Skull giver

Their reasoning isn’t necessarily bad:

They do explain their reasoning:

They use Threads as an example of what could happen to the Fediverse, but who knows how many companies are out there with fake Mastodon/Lemmy servers, subscribing to as many feeds as they can, letting the Fediverse handle delivering structured, scrapable data for them so they can work on their AIs or thread intel or marketing profiles.

They also have a point with their attempts to keep likes/follows private: that’s something a lot of users want, and something a lot of users are surprised to learn doesn’t exist on the Fediverse. The Fediverse is more metadata than data and that’s not something everyone likes sharing. With monoliths like Veklar, you only need to trust one server not to datamine your every move rather than thousands of servers.

Speaking of privacy, most of the Fediverse isn’t compatible with any privacy laws I’ve seen. For a bunch of hobbyists that’s probably fine because privacy enforcement agencies have better things to do, but for a company that intends to make money and wants to actually become an alternative, that’s a problem. A GDPR-compliant Fediverse server would need to record which other servers which bits of PII have been shared, how that information is protected (does lemmy.world even encrypt their database?), and with what other servers that information was shared in turn. That’s practically impossible. The Fediverse exists in Europe because it’s unimportant and unprofessional enough not to attract lawsuits.

They also have a good point about moderation. I could trivially spam every Lemmy server full of CSAM with maybe $100 in cloud credit to the point the FBI becomes interested. The Fediverse, and in particular Lemmy, is a bit like the Old Internet, assuming everyone has good intentions and that the minority with bad intentions can be handled by human interaction. New servers don’t get vetted, new moderation environments don’t get verified, and server administrators are left to their own devices to get rid of botnets and other malicious entities if they don’t want their server to become a spam relay.

I think the upsides of the Fediverse are worth the risks. Veklar clearly thinks otherwise. They’re not necessarily wrong, they just have different priorities.

MLS is designed to support that use case, but the spec to actually intercommunicate between services is still being developed by the MIMI group. MIMI is the logical but entirely optional extension of MLS.

I don’t think carriers will want random chat apps to send messages for free to their infrastructure for spam prevention alone. Companies like Element and Wire are probably going all in on this, but Signal doesn’t even want you to use clients they didn’t compile, let alone federate between services.

I believe WhatsApp has chosen to license its API in a documented fashion rather than implement a cross platform messaging protocol after they were forced to open up by the DMA. That said, there are a bunch of Facebook emails in the MIMI protocol discussions, so at least one of their messengers may still end up implementing MIMI when it’s finally finished.

I believe booze can be exported as concentrated syrup and turned back into liquid in the country of destination for tax purposes. I know for sure at least one European whiskey company exports part of its inventory this way. If Jack Daniels uses that system, that would explain why it’d show up as being of UK origin.

H1-B is a great boon for the American economy and it’d be absolutely idiotic to get rid of it, but the current American government runs on a platform of xenophobia, racism, and plain lies. They’re stupid enough to kick out all the illegal residents that harvest the crops and take care of trades, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t be stupid enough to end the programs that essentially bring in cheap, highly-educated labour into the country.

I know Elon is profiting massively of H-1B, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some kind of special exception for Elon’s companies. The current government is also getting rid of electric chargers along federal roads, while at the same time peddling Teslas at the white house.

As for a source rather than a generic feeling: Project 2025’s handbook, basically a step-by-step guide of what the current American leadership is working on, page 150, mentions H-1B reform as a goal:

H-1B reform. Transform the program into an elite mechanism exclusively to bring in the “best and brightest” at the highest wages while simultaneously ensuring that U.S. workers are not being disadvantaged by the program. H-1B is a means only to supplement the U.S. economy and to keep companies competitive, not to depress U.S. labor markets artificially in certain industries.

Read to me like they’re trying to restrict H-1B to what it was originally intended to be: supplementing highly-educated labour where necessary, rather than allowing tech companies to cheaply import labour from poorer countries. Thing is, the US doesn’t need that much extra highly-educated labour in fields like computer science. When I see these people write down “reform”, I interpret that as “completely tearing down and replacing whatever was there with a new system”.

If you’re in the US, you’re probably right. After the cancerous growth VC companies dumped the unused software people they hired for no reason other than paper growth, the market showed it’s not as desaturated as statistics would make it seem.

On the other hand:

• H1-B is a political tool, and I doubt that visa still exists by the end of the year. Plus, the people coming in on H1-B visas are still software developers. They’re just from another country.

• The software already built is good enough

  I have worked at several companies whose terrible, buggy software sold like hot cakes because the competitors were even worse. General consumer software and apps may be pretty saturated, but B2B is an unending race to the bottom, racing for “better than before without being much more expensive”.

• Destruction of the public sector

  Helps not to be American. Or if you are, look for software jobs in defence.

• AI is going to change the industry for sure. Lots of dumb framework copy/pasting jobs are going to disappear, but among the mess people with actual knowledge are going to be incredibly valuable.

I do expect programmer careers to start paying out significantly less over the coming times, but mostly if you’re used to the ridiculously high wages software development pays in the US.

I’ve found a new software dev job within biking distance in less than three weeks, after submitting my CV a total of three times. The B2B sector is still growing.

As in group texts having shitty image quality: that’s already solved by their current RCS implementation. This just makes it possible for the spec to support encryption (which Apple may still choose not to do).

As in blue bubbles being a status symbol: no.

It kind of depends on how long the American shortage goes for. If they can’t get their supply chains in order for a year or so, making a deal could later prove good leverage material against the Americans. Get them hooked on cheap European eggs, then threaten to tariff them or cut off the supply, making prices soar all across the USA.

An egg can easily be stored for 3-4 weeks unrefridgerated (unless you wash them with chemicals like often happens in the US, then they need to be kept in the fridge for a shorter period of time). European food law puts the maximum consume-before date of eggs at 28 days, but usually you can keep them for a while longer.

If you don’t reserve cargo space in advance, shipping across the Atlantic can easily take 20-40 days, depending on how annoying customs is being. The ship itself can be there in 9 days, weather permitting. Most ships also make stops at islands and other countries, so shipping time kind of depends on how direct the route can be.

If you’re sure the eggs will be used within a reasonable time frame (a week), and you pre-arrange the transport ahead of time, you can have the eggs on US soil for a week before they spoil. If you keep them refrigerated during transport probably longer.

Other options also exist. For instance, one could pre-crack the eggs in Denmark, collect the yolk/whites/scales, and transport them in dehydrated form to the US. That’s good enough for bakeries and factories, which would no longer need to buy eggs from the local markets, relieving pressure for non-industrial consumption.

It works absolutely perfectly in Wine. There are re-implementations for Linux directly, but those won’t work with the Windows plugins you can download from the internet.

I’m all in favour of increasing voter turnout and improving election reliability (making voting days holidays, redesigning the system that allows for gerrymandering, voted ID laws with easily accessible ID, removing the requirement to register to vote at all) but your misinterpretation of how democracy works isn’t helping anyone.

Elections, unless mandatory, are a sample of the general population. In this case, the sample size is more than large enough to represent all citizens. Voter turnout during the US presidential election was the one-but-highest turnout since 1976. If anything, this has been one of the most representative elections in your country’s history. That turned into a win for the idiots, but that’s the risk of an increased voter turnout.

Most democratic countries don’t implement mandatory voting, and even the ones that do implement it often come up with less than 100% turnout. Australia only ends up around 90% of the eligible voters despite the 20/50/75 $AUD fine associated with failing to show up to vote.

Most people not showing up doesn’t mean a sample taken from across the population is bad. By that argument, every election in the history of the United States has been completely meaningless, because nobody has ever achieved 100% voter turnout, except for maybe in some suspicious elections in Soviet Russia and North Korea. Your country would not have had a legitimate government since the introduction of democracy, or ever if you only accept democracy.

You can call me names if you want, but it won’t change the fact that the problems both the US and Europe are facing are bigger than “oops we accidentally didn’t let enough people vote”. Being in denial about the baffling amount of people actually supporting Trump is exactly how we got here in the first place.

Pardons don’t make anything legal. Murderers get pardoned but murder is still illegal.

If you think you can prop up an anti-Trump president that will also pardon the terrorists supporting them, then you could in theory risk it. In practice, you’ll probably be treated the way the Jan 6 traitors should’ve been treated: shot dead, or locked up for a long time.

Europe is full of bigoted, racist leaders. Countries like Poland has been met with plenty of anti-Polish sentiment with their anti-LGBT+ zones and their attempted reform of the legal system. Hungary, as a country, is disliked by many Europeans for being Putin’s little pawn. Most of Europe’s governments are either assholes or hypocrites, letting Gaza be genocided while aiding Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

Most Anti-American sentiment is mostly a response to a) over half your country being stupid enough to vote Trump over literally anybody else and b) the trade wars the government you elected have started and with a bit of c) the whole Ukraine situation.

I don’t really get what protesting is supposed to do. The people voted, the majority of the people that bothered to show up proved to be idiots, so idiots rule the country. I haven’t seen any proof of foul play during the election, this is what the people wanted. You should protest against the supposed checks and balances that should be stopping Trump, but protesting Trump itself is silly. He and his idiotic policies are what the voters wanted to happen.

There was a time and a place to stop Trump, and it was at the voting booth. Not enough people showed up to make a difference. Either because some people didn’t bother to vote, or because on average, Americans really do support this bullshit.

If you’re going to take action, explain to your fellow people how they have been misled, or if why they’re wrong if they stand behind the shit your government does. When prices rise in the coming few months, explain to your Trump loving family that this is the results of tariffs. Don’t gloat, don’t say things like “I told you so”, let them protect their pride by telling them they’ve been lied to. Many of them have been.

If you somehow succesfully sabotage the system into blocking Trump through protests, the Trump fan club is going to use those exact tactics in four years time when the obligatory change of the guard puts some other fossil in charge.

It’s a real shame. I’ve looked into ONLYOFFICE before, and they did all kinds of corporate restructuring tactics to try to hide that they’re Russian. I’m guessing it’s done to keep their contracts with European customers, but software made by a group that acts suspiciously is quite suspicious to me.

It looks like they’re now trying to cater to both the Russian and the European market. You can’t do both at this moment, not if you’re based in a warring totalitarian state like Russia; the risks are too high. Another probably-well-meaning company fucked over by Putin’s evil plans.

Looks like you were ten minutes ago: https://lemmy.world/modlog/?userId=1957570 Though I guess you’ll never see this message, then.

Basically. Although, it kind of depends on what a server gets reported on first. If it’s just something like account deletion or data exports, that can be done manually, just not on scale.

Yes, unless you accept the risk of being banned. Every community and every server has its own set of rules.

You can usually safely ignore these rules, but if you get banned you don’t have a leg to stand on if you didn’t bother with reading the rules.

Dealing with data protection laws surrounding children is a MASSIVE pain. Most Lemmy servers ignore the GDPR safely, but ignoring COPPA is a bit harder. And that doesn’t even take into account the recent rise of laws blocking teenagers from social media, with varying ages and consent laws.

For EU citizens, they have to legally abide by deletion and correction requests. However, if you can’t prove you own the account (through your email address for instance), they can demand you show proof that you say who you are. If your name/DoB/picture doesn’t match, they can even decide you’re someone trying to do a malicious account takeover and ignore your requests. Fake data requests are easy to send and hard to catch without some strong proof of identification. Even knowing the account password may mean nothing if that password has been leaked before at some point.

Microsoft and LinkedIn blatantly ignore the GDPR in various ways, so while you’re technically correct, you may need to win several court battles to get that fixed. On the upside, it may bring in some extra cash when Microsoft refuses to update your profile despite of a judge’s order, but on the downside this process can take years.

In one recent case, Microsoft and LinkedIn decided that placing a tracking cookie before hitting “accept” on a cookie prompt was worth three years of court battles and €60000 + lawyer fees to ignore the judge’s orders. And that’s a case they lost, they’ve won cases as well. I imagine “we couldn’t verify ownership of the account through the email address” will make it quite far in court unless you send over a lot of personal documentation to prove your ownership of the account.

Not necessarily. A lot of people (6.9 million according to unrefugees.org) fled the country. That number may be on the low end, as men capable of joining the military fleeing the country may be considered traitors and might therefore flee in secret.

Ukrainian deaths directly caused by the war is counted in the tens of thousands. Casualties are in the hundred thousands, but “casualty” can mean anything from a broken toe to death.

Things are beaker on the Russian side, easily having twice or more the deaths and casualties of the Ukrainians.

The numbers are vague, though. Both sides have good reasons to keep the true numbers a secret, and we won’t hear the true Ukrainian numbers until years after the war (and we’ll probably never find out true numbers from the Russian side). However, it’s not like tens off millions of people are dead.