Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I moved from GDrive to a hosted Nextcloud solution. It works fine for everything but video files for me. I don’t know if it’s a bug from my host (disroot dot org) and if this ran better were I to host my own server. I could find references to a bug but no solution last year and just stopped using it to move videos around. They would download but be unplayable.

    For me, Nextcloud is good for notes, calendars, and contacts as well. Syncs well everywhere. Less good if you’re into to-do’s.

    Proton, the company, is just a slightly less evil and smaller Google in a Swiss trenchcoat if you ask me.


  • Is there something wrong with making a new account to make a discussion post about a video?

    If the video is from a platform whose algorithm thrives on controversy, is presented in a context of controversy, on a new account, it’s at least suspicious here on the lemmyverse.

    So you’ve been thinking about joining the fediverse but it was this video you wanted to share with us that finally made you pull the trigger? It’s a sequence of events I find inherently sus.

    Is this not a forum website?

    Yes, it is. And as such it is sometimes abused by people with ulterior motives.

    This is ridiculous behavior.

    That is both your prerogative to think so and a matter of opinion.

    I’ve been respectful and open to every single person I’ve responded to. I am not creating drama or name calling.

    Your eagerness to engage virtually any comment on this niche subject is what I find suspicious. It’s the eagerness you also see by people who abuse Lemmy for rage bait.

    If there’s drama being created on this post, it’s because people can’t stand Mutahar. And I agree with them! But as someone who refuses to be an ideologue living in an echo chamber, I watch content from sources I don’t agree with too, and I discuss it. I don’t get what problem you have with this.

    I don’t know who that is and don’t care enough to find out. I refer you to my criticism of the source of the video. My suspicion, which I have to say your comments have not diminished, is that you created this account and this persona to generate more views to feed the algorithm on YouTube and not because you wanted to have a serious discussion about the subject.





  • One thing that what they call agenetic AI will undermine might be a lot of the subscription based biggies of the industry. I’m thinking about Adobe in particular. They charge a monthly premium for having user-friendly, low learning curve software that often has become industry standard. But there are open source alternatives for many of their big hitters (Inkscape, GIMP, etc.). If the agenetic model needs a tool to design a logo or expand an image - and you probably already pay for the privilege of using the agent model - this may prove to be a boon to the open source development of these intermediary software tools. Because the relative difficulty to use them as we hear from Adobe heads all the time won’t matter to the computer. And they are free (with a request to donate). So a chunk of interest and probably money and effort will move from those subscription services to open source alternatives and their development. This is just one positive effect so-called AI could have for some open source projects.

    Sadly, at the same time we squander resources and kill polar bears.





  • Is this a bad use of so-called AI? Yes. Is this illegal? I’m going to say no. One of the reasons why Google tried this is because in various markets they’ve been dragged to court or coerced to fund news initiatives because they used snippets from publishers in their search results word-for-word. A not insignificant number of publishers has been lobbying pretty hard against them for giving you their headline and a couple of phrases as a snippet. Those publishers are dumb if you ask me but they were able to bend laws to their will and limit the usefulness of the link, the cornerstone of the internet. So you can sort of understand their motivation why they would try this. And it was only a test from what I’ve heard. So bash Google for all the truly evil shit they’re up to. This issue is dumb but not really worth the outrage.


  • I suspect this is a problem of fragmentation on Android. I’ve had issues when I tried other Clock apps than the Google one. Alarms would not be triggered for various inexplicable reasons. Or they reset if the launcher crashed for whatever reason. I don’t have the time and energy to test this simple function that I rely on quite heavily. And that’s why I stick with the stock Google app because it has never failed me personally no matter whose manufacturer’s version of Android it ran on.



  • If I had to hazard a guess, your comment managed to violate another guideline or contained unsuitable language. I would also not be surprised to learn that if we managed to get ahold of the person who deleted your comment we would find out that you had a history of questionable comments and that’s why the moderative leeway afforded to you may have been cut short. The fediverse will not benefit from a crusade into other platforms in the same way coca cola doesn’t advertize with the slogan “hey, you fucking loser, you would benefit from this cool beverage of ours.”

    I’m basing my guess - and I could be wrong of course - on the fact that you think I was gatekeeping rather than describing the status quo.




  • I think your definitions don’t quite match common use. When people think about sideloading, they think about installing apps from a third-party source that are not approved by the primary vendor. That’s precisely what Google is going to block.

    See the end of my pervious comment. The fact that we call that “sideloading” in common parlance is a magic trick Google has already played on us and we ate it up. Resist.

    The way I understand sideloading is installing an app through a way that isn’t Play. So F-droid - as one example - is sideloading because you need to go through the overly dramatic warning messages to enable the install from unknown sources. If all the devs in F-droid’s repository theoretically registered with Google, nothing will change. The only difference is that Google wants to know who made it. They make it harder and shittier and thus limit our choices, yes. But they don’t block everything outright.

    The problem arises for apps, whose developer doesn’t want Google and by legal extension the American judiciary to have access to their information. That’s a privacy concern that I find very concerning too. I’m not defending Google’s choices here. I hate it. I also don’t like the inevitable hyperbole going the other way.


  • Not defending Google but I have a but (no typo - although I’m the proud owner of a double t version as well. But I digress.)

    Google is not getting rid of sideloading. They are implementing a registration process for devs and then do a check if they have the info on record before allowing an app to be installed. It is possible for you to download an APK from wantsomalware dot com and install it as long as the developer registered with Google - as all the malware dipshits will manage to do on burner accounts, which will not curb the spread of malware, which is their stated aim. Technically, your bank could distribute its app on its website as long as they registered with the Goog. But it will render abandoned projects uninstallable and that’s the rub.

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this either. Twisting their words though isn’t helping either.

    Corey Doctorow pointed out that it is mad that we call it sideloading. Installing an APK is the same, whether it’s coming from Play, F-droid, or the dark web. There should not be this distinction. Lobby your politicians on this matter. G will not GAF about this petition - it’s PR for the cause at best. Only the tag team of legislature and judiciary can set this right.


  • I think there will be fork and there will be fork. A company like Samsung will continue to take what Google churns out, put their more proprietal stuff on it, and ship it. Probably not as Tyzen any more but who knows. I suspect a FOSS fork will never go back to Google after the last version that didn’t require this dev register check. They will find a way to maintain feature parity with it but it will be delayed.

    Forks haven’t worked that well for Samsung Tyzen or Amazon because they never gained enough users, nor probably contributed they enough to the bottom line given the investment. It remains to be seen whether the more privacy conscious people can move the needle enough for a FOSS version.


  • It’s always nice to read Corey eating at the buffet of corporate shenanigans and leaving no crumbs.

    If this developer registration really comes to pass and/or has staying power, I suspect there will be eff it we will just fork it movement. A FOSS Tyzen or Fire version of Android that would then not go back to whatever Google does with their Android updates. That would probably work better if all the privacy-friendly Android devs banded together, which probably won’t happen.

    At the same time, I don’t think the last word has been spoken on Google’s plans here. They haven’t implemented it yet. And even if/when they do, I suspect there will one or two courtrooms that will hear about this shit in excruciating detail. If European devs could rally behind this flag there is a good chance the EU will use its golden formula of 50% good intentions and 50% wanting to eff American tech giants to intervene on privacy grounds.