They exist, but very few people care to buy them. TCL/Sceptre/Insignia sell dumb TVs over in America for reasonable prices, though you’ll need to check out the display models to check the TV’s quality.
High end brands will sell their dumb TVs as digital signage displays, often with a price tag that’s oriented at the business market.
Alternatively, you can get “gaming monitors” like the LG 48GQ900 that do nothing but display HDMI. Their sound quality is often worse (get a soundbar) and they don’t always come with a usable remote, but gaming monitors work fine as TVs as long as you have an external TV decoder box.
People want smart TVs. Not because they’re interested in playing candy crush on their big screen, but because they’re cheaper than dumb TVs. The ads and integrated services subsidise the TV so that they can be sold for the bargain bin prices that people have come to expect.
If you take away their data mining and advertising revenue, you’re going to need to pay extra. Especially if you’re in a high end market segment (humongous TV) where there’s little demand for a dumb TV outside the digital signage industry (which tends to demand higher standards because those things are always on).
The cheapest and easiest workaround is to get one of those Google TVs that has the ability to switch back to “basic TV” mode. That way you can get a TV from the consumer segment, subsided by other people’s use of smart features.
You could also DIY a dumb TV by getting a compatible TV, ripping out the internals (don’t kill yourself by shorting out the power supply!), and replacing them with an HDMI controller board from sites like AliExpress.
I’m guessing someone who has been deleted (spammer?) sent you a PM after you already cleared your notifications. The notification counter goes down to -1, the app sees notification_count != 0 and draws a special little marker for the negative notification count.
Hopefully the problem will fix itself next time you get a notification. If this isn’t what happened, I have no idea how you would fix this without database access. Ask the server admins in that case, I guess.
Instance moderators can block individual servers, as can account owners on services like Mastodon.
People are afraid that Threads will suck up all their posts and do something bad with them (privacy violations of some kind? not sure what the problem is when the content is already out there for anyone to crawl and analyse). People are also afraid that this will be another XMPP, and that the popularity of Threads will overwhelm the small Fediverse.
XMPP??XMPP is a federated messaging protocol that Google and Facebook adopted at some point; Google’s/Facebook’s implementations became much more popular, the majority of the XMPP network was on those services, and when XMPP was phased out, XMPP shrunk back to the tiny userbase of enthusiasts that it originally comprised of. It has grown to be actually useful since then but neither Google nor Facebook have enabled XMPP again (i.e. you can actually keep your chat history on multiple devices, E2EE has been added, some standards have been grouped together to make the protocol more palatable). However, with MIMI+MLS on the horizon, I imagine XMPP users will be able to talk to Facebook/GChat users in the future.
Yes, Meta can already access and scrape most content on the Fediverse if they wanted to. The exceptions Mastodon and services that copied Mastodon’s solution, which have a setting to only allow fetching posts for logged-in users or from servers that sign requests, effectively allowing the administrators to choose which servers can access their content at the cost of posts being inaccessible on the website without a local account.
Public information received by a partaking ActivityPub server includes usernames, display names, post contents, edit history upvotes/downvotes/favourites, boosts, and some other activity. Scrapers cannot find out who upvoted posts and in many cases who favourited posts but by scraping across different servers, it’s possible to figure out what accounts are liking what posts.
Something that many Mastodon operators have done is limit or silence Threads; basically, you can follow Threads users and interact with them, but their content will not appear on any algorithmic timeline and accounts on those servers will not be suggested to new users. Lemmy has no such ability at the moment, but I can’t imagine Threads interacting with Lemmy in the first place; we can’t even follow accounts on Lemmy, as far as I know following a Lemmy community through Threads would be as useless and spammy as it is on Mastodon. At the moment Threads users can’t follow Fediverse users anyway, they’ve only enabled outgoing traffic so far.
I’m a bit worried. Since the upgrade to 0.19.0 I have been getting 1 on all my comments. Indicating either my normal engaging personality has left me, I never was and the pity has stopped, or maybe I’m not being seen....
I’ve noticed the same, but when I check other instances, it seems like all my comments and posts still arrive at the other servers. I think it’s just that most Lemmings are busy preparing for Christmas.
0.19.1 is out, that did fix at least one bug related to the ActivityPub endpoints.
It’s important to note that the CLA does not take ownership of your commit. To quote the CLA:
(a) You retain ownership of the Copyright in Your Contribution and have the same rights to use or license the Contribution which You would have had without entering into the Agreement.
All the CLA does, is say “I agree that Canonical can use my code under another license if they want to”. Your contribution is still yours.
I would also argue that by enforcing AGPL rather than Apache, the community gets more ownership. I’d rather have seen Canonical not require a CLA so they can sell the software you’re contributing, but AGPL forces everyone but Canonical to open up their custom versions to their customers, which are free to rehost it elsewhere and help bring the changes upstream, of course.
As for ownership: LXD was started by Canonical. The name and trademark is theirs, and they control the upstream project. Like always, you can reject their terms and provide your changes under another license, but as the article states, Oracle is free to take your Apache2 changes and use them for practically any purpose as long as they put a copy of the license next to their code and give you credit. That includes selling the software. Not just Oracle either, of course; IBM/Red Hat and Oracle can do the very same.
The community should own everything.
In a perfect world I agree, but then the community should take over doing the actual work. Right now, almost all of the work on open source is done by companies and organisations such as KDE and Gnome with their own committees and politics.
Software for some products don’t have company-supplied software (i.e. Asahi Linux, although they do have parts of the Darwin kernel for reference) but those devices also often take ages to become usable. There are also plenty of projects funded by charities and such, but most of those form some kind of organisation that owns the copyright by default.
the only REALLY good company for the Linux ecosystem as of right now is Valve
They brought Linux to the mainstream by locking down most of the customisability and by promoting running proprietary software. That’s just the way things need to be, but I’m not sure if the Linux ecosystem should be that happy about these developments.
Canonical fucks us with snap
It takes two minutes to install Flatpak and remove Snap. Their apt-to-snap transition is stupid and annoying, but it’s a very minor issue.
Red Hat kills X11
Red Hat stops maintaining X.org for free now that a better replacement is (almost) ready. The community is free to set up an effort to prolong X11’s life span, of course.
Google is closed
More and more closed (mostly on Android, because as it turned out, the people taking the Android source code and distributing their own forks didn’t contribute back much), but Android and Chrome are still almost completely open. Your alternatives are iOS (closed for all but the reference kernel), Sailfish (Android app support necessary for real world use but closed and paid), Ubuntu Touch (using the Android HAL, so about as open as Android), and the various Linux distros that can barely do power management and often lack features such as “placing a call”; Google still provides some of the best open source software for mobile devices.
Google’s ChromeOS is perhaps the weird exception here, being basically a closed-ish source Linux distribution. All the components that power it (Linux, Chromium, Android) are open source, but the special sauce that makes those useful for end users is closed.
nVidia is closed and buggy
Buggy? Yes, 100%. One day I will be able to use Wayland without random stutters and crashes!
Closed? Not for recent GPUs. Starting at the GTX1650/1660, the drivers are completely open source, with only the firmware being closed like on every other GPU. The closed nature of earlier cards (which still requires something like the GPL condom) still sucks, but they’re clearly improving.
I used to think that there would be 1, main ‘Fediverse’ with all of the ‘big instances’ connected to each other. The recent Threads debacle has shown me otherwise....
User side blocking will hide the communities but not the comments from others.
On the other hand, interacting with Lemmy from a Twitter style timeline sucks, so I doubt we’ll see any Threads people on here.
If it’s about data mining, there’s absolutely nothing preventing Threads from doing that already, as the entire protocol is completely open. All they need is one server that subscribes to every community, and every comment and upvote comes flowing in. One account on one beefy sever is all they need.
If that happens, Threads will just get blocked, like exploding-heads, hexbear, Mastodon.social, and all the other places that don’t have their moderation in order. If there is a spike of abuse (not from the CP spammer this time), an admin can purge all Threads interactions with one single SQL query.
I think most Mastodon instances also simply silence Threads: Mastodon users can follow Threads users, but Threads won’t fill every algorithmic timeline and doesn’t get suggested.
Unfortunately, neither Lemmy nor Kbin have such a feature, though Lemmy’s user side server blocking introduced in 0.19.0 should help a little.
I think limiting/silencing is an excellent solution. It gives the people who want to interact with Threads a chance, while not disturbing the people who don’t.
In regards to Lemmy: I’ve seen a few Mastodon users tag Lemmy communities and creating posts here (generating some hilariously broken Markdown titles in the process), so we may see a few posts here or there. I don’t think anyone over at Threads knows what the Threadiverse is, though, so it shouldn’t cause any problems.
I don’t think instance level blocks should be overridden. Some blocks are the result of moderation disagreements (beehaw vs lemmy.world vs exploding-heads vs hexbear), others are because of NSFW content, but there are a bunch of Fediverse servers full of pornography that would be illegal to host in many countries around the world (lolicon porn, for instance). If an administrator doesn’t want that trash on their server, they should have the ability to block it.
I think there’s a significant difference between completely blocking off a remote instance and making all interactions with said instance opt-in, and the server administrator should always have the final word. I think leaving the moderation on a separate layer like Nostr and Bluesky do it (not that Bluesky is federating at the moment) was a mistake, the result of some laudable free speech ideals that just don’t work out in the real world.
Me too, but I don’t understand why they would subject themselves to that. You need to disable boosts from the Lemmy communities so you don’t get flooded with spam, but then you miss most of the posts there.
Maybe there’s an app I don’t know about, but I don’t think Threads will be interest in becoming a Reddit competitor as well as a Twitter competitor.
I’ll be honest, personally I think the nail in the coffin was the Spotify-deal. If Google had been able to prove that it either has no special deals or only with tiny publishers (so it feels more like helping the underdog) then I don’t think they could have claimed that Google is treating anybody unfairly.
Threads is big not because the average social media users cares or even knows about Federation, but because it came free with their Instagram account.
Obviously Threads is going to be a better platform than Mastodon or Lemmy because the Fediverse doesn’t have any billionaires backup projects like these. Threads did copy a lot of Kadtodkn’s homework, though, and Mastodon can copy right back. Win-win for everyone, I’d say.
I don’t get the conspiracy theory that Threads is out there to kill ActivityPub. It’s an open standard, they could’ve joined the body governing it years ago if they wanted to. They’re enabling federation because they’re huge and that means they have to open their software up to competition (the EU’s DMA). This is just a test to see how that would go.
Threads doesn’t gather your data to advertise to you. It can’t advertise to you, because you’re not on Threads. If you care so much, you’ll block the entire domain anyway, or course, but there’s no business incentive for Facebook to gather your data. All they’d be doing is exposing themselves to further privacy violation fines.
Threads poses one danger to the Fediverse, and it’s the same danger Reddit would pose if they would join: the ability to build and market an app most normal people would be willing to use. The whole XMPP story is just another example of that: almost nobody used XMPP, then a bunch of people discovered XMPP because Gmail and Facebook supported it, and then that support stopped. Now almost nobody uses XMPP anymore, just like before. XMPP was never a feature anyone cares about, that’s why it got killed.
Mastodon is the best Fediverse software out there and you still can’t follow someone from their profile page. Instead of blocking the competition, maybe build something better. Improve the onboarding process, explain how it works without using the word “federation”, work on interoperability, fix the flood of spam notifications you receive when you have more than 100 followers, maybe even do daring things like “make the replies under a toot show up if the toot comes from another server”. While we’re at it, maybe also start doing some better moderation, because every big Fediverse instance seems to be managed by two or three volunteers every other weekend.
You talk about democracy, but ignore the fact that maybe the 141 million users on Threads may disagree with the at most 4 million users on Mastodon/Lemmy/Firefish/Kbin/Mbin/CalcKey/whatever. Foursquare has joined the Fediverse, increasing its size by tenfold in one fell swoop, and Tumblr is working on it.
ActivityPub is taking off and doing its job. We’re entering the eternal September of the Fediverse: it has become successful enough that large companies with sizable user bases are joining up, proving the success of ActivityPub and the concepts behind it for once and for all.
Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.
Part of it is the illusion being shattered. Part of it is the realisation that your parents and every adult in your life have been deceiving you.
I’m all for keeping it, though. Great fun while it lasts, and it keeps kids wondering “what other magical stories does everyone around me say they believe in but isn’t actually real?”
Technically speaking, little is stopping anyone from doing this.
I’m not sure what you’d gain by this, though. You just end up being flagged as a malicious bot and blocked by most instances, and probably hated by most of your audience.
Post privacy is mostly “please be nice and respect my wishes”. Not doing that is just dick thing to do.
Also, depending on how the search engine is set up (personal project? independent organisation? receiving donations?) this could end up falling afoul to the GDPR and other data protection laws.
Unless you’re in it to make money by selling data, getting rid of the goodwill people have for useful Fediverse services just sounds counterproductive. The whole Fediverse network is a privacy compliance nightmare (why do you think Threads is doing one-way ActivityPub traffic at the moment?) and the only reasons half the servers aren’t shut down or fined is that most people don’t dislike any of them enough to take proper legal action.
I use the app’s by local transit services and organisations (9292, NS) and so far that’s working out pretty well.
They don’t have the reminder to indicate when your stop is coming up, but the last two or three times I tried to use that with Google Maps it just didn’t warn me, so I don’t think I’m missing out on much.
There are a bunch of open source transit apps as well, but little work as well as Google does when it comes to planning trips and finding alternatives. Sometimes there just isn’t any open data about public transit and only a few shitty commercial apps have up to date information, but you could always check Google if the routes they suggest seem inefficient or too good to be true.
This isn’t Linux, but Linux-like. Its a microkernel built from the rust programming language. Its still experimental, but I think it has great potential. It has a GUI desktop, but the compiler isn’t quite fully working yet....
C and C++ can’t be fixed retroactively because old code must remain compatible.
If you’re going to implement your own C dialect, you may as well just write a new language.
For C++ that’s Rust, for C that’s probably Zig (Zig will just let you import existing C files, which helps with porting). Carbon and experimental languages like Jakt may also work, it all depends on what your priorities are.
You can load Rust into Python just fine. In fact, several packages have started requiring a Rust compiler on platforms thst don’t get prebuilt binaries. It’s why I installed Rust on my phone.
The build files for Rust are bigger than you may expect, but they’re not unreasonably big. Languages like Python and Java like to put their dependencies in system folders and cache folders outside of their project so you don’t notice them as often, but I find the difference not that problematic. The binaries Rust generates are often huge but if you build in release mode rather than debug mode and strip the debug symbols, you can quickly remove hundreds of megabytes of “executable” data.
Rust can be told to export things in the C FFI, which is how Python bindings are generally accomplished (although you rarely deal with those because of all the helper crates).
Statically compiled code will also load into processes fine, they just take up more RAM than you may like. The OS normally deduplicates dynamically loaded libraries across running processes, but with statically compiled programs you only get the one blob (which itself then gets deduplicated, usually).
Rust can also load and access standard DLLs. The safety assertions do break, because these files are accessed through the C FFI which is marked unsafe automatically, but that doesn’t need to be a problem.
There are downsides and upsides to static compilation, but it doesn’t really affect glue languages like Python or Typescript. Early versions of Rust lacked the C FFI and there are still issues with Rust programs dynamically loading other Rust programs without going through the C FFI, but I don’t think that’s a common issue at all.
I don’t see Rust replace all of C either, because I think Rust is a better replacement for C++ than for C. The C parts it does replace (parsers, drivers, GUIs, complex command line tools) weren’t really things I would write in C in the first place. There are still cars where Rust just fails (it can’t deal with running out of memory, for one) so languages like Zig will always have their place.
Beeper ready to wave white flag if its latest iMessage fix gets shut down (www.androidauthority.com)
I got this popup ad on my TV **while watching a DVD** (lemmy.world)
we live in hell...
I achieved a negative inbox (programming.dev)
Am I gonna die?
I have some questions about the Fediverse
This post at the top of the community homepage explains and answers all of my issues....
Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?
I’m a bit worried. Since the upgrade to 0.19.0 I have been getting 1 on all my comments. Indicating either my normal engaging personality has left me, I never was and the pity has stopped, or maybe I’m not being seen....
LXD now re-licensed and under a CLA (stgraber.org)
Blog post from LXC’s project lead
The Fediverse is working just as intended.
I used to think that there would be 1, main ‘Fediverse’ with all of the ‘big instances’ connected to each other. The recent Threads debacle has shown me otherwise....
The Epic question: how Google lost when Apple won (www.theverge.com)
I’ll be honest, personally I think the nail in the coffin was the Spotify-deal. If Google had been able to prove that it either has no special deals or only with tiny publishers (so it feels more like helping the underdog) then I don’t think they could have claimed that Google is treating anybody unfairly.
have I installed TWRP?
computer: ubuntu 23.10...
Block Meta/Facebook from Mastodon (tilde.town)
(This is an extended version of one of the most widely re-shared post I have ever written on Mastodon.)...
What's a word that means a common saying which is arguably untrue?
Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.
In the holiday spirit... (startrek.website)
What’s with the Stone Cold Salutes?
I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse
Hey everyone,...
Google Maps transit is still a frustrating experience despite the latest changes (www.androidauthority.com)
Redox OS - an OS built entirely out of Rust (www.redox-os.org)
This isn’t Linux, but Linux-like. Its a microkernel built from the rust programming language. Its still experimental, but I think it has great potential. It has a GUI desktop, but the compiler isn’t quite fully working yet....