I just had this funny thought— so boomers adopted and settled into Facebook after millennials made it popular. And then everyone except for boomers stopped actively using it. It’s kind of their “retirement social media platform.”
Now you have TikTok, which the millennials flocked to after GenZ popularized it. Does this mean after Gen Z flees the platform that it’s just going to be the Facebook equivalent for millennials?

It’s like people forgot about that.

I’m not mad at you at all. I’m mad at the motherfuckers who think they have a right to my attention.

But to respond - it’s not better, because either option is detestable. I reject both.

You correctly called it that we’re answering different questions. I reject the question you’re answering, because I do not accept advertisements in my vehicle, that I own, as a foregone conclusion. You accidentally’d a step in accepting their bullshit.

I literally would rather threaten legal action, or show up outside their advertising executive’s house with a megaphone to try to sell them some scammy bullshit while they expect privacy. Maybe I’d even read off the advertising I get on the console. (Not that I’d ever buy a RAM truck, but still.)

New Business Idea: Buy unzoned property that can be used to block scenic overlooks around the homes of scummy advertising executives. Put up billboards.

Absolutely fucking not.

My attention is not free and they have no fucking right to my attention.

And second, fuck them for thinking they do.

Definitely slow.

Like - I’m excited about sensors that uses higher frequency versions of this for health monitoring. I think that’s a perfectly valid use. But also, in my use, I’d be installing it as an IoT device on a network I control, feeding data to services I own.

This use - where it’s opt in for now, until they figure out how to monetize selling how much time you spend in front of the TV, in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom (paired with ‘anonymized’ data about what you’re looking at online in each space) is creepy as fuck.

Why this is unneeded

Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections. Every state currently maintains its own voter rolls. These voter rolls are administered at the state level and how citizenship is proved occurs according to state laws.

Why this is bad

This database represents a breach of state autonomy to administer their elections.
Some localities do not require citizenship to vote. This database could disenfranchise voters in those localities.
This represents a huge target for hackers, and given that every municipality will have access to it, there are a lot of potential ways in which it could be compromised or manipulated. The federal government is rife with inaccurate information, and is often understaffed to address the issue. These issues can and will disenfranchise voters. States and municipalities are better equipped to handle their voter rolls.

How this will be abused

This database will be used to both verify citizenship, and for election officials to upload who is registered to vote in a given electoral area. This will lead to its usage to disqualify people who are registered in multiple areas. If - 31 days before an election, someone uploads a list of conservative or liberal voters from a purple area such as Florida or Ohio to the rolls of another state using hacked credentials, then it’s very possible those people will be disqualified from voting and may not know until they try to cast their ballot - shifting the balance of the election.
With the Supreme Court recently discarding birthright citizenship without clarifying who qualifies for citizenship, a sufficiently malicious actor could ensnarl the electoral and legal system with arbitrary claims that people’s parents were not U.S. citizens.
Invariably, the data from this will be used to stalk hapless people — either by electoral workers, or by anyone, once it has been hacked.
And, speculatively - what happens if the scope of this morphs to a ‘voter eligibility’ database, where it tries to ascertain if someone is eligible to vote on additional criterion, such as criminal history? Will it be plagued with errors, such as not registering expunged records, or applying one state’s laws to another?

I feel that in my area the driving culture has become so toxic that there’s a better than average chance that indicating a lane change (which I always do) will lead to the vehicle in the lane you’re attempting to change into accelerating to prevent you from ‘getting in front of them.’
It’s so frustrating (and dangerous!). It seems that a lot of folks feel entitled to the road, or the patch of road in front of their car fro as long as the eye can see, and are willing to behave irrationally regarding it.

I feel that telegraphing that your vehicle is slowing down (for any purpose) will lead to overconfidence or even willful misunderstanding by other drivers. A careful slow-down will turn to panic as they try to take advantage of the situation. I also think that drivers will focus on the vehicles too much, and will not focus on things like pedestrians or perhaps why your car is slowing down, and wind up contributing to the problem.

You are a light in the darkness.

Right! I can’t wait to hear about all the new historical events!

I wonder if anyone witnessed the burning of the Library of Alexandria and felt a similar sense of despair for the future of knowledge.

Ope, now I regret deleting my edited explanation! That is an excellent response to my accidental comment.

My immediate thought was “That’s not all they’re going to be hitting…”

deleted by creator

Or mastodon.

Oh, snap, bringing me the magic I need, but didn’t know to look for.

I’ve been refusing to update because of video station. Looks like I’m saving your comment for later.

No, because there isn’t a single IP range or user agent, and many developers are going to lengths to defeat anti-scraping measures, which include user agent spoofing as well as vpns and the like to mask the source of the traffic.

They say regulations are written in blood.

Elaine Chao is a conservative government official who is famous for not enforcing safety rules or following up on safety complaints and may have violated ethics laws while Secretary of Transportation under Trump’s first regime. While in that role, she rubber stamped a sketchy driver control system implemented by Tesla that later helped kill her own sister (in addition to drunk driving).

Can the lightning bolt of consequences strike twice?

Back then the internet was a bunch of coffee shops. Not literally, of course - but for me it was about 30 people on messenger, my favorite chatroom, a random message board, a small but far flung group of people on LiveJournal, and sometimes even my Neopets guild.
Each was my own retreat. The weird and funny stuff we shared there was created and shared because people had a passion for whatever. It also was great in that you could learn about something, and share it with another group that had not seen it yet.

Today the internet is the infinite cul-de-sacs of meme pages, political messaging groups, and disinformation rings on Facebook, along with approximately 6 people that keep showing up from your friends list of hundreds. Or it’s the screaming gladiatorial stadium of Reddit, where the sheer volume of noise smothers any particular voice. Maybe it’s the infinite lawless Walmart of X or even the carefully manicured Target that is BlueSky.
From mining your attention, to hawking trinkets amidst the spectacle, or attempting to sell a little bit of everything to anyone, the new internet lacks third places. It’s all business, all the time, and you can feel it. Every meme is created to engage with that platform’s broadest audience. Everything is homogenized and lacks uniqueness. All the content has been aggregated and reshared, and in the endless and futile search for validation from the algorithm it’s lost something that makes it meaningful.

And that’s why I like Lemmy. It’s a digital third place.

The advice I needed and have not been able to find. I could kiss you. Or at least give you a fond nod.

GifOfSnapeSayingObviously.gif.jpeg.exe