CerebralHawks

So no smartphones.

Nokia is Finnish and I’m not sure if t hat’s considered European. It’s not American though. In fact the only American company left making phones is Apple. The problem is, the rest of them uses Android, which spies on you. Counterpoint: Apple won’t let you install apps your government doesn’t approve of. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Android. Fucking. Spies. On. You. Counterpoint to the… you get the idea: Apple still hasn’t shipped a working software keyboard. Pick your poison. Spyware or a broken keyboard and you can’t use a few apps you may not care about… but you’re buying from an American company whose CEO kisses Trump’s arse and literally gave him a solid gold participation trophy.

I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space. No one expects them to compete with the iPhone, or the equivalent Android phone that comes out 3-5 years later and stops getting updates while the iPhone it matches on performance is still getting them… but it shouldn’t have to. We kinda hit a plateau a few years ago.

Otherwise, definitely worth a look.

Wild guess: Spotify was founded in Europe.

It’s now based in the US, and a lot of its revenue goes to alt-right loonies. Renewing their podcast contracts is why you’re paying more year after year to stream music.

I like Apple Music because they pay artists more, but I might be a little biased as it came with my phone and computer and I have a family plan with others who enjoy it (and yes, they are family).

The true alternative to streaming anything is using Plex (or something like it) to make your own music streamer, buying all your media (that pays artists more than any streaming platform), and streaming it to yourself that way. It is illegal to rip CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in the US, but technically if you own the media it’s fine to have it, you just can’t have broken the copy protection. Kind of a catch-22. But it costs a lot more as you have to buy everything. If you already have a massive CD collection, it’s not as big a deal.

Same, but I still enjoy using Windows. I have 30 years of experience with it, and I have a Windows 11 machine… at work. I do stuff with Windows that make my coworkers think I’m a wizard. I’m not trying to brag about being special in a Technology community. Rather, the bar is pretty low. Like when my boss says he has two monitors and that makes him special, I tell him I have four. He taps my one and says no, you have one. I say, come round and watch this. Hold CTRL and WIN and tap left and right. I have four desktops. Super easy, hit Win+Tab or the new task view/switch icon (white square, black square icon) and add a desktop from the bottom. Lots of other shit I do. Word spreads. IT guy’s busy (or can’t be arsed to show them how to do something)? They come to me. My boss thinks I’m wasting time and gives me more work, but I have all kinds of shortcuts set up. (No AI/Copilot as that requires a Microsoft account, and I don’t get one with work and I’m not using my personal one. I could make a dummy one just for work, but I’m not poking that bear.)

At home though, I use Macs. I’m relatively new to Mac, and I’m sure they’ve had problems like Windows has had lately, in the past, but the biggest complaint seems to be “Liquid Glass is ugly.” I don’t really care about the theme. It’s a fucking theme. Does the shit work like I need? Yes. I don’t care what it looks like, though I do fancy a dark theme. Easier on my eyes. But real talk, macOS window snapping sucks compared to Windows. Microsoft figured that shit out with Windows 7. And it’s been solid since. We can use a free app called Rectangle to get up to Windows level and a few other tricks, but I don’t need it. The system snapping is good enough for me. Finder is also not quite as good as Windows Explorer. They both have all the features I need, but Finder is kinda like the dumb little brother of Windows Explorer. I could replace it with a file manager that beats both of them, but default is good enough. The only one I really know is Directory Opus, which I used on the Amiga (showing my age here), but I just checked, they’re Windows only now.

For people who still have machines that run Windows (mine died, which is why I have Macs now, I didn’t like what the PC market looked like and Apple Silicon was in its second generation (M2 Pro on the desk, M2 base on the MacBook) and seemed like a better fit for me), I’d recommend some flavour of Linux. Mint is a great place to start if you’re familiar with the look and feel of Windows. If you’re sick of Windows, but you want something commercially available (you buy it and become their customer) and supported by the company, Macs are $500 now, and that’s for the M4, two generations ahead of mine. Though, I’d recommend springing for more storage. 256GB doesn’t feel like enough. M4 Pro will get you more cores, but then you’re pushing $1000 and you can probably do better with Windows/Intel or AMD, unless you really just want to avoid Windows altogether. Still, find a machine without an OS and stick Linux on it. At that price point it just makes a little more sense.

Interesting, but nah. They launched it before for influencers to join, and I’m not sure how many did. I haven’t heard much about it. It sounds like it’s gonna be very corporate run. I have no idea what the political climate will be, but there’s a lot of big money behind it, so that’s not great. I got kicked off Reddit for saying child abusers should be punished more harshly, which says way more about Reddit than it does about me. I don’t trust Digg to be any better.

It can. Maybe yours does. Maybe mine did by default. Mine ignores vote weights and sorts both the home feed (either Subscribed or All) and the comment feed by newest first.

I can vote, I see the arrows, but I don’t see vote weight and vote weight has no affect on how I read Lemmy.

Paywalls mostly (speaking for myself).

That and, back in the day, they trashed Samsung for making big phones, then praised Apple for making objectively less functional ones (no stylus, no Note like features). We started calling them iVerge back then, for favoritism to Apple. Even as an Apple guy, I found it annoying.

Funny how it’s the other way around when it comes to hardware. Headphone jack removal and fingerprint reader, Droid did both first.

With software, copying Apple is everyone’s game. Samsung were caught red handed literally telling their designers where they could copy Apple more. They’re only just getting around to the important bits. Software updates, and synergy with a computer (which unfortunately is Windows, not Linux).

Stop checking. Your mental health is worth more than that. Forgive them, forgive yourself for worrying about it, and keep moving forward.

Social media sites often filter other social media sites. It’s crummy but that’s most likely why.

Also, “goodbye” posts are banned on a lot of forums because they contribute nothing. They don’t even contribute discussion because either the person who made them has left, or they’re a liar and you don’t want their contributions anyway (attention seeking).

No love for Reddit here — they banned me for saying the US should have stricter penalties for messing with kids. They took it as a threat to the President — this was around the time the Epstein files hit the news again. I thought they were a little overzealous, so I appealed and it was upheld. I decided to not continue to use a site that was supportive of paedophiles, and said as much when I closed my account and they asked why.

So, welcome to Lemmy! Not all of us are here because we hate Reddit, though. But still, enough do that it’s kind of the revolution, in a sense. There’s also the open source element. Lots of FOSS fanatics here, Linux guys and whatnot. As a Mac user, I feel like Linux guys are our allies and we’re all against Microsoft, but a lot of Linux guys feel they stand alone and that Mac is just as corporate as Windows. I get that, but I don’t agree. Better to build a bridge than to burn it — unless a paedophile is the only thing on the other side of that bridge. Then burn it down.

I mean, yeah, but my point is, a computer would know the difference and not have the emotional attachment to it. That it can associate a person with a wrong thing (even if they are morally equivalent), then it can associate a person with a wrong thing that is not morally equivalent. And that’s the problem.

This should show people how unreliable AI is.

Okay, yes, Donald Trump is some kind of pervert and predator, and he made a comment about a ten-year-old girl one time (joking “I might be dating her in 10 years”), but he mostly preys upon teenage girls. So, not a pedophile — the word for that is ephebephile. Now, I might be splitting a hair here. Both types prefer underage partners. One is clearly more inflammatory. But the fact that the other is more accurate, and that a computer should know the difference, should tell you that AI can leverage the court of public opinion.

Also, shaming a woman by calling her a man in drag is just ugly, I don’t care who she is. I may be just a bit left of centre, but I think even if you’re a lot further left than I am, you can understand that if you don’t want the sword of sexism swung at you, maybe you shouldn’t swing it at others. But in any case, a computer is jumping to this conclusion because these are unpopular figures.

I don’t like these people either.

But what happens when it’s you? Or someone you love? Or the fact that Grok has been used to create CSAM of a ten-year-old girl and a teenage girl? This was in the news the other day, someone got it to take a photo of a grade-school girl in a nice, conservative dress, and swap it for a skimpy bikini. Then they got a photo of a teenage girl (I think someone from Stranger Things?) and had it render her fully nude.

So yeah, it’s funny when AI attacks fascist dictators and their supporters, but it’s also attacking children. It doesn’t know the difference, it doesn’t care, and it can’t be made to do either. It’s just a tool that is used by whoever wields it against whomever they do not like or want to see harmed.