I have qualms about casting Harris as a “career” politician. He first election for DA was in 2003. To get from running for DA to running for US President in 21 years is a very short ride. She was born in 1964.

Hell, Trump ran for President (Reform Party) in 2000, so he’s been a “politician” longer than Harris. So if she’s a “career politician,” then so is he.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a politician for a long time, as long as the politician is serving her constituents to their satisfaction and avoids corruption.

Hmmm maybe we should ignore #1 and focus on #5 then

If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.

All these other “like Twitter but ______” micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they’re profitable.

If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they’ll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can’t kill it.

I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.

For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a “just do this part for me” option, probably automatically enabled.

#3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.

#4 is hard… Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the “early” Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That’s some very strong “lizard brain” stuff.

So… let’s get going y’all! :)

Every time I install Windows the first thing I download is total commander. I can’t function without it.

It looks like midnight commander with some upgrades

I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/what-made-chicago-school-so-influential-antitrust-policy

The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.

Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.

Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/fact-sheet-ftcs-proposed-final-noncompete-rule

I think what Snowden did was fundamentally good.

My only problem is that he could have chosen to violate the bad law in the way King and others have violated bad laws in an effort to shed light on their badness: break the bad law in the open where everyone can see, then get arrested, then put the bad law and the system behind it on trial.

By running away, he’s given the people who are doing bad things a line of attack against him. It’s bullshit, and doesn’t change the fact that widespread warrantless surveillance is wrong. But some people will take the attacks against Snowden seriously. If he had turned himself in and gone to trial, that line of attack would be gone.

It’s literally impossible for them to not be “analyzing” all the sounds they (perhaps briefly) record.

[Sound] --> [Record] --> [Analyze for keyword] --> [Perform keyword action] OR [Delete recording]

Literally all sounds, literally all the time. And we just trust that they delete them and don’t send them “anonymized” to be used for training the audio recognition algorithms or LLMs.

Sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic, sufficiently advanced algorithms look like artificial intelligence.

Oh, algorithms that write algorithms that write algorithms… they’re still algorithms.

Our TV has a YT app on it and I never sign in. I have way better experience with it because it randomly suggests stuff that the algorithm would probably think isn’t something I like and yet it TOTALLY is something I like.

This is the problem with all these attempts at AI. They don’t have the capacity to be actually random when they’re using large databases of accumulated input from us.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the non logged in version I’m experiencing is also constrained by my prior choices, but it seems like the data they’re holding is much smaller which allows for better chances at a random find.

Plus my kids get on there and search for their weird gamer streamer blah blah BS too which I’m sure really throws a curve ball.

You’re kind of arguing against the foundation of human society. If we’re all required to “do our own research” about things, where does that requirement end? How can I buy food if I have to do my own research on what’s healthy or what’s dangerous? What about my tap water? How can I put gas in my car? Use electricity? A computer? A phone?

Somewhere along the way you have to trust the systems that have been built by the people before us to function, and for people who work in those fields who are experts to use their expertise.

Obviously oversight & verification is also important. It’s important that people earn trust and work to maintain that trust and get booted if they violate that trust.

But it’s foolish to just stop trusting experts out of nowhere. It’s extra foolish to stop trusting experts specifically because they say things you don’t like to hear. As far as I can tell, that’s been the accelerating project of the Republican Party since at least the talk radio explosion following the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. Maybe longer if you go back to Moon landing deniers and their ilk.