Stupid question: Why can’t journals just mandate an actual URL link to a study on the last page, or the exact issue something was printed in? Surely both of those would be easily confirmable, and both would be easy for a scientist using “real” sources to source (since they must have access to it themselves already).

Like, it feels silly to me that high school teachers require this sort of thing, yet scientific journals do not?

There’s still a lot of people who will always stick to Reddit as well (as evidenced by a good amount of hostility in the comment section of the Reddit discussion on /r/rust).

Counter-counterpoint: I’ve been using it since 2019. I think you’re exaggerating.

• It aggressively tries to center itself, always. If you’re in a lane and it merges with a second lane, the car will swerve sharply to the right as it attempts to go back to the middle of the lane.

• It doesn’t allow space for cars to merge until the cars are already merging. It doesn’t work with traffic; it does its own thing and is discourteous to other drivers. It doesn’t read turn signals; it only reacts to drivers getting over.

• If a motorcycle is lane-splitting, it doesn’t move out of the way for the motorcycle. In fact, it assumes anything between lanes isn’t an issue. If something is partially blocking a lane but the system doesn’t recognize it as fully “your lane”, the default is to ignore it. The number of times I’ve had to disengage to dodge a wide load or a camper straddling two lanes is crazy.

• With the removal of radar, phantom braking has become far, far worse. Any kind of weather condition causes issues. Even if you drive at sunset, the sun can dazzle the cameras and they don’t detect things that they should be able to - or worse, they detect problems which aren’t there.

• It doesn’t understand road hazards. It will happily hit a pothole at 70 MPH. It will ignore road flares and traffic cones. When the lanes aren’t clearly marked (because the paint has worn away or because of construction), it can have dramatic behavior.

• It waits so long to brake, and when it brakes it brakes hard. It accelerates just as suddenly, leading to a very jerky ride that makes my passengers carsick.

The only time I trust FSD is when it’s stop-and-go traffic. Beyond that I have to pay so much attention to the thing that I might as well just drive myself. The “worst thing it can do” isn’t just detour; it’s “smash into the thing that it thought wasn’t an issue”.

To be fair, you don’t get to be an expert at something by just reading about it. You become an expert by immersing yourself in it and knowing all the nuanced details of what you specialize in.

For example, I’m a AAA gamedev programmer. My specialty is the Unreal Engine. I know tons of little quirks about the engine that many of my coworkers don’t - but that’s because I’ve been using the engine for over a decade at this point.

I don’t devote every waking moment to learning about Unreal - I used to spend a lot of free time researching it before I got hired, but now I leave gaming stuff at work to avoid burnout.

You don’t need to like hyperfixate on something to become good at it. You just need to work on it for long enough - and if it’s literally your job, you’ll spend 40+ hours/week engrossed in it, for years.

I’d love to see more races and classes. Artificers, Tortles, Warforged, Tabaxi, etc. There’s a bunch of missing subclasses too, like Storm Barbarian or Swashbuckler Rogue.

Maybe mod tools would allow that, but at the same time I’m not convinced. It just seems like easy territory for an expansion, sort of like Tasha’s or Eberron… but for the video game.

Your phone doesn’t listen to you, but it builds a fingerprint and uses that fingerprint to serve ads.

It also serves ads for things based on who you’ve been around recently. The example given was the guy’s wife asked for a power drill for her birthday, and then the guy started seeing power drill ads.

This wasn’t because of the conversation, but because his wife had looked up power drills and opened herself up to ads about them. Because the husband had been around the wife, the ad algorithms thought he might be into the same sort of things she is, and so they started serving him ads based on what they think his wife would like.

The article takes issue with this and considers it an invasion of privacy. It’s the same sort of story we’ve seen dozens of times before; John Oliver did it better.

POV: You don’t know what the words “well-regulated” mean

Yes. Here are the timelines:

The DMA started applying as of beginning of May 2023. Within two months, companies providing core platform services have to notify the Commission and provide all relevant information. The Commission will then have 45 working days to adopt a decision designating a specific gatekeeper. Designated gatekeepers will have six months after the Commission decision to ensure compliance with the obligations foreseen in the DMA.

So we should start hearing things in about 2-3 months, with compliance in 8-9 months.

Relevant sections:

The ability of end users to acquire content, subscriptions, features or other items outside the core platform services of the gatekeeper should not be undermined or restricted. In particular, a situation should be avoided whereby gatekeepers restrict end users from access to, and use of, such services via a software application running on their core platform service. For example, subscribers to online content purchased outside a software application, software application store or virtual assistant should not be prevented from accessing such online content on a software application on the core platform service of the gatekeeper simply because it was purchased outside such software application, software application store or virtual assistant.

Gatekeepers can hamper the ability of end users to access online content and services, including software applications. Therefore, rules should be established to ensure that the rights of end users to access an open internet are not compromised by the conduct of gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can also technically limit the ability of end users to effectively switch between different undertakings providing internet access service, in particular through their control over hardware or operating systems. This distorts the level playing field for internet access services and ultimately harms end users. It should therefore be ensured that gatekeepers do not unduly restrict end users in choosing the undertaking providing their internet access service.

The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.

Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation.

In all cases, the gatekeeper and the requesting provider should ensure that interoperability does not undermine a high level of security and data protection in line with their obligations laid down in this Regulation and applicable Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC. The obligation related to interoperability should be without prejudice to the information and choices to be made available to end users of the number-independent interpersonal communication services of the gatekeeper and the requesting provider under this Regulation and other Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

Pretty clear legislation - no lock-in, don’t block access to content, you must publish your API for others to use. Very good legislation.

“I know exactly what React is, I prefer to use Vue” shows you literally have zero clue what React is.

You don’t choose when you visit a website. There’s no option that says “render this with Vue.” It’s handled by the website itself. Lemmy uses Inferno instead of React, for example. You didn’t make that choice, and I highly doubt you chose Lemmy because researched that beforehand. And if you did, by going to Lemmy’s GitHub page… surprise! GitHub uses React!

I think you need to take a history lesson on the web. I gave multiple examples of tech Facebook has backed, and yet EEE hasn’t happened to any of them. There are more open techs that Facebook has contributed code to; a lot of Apache projects, for example. And yet no EEE. Curious. Also I noticed you’re avoiding the “EU will come down on Facebook if they get out of line” side of my argument. Also curious.

But I suppose that’s not a surprise. It’s clear you have no idea how things even work; you probably googled (oh, wait, you probably don’t use Google) “React replacement” to find Vue at all. You probably didn’t know Vue was created by a Google engineer and Google uses it internally. I suggest you change what web framework you use, if you have that magic button tucked away. Maybe switch to Inferno?

Not to mention you say you never used the Reddit app. I never said anything about the Reddit app. I was talking about the Reddit website. Unless you’ve never used the Reddit website, either? I trust you’re going to say you’ve never owned anything but a flip phone and do web searches with a phone book next.

You conclude by making a strawman and putting words in my mouth that I never said. You think if I loved corporations I would be here? But you’ve made multiple factual inaccuracies, you never source anything you say, you just constantly pout like the world is ending and try to force everyone else to do things your way.

But you’re right. We do have different viewpoints. I suggest you stop spreading yours as factual, or use that phone book to find sources.

(And for the record, I despise Elon.)

Are you really saying you don’t use PayPal? I presume you have a job; your job probably uses Slack (or Teams) at the corporate level. You’re never streamed anything? You’re not coming from Reddit? You don’t use Wikipedia? Or Spotify? Or reCAPTCHA?

I most sincerely doubt that you’ve never used any of those, all of which run on tech that Facebook built and helps maintain. And I’m not even mentioning the countless small places that use things like React. I’m not joking when I say you literally cannot use the modern web without bumping into a website running React, which was - again - created by Facebook.

Maybe you think the things I mentioned are “apps” - they’re not, to be clear. They’re frameworks. You generally have no idea you’re using them, because it’s something that gets setup by the folks building the website. You don’t directly download React.js; you go to Discord.gg and Discord will download React to your machine and run it to display Discord. Same thing with Wikipedia - you go to Wikipedia, it uses HHVM to show you the page you want.

If you knew all that already and still think you don’t use tech run by Facebook, then your ignorance of how the web works is shocking.

I also think you’re struggling with the concept of “Meta doesn’t want the EU to come down on them.” They will never extend the network in a way that breaks apps, and they can’t extinguish it because both of those would make them “gatekeepers” under EU law - the thing they’re trying to avoid.

You have to understand that - as much as I dislike capitalism - it is what drives consumers. Linux is the better OS than Windows. That’s proven by basically everything running Linux… except consumer PCs, which are usually Macs or Windows. Because Linux doesn’t advertise itself like they do, not really.

The way for the fediverse to grow is to get corporations to embrace it. The more corporations that embrace it, the less likely it is that any individual corpo can extend/extinguish (assuming they ignore the EU for some reason). Corporations means regular users, and regular users means normalization, which means a healthy and growing fediverse.

Rather than trying to get a big place to reject this at all cost, maybe you should move to a small place like Beehaw that will more readily accept your worldview.

I think you need to open your eyes as to the real reason why Threads exists. Instead of baseless claims, let’s use a source, shall we?

It’s obvious why Facebook would want to make a Twitter clone. But the Digital Markets Act is likely why that clone uses ActivityPub: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

• allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
• allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
• provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
• allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn’t considered a “gatekeeper platform”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn’t currently connected to the wider fediverse, that’s probably why they’re not in the EU yet - because it’s currently in violation of the Digital Markets Act.

This also means that fears of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” are likely overblown and FUD. Breaking ActivityPub interoperability means that they’d be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers.

I’m not saying Facebook is innocent. But I think people are so paranoid about things like EEE when there is clear evidence that EEE is not in Facebook’s best interest.

We want the fediverse to be a “normal” thing. Heck, we should get as many corporations as possible onboard, because then fears of EEE go out the window entirely. That’s how other protocols like Matter work - a bunch of corporations work with an open entity to decide collectively how the protocol should work.

And, if you pay attention, the web - and specifically Facebook - has been using open protocols like those for years without issue. Many of these open protocols the web uses were made by Facebook. Some examples:

• React.js

React is a JavaScript library that was created by Facebook.

It makes webpages pretty, basically. It makes things load really really fast while still looking clean and modern.

Dropbox, Paypal, Discord, Slack, Netflix, AirBnB all use React.

• HHVM

HHVM was created by Facebook.

HHVM is what executes the Hack programming language (also made by Facebook). Hack is based on PHP (the same thing Kbin runs on), but is optimized in a different way and is more flexible than traditional PHP.

Slack and Wikipedia are the biggest users of HHVM.

• Cassandra

Cassandra was created by Facebook.

Cassandra works basically as an alternative to MySQL. It does much of the same job, but works a bit better making sure there’s no single point of failure.

Uber, Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter all use Cassandra.

• Apache Thrift

Thrift was created by Facebook.

It connects programs that were created using different programming languages. They can all share a data format through Thrift, which lets them talk to each other.

Thrift is used by Netflix, Evernote, Twitter, Uber, and reCAPTCHA.

Literally you could not use the modern web without using these technologies. I’m leaving 5-6 more out for space constraints. Meta has a loud voice in most of those techs, and outright controls a handful of them. That’s been the case for most of the 2010s into the 2020s.

I wouldn’t say I trust Facebook with the fediverse. But I’m also not so quick to jump to EEE because they do have a fairly solid track record when it comes to web tech.

And I don’t think “this isn’t a place for normies, normies go home!!!” is a winning proposition to make sure the fediverse becomes big enough that EEE isn’t an issue. We want widespread adoption. Smaller instances will always exist, and if that’s what you want you should join an explicitly small instance like Beehaw. Let the bigger instances federate and be federated with. Stop spreading baseless FUD.

Yes, and that’s likely why Threads uses ActivityPub to begin with. See the EU’s Digital Markets Act: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

• allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
• allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
• provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
• allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn’t considered a “gatekeeper platform”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn’t currently connected to the wider fediverse, that’s probably why they’re not in the EU yet.

This also means that fears of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” are likely overblown. Breaking fediverse interoperability means that they’d be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers. The whole reason why Facebook is making Threads ActivityPub is so they don’t get hit by EU rules about being gatekeepers of content.

This means your normal fediverse apps (e.g. Fedilab) would be able to work with Threads natively, without any need for “read-only” instances like you say.

My worry that many articles are going to have a biased take on the situation, or be coming from Mastodon etc. where things don’t map up 1:1.

My perspective:

I moderate a medium-sized magazine here on Kbin (@Disneyland, about 264 subscribers here and a couple dozen elsewhere on the fediverse). You can’t moderate a magazine from another instance, nor can you redirect a magazine somewhere else. This means I effectively must use Kbin.social, especially since I also mod the /r/Disneyland subreddit and have been redirecting people to our magazine for a month now.

I personally would like to see Threads here, if only because @disneyparks would be a nice fit to have automatically included in our microblog tab. I can’t go to another instance that supports Threads because again - moderators on Kbin can’t be from different instances. And besides - me being on another instance doesn’t stop the fact that I couldn’t have content from Threads automatically added here. So my options are basically “deal with it” or “abandon the community here”.

It really sucks that there is a way that could make my magazine better by including actual official Disney sources in our Disney-themed magazine, but some people are afraid of EEE they are trying to keep that from everyone. I’d rather federate with Threads and allow users to individually block the domain if they desire.

• If EEE is the worry, fight them at the “extend” step, not the “embrace” one.

• If mountains of spam is the worry - people have to manually follow people from other instances for those posts to federate to Kbin, so not every single account will magically pop up here on Kbin. It’ll be accounts that people on Kbin have followed; a small chunk.

• Vice-versa, Threads is full of casual users who don’t know much about the fediverse. Any Threads users interacting on Kbin are those who understand the fediverse and go out of their way to subscribe to Kbin magazines from Threads. We know from past history that these are going to be a minority; even within the fediverse, Mastodon is huge (and tech-savvy) but we see very few Mastodon folks posting to Kbin threads.

• If “Facebook is sucking up all my data” is the worry, they could do that anyway. The fediverse is open and public; they can easily set up a “shadow instance” that federates everywhere and slurps everything. They don’t need Threads for that.

If people just don’t want to see Threads users at all, making the block button defederate on the account level would be wonderful. If people choose to block Threads, then Threads users couldn’t see them and vice versa. People who see Threads as a potential useful resource (myself, for the magazine I mod) would still be able to have that content in the community here on Kbin. Everyone’s happy.

Yep, a lot of my old friends and co-workers aren’t on Mastodon. I’m seeing them pop up on Threads.

I really want to be able to follow my friends and interact with my friends and - from my perspective - it’s this vocal minority loudly saying “YOU DON’T NEED TO TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, LET’S SPLIT THE FEDIVERSE”.

It makes no goddamn sense. If the fedipact holds you’re just going to have two separate fediverses now and users are going to fragment. I’d rather interact with my IRL friends than a bunch of nerds talking to each other on Mastodon about the last time they showered. I get that they’re trying to avoid “embrace, extend, extinguish” but splitting the fediverse into 2 is actively worse.

EEE is all about a corporation making a product that (to an average user) is better than the free alternative, and making it hard for the free alternative to keep up and maintain parity. Over time, people will leave the free version and go to the corpo version and the free version will have nothing on it but diehard nerds.

Defederating from the corpo instances is literally identical. All these people are just going to shoot themselves in the foot. You are giving people the option of “talk to all of your friends and celebrities” or “talk to us, a bunch of overbearing control freaks who jump at shadows”. Of course people are going to choose their friends and leave behind the strangers they hardly know. If the fedipact has its way, Mastodon’s core users will dwindle and dwindle until it’s just the hardcore. Note that this is the exact same outcome as EEE, but Meta didn’t have to lift a finger.

Don’t mistake me for someone who likes Meta, mind. I hate the Zuck. Not as much as I hate Elon, but I do not like Zuckerberg. But I’m given the chance to use FOSS stuff to talk to my friends? I can use apps like Fedilab and swap between Threads and Mastodon? I can follow Threads users from here on Kbin? Threads users can subscribe to my magazines and make posts?

I’d much rather make Facebook work on EEE than do it to ourselves for free.

A list of subreddits remaining dark indefinitely is being made.

There’s a few hundred of them, including big ones like /r/aww and /r/videos. There’s also popular ones like /r/perfectlycutscremes, /r/lotrmemes, /r/murderedbywords, /r/Nintendo, /r/Hearthstone, etc. There will be a full list soon.

Many other subs are watching to see what the majority opinion is before making a move.

One subreddit has been taken out of the protest, /r/AdviceAnimals. The head mod got removed by Reddit admins and the remaining mods re-opened the sub, deleting all the protest posts. It’s unclear what prompted this, and whether it was something Reddit admins did at the request of the other mods or not.

There are 4 options:

1. Public. This is how most subs operate. Everyone can post and comment.

2. Restricted. This disallows posts. You can set it to “restrict posts only”, “restrict comments only”, or “restrict both”. Mods and “approved users” can still post as normal. /r/polandball used this to make sure that only good content from known people got submitted.

3. Private. This turns off the subreddit entirely - the only people who can see it are mods and the aforementioned approved users, while everyone else just sees the subreddit description. An example of this is /r/centuryclub, which only approves uses with over 100k karma.

4. Gold-only. You need to set this at subreddit creation (it can’t be changed later). This restricts the sub to only be visible to people who have Reddit Gold.

Most subs who are “going dark” are setting their stuff to “private” and then changing the subreddit description to say something about the blackout, because that’s all that users can see.

On Old Reddit, you can see the full message. On New Reddit, you see the first 20ish characters. On the official app, you don’t see a message about why a subreddit is private at all.

I closed my 500k member subreddit yesterday!

It feels sad, but it needs to happen. We’ve moved here to Kbin - @Disneyland - and I linked it in the “we’re going private” message.

Hopefully we get people to come over. We have half the original mod team and I’m still trying to convince the other half to join up before Kbin closes registration (I’m not sure if you can mod across instances).