extremely vulnerable to this corruption.
You can make the case that dictatorships/authoritarian structures are needed to protect a socialist revolution, which Im not sure I entirely agree with, without supporting the theft of state resources by people in the government.
Its quite sad to see that some terminally online leftist just automaticly replace siding with the imperialist systems that there born into
That's not what we’re doing; that’s what intellectually incurious imperial core labor aristocrats think we’re doing.
How about not bootlicking authoritarians?
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Yes he’s certainly an authoritarian. Authoritarian doesn’t automatically mean bad…there’s such a thing as the concept of a benevolent dictator.
What evidence do you have that “the country went to shit” or “Venezuela is not a nice place to live in” or that he’s a “corrupt dictator”?
This original post, presumably, attempts to scratch slightly beneath the surface of what we hear on the news and suggest that your above statements only apply to a certain “deserving” class.
I don’t actually know a lot about Venezuela, and I’m asking these questions in earnest. I started to ask questions a lot earlier, but certainly looking into Maria Machado (this years Nobel Peace Prize winner) made some alarm bells go off. Could it be that the narrative is controlled by Machado and her neoliberal/right wing ilk, and she actually represents a large minority class of people that was purged/displaced in Venezuela?
I’m still investigating.
like this
Nobilmantis likes this.
We also get it from Maduro and the rest of the Chavanistas: his party rules by supreme power and decree. The way his party allocates power as a matter of internal affairs, may be another story.
Please, let’s not talk in absolutes. This notion that any and all narratives that you deem negative are part of a grand conspiracy just isn’t true.
I implied in my original reply that I believe Maduro may be benevolent, along the lines of Castro. I don’t really have a problem with dictators…the problem with dictators is they’re usually fascists. That isn’t the case in Venezuela.
his party rules by supreme power and decree.
Again, how do you know this, and why are you so certain that this is a fair characterization? Have you read or listened to Maduro’s speeches or read Chavismo literature? Did you ask working class Venezuelans they consider these “decrees” to be extra-legal are or whether they are popular among them? Or did it come from Five Eyes sources, their telling of events?
the problem with dictators is they’re usually fascists.
In the modern era, dictators dictate with the consent of the bourgeoisie. And yes, that is fascism. In stark contrast, the Maduro government is a thorn in the side of both the indigenous bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie.
Yes I have listened to his speeches and read his lefislation…that’s why I’m saying what I’m saying.
You’re citisizing things I didn’t say…I know Maduro is popular there. I don’t know how else to say it: I believe he has the best interests of the working class in mind.
There's a concept true. Just not an example. Technically it's possible for sub atomic particles in deep space to randomly coaless as a Ruben sandwich. But you're far more likely to see the evaporation of a super massive black hole.
Power corrupts. And sometimes there really is no point to arguing which shitty person is slightly less shitty than the other shitty person. The only true answer is not play, and that there shouldn't be such positions of power. Anything else is calvinball.
You'll notice that there are no real arguments that he isn't a authoritarian/dictator. Just justification that certain people identify with him, so it's okay. Or that because one cringe group of privileged people criticize him. All criticism against him is from similar cringe groups of people. The meme in a nutshell. A non sequitur.
Maduro absolutely is an authoritarian. As is Trump. I don't agree with either one of them. But Trump absolutely means to fuck all the way off when it comes to continuing to meddle in South America. Argentina and Venezuela have enough problems of their own. They don't need ours.
What makes Maduro an dictator? He's popularly supported, was democratically elected, and is setting up participatory systems in the economy. I can agree that he's "authoritarian" against capitalists and fascists, but that's absolutely a good use of authority.
Secondly, there's no evidence to the notion that "power corrupts," just correlation. In systems like capitalism, corrupt leaders are pushed upwards because that's profitable, it wasn't the power that corrupted them but a system that selects for corruption.
Tell the cryptofash on MeanwhileOnGrad that they're a hoot, btw.
- They have a “tankie”-punching community, but we’re the brigaders?
- That comm is way more censorious than we’ve ever been. Wrongthink is an instant permaban.
Your position is there has never been a benevolent leader? Power corrupts universally and equally? That’s nuts, quite frankly.
It’s absurd to suggest that Trump and Maduro are equivalent. They’re not equal in a single way, even if you believe they’re both bad.
It isn't groundbreaking to say that people can be corrupt to different degrees. What you failed to do is provide any meaningful explanation for why you believe Maduro to be corrupt, authoritarian, a dictator, etc. We gave ample evidence pointing to his popular support, the robust system of democracy in Venezuela, the rising commune movement and participatory economy, etc, while you called us bad-faith.
To me, it looks like you think yourself above having to back up your claims and as outside of the conversation looking in, rather than actually communicating with us. This is compounded by your commenting both here and on the MWoG threads, a known cryptofash gathering spot. Is this behavior of yours "good faith" in your eyes?
“Calling out Trump” is clearly a rhetorical tactic to distract from your incorrect assessment of Maduro. It should be noted that you’re aligned with Trump when you say that, and it should give you pause.
You don’t seem to remember your own comment. You used the most extreme straw man, adorned with sarcasm, to asses Maduro…there was no reality in your reply.
Meh, the fact that you think you’re talking to liberals is pretty amusing. Why defend an argument when you can attack the messenger, right?
Power corrupts.
A meaningless platitude; as baseless as saying that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Liberals just think it's true because they've created a system where people who were already corrupt gain power.
The only true answer is not play,
Yeah man, people should just "not play" real life. Fuck me, Western liberals really are the most privileged fuckers: all just a game to them.
You’ll notice that there are no real arguments that he isn’t a authoritarian/dictator.
???.
Other than the arguments people are making that he was democratically elected. Those are objectively arguments, regardless of your feelings on them.
Maduro absolutely is an authoritarian
Name one country that is oppositional to the West that you don't "consider" authoritarian.
Venezuela is not a nice place to live in.
Hmm, I wonder why? 🤔
democracynow.org/2019/4/26/hea…
Report: U.S. Sanctions Have Killed 40,000 in Venezuela Since 2017
More than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result of U.S. sanctions. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the economist Jeffrey Sachs. The report examines how U.S.Democracy Now!
The country went to shit before Chavez died as a result of many backing away from trade as a result of US demands as well as a slew of bad policy choices that turned them from a food exporting nation to one that imported food which collapsed the economy. Chavez and Maduro instituted price controls which have harmed the agricultural economy significantly which further harmed things.
That being said while their results were bad their intentions were good which is not going to be true of whatever puppet government the USA would install.
The fact is price controls are terrible policy and have never worked because we cannot predict the future needs of the market. Unless we magically get vastly better AI that runs the entire economy it is unlikely price controls will ever work so when Chavez instituted them it lead to a collapse of the agriculture sector leading to hunger issues.
Some of the economic problems were self created because many leftists have zero formal economic backgrounds and thus have trouble separating reasons for factual historical failures of specific leftist policies, like price controls or rent control being extremely problematic historically speaking, vs what is merely capitalist propaganda eg "capitalism is the only system that works" which isn't true historically speaking.
Some of the economic problems were self created because many leftists have zero formal economic backgrounds
That may well be, but at the same time, most economists in the world have a garbage education in neoclassical economics and carry neoliberal brain worms.
The system was created and developed by rich folks to ensure that rich folks continued to accumulate more and more wealth. Economists seem to me to be just working backwards from that point without ever mentioning it.
We had a middle class when taxes on the wealthy were 50-90 percent. Unless we bring that back, the ‘economy’ is bullshit.
Referring to the USA of course.
But Venezuela’s economy collapse was caused mainly by US foreign policy. It may have been exacerbated by Maduro’s or Chavez’s policy, but the US was the cause.
We had a middle class when taxes on the wealthy were 50-90 percent. Unless we bring that back, the ‘economy’ is bullshit.
If you were white and male it was a good deal for one generation. That was an anomalous moment in world history that will never come again. The US was the only major power in the world that didn’t have its productive capacity blown to smithereens in WWII, unions were comparatively strong, and the USSR posed a serious ideological threat to capitalism which caused the bourgeoisie to give (temporary) concessions.
Yes, of course there was systemic racism and women couldn’t even have personal checking accounts without approval from a male….
I’m just saying that unless taxes go up to 90% on folks making over a couple million dollars a year then we’ll never get there again.
I wouldn’t want to “go back” to it. But we do know that the 90% tax on the wealthy is a viable plan to fund the social services and needs of the people. And we also know that it needs to happen.
Edit: I hope it’s clear I was not advocating for something or anything like a return to 1950’s values lol
ANTICONQUISTA is an anti-imperialist media collective. Our content is produced by and for the Latin American and Caribbean Diaspora.We are dedicated to exposing and fighting the capitalist-imperialist system, the root cause of our displacement.
We provide analysis of the region’s current events and history from a communist, anti-imperialist, Third Worldist, pro-Indigenous, pro-Black, pro-LGBTQ+, proletarian feminist and pan-Latin American and Caribbean perspective. We produce articles, books, podcasts, videos and social media memes.
In our motherland, we provide financial support to revolutionary movements resisting capitalist-imperialist oppression.
Yeah, I have a friend who lives in Venezuela, he and his family can barely afford to eat, and I mean barely. Beans everyday and nothing else for years. I tried to send him some computer parts and it was going to be over 5 grand to send them, so I couldn't afford that, but his pc was genuinely very low end 5 years ago and I know he hasn't been able to upgrade, especially with all the money going to his 9 other family members living in the 1 bedroom apartment.
But whatever lies you have to tell yourself to sleep at night buddy.
First comment: Responded within five minutes
Second comment: 1 hour later and nowhere to be seen
If you want to get banned just start insulting people like the op.
additionally feel free to let your fashy friends know that I'm on payroll for both Putin AND Xi for my sfw online posting activities. I also collect checks from George Soros for in-person work that upsets conservatives.
it's important to have multiple income streams 💅
I've started tagging every single one i see. I should write them all down lol
The insatiable fascist urge to make lists of leftists
I think most people are indeed agreeing that Venezuela is facing financial hardship, but not because of Maduro, but mainly due to the sanctions by western govts.
Venezuela is a small country and the US is a large and influential one. So such sanctions are going to hurt Venezuela.
Can I ask a question to get the idea across?
We have heard news that Palestinians have faced food shortages and there was even famine warning.
Do you see it as a failure of their leadership or that of Israel blocking food and aid to the place, while isolating and attacking them?
If it is the latter, then wouldn't Venezuela be in the same position but relatively more favorable?
I think that is the view that many in the thread have.
Palestine and Venezuela are not even remotely similar, while both have been screwed over by US stupidity, they are so vastly different in circumstance I personally find comparisons to be a little silly.
Venezuela is well known to have screwed up its own economy in previous leadership, while spurred from US sanctions and interference it was ultimately their own actions that caused their economic collapse. Maduro has not helped with these issues and has only helped expand these problems. Though not nearly as problematic as previous leaders.
And while I personally get the hate Venezuela has towards the US, Jesus they are playing with fire. The US is out for blood, and will likely flatten the country just because they can, its going to be quite bad, and very sad.
At the point that US starts flattening Venezuela, killing hundreds a day and planning to rebuild it, then that would be a more fair comparison.
The US Empire isn't committing genocide in Palestine and attacking Venezuela out of "stupidity." The US Empire is rational, and acting in its own self-interest. Israel is a US millitary base in west Asia, and Venezuela is daring to go against US imperialism and try to harness its own production and resources for their benefit. The US Empire's aggression is rational, not simply a matter of stupidity.
Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro has seen dramatic expansions in social welfare, democratization, and poverty alleviation. The opposition wishes to establish itself as a comprador class to sell out their people to the US Empire. Venezuelans have the choice between resisting the system that keeps them perpetually underdeveloped, US imperialism, or resist that and risk millitary confrontation. Venezuela has bravely chosen the latter, and going along with imperialist framing of Venezuelan leaders just cedes legitimacy to the narrative the US Empire is concocting to justify invasion.
Well that was a lot of credulous Lemmy users. I should spend less time debunking imperial talking points and more time selling these people bridges. I’m leaving money on the table.
Some of them even fired up their dusty old alt accounts to vote multiple times.
Two things can be true at the same time. Maduro can be a dictator and the US can exerciser its military power illegally and attempt to intimidate and topple him.
Both can be true at the same time.
Both can be true at the same time.
They can also not be, brainiac. Despite what Redditors may think, vagueposting is not an argument.
As a latino....I am tired of USA citizens whitesplaining me shit.
Guy is a dictator.
Trump should still fuck off from latinoamerica but Maduro is a dictator.
Well that was aggressive. You seem very excited about this subject, maybe you should calm down.
There was nothing “vague” about my statement. Maduro is a dictator and the US is violating international law going after him.
It's not at all a grand statement to say "US bad, but enemy of US also bad." All this does is cede legitimacy to the US Empire against its enemies, manufacturing consent during their aggression. It doesn't matter if you finger wag the US, by legitimizing their claims against their enemies, you legitimize their assault.
This is even further compounded by your lack of explanation of how a democratically elected and popularly supported president is a dictator. This is the same playbook they used against Allende.
Once again both can be true at the same time.
Here are some articles on the subject if you wish to educate yourself. Of course if facts get in the way of your preconceived notions or political objectives you can always ignore them.
theguardian.com/world/article/…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuel…
hrf.org/latest/hrf-condemns-fr…
npr.org/2024/07/29/nx-s1-50555…
Evidence shows Venezuela’s election was stolen – but will Maduro budge?
Analyses indicate Nicolás Maduro lost the presidential election, but country’s leader shows no signs of stepping asideTiago Rogero (The Guardian)
You seem very excited about this subject, maybe you should calm down.
“You are an emotional soyjack and I am a rational chad.”
Redditors, man.
Two comments and not a single coherent argument besides name calling.
I can see redditors live rent free in your head. Is there some kind of trauma they inflicted which you can’t move past?
Well, the friends are right, because he is a dictator.
Which is still better than whatever USA has in store for Venezuela.
And which absolutely doesn't justify slaughtering Venezuelan civilians.
It's okay they think Maduro is a dictator. That's not a crazy idea, to be fair, but I believe it's a debatable idea, since parties in democracy may get overwhelming support, to the point, the leader of the State can accumulate enormous power. But I struggle to call it a dictatorship or an authoritarian regime, until they start changing laws so they can benefit from them directly without the stated support of the people by referendum. I honestly believe Maduro would have been out by now if it wasn't for the antagonism of the USA and their pets.
It's easier for me to call Bukele a dictator. He kind of bent the law, exercising his authoritarian faculties, so the authorities could "allow" him to have a license from his presidential duties in order to participate in presidential elections. How can anyone forget another symbolic fact? One time, in 2020, Bukele did enter the Legislative House guarded by soldiers and sat on the chair of the President of this power to make some speech. Dictators accommodate well enough to hegemonies since they will accept anything as long as they remain in power. They don't defend sovereignty, they just defend their position.
In the case of my country, we really can't be called a dictatorship, because reelection was banned by historical lessons. The USA plays a familiar game with us, they call it a narco state, instead. I wonder what's the third option in the CIA manual.
Notice these same people don't come out of the woodwork upon the mere utterance of "El Salvador" or "Bukele" like they do with "Venezuela" and "Maduro" even as Trump is deporting legal citizens to CECOT.
The words "dictatorship" and "authoritarianism" are clue words for followers of western publications to turn off their brains. They want to sort countries, parties, and leaders into neat little "good guys" and "bad guys" bins. These words allow them to do that with minimal effort, circumventing the need to understand the societies involved. Questioning that framing takes research effort and "sympathizing with authoritarians" so they never do it.
Rich people love dictators, as long as it's their chosen dictator.
I once worked with a guy from a wealthy family who had to escape Venezuela after Maduro took power. His family hated him, of course, because they'd become rich under the old system, but now they were in America, and he had to work a real job. He flat out told me that he felt like the best governmental system is when 5% of the population is wealthy, and 95% is dirt poor. Of course, he'd been one of the 5%.
had to escape Venezuela after Maduro took powerthey'd become rich under the old system
.... They didn't flee from Chavez? What's the timeline here?
Yeah, you're probably right, it was probably Chavez. I worked with this guy years ago, I'm not sure of the timeline off the top of my head.
The point is that the rich had it made under the old system, and had to leave when it changed.
I also had some elderly neighbors from Venezuela, and they had relatives that would have loved to visit them, but they were afraid to leave because they were afraid their houses and businesses would be confiscated by the government while they were gone. That happened to one relative when she went to visit family that was living in Paris, so she just stayed in Paris.
their houses and businesses
Of course they worry about wealth redistribution, they’re wealthy. That’s why the capitalist class will do literally anything in their vast power to crush socialism.
China is bearing down on Taiwan – enabled by Trump’s weakness and vacillation | Simon Tisdall
China’s relentless siege of traditionally US-backed Taiwan has moved beyond crude military pressure (although that’s increasing). Its efforts to enforce the island’s economic and diplomatic isolation – and overthrow its pro-western, elected government – are augmented by spying, cyber-sabotage, mass surveillance and idiotic lies, conspiracies and disinformation.
Announcing a $40bn increase in defence spending last week, Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, warned the annexation threat was “intensifying”. In an echo of Ukraine, which faces similar pressures from Russia and is likewise unsure of US support, Lai said the most worrying scenario was that browbeaten Taiwanese would simply give up.
“Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first preference is to win without a devastating, unpredictable war,” wrote analyst Hal Brands. “His method is encompassing, steadily escalating coercion … This is a classic ‘anaconda strategy’, meant to get progressively tighter until Taiwan yields. Isolation and demoralisation will ultimately produce capitulation, the thinking goes.”
China is bearing down on Taiwan – enabled by Trump’s weakness and vacillation
The US hasn’t just left Ukraine vulnerable; it is also provoking Xi’s intensifying attitude towards what he considers a renegade province, says Guardian foreign affairs commentator Simon TisdallSimon Tisdall (The Guardian)
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Fucking finally, time to take care of the rouge "state" 🇨🇳
Umm.. Lol.
the rouge (or red) state being China 🇨🇳;
Or rogue state 🇹🇼 Taiwan?
Technically, the only rogue and red state is China ofc.
Conntrack question
cross-posted from: lemmy.nocturnal.garden/post/38…
Hi, I've had issues for the last days where my services were unreachable via their domains sporadically. They are scattered across 2-3 VMs which are working fine and can be reached by their domain (usually x.my.domain subdomains) via my nginx reverse proxy (running in it's own Debian vm). The services themself were running fine. My monitoring (Node Exporter/Prometheus) notified me that the conntrack limit on the nginx vm was reached in the timeframes where my services weren't reachable, so that seems to be the obvious issue.As for the why, it seems that my domains are known to more spammers/scripters now. The nginx error.log grew by factor 100 from one day to the next. Most of my services are restriced to local IPs, but some like this lemmy instance are open entirely (nginx vm has port 80 and 443 forwarded).
I never heard of conntrack before but tried to read up on it a bit. It keeps track of the vm's connections. The limit seems to be rather low, apparently it depends on the memory of the vm which is also low. I can increase the memory and the limit, but some posts suggest to generally disable it if not stricly needed. The vm is doing nothing but reverse proxying so I'm not sure if I really need it. I usually stick to Debians defauls though. Would appreciate input on this as I don't really see what the conseqences of this would be. Can it really just be disabled?
But that's just making symptons go away and I'd like to stop the attackers even before reaching the vm/nginx. I basically have 2 options.
- The vm has ufw enabled and I can set up fail2ban (should've done that earlier). However, I'm not sure if this helps with the conntrack thing since they need to make a connection before getting f2b'd and that will stay in the list for a bit.
- There's an OPNsense between the router and the nginx vm. I have to figure out how, but I bet there's a possibility to subscribe to known-attacker-IP-lists and auto-block or the like. I'd like some transparency here though and also would want to see which of the blocked IPs actually try to get in.
Would appreciate thoughts or ideas on this!
Increasing ip_conntrack_max safely?
I've see the following in my logs every so often: kernel: ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet. Currently, I have ip_conntrack_max set to 65536 (default, RHEL5). Keeping memory usage in min...Stack Overflow
Connection tracking might not be totally necessary for a reverse proxy mode, but it's worth discussing what happens if connection tracking is disabled or if the known-connections table runs out of room. For a well-behaved protocol like HTTP(S) that has a fixed inbound port (eg 80 or 443) and uses TCP, tracking a connection means being aware of the TCP connection state, which the destination OS already has to do. But since a reverse proxy terminates a TCP connection, then the effort for connection tracking is minimal.
For a poorly-behaved protocol like FTP -- which receives initial packets in a fixed inbound port but then spawns a separate port for outbound packers -- the effort of connection tracking means setting up the firewall to allow ongoing (ie established) traffic to pass in.
But these are the happy cases. In the event of a network issue that affects an HTTP payload sent from your reverse proxy toward the requesting client, a mid-way router will send back to your machine an ICMP packet describing the problem. If your firewall is not configured to let all ICMP packets through, then the only way in would be if conntrack looks up the connection details from its table and allows the ICMP packet in, as "related" traffic. This is not dissimilar to the FTP case above, but rather than a different port number, it's an entirely different protocol.
And then there's UDP tracking, which is relevant to QUIC. For hosting a service, UDP is connectionless and so for any inbound packet we received on port XYZ, conntrack will permit an outbound packet on port XYZ. But that's redundant since we presumably had to explicitly allow inbound port XYZ to expose the service. But in the opposite case, where we want to access UDP resources on the network, then an outbound packet to port ABC means conntrack will keep an entry to permit an inbound packet on port ABC. If you are doing lots of DNS lookups (typically using UDP), then that alone could swamp the con track table: kb.isc.org/docs/aa-01183
It may behoove you to first look at what's filling conntrack's table, before looking to disable it outright. It may be possible to specifically skip connection tracking for anything already explicitly permitted through the firewall (eg 80/443). Or if the issue is due to numerous DNS resolution requests from trying to look up spam sources IPs, then perhaps either the logs should not do a synchronous DNS lookup, or you can also skip connection tracking for DNS.
Linux connection tracking and DNS
My busy Linux-based nameserver is giving unreasonably slow responses. How do I know if Linux connection tracking is causing the problem I am having?kb.isc.org
There’s an OPNsense between the router and the nginx vm.
Have you tried integrating opensense with Suricata or perhaps Snort as an IDS/IPS? Then use ntopng for observables and traffic analysis. Currently, there are several IP that have been hounding the pFsense firewall. Mostly from China, Romania, and Singapore, but they just get blocked by Suricata.
I have no experience with conntrack tho.
World News in Brief: Children hit by HIV funding gaps, risks to Pakistan’s courts, minority exclusion | UN News
World News in Brief: Children hit by HIV funding gaps, risks to Pakistan’s courts, minority exclusion
Children and adolescents living with HIV continue to be left behind in access to early diagnosis, life-saving treatment and care, as shrinking funding threatens to reverse decades of progress, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday, ahead o…UN News
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DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian
DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian
I am a huge fan of Git, as I have witnessed how it has made software development so much more productive compared to the pre-2010s era. I wish all Debian source code were in Git to reap the full benefits.Otto Kekäläinen (Optimized by Otto)
Zimbabwe: Chinese firms tighten grip on country’s lithium sector as Environmental Law Organisation urges for more domestic production of high-value, refined lithium products
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46485447
[...]While Chinese investment has helped revive Zimbabwe’s lithium industry, ZELO [the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation] found widespread concerns over poor labour standards and environmental violations, particularly among medium- and small-scale Chinese operators across the lithium, gold, coal and chrome sectors.
Reported issues included non-compliance with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations, dust pollution, water contamination from mine effluent, low wages, inadequate protective equipment and allegations of worker abuse and discrimination.
The report warns that such malpractices have contributed to the perception that Chinese companies have a poor human rights and environmental record in Zimbabwe. It says this presents reputational risks for the country’s lithium exports at a time when global supply chains increasingly prioritise strong Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards.
[...]
ZELO's latest study, 'Mine to Market for Critical Minerals: Zimbabwe’s Lithium Supply and Value Chain Situational Report', finds that Chinese companies now control most major lithium mining and processing operations in the country.
[...]
Although Australian and British companies also operate in the sector, ZELO says Chinese dominance has created an imbalance that weakens competition and reduces Zimbabwe’s bargaining power.
“This imbalance restricts the Zimbabwe’s ability to derive optimal value from its lithium resources,” the organisation said. “It also exposes Zimbabwe to external risks linked to fluctuations in Chinese global investment or commodity demand.”
[...]
Data from the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) highlights the stark value gap between raw and refined lithium. A tonne of lithium concentrate with 4%–5.5% Li₂O content sells for between US$300 and US$600. By contrast, refined lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate can fetch more than US$26,000 per tonne.
ZELO says this disparity underscores the need for Zimbabwe to prioritise domestic production of high-value, refined lithium products instead of exporting low-value concentrate.
[...]
ZELO recommends increased investment in beneficiation, production of industrial by-products such as sodium sulphate anhydrous and alumina silicate, and stronger local content rules to promote skills transfer and technology adoption. It also calls for tighter enforcement of labour, safety and environmental regulations and strategic partnerships with non-Chinese investors to diversify markets.
[...]
Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s journey from CIA-backed ‘Zero Unit’ to DC shooting suspect
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ikt
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •like this
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Goodlucksil
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Sean Tilley
in reply to Goodlucksil • • •astro_ray
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •I want to support artists and would definitely buy music on fedi. I would rather just watch hobbyist make videos for peertube and especially for loops.
But if it means that it would help the platform stay afloat I am way more open to the idea of monetization beyond just donations.
Olap
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Keep it away is my strong advice. Having to deal with banks will mean having to deal with regulations. Having to deal with crypto means having to deal with crytpo bros. Having to deal with paywalls is a barrier to entry
The internet was a better place without money touching everything!
JohnnyEnzyme
in reply to Olap • • •I don't have strong feelings either way, but money does touch everything, overtly or not, when it comes to civilisation. Time spent volunteering on Fediverse projects is effectively money spent (at least to some degree), and instances cost time & fees to maintain.
But I guess to argue against myself-- you have to think that without some kind of ongoing responsible oversight, then the worst aspects of capitalism might predictably find a way to screw it all up if left to its own devices. Then again, maybe the scale involved makes that less likely. *shrug*
Olap
in reply to JohnnyEnzyme • • •Yeah, I get it. Volunteers' time should be valued. But, there is more to valuing than money is my counter: authority, respect, community engagement, and a fraternal/paternal element
I salute all mods. And I pay for admins
JohnnyEnzyme
in reply to Olap • • •I mean, you're kind of lifting my point in to a broader area that I wasn't speaking to at the time.
Of course I agree with all that you said. But I was talking strictly in the context of OP's framework.
brachiosaurus
in reply to Olap • • •The internet was also a better place when people using it were more open minded
poVoq
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster
drewdevault.combrachiosaurus
in reply to poVoq • • •poVoq
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •brachiosaurus
in reply to poVoq • • •poVoq
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •brachiosaurus
in reply to poVoq • • •github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy?tab=…
You can support lemmy by donating cryptocurrencies, they are not only used by scammers.
GitHub - LemmyNet/lemmy: 🐀 A link aggregator and forum for the fediverse
GitHubamino
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •brachiosaurus
in reply to amino • • •amino
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •brachiosaurus
in reply to amino • • •Your argument: lemmy is shit because its creators are communists and it isn't decentralized because most of the traffic is on lemmy.world
BTC is and still is a decentralized project, a few actors gained a lot of power over the network but that is another story, similarly you could argue that a bunch of people run the finance world.
amino
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •yes, Lemmy being created by tankies, genocide deniers and tech bros is the reason why most servers are rife with misogyny and incel mentality. that's why women don't feel comfortable participating and most active members are men.
the fact that the gender hierarchy keeps reproducing itself all over the fediverse inherently disproves the myth that Lemmy is decentralized (as in abolishing hierarchical power).
that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate this experiment for what it is and I definitely prefer the limited freedom of movement I enjoy here compared to the nonexistent freedom on Reddit.
the US is and still is a federal institution. just because Trump became dictator that doesn't mean that the country is fundamentally flawed and states rights hasn't always been bullshit. just one more election will get our freedom back bro I promise! /s
brachiosaurus
in reply to amino • • •How do you know that most active members are men? To me it sound you are being sexist here and judging people by their posts. Also where have you seen rife misogyny? Lemmy community is quite open and there are different instances you can chose each with its policies.
I don't know much about US government but i believe the US president has some power over states granted by constitution. Bitcoin isn't designed to have a president that can chose for others.
amino
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •EfreetSK
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Maybe it's just nostalgia but in my opinion, with youtube it went all to shit the moment the money started to be involved. Algorithm chasing, advertisement, reactive content, sponsors, quickly generated videos, ... and all the other shit.
So if monetization, then let's try to avoid same mistakes
hendrik
in reply to EfreetSK • • •JohnnyEnzyme
in reply to EfreetSK • • •🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Sean Tilley
in reply to 🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖 • • •You might be interested in trying out Nostr. I know it's more Bitcoin Lightning focused, which admittedly is not for everybody, but they've managed to make a lot of stuff work when it comes to paying one another.
In the technical sense, Nostr is really great.
CosmoNova
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •It‘s a two sided blade, but I get what you mean.
On one hand monetization is the thing that ruins platforms for me because it invites grifters and even decent people are becoming obsessed with numbers. Most people see content creation only as a career path and not something to do for fun anymore. I find that depressing at times.
On the other hand we currently live in a capitalist world and have to play by those rules to some extend. I learned most of the things I do for a living from Youtube because professionals do Blender tutorials as a side gig or even for a living. There probably wouldn‘t be nearly as much knowledge out there without this motivator. Or at least not in this form that is easy to understand for me. The official Blender documentation usually isn‘t the first place I‘m searching through when I have a problem.
So I see where you‘re coming from but it‘s a fine line between helpful and loathsome.
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Hamartiogonic
in reply to CosmoNova • • •Meldrik
in reply to Hamartiogonic • • •Cracks_InTheWalls
in reply to Hamartiogonic • • •Well we do have Liberapay. It's not perfect in that it only addresses the payment angle (with the issue around processors noted by the other reply still present), and doesn't allow for subscriber only content, but it's something.
I think between something like this and a few other things (dunno much about PeerTube etc. or if 'private' posts are a thing where you could maintain a 'mailing list' of donor accounts and grant them access to exclusive stuff), it's possible to cobble something together. Lot of management would be required in the backend compared to more mainstream approaches at this point, though.
Just thinking outloud, there's probably stuff I'm not considering here. Re: an eStore...idk, only thing I can think of is a DIY webstore relying on emails and money transfer services if trying to avoid mainstream eCommerce stuff like Shopify or whatever (same way people used to sell pot on the clearweb back in the very early days, lol).
Liberapay
liberapay.comCooper8
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •like this
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Rimu
in reply to Cooper8 • • •Sean Tilley
in reply to Rimu • • •Cooper8
in reply to Rimu • • •pedroapero
in reply to Cooper8 • • •widowdoll
in reply to pedroapero • • •As he over-engineers it.
"Built-in to the UI" could literally just be a wallet link in a sidebar.
chicken
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Hell yeah, I didn't know about Mitra. It sounds like it's a Patreon esque kind of deal with what the payments part is for.
Sean Tilley
in reply to chicken • • •chicken
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •inconel
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Artists need exposure before monetization imho, which currently fedi lacks severely. So discoverability is what I suggest as priority to work on.
That said, algorithm free is the draw of fedi as well and I personally don't want my feed filled with excessive ad or self promo spam. Getting the right middle ground will be tricky.
Gary Ghost
in reply to inconel • • •Where do you think would be an affordable place to advertise the fediverse?
I think the fediverse should advertise it's self in a simple slogan that can lead the normal user into a more in depth explanation of what, why and how. When I first discovered Lemmy, I didn't know what the fediverse was, it felt really strange
ChunkMcHorkle
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •If you allow artists to display their work in various communities along with the ability to post links in their profiles, but you restrict actual posts to disallow self-promotion, it's the best of both worlds, IMO.
In other words, if you can't include self-promotion in your community posts, but everyone knows you have the links in your profile, it attracts less grifters and keeps the feed clean, while allowing anyone interested to contact a poster directly or ask them promotional questions via DMs.
That said, hosting a full-fledged marketplace is not a good idea, IMO. There are laws and banks involved, which mean lawyers and taxes, and volunteer management does not work for that. There are already marketplaces that do that well, and allowing artists to post their own links of choice in their profiles will let them steer actual business to other platforms, while keeping the fediverse for display, review, share and critique. My opinion, anyway.
brachiosaurus
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •like this
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ScoffingLizard
in reply to brachiosaurus • • •like this
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mPony
in reply to ScoffingLizard • • •queermunist she/her
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •like this
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Randomgal
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •poVoq
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •I have high hopes for GNU Taler in that regard, as it is in theory super easy to include in any website and makes tipping small sums very feasible.
But in reality it is bogged down by bureocractic hurdles on the banking side, and I am starting to lose a bit of hope due to perpetual delays even after some banks promised to support it as part of an EU grant via Nlnet.
rumba
in reply to poVoq • • •Cris_Color
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Really happy to see this discussion here. Here is no "correct" path here, but is deeply important that the one we choose is intentional and thoughtfully considered by the folks these platforms serve
Both their audience and their contributors.
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OpticalMoose
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Thanks for bringing it up. Nobody likes to talk about money in the Fediverse, but it's a fact of life.
I've stopped making Peertube videos lately mainly because I got tired of donating. We've got to come up with a better solution.
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Bababasti
in reply to OpticalMoose • • •dbtng
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Hey, um .... I read your article. Or I tried to.
It lost me at the point where I need to give money to somebody else. So, basically right at the start.
To be more specific, your article starts of lamenting that its not convenient enough for me to give money to someone ("content creators", a bullshit term if I've ever heard one) on these federated platforms. "this is a bit of a problem" There's no examination of whether we should be doing this. Its taken as a given that monetization is a positive goal.
So ... I really tried to get there and understand your point, but there's this vast gulf between us.
Why would it be bad if nobody makes any money off the fediverse?
That sounds good to me.
megrania
in reply to dbtng • • •I don't agree, really ... that'd limit the Fediverse to hobbyists.
It's completely legitimate to look for income & exposure as a creator, whether you're making music, visual art, or document your process making physical objects. Corporate platforms, as crappy as they might be, provide a path to that, and in many ways created viable path for creators to do what they like full-time. Not saying that it's perfect or easy. But the Fediverse is currently no alternative at all ...
Currently, restricting yourself to the Fediverse as an artist unfortunately means that you're taking quite a hit in terms of exposure you can get. As long as that's the case, and people even defend it, then we really can't complain that the Fediverse isn't attractive for a larger amount of people, and centralized platforms will always have the bigger draw.
I try to avoid corporate platforms as much as I can, but as a consumer I often feel starved of content. I haven't found any interesting woodworking channels on PeerTube, or guitar repair channels, or whatever else I enjoy watching to wind down.
And as a creator, well ... it's not my source of income, but I sure would like it to be. And if I ever decide to make that step, I'm pretty sure that I's have to make amends to my "no corporate platforms" approach. The Fediverse doesn't feed you.
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dbtng
in reply to megrania • • •Ok. I can follow this line of reasoning.
If you want to avoid corporate platforms, fediverse doesn't provide as viable an alternative as one might like.
This is clear, and makes sense. Thanks for the succinct explanation. At least I see some sense here now.
I'm not entirely sure that it matters.
Like, when was it decided that the 'making money' bit needed to be imported from YouTube?
OpticalMoose
in reply to dbtng • • •What's bullshit about content creators? I enjoy watching documentaries from The History Channel or The Learning Channel. If someone does a bunch of research and self-publishes a documentary, they're somehow less valid?
The article isn't about anybody "making money off the fediverse". It's about finding a way to make the fediverse viable, considering that everybody wants to use it, but nobody wants to donate.
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dbtng
in reply to OpticalMoose • • •Krudler
in reply to dbtng • • •You're referencing a time when the content was also completely useless, and ZERO production values were expected.
Times have changed, old man.
dbtng
in reply to Krudler • • •Krudler
in reply to dbtng • • •Perhaps this will explain it better
lemmy.world/comment/20830214
dbtng
in reply to Krudler • • •rumba
in reply to dbtng • • •Not OP, but I'd work real fucking hard to give us something that can be a viable alternative to Youtube where a corporate monopoly doesn't take 95% of the cash. It doesn't even need to be federated, but we all see the shithole Odysee immediately became. We have a substantial number of people here with like interests and marginally like feelings on a lot of topics that would make great video content.
Peertube has been around for 7 years, and there isn't enough content on it to occupy even a Linux nerd for more than 30 minutes a week. People are only making videos on YouTube because they can make some semblance of a living at it.
I think giving people who are willing to create videos some decent tools for monetization in open products would be a reasonably good idea. We have nothing there now; we don't have anything to lose by it. It's not like great content that doesn't exist can be walled off to us.
This could be as easy as forking peertube and putting in patreon privitization links. Or it could be a federated version of KoFi that ties in.
dbtng
in reply to rumba • • •Ok, I quibble with much of what you just wrote, but your first line contained a lucid point.
In essence, you propose that a federated monetization scheme would direct the bulk of the pie to the participants and not to the big corporate interests.
Now that's a damned interesting thing to consider.
I think its obvious that it would/will go awry. Any time you get non-profits screwing around with money, somebody figures out how to steal it.
But if even a bit more went to the participants and paid for infrastructure, that would be a positive thing.
But again ... non-profits and coops never handle money correctly. Watch this get all the way to the goalpost and then swoop, it all gets handled with GooglePay. Its doomed. DOOM.
rumba
in reply to dbtng • • •I'm not even sure that is possible, but I'd like to see us try something.
Maybe the best place to start is by allowing a microtransaction service into the UI and let people add their own API keys to known players.
melsaskca
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •somerandomperson
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •Because you ain't doing that.
dbtng
in reply to somerandomperson • • •moonshadow
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •widowdoll
in reply to Sean Tilley • • •There is nothing stopping anyone from running ads and making deals with creators.
There is nothing stopping creators and hosters from accepting payments via Monero.
Also, we should stop trying to figure out how to make other people money.