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2 yr. ago

  • They participate because the Digital Markets Act is forcing them to: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-marketsen

    Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

    • allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
    • allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
    • provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
    • allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

    The interoperability is the big one. The Fediverse gives a way for Meta to be in compliance, and they have an interest in maintaining competition.

  • I think they mostly just want to be able to have parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers. Arnold Schwarzenegger would give advice occasionally on the bodybuilding subreddit, IIRC. Having your favorite YouTuber dip into the comments section for a quick moment just to say a thing or two was something Reddit/Twitter had that was really cool.

    The fediverse kind of has that. Shout-out to Technology Connections, who is on Mastodon - @TechConnectify - as well as Not Just Bikes, who is @notjustbikes on Mastodon but is considering moving to Bluesky. (If you're on Kbin, you can follow them from Kbin at https://kbin.social/u/@TechConnectify@mas.to and https://kbin.social/u/@notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com respectively.) But most influencers aren't on the fediverse, outside of huge nerds.

    The issue is that until we have a Reddit-like service which has a plurality of Reddit users and a Twitter-like service that has a plurality of Twitter users we're going to be in this weird state. Both Reddit and Twitter still exist. They still have people who make posts there. Some celebrities still post there. While Twitter is finally collapsing due to its dumb rate limiting, Reddit has enough bots to maintain the illusion of being an active community, and plenty of Google SEO to get new users to move there. It's obvious that - while splintered - both those places aren't going to magically disappear.

    Then we have Bluesky (which I predict will be a monster once it comes out of invite-only mode, if only because it's built up so much hype) and Threads. Both are targeting Twitter specifically, and I predict that one will win. Jimmy Wales (of Wikipedia) is also working on his own Twitter clone, which may be a dark horse in the race as well.

    I'm not confident that the fediverse will "win" on the Twitter clone side. While I expect that Threads will get a lot of "normal" people on it who use Instagram, a lot of the fediverse is cutting Threads off ASAP to try and prevent "embrace, extend, extinguish" from leeching people from Mastodon into Threads. Bluesky seems to be a frat house at the moment (from what I've heard) but it may self-regulate. It's already seen a recent spike due to Twitter's rate limiting.

    My prediction is in 2-3 years we will be back in the same game we were playing before, but with new players.

  • Generally any kind of superglue will be fine. Elmer's glue might even work if you're in a rush or don't have other materials. There will be a visible seam, and my experience with both is that it's quite easy to break the bond (especially with Elmer's glue).

    What you really want is plastic cement or something that'll melt the plastic slightly, as that'll give a stronger bond. Plastruct is what I use, but there may be alternatives in your region. This will also leave a seam, but the strength is far stronger than regular glue.

    Another way is to do what cosplayers do and use a soldering iron to melt the plastic together (do this in a well-ventilated area). This'll leave a seamless finish without any visible gaps, but only really works on larger models that you're also planning to coat/sand.

  • Doesn't seem to have federated with Kbin just yet. :(

  • Ah yes, a world where Napoleon conquered Moscow and renamed it "Paris".

  • Technically, the domain name is itjust.works. ;)

  • I dislike Cinnamon because it doesn't "just work" if you have multiple monitors like I do.

    Apps don't sync properly on the taskbar across both of them. The only way to get them to sync properly is to disable the grouped taskbar. People have mentioned this to the Cinnamon devs for years now, and they don't appear to use multiple monitors so they don't care.

    KDE Plasma works great with multiple monitors and has been 100% an upgrade over Cinnamon. Plus there's more third-party support for Plasma than there is Cinnamon.