"We'll rise together and say: We reject political violence. We reject fear as governance. We reject the myth that only some deserve freedom," wrote the coalition behind "No Kings" rallies planned for June 14.
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The Maghreb Resilience Convoy’s 300-vehicle caravan departed from Tunis on Monday morning, before crossing the Libyan border on Tuesday. It is expected to enter Egypt on Thursday and reach Rafah a few days later.
According to participating groups, “doctors, students, lawyers, and everyday people” are in the convoy, part of the Global March to Gaza scheduled for June 15, during which 2,500 activists from over 50 countries plan to march from El-Arish in Egypt to Rafah in Gaza.
The defense minister called the pro-Palestinians “jihadists,” saying they would also endanger the stability of the governing Egyptian regime and other moderate Arab governments in the region.
The State Department is preparing to order the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad due to the potential for regional unrest
The State Department is preparing to order the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad due to the potential for regional unrest, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The Baghdad embassy has already been on limited staffing, and the order will not affect a large number of personnel, but the department also is authorizing the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait.
Note that we don't have diplomatic relations with Iran, so in the event of a military conflict with Iran, there wouldn't be anyone to evacuate there, just in nearby countries.
I created a secondary Pixelfed account to test the share functionality, but none of the posts I've shared from my main account are showing up in the new account’s feed.
Try again after following the account that post. Having someone from your instance following a remote user is the best way to insure proper federation of content in the fediverse.
if your two accounts are on a different instance, federation takes a while, your follow signals to your instance to synchronize the content from the other account, and it's not instantaneous, it's queued along the requests of everyone else on your instance.
Fediforum happened this week, porting your social graph cross-protocol with Bounce, Bonfire gets closer to release, a prominent Lemmy server shuts down, and much more.
I also run a weekly newsletter, where you get all the articles I published this week directly in your inbox, as well as additional analysis. You can sign up right here, and get the next edition this Friday!
FediForum and related announcements
The FediForum unconference was this week, with three days of sessions, keynotes and demos. The event was originally scheduled for April, but got cancelled at the last minute due to drama around transphobic statements made by one of the co-organisers. The individual in question left FediForum, and instead FediForum set up an advisory board with a number of community members. This edition of FediForum had keynotes for the first time, by ActivityPub co-creator Christine Lemmer-Webber, author Cory Doctorow, and Ian Forrester, who lead a Mastodon instance at the BBC. There were also a large number of demos (list here) and unconference sessions about a wide variety of subjects. I’ll write more about both the demos and the keynotes once the videos of them will become available online, likely next week.
Bounce is a newly-announced tool that allows people to migrate their social graph across protocols. It is made by A New Social, the organisation behind Bridgy Fed. The ability to port a social graph from AT Protocol to ActivityPub reshapes what is possible within the Open Social Web. For that reason, I think Bounce is a meaningful release, with its power mainly being in altering the shape of these networks. I wrote an essay on that this week that goes into the philosophical side of Bounce. For more practical information I can recommend this coverage by TechCrunch and The Verge. Meanwhile, A New Social’s CTO Ryan Barrett has shared all the updates and new features that have happened to Bridgy Fed over the recent months.
Music sharing platform Bandwagon shared more information during Fediforum on their development work, and how they are working on integrating album sales. A dev blog by Bandwagon recently shared their plans on adding a premium subscription, and how album sales work. During a Fediforum session, developer Ben Pate shared some screenshots on what this looks like. WeDistribute has a deep dive into Bandwagon and the current state of development based on the latest FediForum session.
Bonfire is an upcoming fediverse platform that has slowly been reaching the end of the line for development, and they announced the release candidate version of Bonfire 1.0. It is a framework and platform for building communities on the fediverse, and has a large variety of features and extensibility. One of the standout features is circles and boundaries. Circles allow users to define lists of accounts, and boundaries allows users to determine on a per-post basis to what circles each post gets shared. This creates a significant amount of flexibility on how to handle private posts, something which is in huge demand within the open social web. Bonfire also gives users a large amount of control over how they see and filter their feed. For more of a philosophical take on that, I recently wrote about how Bonfire’s approach on custom feeds compares to Bluesky’s approach. The developers are inviting people to install their own instance and experiment with the new features. It is unknown when Bonfire will be ready for a full 1.0 release. For another look at Bonfire, TechCrunch also covered the story.
Filmmaker and fediverse evangelist Elena Rossini has released her fediverse promotion video, which was highly anticipated by the community. The video can be viewed here, and tells the story of why the fediverse matters for a lay audience. The video is worth paying attention to for two reasons: first of all, it is a well-produced promo video for the fediverse that explains some of the core ideas in an accessible manner. Secondly, the video has gotten a huge amount of support from within the fediverse community, with a large number of prominent people within the community supporting Rossini’s work. One of the challenges of analysing a decentralised community is that there is no singular decentralised community, there are a wide variety of different groups and cultures. However, by seeing how and who responded positively to the video, it becomes clear that Rossini’s video does represent a dominant and popular understanding of what the fediverse is, and why it matters. In that way, analysing the video does provide good insight into the one of the more dominant and popular cultures of the fediverse.
Shutdown of Lemmy and opportunity for PieFed
Lemm.ee, one of the biggest Lemmy servers, is shutting down at the end of June. The team says: “The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.” This has some significant impact on the wider Threadiverse community, as the lemm.ee hosted a significant number of popular communities. This makes server shutdowns on Threadiverse platforms signficantly more impactful, as they also impact people who do not have an account on the platform. Community migration is challenging, and there are no specific tools to help with a community with migrating to a different server.
The shutdown of the Lemm.ee server provides an opportunity for PieFed, a link-aggregator platform similar to Lemmy. PieFed is over a year old, that has seen significant development and new features beyond Lemmy, but has not managed to gain traction yet, with growth of users being slow. However, now that communities on the lemm.ee. server need to find a new place, PieFed is emerging as one of the main destinations. In turn, this is giving PieFed some much need promotion and awareness within the Threadiverse community, with PieFed doubling the number of accounts within a week. Lemmy clients are also starting to add support for PieFed, with the Lemmy client Interstellar already supporting PieFed. PieFed also uploaded two PeerTube video walking through all the moderation and administration features the platform has.
Platform updates
Ghost’s work on implementing ActivityPub is getting close to an official release. In their latest update, Ghost said that their ActivityPub integration will be part of the Ghost 6.0 release, which will come in ‘a few weeks’. The team has been working on ActivityPub for over a year, and have grown from 3 people to 8 people now working on their social web integration. For Ghost, the ActivityPub integration is more than just another connector, describing it as ‘a statement that the open web still matters’.
Mastodon is planning to release a new update, version 4.4, with the first beta now available. Some of the new features include the ability to set more feature content on user profiles, more list and follow management tools. For admins, there are better tools for setting legal frameworks, moderation tweaks and more. The biggest feature of the patch is that it will display quoted posts. The highly requested feature will only be fully available in version 4.5, which will include the ability for users to create quoted posts. Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput says that he expects version 4.4 to be released at the end of June, with version 4.5 scheduled a few months later in September of October. The organisation also shared their monthly engineering update for May.
PeerTube released their latest version, 7.2, with a new design for video management and publication pages. PeerTube also now has more features for handling sensitive content. Creators can now add an explanation of why the content is marked as sensitive. Users also have more flexibility with how they want sensitive content to be handled, with various different configurations between hiding, blurring or warning about a video with sensitive content. PeerTube is also running a crowdfunding campaign for the mobile app, which has now crossed the halfway mark at 35k EUR. This milestone is for video management from the mobile app, with the next milestone being for livestream support in-app. The PeerTube app developer also shared a blog post with his thoughts on the technical framework considerations for building the app.
Hollo is a single-user microblogging platform, and their latest release has a significant number of new features, including better OAuth and various upgrades to the UX. Developer Hong Minhee also announced that independent fediverse developer Emelia Smith will join as a co-maintainer for Hollo.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to get all my weekly updates via email, which gets you some interesting extra analysis as a bonus, that is not posted here on the website. You can subscribe below:
In this case that's exactly what we need, someone with more money than god that can set precedents to protect the authors and artists that need it the most.
It doesn’t matter it was the evil empire getting that result
It does if it only benefits evil empires. The open source tools can't afford the price which only leaves the big AI companies that can and Disney who holds the data.
All this will do is add a fat price tag and censorship. Artists will not get paid and AI will not go away, the jobs will still be lost. It's the worst of both worlds.
when disney wins there will be nothing left to sue, with the result that now the entertainment industry, which has the available training data, will also have the AI technology, and the only one who profits is disney - because in this situation all open source GenAI is fucked.
I dunno, we've seen corporations come at each other many times before.
Most of you people won't understand this, but copyright and patent laws aren't going to be around forever. They don't help the working class and it's only a matter of time before new generations rise above our tunnel vision and indoctrination.
I mean, just look at this case a prime example. Who is the one suing? Disney. Who stands to benefit? Disney.
Are the random joe's suing? No, they can't afford it. The laws do not exist to protect them. It's another reason why we never see big corporations challenge copyright and patent laws. They know they make more money with them.
I don't see the irony. They perceive AI as a loop hole and need to squash it to keep their grip on things. If anybody can just prompt a movie in ten years, their business is dead. If a small group of indie animators can make a fully fledged movie, their business is dead.
They made it fucked up in their favor, this lawsuit is a continuation of that.
Disney isn't fighting for the little guy. They will still agressively use it to cull their own workforce. They want to control who can use it and don't want to compete against an indie animation scene.
Show me where I can download Midjourneys full model to run it locally and then we can agree to call it "open weights". Unless their base model and training data is also available, it's not open source.
I'd say do it more... generate more star wars media until Disney gives it up as a golden goose to milk. Doesn't matter if it's ai or whatever fuck disney...
The Google-owned site has provided moderators with new guidelines and training on how to deal with inflammatory content that breaks YouTube's code of conduct, writes The New...
Well yes. You obviously still can’t say “le dollar bean” without getting nuked from orbit. YouTube is a goodly Christian corporation after all, can’t have such content.
Are you implying you don't use YT at all? Or you use it and choose to be unhappy with it?
Just curious, I often get mad because they need to censor words, but not to the degrees to say 'fuck this place" and move to the other (unborn) alternative.
Yes they are, some from the very conception of YouTube perhaps, but they are not real alternatives a real alternative would be one where all your subscriptions also upload the same content there, it is totally not YT based and you get the same or similar ecosystem Google provides, I don't think too many channels fit this.
I mean, if your requirement for a youtube alternative is that it's as big as YouTube, you're just guaranteeing that there will never be a YouTube alternative...
Yeah perhaps, we are here on Lemmy after all, which I consider a Reddit alternative, but with YouTube the thing is different because we follow individuals, and here we follow subjects, hopefully somebody can truly stand out against Google in the video field, a movement big enough to motivate content creators to check it out, the last thing I hear was about Odysee, which I think is a step in the right direction.
almost all the right wing contents get pushed to the front. there are some that are also rw that is buried by the algorithim, because they are loud mouths, i wonder if this will change for them too.,
Good. I don't really care about youtube, but less censorship is always a good thing.
How can you people say you respect science when you support silencing any criticism of it? That's not science. That's religion.
That said, this criteria clearly only exists to protect "influencers" who make youtube a proportional amount of money. If you have a channel with very little traffic and you say something controversial, you'd better believe your "freedom of expression value" will not be high enough to outweigh the corporation's perceived "harm risk."
youtube shadowbanning, demonitization and censorship is the most retarded shit that's ever happened to the internet. the whole website is videos and comments of people who cater to kids and commercial advertisers and cant say shit.
We will (still) allow children's cartoon characters to be mutilated and put into explicit situations and then push them as child friendly, but how dare you use a swear in the first 15 seconds of a video or say the work kill.
Intention: YouTubers can stop with the whole self censoring shit.
Example: Unaliving; PDF file; grape; etc.
Reality: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and other right wing grifters receive zero censorship while YouTubers still have to self censor to receive monetization.
How long before Google locks YT down only to Chrome on Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, or Android, and blocks it from loading at all on non-Chrome browsers and on Linux or iOS, blocks it from loading at all if ad blockers, including hardware-based ad blockers ala PiHole, are implemented, and enforces hardware security measures ala TPM2 for authentication, and ensures that no one can download and re-upload YT vids, with DRM?
Basically, I wouldn't put it above them to ensure their video platform only runs on their browser, on hardware and OS platforms they deem worthy of running it, even down to somehow implementing a Vanguard-style rootkit.
A peaceful protest is underway against mega corporations attempting to impose DRM on the web, aiming to gain control over all content possible and making our lives worse.
They won't ever say it out loud but they have always removed videos for mentioning alternative frontends or other technology they view as direct threats to their revenue stream.
See the issue here is Google/Youtube still get to be the ones to decide what "may outweigh the harm risk". And the answer I bet will usually be whichever one serves their financial interests.
Which on one hand sure, it is their platform after all. But don't do me dry and claim you used lube.
I still wouldn't trust Google not to nuke my channel on a whim even in spite of those relaxed moderation rules. What's stopping a little bribe from the right company or political party from causing them to backpedal or even tighten their grip further?
This is why one should at least mirror their content to PeerTube or a similar alternative platform like that even if they're not going to just outright post future content to said alternative and give up on YT altogether.
I agree. We've seen enough times in the past where a creator would get a strike from a video several years old because the rules changes. Anyone legit should be careful.
Moderators were previously told to remove videos if one-quarter or more of the content violated YouTube policies. Now, that limit has been increased to half.
This seems like alien speak to me. They announce that shit, someone read it, and then repeated it in an article. But what does it mean?
Can you have 6 contents and make 2 really crazy? Can you tell people to commit violence for 5 minutes and then review a game for 6 minutes? Is there a dude with tvtropes open going through and marking the contents of content?
Great, now that 50% of a video can be a direct call for genocide, does that at LEAST mean I can use ONE instance of a "bad" word or speak of "icky" things like death and drug abuse without being demonized?
I like freedom of speech but it seems like it would be pretty difficult to weigh those things against one another. what is the metric that they have in common? I don't know that there is one
This morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on inflation confirming what many of us have felt at the register: grocery prices are rising again.
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‘Wildly underprepared’: National Guard troops sent by President Trump to Los Angeles amid immigration protests are seen sleeping on floors in exclusive photos
The protestors really need to get the CANG to switch sides and face off against the police. Low key convinced that’s a real possibility if orangeboi or Hesgeth tries to order them to do something really beyond the pale.
I empathize with the hope that the national guard would side with protesters in violation of their orders, but is there any historical precedent for that?
On the other hand, there have been plenty of historical confrontations where the national guard has engaged in violence against demonstrators.
Maybe it can be different this time, but I don't know.
Looking at the US descent into full on fascism is horrifying and frustrating at the same time. Like a car crash in slow motion: it's clear what the result will be, but it's taking its time.
Hi everyone, I just created a PeerTube account on makertube.net/ and wanted to subscribe to a channel on a different instance. I click subscribe and get the pop-up that I have subscribed, however when I reload the page it's gone again, and nothing shows up in my subscriptions. It does the same thing for different channels on different instances. What's going on?
Under Louisiana’s 2024 CAMRA law, community groups now fear they could face fines of up to $32,500 per day – or even $1 million for ‘intentional’ violations – for talking publicly about evidence of airborne pollution, except under a narrow set of circumstances.
From Colorado to Virginia, environmental groups are challenging legal barriers that prevent scientists and communities from seeing the full picture of fossil fuel harms.
While that's a reasonable take, I think you could selectively render domains in non-latin scripts while blacklisting those greek/cyrillic letters that match latin ones, falling back to the "xn--xxx.com" formatting. Though I guess that would be a lot harder.
The first step toward meaningful change begins with us. We must abandon our craving for glossy (and therefore glassy) devices, and instead embrace hardware that may not be as immediately pleasing to the eye (as it is the case with e.g. Fairphones or the PinePhone), but is built to be slightly more durable, somewhat repairable, and capable of outlasting even today’s limited commitments to software updates.
Fairphone and PinePhone being only mentioned anecdotally for being too pretty, and I guess not as sturdy as the author wants, is quite weird for an article about reducing fragility and improving repairability.
I mean phone durability has become a lot better. I use my iPhone 14 Pro without a case, and I have dropped it a few times and more than once it has flown across the room. Just last Saturday it fell on concrete from like 4 feet high. It’s good as new.
It is also the consumer who is mostly at fault anyways. There are many durable phones out there, none of them sell like the shiny sleek phone. Do people really want devices that are more durable? If so, why aren’t they buying them?
The article is disappointing. It appears author of that article only has one narrow view and assumes the rest of the world has the same.
They buy the most fragile and aesthetically pleasing phones, and complain they are fragile. They advocate for manufacturers to stop making fragile aesthetically pleasing phones, and only make rugged or repairable phones instead. They make an inference that phones should be repairable like cars with accessible parts and non-proprietary tools, but they appear to not know that today's cars have difficulty getting replacement parts and absolutely contain mechanical and electronic proprietary tools to repair the cars.
Mr/Ms author, if you want a phone that doesn't break so easily when dropped, you can buy such a thing right now. Something like CAT phones:
... or other ruggedized Android phones.
I think the last time I dropped a phone an broke the screen on it was maybe 2007. I don't even use phone cases. If your particular use case has you dropping your phone more, buy one that exists and is designed to take those kind of conditions. There's no shame in that, but don't advocate for an entire industry shift because of just your own use case.
Smartphones/technology are still incredibly young in the grand scheme of things. Each of the new generation of devices that comes out adds more functionality for features that people want. Until that stops, it doesn't make sense to try to switch everyone to a "buy it for life" approach. My Commodore 64 computer still works, and is very easy to service, however I wouldn't have wanted technology to stop back then just because its a sturdy built machine. Today I have the paper thin laptops with 8 hours of battery and high speed CPUs are not as rugged or repairable as my venerable C64, but I'm quite glad to have the fragile laptop instead.
Theres this pervasive mentality in online spaces that completely disregards the consumer’s role in all of the design choices of products. They completely ignore that it is the consumer who signaled they wanted this and continue to signal they want this by buying more of the same. Corporations cannot create desires, they only fulfill them. Consumers have demonstrated they want sleek devices that are easy to operate and last only as long as they are not outclassed by next thing. The alternative of course is coming to the realization that consumers prefer convenience and novelty than durability above anything else but once you realize that you become elitist and that’s a big no no. So it must be the corporations fault!
You also ignore the role marketing has to play in convincing people that they need those things. Most people don't need an SUV, let alone a truck, yet I see plenty of people driving these, and even thinking they're safer than sedans. But they cost more money, which means more profit, and why would it be surprising that people who sell something with a relatively inelastic market want to maximize profit dollars per sale?
Smartphones are fragile without a case. They should have one, and maybe manufacturers should make that clearer, but a world where removable cases didn't exist would just mean that the case you get is the one that the manufacturer chooses for you and permanently attaches to the smartphone. Less options for you.
Just get a case.
I am also more than willing to carry a slightly thicker device if it means greater durability and easier repairability.
Me too. It's why I have a case.
And I am certain many others would gladly trade their bulky, overpriced cases and bumpers for a sturdier device that inherently provides the protection we now have to purchase separately.
If you want a built-in case, you can get them. There is a whole collection of "ruggedized" smartphones from various manufacturers in China that are large, usually have a hefty battery, and have shielding built into the device.
Personally, I think that the built-in case isn't very interesting relative to a removable case, but the large battery might be, depending upon your needs.
EDIT: A number of manufacturers will even make official cases for their phones, if you can tolerate a removable case and just want something endorsed by the manufacturer.
They don't have to be fragile, though. I have several old, cheap smartphones that didn't need a case and weren't bulky by the standards of the day. Even now all they would need is a new battery (easily replaceable btw) and they would work as good as new.
It’s not a compromise, it’s a reflection of the fact that most people don’t care about these durable devices so they don’t sell well and thus they can’t be supported very well or for very long. This is just a reality of the market.
The global smartphone screen protectors market size was estimated at USD 49.73 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.9% from 2023 to 2030
It makes total sense to me. A phone case is just a cheap piece of plastic that's made using cheap mold-manufacturing, and cases last for the entire life of the phone, sometimes even living on through a couple of phone lifetimes.
But screen protectors have to be more rigorously designed, - making sure that the material works well between finger and each particular touchscreen, and it's made using relatively much more expensive manufacturing processes like curved glass cutting, and people have to replace them every once in awhile because the purpose of a screen protector is to take all the damage that otherwise would've happened to your screen.
Most "50 MP" cameras are actually quad Bayer sensors (effectively worse resolution) and are usually binned 2x to approx 12 MP.
The lens on your phone likely isn't sharp enough to capture 50 MP of detail on a small sensor anyway, so the megapixel number ends up being more of a gimmick than anything.
That doesn't match my experience with phone hardware. Everyone i know has a bunch of old phones that've been handed down to kids and even more sitting in junk drawers, because they all still work. Yes a couple of them have cracked screens, but even with those the only reason why the screen wasn't repaired is because people wanted or already had a newer phone.
Software is a totally different matter though. The OS and apps stop getting updates at some point even though the hardware is still totally capable of doing what most people want their phone to do. And even worse, many companies don't allow a phone to revert to an older OS version, so the company pushes out an update that slows the phone down and then there's no way to fix that.
The HARDWARE isn't designed to fail, because the SOFTWARE is designed to let the company force the device to fail at whatever exact moment the company later decides on.
The hardware was certainly designed to be less repairable and phones less upgradable. Gone are the days with user-replaceable batteries and MicroSD card slots.
A 20 minute video on how to replace your battery with batteries that are glued down and you need a pry tool to remove them and hopefully not puncture them is not exactly what I would call user-replaceable batteries:
I'm talking about ones like the Samsung Galaxy S3, Nintendo DSi and Nintendo 3DS, etc had where you could just open the cover, take the battery out, and then put the new one in.
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My favourite argument for these things is always: but it has to be water tight. It has to be aesthetic and thin. Okay cool, then make phones for people who use them as a fashion statement or throw them into the water and make one that you can just crack open. I know it's something completely different but my first phone was an alcatel where you could take out the battery and throw in 4 AA's in case you ran out of juice.
I have had few phones over the years, few of them I damaged by using them in bad conditions, mainly on construction sites.
As far I can remember I have never cracked the screen. Phones are and always were fragile, its a piece of condensed technology, with large glass screen. What do people expect from glass dropped from 1m? Just take care of your shit.
It always amazes me how can people cary their phones in back pocket or just throw it in the bag with keys or other sharp objects.
The main issue is the lack of software support. They keep making each new Android version more bloated so you can't update more than once or maybe twice. If it wasn't for that, you could keep using the same 5G phone until they shut down the 5G network as long as the battery is replaceable.
I wish Android was more like Debian where it's lightweight, uses stable versions of software and runs well on old hardware.
The newer Android versions aren't that much more bloated. Sure. If you compare Android KitKat with Android 14 it is gonna be a bit more demanding probably especially on graphics, but overall there were a lot of improvements to the battery usage and memory management over the years and I have an experience of newer Android versions running better than the older ones. You can have a 6 years old phone that will run the newest Android version just fine because you flashed it with a custom ROM.
When we get to the manufacturer's custom Android skins... Well that's a different story. Most of them are gonna be more or less bloated than stock Android, but this is a problem of manufacturers and the fact that mobile OS market and ecosystem is so much locked down compared to desktop, which makes it harder to remove manufacturer's bloat from your OS, install different ROMs and tinker with it, rather than Android being bloated as an OS.
Samsung used to have rugged mainline Galaxy phones. Guess what? They didn’t sell well so they don’t make them anymore.
Mass market doesn’t want this, is that simple. The people who want it are over represented online. It’s a similar case with people who want small phones, why do you think they don’t make them anymore? Because hardly anyone buys them.
I think this highlight the problem with this approach. $500 MSRP would likely not be cost effective for a phone manufacturer to invest in the design, construction, inventory of replacement parts, and multi-year long support of the rugged and long lasting phone. An important part of the premise of the author is that the phone lasts a long time, and your stated desire for long software support.
This is likely a money loser for a phone manufacturer from day one. My guess is that this phone would likely have to cost $2000 to $3000 for a chance to be economically viable. The biggest expenses are going to be on the human labor parts of a staff to provide the regular software updates, maintaining humans that run the manufacturing lines for the replacement parts, and the repair staff to effect the repairs over time for customers. Considering the only time the phone manufacturer gets money is from the initial sale of the phone, they have to price it high enough to cover many years of these support operations.
At the higher, more realistic, phone sale price it likely drops the number of potential customers so low to not even pay for the initial design and tooling to be created.
This is likely why no manufacturer makes this theoretical phone.
It’s stuck on iOS 16. Once iOS 26 releases, companies will quickly pivot to iOS 17 as the minimum supported version and slowly you will find important apps no longer work on the phone.
I've recently learned that the device Sun first made Java for was, well, almost a smartphone in idea. So those Java phones and now Android are not a perversion of the initial intent.
I also think that, if you only compare various places in reality and various casinos by the amount of endorphine per minute spent, you'll choose casinos (OK, maybe brothels).
The reason you don't choose a casino is because you know that in average the casino always wins. That's a knowledge of how casinos work.
The reason you don't choose a brothel is because you know that many people working there are disadvantaged, and because you can control your impulses. That's also a knowledge of how brothels work.
This means, that if we make an analogy between casinos, brothels and the computer industry, including smartphones and the web, the user has to know how it works to make the right decisions.
So the commonly repeated point about grandmas and casual users is simply wrong. There's no way they don't get deceived by the other side profiting from their ignorance, other than learning how things work.
So - I think we need a global social network. We have siloed services because it doesn't bring profits to make such a global service, and the one Sun, Netscape, Macromedia (yes) and many universities made in the 90s has gone obsolete. The Internet itself allows to make a global Facebook. But instead of solving the problems of technical debt and adoption for that, it's simpler to use a centralized service which was relatively easy to launch initially.
From Facebook (or others) you ultimately need 1) search of 1.a) contacts, 1.b) groups and 1.c) posts, 2) storage of 2.a) contacts, 2.b) groups and 2.c) posts, 3) universal forward identifiers of 3.a) contacts, 3.b) groups and 3.c) posts.
With cryptography and #3 you can use untrusted services for #1 and #2.
If they can be untrusted, services for #1 (indexer crawling the network and answering search requests in a standardized way, similar to RSS, maybe just with RSS ; the crawler service and the search result storage can be separated too) and #2 can be contributed to their respective pools like with SETI@home or other projects.
There is the question of a financial incentive to providing such a service. That can be done with using, say, (maybe number 4), a pool of billing services. A user makes a payment and before requesting a search service or a storage service, requests a billing service on which they are registered, providing it with the identifier of a resource they are going to use, that billing service and that resource interact in the sense of payment in background, giving the user a token with which they request the service itself. To pay for used storage or a heavy search request (or a request above a threshold).
Well, that looks ugly, maybe some other way is possible.
Those search results from search services and objects fetched from storage services are presented in a native application similar to Facebook, perhaps.
Contacts would be just PKI certificates or something, with a valid certificate for a registrar domain someplace in chain.
So you'd request in DNS (or someplace else, I dunno) pool.search.nihilsoc.org for a bunch of uniform indexer services, pool.store.nihilsoc.org for a bunch of uniform storage services (if we don't have a paid service saved, probably even encrypted on some available storage service), pool.relay.nihilsoc.org of a bunch of notification servers similar to IRC (except not used for chat directly, or maybe even that), pool.billing.nihilsoc.org to pay for services requiring it. It wouldn't matter much which ones you'd hit, because every post, contact and group identifiers would be global, containing parent identifiers and such.
It would supposedly be seamless for the user. You search for a group on a few indexers, you get a few lists of results showing on which storage services it's present and how much of it, you deduplicate those and you ask those directly by global identifiers, check signatures yadda-yadda.
Seems very archaic, I dunno why nobody is doing this, probably because things seeming simple are complex.
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OK, about smartphones and casinos - just like the way to fight gambling lies in knowing that the casino always wins and there's no luck, the way to fight enshittification lies in users caring what they use. Yep, technologies and systems involved are complex, then maybe those should be made simpler for users to understand. Simpler inside, like OpenBSD, not simpler outside, like ChatGPT.
Software side too: Linux's deliberate choice to not have a stable driver interface is detrimental to atomic distros with the usually shitty proprietary vendor drivers. Causing you to get no updates after a few years or get a new device.
Which is why i think BSD would have been a better fit for Android.
Nah, more likely, someone reminded him his citizenship could be taken away, meaning he could lose his citizenship even though that'll be questionable trump gives no shit and remember elon past is questionable but trump wants it make it fact.
And the MAGA Nazis can cut off the government money tap, they can crack down on his many corporate and regulatory violations, they can even nationalize his space businesses. He wouldn't have to worry about it if a Dem was in office, they'd NEVER do that (even if they should), but he knows HitlerPig wouldn't hesitate, because they are exactly alike.
It looks like someone had a good ol' classic "Come to Jesus meeting" in the Oval Office.
What a show that must have been, huh? Who was there? What did they say? You know HitlerPig took a breather after a while, and let the others beat up on him, while he sat back, entertained. That's his move, we saw it with Zelensky.
Maybe let the head of each department give a report on what their agency is doing to attack some arm of his empire. DoJ talks about investigating his drug use, Defense wants to take Starlink, NASA or the Space Force wants Space X, then Pakled Holman and Canine Killer Barbi drop the big immigration bomb at the finish.
By the end he'd be giving HitlerPig a big sloppy knob job in front of the crowd while Epstein films it ( oh, yeah, he's still around, he always brings the girls, or whatever).
So we had Romney, Cruz, Christie, Rubio... All humiliated by Trump. Now add Musk to the list. It's amazing how weak all the right wingers are. They all fold immediately before Trump. Trump is a baby, all other dictators laugh at him. Yet in US is the alpha politician. Amazing.
He must have realized that apart from tech bros, there is not a single person in the world that likes him including his father and his step mother who also happens to be his step sister.
That fucking look he has on his face whenever he meets someone in a position of power. Head down but looking up with that shit eating grin, like real life is a Scooby Doo cartoon.
To be clear, he only wrote that he regretted posting them. He didn't say they weren't true. The key takeaway here to remember is that Trump is DEFINITELY in the Epstein files.
Republicans have no balls. All of these losers bend over to accept Trump's cock in the end like the little sluts they are. They have no respect for themselves, this country, or anything. Fuck all of these guys.
I'm not sure this is any more humiliating than the original tantrum was, but because neither of them believes a word of anything they say anyway, nobody really cared. When you live your life in a narcissistic bubble, you never had friends and you never will have any, and no apologies you make or accept have any meaning.
Is It just me, or is this a very badly written article? I read it twice and it makes no sense to me. I understand the article is trying to ~~day fix~~ say fox news it's trying to be manipulative, but it's not clear in what way based on what is written. No context is provided. They mention the time the call takes, in Newsom's and Trump's local times like that helps when we don't know when the fox segment airs, nor when Trump's claim of calling newsom.
TL;DR: what you'd expect. Boring gangster disputes. A gangster laid the blame on him partially for killing an associate of the gangster, with little to no evidence. So they killed him publically to maintain street cred.
The California governor said the troops had been left without food or water in federal buildings
Hundreds of National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles under Donald Trump's orders are reportedly idle and without clear directives, California Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed, calling the situation a political stunt.
The controversy stems from Trump's decision to send 2,000 Guard troops to Los Angeles over the weekend in response to protests against aggressive ICE operations. On Monday, Newsom said he was informed another 2,000 were en route, even though most of the first wave had not been mobilized.
Only about 300 have been actively deployed, while the rest remained in federal buildings "without orders," according to Newsom. The governor said the troops had been left without food or water, and accused the White House of misusing military resources to bolster Trump's image.
Gov. Gavin Newsom says hundreds of National Guard troops deployed by Donald Trump to Los Angeles protests remain "sitting, unused, and without orders."
Don’t forget the millions for the penis parade. These two events alone are wasting 200 million. Be sure to call your rep and let them know you found negligent government spending.
Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
It's important to everyone, including you. As the population ages, and fewer young people move into the economy, the tax base shrinks. Who is going to pay for government?
Also, employers will have to compete for the remaining workers, raising wages. That's good to a point, and then everything becomes too expensive, now you're in a depression. It's an economic death spiral.
Taxing the rich only works to a point. Their wealth is mostly in the global stock markets, which will eventually crash. As well, the value of those publicly traded companies will nosedive as fewer and fewer workers are available to produce the goods and services.
We're facing the global equivalent of the fall of Rome. Nation states will splinter into smaller and smaller, self-dependent groups and the riches we enjoy today will be memories of a better time. If you want a contemporary version of that, look at China restricting rare earths. That's impacting about every other country on Earth. Now imagine international trade utterly collapsing.
Sure but you can't have an endless increase in population. Whatever the problems of declining or stabilizing the population are, they need to be tackled, not ignored, yes. You can't fix them by saying just keep the pyramid scheme going.
The real problem is more like how many workers for each retired person. So there are other ways to fix that. Personally I'm down with working more years so that people don't have to have kids if they don't want to. I can't imagine forcing people to have children.
And you know what? Employers having to face a tight labor market doesn't sound like it's worse than employees having to find scarce jobs.
Never proposed that growth should continue, indeed it cannot. But depopulation is going to steamroll us in the next century and I see no way around it.
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.
The reason there are fewer child births in the US since the 90s is mainly the reduction of pregnancies in the demographic "25 and younger". They didn't made a conscious choice, looking at their abacus and evaluating the state of the world. They slipped into it and were forced to make it work. Interestingly, they then still had children later in life as well, for more complex and personal reasons.
It seems to me, that if you give woman the choice, they choose not be pregnant at the cost of their career.
Capitalism needs to choose if it wants everybody to work to exhaustion with slavery wages or if it wants people to have healthy relationships and kids. Can't have both.
Last year, Germany imported nearly 94.6% fewer goods from Russia than before the war in Ukraine began. On Wednesday, the Federal Statistical Office, Destatis, reported that goods worth €1.8 billion (around $2 billion) were imported from Russia in 2024. In 2021, before the EU's 17 sanctions packages against Russia, imports amounted to €33.1 billion.
Exports to Russia also fell significantly, by 71.6%. In 2024, Germany supplied Russia with goods worth €7.6 billion, compared to €26.6 billion in 2021. Russia's share of total imports to Germany fell to just over 0.1% in 2024, compared to 2.8% before the Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
Last year, Germany achieved its largest export surplus with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Exports exceeded imports by €5.8 billion — the fourth time since 1993 that there was an export surplus, after 2023, 2020, and 1993.
Germany's trade with Russia has lost significance since the war in Ukraine began, with imports from Russia decreasing by 95%. Meanwhile, renowned German "nail artist" Günther Uecker passed away aged 95.
Unfortunately those are insanely cheap to operate for how effective they are. If anything they'll invest even more in hacker groups and the like to generate income similar to the North Korean model. Though the Russian economy looks extremely dire. They can only keep up appearances for so long until inflation spirals out of control. A war economy needs meaningful military accomplishments to function and so far they've had none to really speak of. At least not compared to what they have to give up for it.
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that European Union energy and climate regulations are incompatible with the Polish constitution and breach national sovereignty in determining energy policy.
The Tribunal found that EU institutions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), had exceeded their competences by interpreting EU treaties in a way that significantly impacts Poland’s ability to choose its energy sources independently.
Interpretations of EU law “cannot mean that Poland loses control over the scope of its delegated competences, and thus that there are areas in which its sovereignty (here: energy) is not protected”, the court said in a statement announcing its decision.
However, the ruling is unlikely to have any real effect for now given that the current government, a coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, does not recognise the TK’s legitimacy due to it containing judges unlawfully appointed by the former Law and Justice (PiS) administration.
The case was brought by a group of opposition lawmakers led by Sebastian Kaleta, a PiS MP and former deputy justice minister. The motion challenged the compatibility of EU climate rules – including Directive 2003/87/EC, which created the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) – with the Polish constitution.
The MPs argued that, although Poland had transferred some powers to Brussels, it should retain sovereignty over critical energy decisions. They claimed that mandatory participation in the EU ETS restricts economic freedom and undermines the state’s ability to ensure energy security.
They also warned that EU decision-making processes, which do not require unanimity in the European Council on issues affecting Poland’s energy mix, might breach the limits of competence conferred on the EU and undermine the primacy of the Polish constitution.
In its ruling, the TK agreed with the motion’s core arguments. It held that the CJEU had extended the interpretation of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union beyond the conferred competences, infringing on national sovereignty.
“Competences not conferred on the European Union belong to the member states themselves, and the EU can only act on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity, subject to the scrutiny of national parliaments at all times,” the court said.
Consequently, the TK found this interpretation of EU law to be incompatible with the Polish constitution, emphasising that Poland cannot lose control over the scope of delegated powers, especially in such a key area as energy sovereignty.
The TK, however, discontinued proceedings relating specifically to the ETS “due to the incomplete, from a formal point of view, definition of the object under verification”.
The TK concluded its statement by stating that it was now up to the Polish legislature and executive to take “appropriate public law measures” to implement the decision, which enters into force upon its publication.
However, it is the government that is responsible for publishing TK rulings, and it refuses to do so due to given that some of the tribunal’s judges were illegitimately appointed under PiS.
The ruling could still reverberate in Polish politics, however. The PiS-aligned president-elect, Karol Nawrocki, who takes office in August, said last month that the TK’s decision on this case could be a way to lower the electricity prices by 33% – one of his campaign promises.
He also pledged to hold a referendum on withdrawing from the EU’s Green Deal – a set of policies aimed at reaching climate neutrality by 2050 – and reaffirmed his support for coal, which remains Poland’s main source of electricity generation and is also widely used for heating homes.
PiS politicians welcomed the verdict, insisting that it means that Poland does not have to implement the Green Deal.
“The EU has not been given the competence to decide without the consent of Poland which energy sources we can use and what fiscal burdens may be imposed on individual sources,” Kaleta wrote on X. “This opens the path for a radical reduction in electricity and heating prices now.”
The former justice minister in the PiS government, Zbigniew Ziobro, meanwhile, challenged Tusk, asking if he would “break the law again and hide the verdict to drive Poles into poverty” or “will you behave as you should?”
The government has so far not commented on the TK’s ruling.
Its always so short sighted. Get a couple votes with issues like this, but in the lifetime of everyone who voted in favor of this, climate change will cause huge issues.
Thing is the TK is not an institution supported by the current government. Its judges were illegally appointed by PiS (the previous government) and now only serve to politically posture.
Thr German Constitutional Court ruled something like this as well (regarding EU financial policies, EU bonds). The consequences? Well you have to change your national law, push the EU to change the policies, or eventually face consequences. This conflict is not resolved yet afaik, but otherwise it's business as usual
Police in northwestern China are cracking down on writers of online erotic fiction across the country, including many college students, according to RFA sources and media reports, amid concern that officers are punishing people outside their jurisdiction.
Police in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have been summoning writers who don’t even live there. A report from Caixin media group said some have been referred to police for prosecution, and anecdotal evidence indicates writers are facing substantial fines.
A source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for safety reasons said the crackdown could involve 200-300 writers.
Their cases have also sparked a legal debate over the definition of “obscene materials” and renewed public discussion on the boundaries of creative freedom. Known as “Danmei,” the genre features romantic relationships between male characters. It originated in Japan and has become popular in China.
Amid tightened restrictions in China, many writers have turned to Haitang Culture, a Taiwanese-based adult fiction website established in 2015 to publish their work. The website on the democratic island doesn’t force censorship and allows explicit written content. Most readers are females.
Authorities in China have reacted. Last year, two China-based distributors affiliated with Haitang Culture were arrested for “assisting in information network criminal activities,” according to Shuiping Jiyuan, a news portal on the WeChat social media platform.
The recent police crackdown in Lanzhou followed similar moves in the eastern province of Anhui in June 2024, where authorities began arresting writers of online erotic fiction under the charge of “producing and distributing obscene materials for profit,” resulting in heavy fines and even prison sentences.
Police are seeking out writers even when they leave outside their jurisdiction - a practice that critics call “offshore fishing,” implying the motive of police is financial or political, rather than strictly legal.
“I don’t understand what they’re trying to do—are they pushing political correctness, or are they just desperate for money?” said Liu Yang, a veteran media professional in Lanzhou, told Radio Free Asia. “The police are short on funds, and now even arrests have become a way to make money.”
I don't think saying state-funded media is untrustworthy as a reply to a comment saying state-funded media is untrustworthy is the gotcha you think it is.
Aside from the actual effect of the resumption of rare earth exports, Trump’s apparent priority given to the issue signals to Beijing just how reliant the U.S. is on China in this regard — something that would not have gone unnoticed by Xi.
Xi never came calling
Just one day before the June 5 call, Trump wrote on social media: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”
His conversation with the Chinese leader would have further reinforced Xi’s tough image — not just for a Chinese audience, but for international observers as well.
This was certainly encouraged by how China described the call. According to China’s official statement, Xi “took a phone call from U.S. President Donald J. Trump” – the subtle implication being that it was Trump who initiated the call.
This framing promotes the idea that Xi holds the upper hand. The Chinese statement also highlighted that the Geneva talks were “at the suggestion of the U.S. side,” implying that China did not back down in the face of Trump’s trade pressure — and that it was Trump who ultimately blinked first.
It goes on with lots of interesting details. Worth the read.
"It was the best kowtow! The most stupendous BOFFO suckup! Many people are saying no one gives in to Ghina like Trump! I caved so fast, you can call me Batman! I'm Ghina's little pants crapping b1tch bigly!"
L’ostinato verme geometride avanza, avanza con possenza sotto l’irto zoccolo di pietra. Facendo uso di una testa dove tutto è un disco diamantato e i denti rotativi non cagionano ragioni o procurano alcun senso di riposo agli osservatori.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) asked a federal judge to immediately intervene on Tuesday to limit President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.
Yes, although they published an opinion piece. Still garbage journalistic ethics, but not as bad in my opinion as if it was posted as a factual article.
Sanctus
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Stovetop
in reply to Sanctus • • •Knowledge and empowerment!
(But also fire)
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gravitas_deficiency
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masterofn001
in reply to ThePantser • • •If you're bringing your rights, maybe not.
But, evil will do what evil needs.
There's gonna be history made.
I'm just not sure if it'll be like the Arab spring or the Tienanmen massacre.
criss_cross
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