Is each instance like another person with a server?
Yes.
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Yes.
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Idk, they'd be very niche.
Sorry I'm sure I messed up some of the terminology, I hope my questions make sense!
Nah, you pretty much nailed it.
Lemmy, and a lot of the fediverse, functions very similarly to email. Gmail can send emails to Proton even though they're hosted by two completely separate companies. A post/comment/vote/interaction is like an email in that a copy of every interaction is sent to every federated instance, like emails sent to recipients. This creates a lot of redundancy and traffic between instances, which has its pros and cons.
In 2020, Marc Benioff, the co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, declared to the New York Times that “it’s time for a new kind of capitalism: stakeholder capitalism, which recognizes that our companies have a responsibility to all our stakeholders”.
And how is our current system not already an extreme version of this???
Podman is purposefully built to rely on systemd for running containers at startup. It ties in with the daemonless and rootless conventions. It's also nice because systemd is already highly integrated with the rest of the OS, so doing things like making a container start up after a drive is mounted is trivial.
Podman has a command to generate systemd files for your containers, which you can then use immediately or make some minor tweaks to your liking.
I use podman for my homelab and enjoy it. I like the extra security and that it relies on standard linux systems like systemd and user permissions. It forces me to learn more about linux and things that apply to more than just podman. You can avoid a lot of trouble by running the containers as root and using network=host, but that takes away security and the fun of learning.
Usernames in Signal are protected using a custom Ristretto 25519 hashing algorithm and zero-knowledge proofs. Signal can’t easily see or produce the username if given the phone number of a Signal account. Note that if provided with the plaintext of a username known to be in use, Signal can connect that username to the Signal account that the username is currently associated with. However, once a username has been changed or deleted, it can no longer be associated with a Signal account.
Their blog post says explicitly that phone number is still required for sign-up and that usernames are purely meant as an avenue to message new people without sharing your phone number. Your username isn't even visible to anyone but you and you can change it whenever you want.
Precedent states that the only legal remedy is to buy whatever social media platform the dependent uses, ban them, and run the rest of the site into the ground.
That's crappy, but have you seen what other remote apps are doing?
Vizio has an ad that takes up around 25% of the screen!
MyQ has a large scrolling ad at the top, and they are actively hostile towards any integration that allows you to control your garage door without using their app (unless you use one of the very few subscription-based integrations they offer, of course).
I own and like the steam link, but the reason they don't sell it anymore is because the steam link app is on most smart devices now, and if your TV doesn't support it, you can buy a streaming stick that does for like $30, give or take depending on sales. And those devices are more portable (less wires) and more versatile than a steam link.
Any competitive price for the steam link would be less than what Valve can produce them for. Weren't they selling it for $5 at the end? Pretty sure I picked mine up for $10 or less. Steam can't show ads to subsidize the price of the hardware like every other smart device does.
It tastes good and good cuts of steak are expensive. Just because it's a little pricey doesn't mean it's difficult to prepare. High-end restaurants will happily sell you caviar for hundreds of dollars, but it's not exactly difficult to put on a plate.
I've never seen a highway with a hill so steep that your visibility is less than stopping distance. There's an exception to every rule, but I'd wager that it is at most exceedingly rare. It's definitely not regular.
Texas has u-turns at basically every highway intersection, with exceptions like this photo. The u-turns bypass the stop sign/lights so that it's just a yield. I'm not sure if any other states do that at the same frequency. With that design, it's probably easier to just raise the highway since it's a straight road rather than raise an intersection. I'm sure it also depends on which road was there first.
The huge access roads also typically stop at intersections, unlike in this photo. In order to support that and have the smaller road use an overpass, the access roads would either need to be built much further away from the highway or curve out and in at every intersection in order to reduce the grade of the overpass's slope. The overpass would need to be longer too since it's crossing more lanes.
If the smaller road goes over the highway, it's pretty common that the highway actually goes down so that the smaller road needs to be raised less.
I'm sure there are plenty of other positives and negatives, but I'm not a structural engineer. I'm just pointing out that it's not an arbitrary decision and it comes with some benefits like robust access roads and u-turns.
Texas has big access roads on almost every mile of highway, and it's glorious. If there's one thing Texas does right, it's highway infrastructure. Except for its obsession with tolls.
SCOTUS's power comes from judicial review and precedent. They can't make arbitrary decisions on arbitrary things. Someone has to bring a case through a ton of appeals and different courts, then SCOTUS can rule on their interpretation of the law and write one or more essays explaining why and the nuances of their decisions. Those decisions are then examples/precedents that are followed by lower courts in future cases, until someone goes through the process again and SCOTUS decides to take the case and change the precedent, which is even more difficult and rare.
In this case, it sounds like they're arguing over if the FDA did their legally required due diligence. If not, then their approval is null and void, so the drug is banned.
A bunch of things stop states from ignoring their decisions. In this case, any company making the drug is not going to value it as worth the risk so it probably won't even make it to court again.
Some federal laws are tied to federal funding. For example, the 21 drinking age is tied to funding for roads. States can choose to set the age to 18, but they lose out on funding.
States can decide to just ignore federal law and get away with it, so long as it's not something the federal government is willing to fight for. For example, states legalize Marijuana essentially by deciding to just ignore the federal ban. The federal government doesn't care enough to send in their own anti-weed police or to pass legislation to force states to ban it again.
It even applies at the federal level. The executive branch can decide to just ignore SCOTUS and do their own thing. For example, SCOTUS ruled in favor of Native American's rights but Andrew Jackson ignored it and did the Trail of Tears anyway (he kicked tons of natives off their land with no shortage of human suffering and death along the way). The Legislative branch can fight against the Executive branch by withholding funding, but the Judicial branch doesn't have any such "stick".
It's rare that situations happen where branches fight against each other or states defy the federal government, but it's not unheaed of. It's all part of the checks and balances. In any case, it needs to stay within some realm of reasonableness in order to get buy-in from other government officials and the populace as a whole.
Yes.
Yes.
Idk, they'd be very niche.
Nah, you pretty much nailed it.
Lemmy, and a lot of the fediverse, functions very similarly to email. Gmail can send emails to Proton even though they're hosted by two completely separate companies. A post/comment/vote/interaction is like an email in that a copy of every interaction is sent to every federated instance, like emails sent to recipients. This creates a lot of redundancy and traffic between instances, which has its pros and cons.