You can make “brand accounts” on YouTube that are a completely different profile from the default account. She probably won’t notice if you make one and switch her to it.
You’ll probably want to spend some time using it for yourself secretly to curate the kind of non-radical content she’ll want to see, and also set an identical profile picture on it so she doesn’t notice. I would spend at least a week “breaking it in.”
But once you’ve done that, you can probably switch to the brand account without logging her out of her Google account.
I love how we now have to monitor the content the generation that told us “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” watches like we would for children.
We can thank all that tetraethyllead gas that was pumping lead into the air from the 20s to the 70s. Everyone got a nice healthy dose of lead while they were young. Made 'em stupid.
OP’s mom breathed nearly 20 years worth of polluted lead air straight from birth, and OP’s grandmother had been breathing it for 33 years up until OP’s mom was born. Probably not great for early development.
Delete watch history, find and watch nice channels and her other interests, log in to the account on a spare browser on your own phone periodically to make sure there’s no repeat of what happened.
This is the actual truth. Revisiting the catalog of early cross platform games and it’s evident that Sony engineers couldn’t get anything running well on there for the first three years of its lifespan. The same games ran just fine on the Xbox360.
It’s hard to top the inkjet printers I’ve owned. I still can’t believe 30 years later home printer tech is not only unimproved but worse between lower quality production and squeezing people on ink costs.
I bought my parents a laser printer after years of them being incredibly frustrated by inkjets. I got them the same model as me, as well as a spare toner cartridge.
I’m still on my original toner cartridge, and I’ve had it for probably six years or so.
My parents are in their late 40’s and early 50’s. I think I might have accidentally gotten them a lifetime supply of printing.
I should really get a laser printer but my need for 11x17 capacity kind of limits options. To be fair though, my brother small business type inkjet printer does pretty well! Ink costs suck but I don’t want to commit seppuku after using it.
I’ve never owned a better inkjet than the one I’ve had in the late 90s on all measures; build-quality, print quality, speed, operating noise, ink consumption, ink price, overall price, usability. Everything has got worse.
Can any mere man wield such ferocious, blinding power?
A terrifyingly, beautiful thing to behold. But only just a glance.
I’m scared, feel like… like an Upper Neolithic man witnessing Nikolai Tesla inside his Faraday cage, as the bright blue electric current crackles and arches all around him.
The nerdy looking dude in the gif touched grass. “Wasted” is from a video game (GTA?) screen shown each time you died. So from this we can infer that our terminally-online protagonist, Hiroshi, did not survive the attempt to disconnect, even if only briefly.
Ah now I get it, they mistakenly replied with it to “nature is healing” as a completely nonsequitur response instead of as a top level comment. Happens to the best of us.
No one in the US knows WTF a long and short ton are. A ton is 2k lbs. And most Americans probably don’t even know the exact weight of a ton outside of “a shit load.”
For the most part, we generally only use pounds, feet, miles. Everything else is a mystery. Even ounces, cups and gallons are some fucking magical mystery. Just follow the recipe.
I switched everything to metric years ago, and have never been happier. It made a huge difference in most of the things I do, having a system that makes internal sense. The only thing I still routinely use standard for is sewing, because it’s damn near impossible to find any patterns or things like cutting mats in metric in the right sizes for quilting.
There recently was a discussion on lemmy where several US citizens (one of them allegedly an engineer…) tried to explain to me that metric might be „more precise“ (? 😂) but the imperial system more practical, because „everybody knows what a foot is“. When I asked them to add feet to miles I got shouted at (in CAPS) that noone (ever) does that. 🤷♀️
They are right, no one ever does that. Their reasoning for the imperial system being practical is stupid though. The reason it can be practical is that its useful to have a unit the size of a foot sometimes. Metric is better in general, but there are aspects of the imperial system I would miss if I switched entirely. I just use imperial in casual conversation and metric for anything important.
edit: To be clear I’m not saying conversion from feet to miles isn’t a problem because no one does that, its the opposite. No one does it because its a problem.
That’s the great thing about being a metric user in the US. It’s not the common system here, and the only people who really use it consistently are those who do so for work, and those who just enjoy it the same way one might enjoy learning a new language. It’s sort of a grassroots thing here. And because it’s not the standard system, there’s no one here telling us what measures are socially acceptable to use and which aren’t. Use the decimeter. Hell, if you like it, use it in Europe, you might get a weird look, but it won’t be like asking for the distance to the deli in leagues. They’ll still understand. In the US, use the decimeter if you want. I’ve used the metric system exclusively for so long, started as a sort of personal test, that I tend to think in metric now. I look at something and think “30cm” more than I think “a foot,” occasionally I’ll think “bout a 1/3 of a meter.”
Have fun with it. Also, hot tip. If you ever struggle with temps, it’s percentage of boiling. 0% of boiling is frozen. 100% of boiling is boiling. 20% of boiling is nice.
Everybody in Europe can and does so. There’s nothing arcane or mysterious about the metric system. I have no issues telling you how many litres of water go into a 50 x 50 x 200 cm aquarium, or a pool with a 3.5 m diameter and 80 cm height. Good luck doing that with your inches and feet and quarts and gallons.
There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter. Either you know how much it is or you don’t. Everybody knows what a meter is. For me it’s a large step. My arm from elbow to fingertips is 50 cm. Or 1/2 m… A sheet of paper is 30 cm (actually it’s 297 mm, but that’s another story), and so are rulers. Which, btw, is very close to a „foot“.
Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.
I won’t argue that, its a flawed measurement system. My goal isn’t to show you why imperial is so much better than metric, because its obviously not. That doesn’t mean imperial is never useful though.
There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter.
They can both do the same job, but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you’re measuring. I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren’t priorities.
Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.
We don’t literally measure it with our feet, that’s just what its called.
but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you’re measuring.
See, that’s what apparently many people don’t understand: with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs. It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between. There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.
I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren’t priorities.
Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial. You have a mental image of a „foot“ the same way I have a mental image of a ruler or a sheet of paper, i.e. 30 cm.
I don’t really know what a litre is. I know what a beer bottle looks like, or a milk carton, the same way you know what a quart of milk looks like. Pour a quart on the floor and ask someone how much that is, they probably don’t know.
We don’t literally measure it with our feet, that’s just what its called.
Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.
with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs.
That’s the same thing, the units are just proportional.
It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between.
I know, its just easier to say a foot than 30 centimeters. That’s why I use it in casual conversation, and not in anything important.
There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.
That’s not the part I’m saying is convenient.
Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial.
They can both be used to measure things precisely, but metric is more convenient in those situations usually. If I need to accurately measure something, I would use metric because the advantages of imperial are probably not applicable. If I’m just estimating and it doesn’t matter much, I’ll probably use imperial because I won’t have to do any conversions with that number, or anything else imperial struggles with.
Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.
That’s the same thing, the units are just proportional
Sure, if you put it like that. But I do have the feeling many US people treat imperial units like completely different things and have absolutely no mental concept of a relation between them, especially between length and volume.
I know, its just easier to say a foot than 30 centimeters.
That’s just a completely arbitrary thing. It’s easier to answer „how tall are you“ with „one eighty“ instead of „five foot eleven“ 🤷♀️
It doesn’t seem to be an issue for „metric people“ at all, nobody is missing the foot in Europe.
Because if it were convenient we would have that, the same way we have a ton, or a pound (500 g), which are in common use. You have the decimeter (10 cm), but nobody uses it. There used to be a unit called „Elle“, which is 50 cm, and it’s just the name for the stick, nobody says „give me 3 Ellen of canvas“.
I would use metric because the advantages of imperial are probably not applicable.
I still fail to see those advantages.
If I’m just estimating and it doesn’t matter much, I’ll probably use imperial
Yes, because you’re used doing so, not because it’s more practical or convenient. Metric people do estimate things as well.
But I do have the feeling many US people treat imperial units like completely different things and have absolutely no mental concept of a relation between them, especially between length and volume.
There is certainly no shortage of Americans that don’t understand the metric system, or hate it for nonsensical reasons. I was once asked to measure a piece of wood and I said it in centimeters because it was exactly x cm long, and they said something to the effect of “not that commie shit”. They seriously wanted to work with fractions of an inch instead of touching that evil foreign system.
That’s just a completely arbitrary thing. It’s easier to answer „how tall are you“ with „one eighty“ instead of „five foot eleven“ 🤷♀️
Its arbitrary if its not something you care about. Also that’s not a great example for height. Usually its just two syllables. 5’ 4", 5’ 5" etc. You only have to say foot if you are an exact number of feet tall. That way you don’t tell anyone “I’m 6”. Most people’s height in cm will not be a multiple of ten, so it will be longer than 180’s three syllables.
It doesn’t seem to be an issue for „metric people“ at all, nobody is missing the foot in Europe.
It’s just an inconvenience, it’s not worth learning imperial to save a little time. Especially when no one around you would understand what you’re talking about.
I still fail to see those advantages.
The units are usually sized intuitively for everyday use. Just look at Fahrenheit vs Celsius. The only thing I use Fahrenheit for is the weather. 0 is too cold, 100 is too hot. That’s subjective of course, but it seems more intuitive to me than Celsius. The boiling point of water doesn’t matter to me when I’m deciding what clothes to wear for the weather. Celsius works fine but it makes less sense for that application in my opinion.
Yes, because you’re used doing so, not because it’s more practical or convenient.
Or, Europeans only use metric for those things because they don’t know imperial. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing either, if you don’t know imperial then its not worth learning. The advantages are small enough that its not worth the effort, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I have no issues understanding what 20 °C or 30 °C outside means.
Of course you don’t, I’m not saying Celsius is incomprehensible.
100 °F is hot when I go outside, it’s cold when I need to cook, which is also an „everyday activity“.
I’m not arguing Fahrenheit is better for that, use Celsius.
It doesn’t make „more sense“, every point of reference is arbitrary,
I disagree, reference points are extremely important. That’s one of the reasons Celsius is so useful. Maybe its a weird example but one thing I use it for is brewing temperatures for coffee. I know the closer it is to 100, the closer it is to boiling. That’s very useful information to me. I could do the same thing with Fahrenheit but the number is so weird that I don’t even remember what it is.
It also affects how small the units are which is pretty important. Farenheit has smaller units, so it can be more precise without having to use decimals. If I tell someone what temperature it is outside, I will be more exact than you most of the time.
Fahrenheit is not „more intuitive“, you’re just used to it.
Me just being used to it isn’t a good argument. I barely remember many aspects of the imperial system because I’ve replaced it with metric. The aspects of imperial I still use were chosen intentionally.
I could also say that you’re “just used to it”. I could say the reason you’re so resistant to any advantages of imperial is just because you learned how to do things with metric even when it wasn’t optimal. The reason I’m not saying that, is because I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are here to have a real conversation. Do me the same favor.
I have said multiple times at this point that its not worth learning imperial for whatever advantages it may have. Its obviously not good to create new units for every application. But that’s not what I said is it? I said there are aspects of imperial I would miss if I switched entirely.
Or, here’s a wild idea, you could use some indicator that shifts the unit’s scale, some kind of „prefix“ you slap in front of it.
Show me the indicator for Celsius that makes it a proper size for that application.
I would if you were able to have a real conversation, but all you deliver is a 47/53 grasping for straws per freedom eagle.
I guess that’s how you would see it if you just ignore all of my arguments and assume metric is better at everything all the time. Do you think I’m doing this because I’m patriotic? You think I started this argument where I openly admit imperial’s faults, just to defend America’s pride? You have ignored nearly all of my arguments because you are unable to accept the fact that metric isn’t better at literally everything. Nothing is perfect, and I’m not sucking america’s dick by telling you that. The one thing I got wrong was assuming you wanted a real conversation.
Sometimes I think there was a missed opportunity in defining an easy conversion between inches and cm. It is 2.54 cm to 1". Why couldn’t it simply be 2.5? Then a 2x4 from the building supplier could simply be renamed a 5x10. 5.8x11.6 doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well.
My understanding is that the metre was inspired by nautical measures? So the distance from pole to equator along sea level is supposedly 10000 km. But that’s pretty approximate, and there is a more rigorous definition that involves the wavelength of a certain type of radiation. But that number is quite arbitrary-sounding. Couldn’t they have chosen it to line up with the imperial system at some level to aid migration? Anyway, that train has left the station and I’ll stop ranting now…
At the time when the metric system was created, imperial units weren’t standardized at all, so if centimeters lined up with one definition of inch, they wouldn’t line up with the many other definitions anyway.
Point taken. Reading up on it on wikipedia, I love the the legal definition from 1814, wherein one inch = “three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row”.
I say that Metric is like color vision. You can see things in whole new and easier ways. People in USC can’t understand what others see and insist things are just fine the way they are. Thus the “no one ever does that”, “why would you need to know that”, “who cares”, etc.
It is true that no one ever does that though. That doesn’t mean its not a problem, but I’ve never seen anyone do it. If you need to do something like that and you have a brain, you use metric. Just because its flawed doesn’t mean imperial should be completely abolished though. What needs to stop is people thinking imperial is better than metric somehow. Aside from that, its just a weird flawed measurement system.
We don’t use imperial in the US, we use US customary. Some units have different sizes in imperial. For example, a US pint is 16oz and an imperial pint is 20oz.
I’ll tell you something I do as a woodworker a lot that metric isn’t great for: divide by powers of two, three or four. I’ve got some boards milled up 3/4" thick. I’m going to join them with a bridle joint, that means cutting the middle third out of one and the outer two thirds from the other. So each of the remaining “tongues” are each 1/4" thick. 3/4" is approximately 20mm. That’s a nice metric number, a multiple of 10. Let’s cut that same bridle joint in 20mm stock. What’s a third of 20mm? Can you come point to 6.6666mm on my metric tape measure here?
Don’t pretend base ten doesn’t do stupid things too.
Can you come point to 6.6666mm on my metric tape measure here?
Yes: For woodworkers, it’s identical to 6.5mm, accurately eyeballed at between 6 and 5mm. Don’t pretend you’re a machinist. Does your tape measure even have a vernier scale. Does it make satisfying clicks when measuring. If you have a slip instead of interference fit just dump one piece in water for a second it’ll be fine.
I’ll tell you, most of us in the states would love a total switch to metric. We use it where is matters most, but we also have an aging population raised on lead has fumes that think anything they don’t know is “communism” or “wholeness” or whatever else the propaganda right spews. Those are the assholes that pretty much stop progress on anything.
I’m big into 3D printing, actually got into the same argument with another 3D printing guy…. And I’m like, literally EVERYTHING we do is in metric. The whole damn hobby is metric.
You do realize that the US tried to switch to metric for 6 months in the 70s and it was a giant failure so we switched back, yes? Do you think 2023 America is smarter than 1970s America lol?
Edit: not sure why downvotes. I am in favor of switching US to metric. But historically it didn’t work.
You do realize asshole Republicans reverted before it could be more than implemented on a couple of highways
“Metric supporters argued the road signs were a crucial step in helping Americans get over any psychological blocks to switching measurement systems. But Republican Charles Grassley, then a congressman and now a senator from Iowa, killed proposed federal regulations that would have forced states to put up signs in kilometers.”
They literally locked putting up signs in both metric an Imperial
Also… remember my comment about old fucks raised on gas lead fumes…. Yea, the 70s……
Given that the 70’s was 50 years ago, most people don’t know the details of what happened. Other than a metric conversion was attempted.
It’s both surprising and not that it was killed by republicans. And given the current nationalist furor in the party, it doesn’t have a snow ball’s chance in hell of happening in the next decade. If it was proposed, again.
I mean, I’d be very worried if 2023 wasn’t smarter than 1970 no matter the location. Between the lead poisoning and the advancements in knowledge and education methods…
You mean the „engineer“? Well, what can I say, he was insisting his professor at uni taught him „a true engineer can work with every system“.
I mean yes, but the difference is one engineer is just happily pushing around decimals, the other one goes pale when you ask what 1/5th of a gallon in cubic inches is…
Hehe, yea, I was poking fun at the “engineer”. There was a congressman a while ago that got caught posting right wing stuff on twitter from an alt account “as a black man” (dude was white of course”
Sometimes I like to think about the logistical challenges with a switch to metric. The one that always gives me pause is highway signs. Thinking about the monumental task of replacing every speed sign, distance sign, and mile marker across the country in any timely period makes my head hurt.
It could certainly be done, and is probably easier than I think with all the state DoTs working independently on it especially over time. We have a lot of road with a lot of signs.
That’s a good point, but we don’t have to even fully replace them. I admit I don’t know the name of the technology but I see many street signs or construction signs that have basically a printed metal sticker slapped over the old information.
I honestly hate that argument. “it would cost so much to change all those signs” is just negative talk for “it would employee a shit ton of people, create a lot of jobs, and be a major infrastructure project that could help our economy.”. Honestly, the economic benefit of major infrastructure works is rarely talked about as much as it should be. Mainly, I think, because the people it benefits are the ones actually doing the work. And that’s scary to a certain segment of society that would like very much that not to be the case.
I don’t think it’s a valid argument against metric, just a thought experiment to consider about the time needed to implement. Converting would be a slow process, but I agree it could be an economic boost as swapping things is a largely a manual process
Meant to mention in my first comment, I haven’t met many other people who like to randomly imagine the ways major structural changes would take place. Lol.
I like to pick a huge project. Like, say, single payer healthcare, or the nationalization of an industry, and then imagine the individual steps that would need to be taken to get there. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a project I’d support, I just have fun imagining the ways it would need to happen.
I think the bigger one is the construction industry.
2"x4" studs. 4’x8’ plywood. 16" O.C.
Changing to 44x95, 1219x2438, 406 O.C doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We could switch over to the metric equivalents (like 1250x1250 or 600 O.C.), but that would mean switching out machinery and would break a lot of standards.
It’s called an example. Want another one? How many laps do you need to run on a 400 m track to run a 10k? How many people can you serve with your 2.5 kg steak if everybody needs to get a 250 g steak? Need more?
As an American, I understand that metric is better for a lot of things. It also would cost a metric fuck ton (ha!) of money to switch over, and it just really isn’t a priority when things work just fine for us here. It’s not like we are constantly running into problems that would be easier to solve by using metric, and the people in the few professions that do run into those problems frequently just use metric.
The original idea behind imperial units is actually quite nice. They used 12 inches in a foot because you could divide it in so many ways without using decimals. You can take 1/2 of it, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 without ever needing decimals. It’s great for mental math with small numbers. That obviously is no longer the most important thing anymore, as we all have calculators with us at all times, and we deal with much bigger numbers on average than they used 200 years ago.
We all still use 360° in a circle for this exact reason. It can be divided up in 22 different ways (excluding 1 and 360 as factors).
The original idea behind imperial units is actually quite nice. They used 12 inches in a foot because you could divide it in so many ways without using decimals. You can take 1/2 of it, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 without ever needing decimals.
You can measure 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of a meter, why wouldn’t you? Also, seriously, those common fractions aren’t that hard in decimal. Everybody knows that 125 g is 1/8 kg.
That’s not the issue. The issue is that it’s not consistent between imperial units, you have a zoo of different subdivisions between units. You have 12 inches in a foot, three foot in a yard etc pp.
The issue is it gets really unwieldy in multiplication, 1 cubic ft is how many cubic inches… 1728, how convenient.
Tell me how much is 1/6 cubic ft in inches? How many cups are that? There goes your mental math.
(It is also a common misconception that imperial is „duodecimal“. It’s not. It’s counting to 12 in decimal. If you had a proper duodecimal system, „12“ * „12“ would make 100 not 144.)
We all still use 360° in a circle
And you also say 180°, 45°, 720°. Not 1/2, 1/8, 2.
If you go down this rabbit hole, you will eventually realize that it is our base 10 number system that is weak in terms of divisibility. If we counted in base 12, the metric system would follow suit and you’d have your convenient fractions.
In my “perfect world” musings, however, I jump back and forth between base 12 and some power of 2 base. The latter would not be very naturally divisible but would make basic arithmetic much easier. There is a reason computers prefer binary.
The other point I’d like to raise is that even in the imperial system, you are not spared having to deal with awkward fractions, as you will realize when you walk into a hardware store looking for that 5/64" screw. Apparently, fractions are not a deal breaker in this case, so perhaps we should refer to a third of a metre as simply that: 1/3m?
I saw that too, and many of them claimed they learn both Metric and Imperial British systems and convert between them all the time. So this stood out now:
For the most part, we generally only use pounds, feet, miles. Everything else is a mystery. Even ounces, cups and gallons are some fucking magical mystery. Just follow the recipe.
I mean, it’s true. Ask an American to visualize an ounce of anything other than drugs, and they probably won’t be able to. Ask how many ounces in a gallon, and they’ll Google it. Even cups aren’t well understood. We can eyeball a mile on the interstate, or tell you how tall someone is, or lift a box and guess it’s weight to within 5 pounds. But honestly, that’s about it. We just aren’t really taught to visualize our weights and measures, it’s why newscasters keep saying shit like “8 Olympic swimming pools!” Or “the size of three football fields” because we just don’t have a coherent system ingrained in us. That’s also, I think, why we’re so against metrification. Because weights and measures feel hard, because we’re basically only semi-literate in our own mother tongue, so a “foreign language” feels like it’d be this huge undertaking.
We just aren’t really taught to visualize our weights and measures, it’s why newscasters keep saying shit like “8 Olympic swimming pools!” Or “the size of three football fields”
This really isn’t an American thing - it’s just human, we can’t really visualize dimensions accurately unless we have a good reference. Some may measure the Olympic swimming pool in feet others in meters, but the effect is the same.
Really? … Am I super weird then? Because I can visualize volume and distance really well. I just assumed that was being, like, literate in both systems of measure.
Yes. Jesus, why can’t Europeans educate themselves on real measurements! We measure in feet and bald eagles for distance. We measure in shotgun shells, elbows and pounds for weight. We measure in ATNT for temperature. That’s Ambient Truck Nut Temperature, which is the temperature of a pair of truck nuts after driving for 80 bald eagles at 40 bald eagles per Active Shooter Warning, at sea level on a Wednesday. It’s not complicated.
Why are people joining .world to begin with? The entire point of this is to decentralize. Joining the by far largest instance beats the entire purpose.
Join smaller ones like lemmy.one, lemmy.club, lemmings.world, lemmy.zip etc. We might need to start specifically recommending against .world and for general purpose instances like those.
Also, funny how even reddit allows r/Piracy but not .world lol
Perhaps have a system of selecting randomly from a set of hand-picked general purpose instances at sign-up, where having less people gives it a higher chance of being picked (if it’s of at least a certain size of course, to prevent spam etc)
The issue is not about the implementation, but the filter: which criteria do you use to select instances that are eligible for the pool of instances? I’m genuinely asking because I think it takes some time to have a look on instances for people to make the best choice.
In all fairness I applied to 5 Lemmy instances when the Reddit downfall started, including .ca and .world. .ml to date is still the only one to have processed my application. It may have been due to lots of applications at the time but the sheer fact my application is still pending on the other 4 instances leads me to use the one that actually works as opposed to the first one I chose.
Because they have no basis on which to decide where to go. It’s like buying toothpaste but there are hundreds of options, none of which you know anything about, so you get whichever seems most popular. It minimises the risk of ending up with something which is unpopular for good reasons.
Everyone should leave that instance, the admin and the mods on that instance are big time thought police and will find excuses in their vague rules to delete your posts and eventually ban you if your views go against the grain.
If you join a small instance, the chances are higher that it will a) be poorly maintained and b) fold quicker, forcing you to find another instance to join and re-subscribe to all your communities.
I run my own instance that technically does have open registration, but I can’t really recommend anyone actually sign up to use it. It’s not running on very powerful hardware, and my commitment to keeping it running 24/7 is “as long as it stays convenient and interesting.” There are probably many, many of those. But there are a good collection of second and third tier instances now as well, I’m not to worried about .world’s popularity so long as they don’t do something like switch to a federation allow-list rather than a block list.
I’m aware of the risk, but so far the captcha seems to have prevented any mass sign-up, and none of the few other existing accounts so far have any activity. That said, since I have no intention to support a user base anymore, I probably should close it anyway.
Joining the by far largest instance beats the entire purpose.
There’s kind of a tension here between Lemmy’s design and what makes most people join social media websites. Most people want the biggest, most centralized website.
Some people were forced away from Reddit and don’t subscribe to that idea (yet?) - maybe they will understand that after being here for some time, but I know when my reddit app stopped working I just wanted something to fill the void
Also, don't put all your eggs in one basket: diversify, diversify, diversify. Make a main account, but have more on at least one other instance. Instances go down for maintenance, software gets updated, owners change moderation policies, so on. If you can't get to Lemmy through your main, use your secondary.
Personally I use lemmy.sdf.org as my secondary. It's run by a bunch of retro-enthusiast Unix nerds who more care about the functionality of the tech than anything else. No blocked communities there, and AFAIK they haven't defederated from any instance outside of ones that were hacked/compromised. That does not mean you can just go there and be a shitbird though, they do have standards.
I think it still has highest number of posts and comments per day or something? It’s no longer the highest number in terms of users, but there is some basic metric of activity where hexbear still is quantifiably at the top. But anyway you’re right about the quality, that’s what’s important.
I don’t disagree at all but I can kind of understand why a lemmy instance would block piracy communities. Reddit has many millions of dollars and a squad of lawyers to back them up, lemmy admins don’t.
why? because it feels safer to join a big and longer lasting instance than a random one with almost no users. such small instances can vanish from one day to the bext. i once created a account on such a small instance and not even a week later it was wiped from earth, taking my account with it. so it’s no wonder people chooser rather bigger instances.
I have used both, aside from the monetisation (Nitro), Discord (and Slack) has a lot more functionality. Not sure it’s ‘correct’ to say that people are stupid because they prefer a 21st century version of IRC.
Matrix stack would be the 21st century equivalent. Discord is just another Skype - entirely a proprietary product that you don’t operate yourself. Fine for corporate use where people don’t care about longevity because it’s not their problem or interest, but trash for everything else.
I just searched for “Matrix stack” but I’m none-the-wiser, what is it?
Right, you don’t run the thing yourself at a program level, but you can create and moderate channels as you wish, which is what most people want. Sounds like the Windows v Linux argument, just because a lot of people prefer something doesn’t mean we have to shit on it. Discord seems to work well with lots of integration (including on consoles) and fulfils its purpose pretty well from what I can tell.
It’s an entirely closed source, proprietary codebase, run by a for-profit company where you have little control over anything. These corporations don’t care about actual users and they will leave you high and dry. There is a reason people still use IRC - it’s open, easy to connect to and has been around for literal decades. Remember CompuServe? AOL? AIM? ICQ? Google Chat shutting it’s doors to xmpp? If so, you understand the pattern. It’s about walled gardens and blocking interoperability. The industry doesn’t need more of that. We are chatting on an open source link aggregation site because bean counters at Reddit decided to shut off APIs to existing apps arbitrarily.
The matrix stack solves most of those problems by providing an open source codebase and protocol, easy to connect to solution that is akin to Slack. I am fortunate enough to not have to use discord much beyond checking on a class schedule and downloading some sheet music, so I will never be a discord power user. Maybe some there is crazy awesome feature that discord provides that no open source platform does, but I have some serious doubts about that.
Maybe some there is crazy awesome feature that discord provides that no open source platform does
I don’t think any open source platform brings together the kind of functionality Discord currently has, but I’m open to being corrected on that. If there was a better platform doing what Discord does then that would be great to use. Having had to switch from different platforms for video calling for various reasons I get what you mean.
Cheers, I searched before for “Matrix stack” but just got a load of stuff I didn’t understand. Matrix.org shows me some things I can get my head around; checking the public servers and it’s mainly for tech stuff (and one game). How is it compared to Discord?
This is genuinely the only problem why we switched to Signal for work communication. My colleagues wanted us developers to use Slack and other proprietary stuff but IRC was enough. Only issue was that you couldn’t get push notifications on mobile.
I’ve lost a lot of my rose tint for discord, right around the arbitration clause thing, but I can’t deny that it’s convenient. Chat, streaming to friends, popping up a new server for whatever project or group, VC for playing games together. There’s platforms that do all of these things better, but few that do all of them decently well.
Of course, it’s a privacy nightmare and I stick to IRC for anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable having linked to my identity, but I wouldn’t call people stupid for using it.
But there’s a special circle of hell for projects that rely on it for “documentation”.
I get the temptation, I really do. But once you’re taking money or have more than a couple people involved and semi-organized you really need at least a small wiki/git-hub landing page with the basics.
I know documentation is a separate skillset and a lot of work in its own right but projects can also stagnate and die because there isn’t any.
Oh 1000% agree, having a discord for support is nice and all, but using it as a crutch in place of good documentation is a sin worthy of eternal damnation.
Heck, even support is a bit of a pain since projects also like to use it as their issue tracker and want you to search for your issue before posting (which it’s awful for). GitHub is free or at least cheap depending on what you need and is way more searchable, as well as giving a place for wiki and a basic website
Direct chat support, discord is fine, but beyond that, please use something actually designed for it
IRC clients don’t have loads of telemetry like Discord does. And IRC is a protocol instead of a platform, so there isn’t a single set of servers hosting and logging ALL conversations.
That’s fair, but IRC also tends to leak information about users to everybody. They’re maybe bad in slightly different ways, but frankly if you care about privacy that much you probably shouldn’t use either, at least not with additional protections.
IRC doesn’t even see that much info about each user to begin with, especially compared to Discord, and if you’re talking about public IPs - hiding them from other users is now a common thing on servers.
Closed source software without end to end encryption and has access to all chats, voice and video calls. How can it not be a privacy nightmare. You have no idea what they collect and what they don’t.
I doubt that. If you do a gdpr request for your data, you’ll see how much they log about your activities. Obviously chats and VC activity, but also all the timestamps of what you play, session data over all time, etc.
I haven’t used irc for years but isn’t it all plaintext unencrypted? And isnt your ip tied to it?
I’ve never looked into any of that for irc so maybe I’m way off base.
I do remember making my own fvwm config where an irssi irc terminal would slide out of the top of my screen with a hotkey and roll back up again. I was pretty proud of that.
No it’s not cause it’s easy to use, it’s cause Discord is controlled by a single company with various features behind paywalls and only one functional client app.
None of the paid features are necessary for effectively using it, they’re just “fun add-ons”
No API for third party apps is a genuine complaint though, it would be nice if there was at least some competitive push for them to have to strive to meet pushing them to be better
Very sorry, but it’s quite personal. Ye, I had a similar problem. First started by joining random servers preset in Hexchat (so was on the big ones), but now I am mostly on the small networks. It just happened like that.
IRC is only text chat, Discord does a ton of other things on top.
Personally I’ve been on the internet for the last… 27 years or so? I’ve used ICQ, Teamspeak, Skype, IRC, Mumble, Discord, Teams, … (Probably forgot a few).
I never really liked IRC, yes, it’s private servers which is nice, yes you can be relatively anonymous, but the channels were always a mess. Either too many people spamming so you can’t follow a single conversation, or for most channels you had 40 people idling and never responding, so it felt like a ghost town.
Just in my personal experience Discord works a lot better and is far more convenient. But yeah, not much privacy there obviously (though everything you said in IRC was often saved away by a bot, so either way whatever you said was out there).
I’ve never seen someone host a wiki on Discord… that’s just stupid.
Having to join a server before you see its content is a good thing though. It’s a privacy feature and also anti-spam / anti-bots (Before you see anything you often have to agree to the server rules).
Using Discord for information storage is obviously a bad idea. But for text chat including channels, voice chat and so on it’s fantastic. Most games usually have an extra website with a wiki for information.
I think your view of servers here is wrong. They are literally named communities, as in private spaces. You get access if you’re part of that community, otherwise you don’t.
Discord servers are not public websites or a wiki anyone can access, they are not supposed to be.
IRC is a tiny bit more open, but even there you need to join a channel to read it and you can get kicked out. For reading the logs a bot saved away you might need an account too (but that’s up to the server admin or whoever is hosting that content).
Issue with what you are saying is that I have seen a crap ton of software ( Foss software too ) using discord forums / discord I’m general as their “knowledge base” making it quite hard to find solutions for problems or ask questions, where in the past you’d be using a forum for.
Forums in the past always needed an account (with its own registration, accepting rules and so on) before you could ask your question. Hell, a lot of forums barely showed anything besides 2-3 topics and you needed to be logged in to see all areas (sometimes with extra user roles if you wanted to see more).
Exactly, you needed an account to ask and to view some download links, but google never took me to a forum that needed an account just to read my issue.
Duh, because Google wouldn’t index forums where you need an account to read the posts. I’ve been signed up to dozens of forums back in the day, I’m telling you, a lot of them didn’t show shit until you signed in. Google only shows you public posts, if the game forum needs an account you won’t find the post in your search.
Most forums back then were heavily locked down, especially due to bots spamming ads.
Just in my personal experience Discord works a lot better and is far more convenient
Your personal experience is biased as fuck because having to go through phone verification or downloading a sketchy proprietary client is in no way far more convenient than firing up irc
Either too many people spamming so you can’t follow a single conversation, or for most channels you had 40 people idling and never responding, so it felt like a ghost town.
How is this different to Discord? You have huge, medium and small channels in both.
Most IRC servers I’ve been to had exactly one channel for the entire community/topic where everyone hung out. Either way, IRC is dead, it’s just fun how triggered some people get about it.
It’s wild how a good deal of decentralization and FOSS focused communities insist on having Discord be their primary center for community. Worst one is privacy focused communities…
I can’t say that bridging them to matrix was a foolproof endeavor though
ICQ was nice. It had an IM, a user directory, and alternative clients without games etc, until its owners went crazy.
Old Skype was nice. It had fast file transfers, a good Linux client, network efficiency etc, until Microsoft.
I think everybody thought that just like from proprietary ICQ everybody went to proprietary Skype and it was nice, there’s going to be an equally good alternative when Skype rots and people will move to it.
Better how? I can’t message people when they’re offline, everything is completely boring text, no images, it’s not clear how I can easily setup my own server, everything feels archaic.
I tried using it before Discord was even a thing, and I already thought it quite sucked. If you think it’s great, then good on you for knowing everything inside and out, but the discoverability with any IRC client tends to be in the negatives. It feels awful to use.
You literally just listed some of the reasons IRC is better. That said, I don’t see any reason an IRC client couldn’t be made to support images, with the understanding that it would have to be done in a way that falls back to posting it as a link for people using text-only clients, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
can’t message people when they’re offline,
This functionality can be enabled on IRC servers or on a per-channel basis using bots.
it’s not clear how I can easily setup my own server.
Again an advantage of IRC. Not every group of 2 people need their own server. And a simple 2 second Google search (or learning your IRC client) will show you how to create your own channel in seconds.
the discoverability with any IRC client tends to be in the negatives.
That really depends on the client. There are (or at least used to be) plenty of user-friendly IRC clients. How many alternate clients can I use with Discord?
And heaven forbid someone should have to think for more than 3 seconds when learning something new to them.
I swear I sometimes think that once all of us Gen-Xers are gone, there won’t be anyone left who actually understands how the Internet or the technology that runs on it actually works, as prophesied by Idiocracy.
I live in a house with three queer/poly people. Around here, people sometimes introduce themselves or others with a note about their pronouns. But if someone doesn’t, it’s okay and either people will pick up the right ones from context, or they will guess and maybe be gently corrected.
“DiD yOu JuSt AsSuMe My GeNdEr??” is not real; it’s an Internet troll parody.
Yeah. Like if you thought someone’s name was Joe but it was actually Jeff and they tell you that, it’s not a big deal. Just one of those things that sometimes happens if you’re meeting new people.
Sure, but you probably have the sense to focus that into remembering their name correctly next time. You wouldn’t go telling them that Jeff is a molester name because Epstein and that therefore they should pretend to be named Joe.
Exactly this. It’s just a minor social correction. Like if you meet Pamela and a few sentences later you call her Pam. She corrects you to ‘Pamela’ because she doesn’t like the nickname. No big deal, you call her Pamela and move on. It’s like that.
From what I’ve seen gender diverse people generally seem to understand the difference between someone’s who’s just made a mistake and someone who refuses to use the correct pronoun despite being corrected numerous times.
Yup, that’s about it. A good tactic if you’re not sure about someone’s gender is to lead with your own: “hi, I’m shapis, he/him”. They’ll invariably follow suit most of the time. If they don’t and you get it wrong, well, you tried and were polite about it.
I know I’m out of touch on this, but I just can’t imagine someone introducing themselves in this way. Particularly if you’re a cis male and your pronouns are he/him. I guess it depends on context.
Yeah, it’s definitely still something new. It’s not something I would typically do in 99% of face to face encounters. In work presentations in front of a large audience we typically just fill it in on the introduction card at the start.
It’s only a tactic for the edge case where someone presents ambiguously, in which case they’re probably perfectly used to it as a way to politely ask. And yeah, it’s a little awkward, but no more so that any other “polite chat with a new person” banter.
You can usually tell what pronouns to use via normal social awareness, and when in doubt, sharing yours is a polite way to prompt others to share theirs.
This, along with LibRedirect, is still great for when you are searching for something and a Reddit post comes up. Like the direction Reddit is taking or not (and I don’t which is largely why I’m here), there are still some genuinely informative and useful posts on the platform and if you’re not willing to completely foreclose on viewing those ever again this is a great way to do so.
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