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Die4Ever, to technology in Reddit communities adopt alternative forms of protest as the company threats action on moderators

This stuff is funny, but that’s the problem, Redditors love funny events like The Snap, and they love drama and controversy

You can see it’s not hurting Reddit at all maybe even helping them

blackout.photon-reddit.com

The real solution is to share links to Lemmy communities as replacements and just leave Reddit, turn off whatever auto moderation tools they have and just let the place burn, or maybe even worse be overly strict on moderation lol

espiritu_p, to gaming in Hackers are infecting Call of Duty players with a self-spreading malware | TechCrunch

Snow Crash anyone?

TSG_Asmodeus,
@TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world avatar

“I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.”

getBoolean, to gaming in Hackers are infecting Call of Duty players with a self-spreading malware | TechCrunch

is this the one that had the malware patched in the fan servers they shutdown?

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

I don't think Modern Warfare 2 ever had fan servers. It's the one that infamously had a "boycott" over the lack of dedicated servers (which is different than private servers) because it was all peer to peer multiplayer.

PrinzKasper,
@PrinzKasper@kbin.social avatar

MW2 had many iterations of fan servers. It started with alterIWnet, and ended with IW4X, which was recently shut down by Activision with a cease and desist. Fan modded versions of the game with dedicated servers and a server browser, with known security vulnerabilities like this one already patched out. Thanks to Activision, there's now no way to safely play this game anymore.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

Oh, that's cool. Cool that the alternate networks ever existed, I mean. Not cool that they got shut down, but this is from the same people who shut down vanilla WoW to sell it back to you again.

WowMyNameIsUnique,

Seems like it, yep. RIP IW4X. I didn’t even know it existed!

Polar, to privacy in Encrypted email provider Proton has built its own CAPTCHA service | TechCrunch

This company can’t stop starting new projects and putting their current ones on the back burner. Their services are all spread out between multiple operating systems. Want proton drive app? Better use Windows. Want the new proton mail app? Better use iOS. Want anything? Better not use Linux.

sloppy_diffuser,

Yeah, its super annoying.

Port forwarding with the VPN on Linux was an adventure because all the docs are outdated and I had to scour github issues for how to do it.

Android mail app becomes super slower over time. No snooze. Wish it could do POP3/IMAP for send/receive from other accounts like my school one. Can’t delete aliases I made before proton pass aliases came out.

No contact syncing as a bi-directional provider with Android.

Someone recently added Proton Drive to rclone if you want to sync in Linux. Worked for my small test but I’ve since moved to Backblaze for my backend storage while waiting for a solution and it works really well for less than a $1 a month.

TWeaK, to privacy in Signal's Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally 'a surveillance technology'

By that reasoning, every personal data collecting business is a surveillance technology. Not that I disagree, mind.

CanadaPlus, to technology in Foxconn and Nvidia are building 'AI factories' to accelerate self-driving cars | TechCrunch

So can someone explain what an AI factory is, from an engineering perspective? The fact there’s competition to build them suggests it’s not just a marketing term, but I can’t find a clear answer with a quick search.

Butterbee,
@Butterbee@beehaw.org avatar

I can only imagine these are just crypto mining farms, but instead of running mining they train ai models

CanadaPlus,

I mean, isn’t that just a normal datacenter, then? Those already exist, and Foxconn at least probably owns some.

Butterbee,
@Butterbee@beehaw.org avatar

Yes, but probably more video card focused than running the biggest epyc or xeon processors.

agressivelyPassive,

It’s just a marketing term.

CanadaPlus,

Yep, just looked into Dojo. They don’t use the same term at all. -1 to the journalist for making it sound like an industry standard thing.

Paradox, to technology in Foxconn and Nvidia are building 'AI factories' to accelerate self-driving cars | TechCrunch
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

Can they build factories to brake too?

ShaunaTheDead, to technology in Foxconn and Nvidia are building 'AI factories' to accelerate self-driving cars | TechCrunch
@ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social avatar

Uh oh, if Foxconn is in charge of an AI factory then we're sure to see our first AI suicide attempt in no time.

ultra,

First? Didn’t a police robot roll into a pool?

UrLogicFails, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch
@UrLogicFails@beehaw.org avatar

I remember hearing about “Pebble” for the first time about a month ago when it showed up in an article in my “all” feed (pawb.social/post/2688668).

Its name before its rebrand was already questionable as I think T2 already has strong associations with the Terminator franchise; and its new name was not any better. “Pebble” is too generic a term to get people to understand the platform’s concept and in the tech space, I think everyone would think of the wearables first.

All this to say I am zero percent surprised they went out of business. I’m only surprised it happened so shortly after their rebrand (though at this point I’m starting to think that must have been some sort of Hail Mary).

mateomaui,

Yep, I looked it up that day for the first time and haven’t heard about it again until now, when they’re kind enough to tell us to not even bother with it.

marco,
@marco@beehaw.org avatar

I have never heard about it until this announcement of its demise :p

Nusm,

I think the T2 was to insinuate that it was “Twitter 2”. I didn’t understand the rebrand, because, even though it’s been a few years, Pebble to me is still associated with the smart watch.

I actually signed up and used it a little, but I put up a funny post with a Corvette that had a wheel off sitting on wood blocks with the caption, “When Rednecks get Corvettes! 🤣” It was a stupid little joke, but my post was flagged as offensive and removed. At that point I made one more post explaining what had happened, and that I was going to be leaving the platform. I left the post up for a couple of weeks and then deleted my account. If that was considered offensive, my sarcastic self didn’t stand a chance on that platform.

I’m not surprised they didn’t get any traction.

Remmock,

I’m not surprised they didn’t get any traction.

Nobody would be if it was up on wood blocks.

Nusm,

🤣

stefenauris,
@stefenauris@pawb.social avatar

Hey that’s the exact same time I heard about it! …and I’m the one who posted it. Brilliant me 🙃

Adderbox76,

I actually think conceptually “Pebble” is a great name for a social media site if you lean into the “drop a pebble in a pond and it ripples outward = even the smallest person can reach a large group of people with their message.”

At least it MEANS something, unlike whatever “X” is supposed to represent (a name so bad, it’s STILL usually followed by “formerly Twitter” whenever it’s mentioned by anyone)

liminalDeluge,

Following that concept, a platform called Ripple where individual posts are called Pebbles and responses/reshares are called Waves wouldn’t be half-bad, branding-wise.

MoogleMaestro, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch
@MoogleMaestro@kbin.social avatar

Crazy to me that they'd shut down instead of going open source and integrating with the fediverse. Doesn't even seem like a good business move as offering hosting for other companies and professional groups seems like a good market opportunity in a world where businesses even dislike Twitter.

Edit: for example, offer gitlab like service but for social media.

sab,
@sab@kbin.social avatar

Wouldn't even need to open source - they could have joined the fediverse as closed source, offering a platform to those people who are apparently scared away by anything with a permissive license.

Then again, these people are probably more eager to be on bluesky.

ram,
@ram@bookwormstory.social avatar

Is there a part of bluesky that’s under an impermissive license?

max,

I think the whole step to integrate with the fediverse would have taken too much time and too many resources. Seems like a massive rewrite of the codebase to me, if it wasn’t taken into account from the very start.

petrescatraian, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

@UngodlyAudrey Guess there's another score for decentralized social media. 😁

TWeaK, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

the app maxed out at 3,000 daily active users, out of 20,000 registered users.

This is smaller than many mastadon instances.

sab,
@sab@kbin.social avatar

Hell - the fediverse has more than 20 000 registered servers.

i_am_not_a_robot,
@i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk avatar

It was invite only, not open registration, so not surprising they didn’t have many users. Although Bluesky is the same and that seems to have loads. Hmm.

I had an account but literally used it for five seconds and then largely forgot about it.

Pantherina,

I dont get Bluesky. I dont even care for this “app” what and why? Who would use that?

bermuda,

Probably people who want to use it.

imkali,

it feels more like twitter did, and it is more centralised and less technologically focused, so more normie-friendly.

Flax_vert,

I think it should take for someone to make a mastodon instance that just doesn’t boast about federation yet is federated for this to take off more. People say “join mastodon” or “join lemmy” but then you’re hit with a list of servers and you just give up. Contrary to something like “join talkfunhouse.com” which is actually a federated instance

jsdz, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

Not sure if it’s from an alternate universe or from our own future, but somewhere there is a version of this article that’s like “Today, the market for Mastodon alternatives is a crowded one to say the least. There are numerous services for consumers to try, including the open-source based Misskey, smaller startups like Pleroma, plus the Elon Musk-based product formerly known as Twitter.”

asexualchangeling,

At least hopefully in that future they’re all interoperable so choosing one over another wouldn’t really be that big an issue

Five,

Except for Twitter, which burns through the last of its lifeline to bolt-on ActivityPub to the code only to not find anyone to federate with.

asexualchangeling,

I mean yeah, mastodon doesn’t like Nazis

kapibara,
@kapibara@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Wait, Pleroma is also FOSS like Mastodon. Not from small startups.

Thisfox, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

I’m mystified by why everyone wants to make a Twitter clone despite Twitter famously not being all that profitable.

DragonTypeWyvern,

I think one of the things Musk has proven is that there was a fair amount of organizational dead weight in Twitter.

If he’d made some staffing cuts, paid less for ego offices, and done it all while shutting up and not being Apartheid Boy we’d be applauding his 4d chess.

explodicle,

How did he prove that? I don’t know how to determine how much of Twitter’s decline is due to Musk’s public statements.

DragonTypeWyvern, (edited )

The advertiser exodus is 100% a result of his policy changes and public persona. That’s just how it works, the advertisers don’t care about anything but brand awareness.

He changed policy, they left because that policy could be damaging to their brands.

But one of his policies was gutting the workforce, and despite all the dire predictions the platform has somehow still not exploded. There’s certainly a lot of reasons for that, and he’s been publicly embarrassed more than a few times, but if he’d gone in with a scalpel instead of a hatchet and not scared away the money and the tech it’s almost certain he could have made Twitter at least briefly profitable.

Twitter was losing money, but not by standards of potential and net valuation.

Put it like this.

In 2016, Twitter probably decided the US election. At the time, they had 3500 employees.

In 2021, they had 7500, and were losing less money.

Can you think of anything they did in that five year period that made you say, “Wow, that’s a good feature,” or “this community is amazing?”

Not really, right? It was the same Twitter, with double the workforce, doing not a whole lot with them.

sculd,

This is what happens when an organization gets sufficiently large. And this is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Surplus” staff is very important when a new project comes and the organization needs to scale up. Instead of suddenly hiring a lot of people with no understanding of organization culture, the staff can be mobilized to work on new things without affecting existing project and structure.

There is a reason why governments around the world don’t suddenly fire their staff when it is apparent a lot of them are not working at max capacity. Redundancy is a kind of safety.

online, to technology in Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down | TechCrunch

Every time I went to sign up for their site they required that I list my Twitter account. But, I’ve never had consistent interconnected social media profiles.

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