@molly0xfff Maybe they want it to blow up, so they can turn around and blame the Democrats and the Deep State for somehow hacking them? The political press would go along, because they don't know anything and like drama. If they structure it so that their own money isn't exposed, that might be the idea.
@heidilifeldman@BruceMirken Need to make the point that Musk is all in for Trump and Democrats are crazy to make X the center of their campaign. They should be breaking news on other platforms, maybe follow up with a post to X a day later, and only the fediverse will give them a platform that isn't controlled by an opponent (Zuckerberg should also be seen as an opponent, likewise the bros running BlueSky, though Musk is the worst).
@cdarwin If Biden does decide to drop, the only safe approach would be that it's before the convention, it's in favor of Harris and the party quickly unites behind her. A nasty fight at the convention will guarantee a Trump win. Picking someone else means that the money the Biden-Harris campaign raised can't go to the new person.
@profoundlynerdy@BeAware If it is a new account, the profile picture is of an attractive woman, and "she" DMs you out of the blue, it is almost certainly fake. Same if you block DMs from non-followers, follow someone and get an instant DM. All the other social media platforms have those people. They usually have many simultaneous targets. There was a John Oliver segment on how bad the cons can get. Some of them will try to build up a relationship with you before springing the trap. And yes, they are here on Mastodon now.
@mcc Trump will still be allowed to vote in Florida, because he was convicted in New York, so New York rules about losing voting rights apply. In New York, he can still vote unless he's actually in prison.
@HauntedOwlbear Windows 11 will not have Recall unless the machine has an expensive NPU. The machine has to meet the requirements of a so called Copilot+ machine, and even high end Intel and AMD machines don't. I can't think of why people would shell out the money for this feature.
@Bythus@Mastodon Many European NGOs have an associated US nonprofit. For example I give to MSF/Doctors Without Borders that way. It is a way for US citizens to contribute money, but does not give US authorities any operating control.
@lauren The ban is wrong, but it isn't going to help Trump, for several reasons. One is that it has pretty unanimous GOP support in Congress, and Trump's support as well until some billionaire with an interest in TikTok got Trump to switch sides. Second, the ban doesn't happen for a year, and court battles will push it even further back, so on election day there will be no change. And even if they do sell the platform will be just the same. So while I think the ban is incredibly stupid it simply isn't going to affect the election.
@WarnerCrocker "This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus." Doesn't this just create huge evolutionary pressure, resulting in mutations that change the "part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus" enough so that the vaccine is no longer effective against it? I have no expertise, but this is a university press release, not the paper itself, and press releases tend to be overly optimistic about new research.
@GottaLaff What he did would have been rape in a number of other states, but NY law had a narrower definition. And now NY state has closed that loophole, by passing S3161, also known as the Rape is Rape Act (though I would have called it the Donald Trump Act).
@AnthonyJK@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes And yet I am hearing a lot of people on the left saying they won't help to beat the GOP, because the Democrats suck and Biden sucks and it makes no difference. It is true that Biden sucks in many ways, and I am outraged by what is going on in Gaza, but he has to win to prevent the pogrom. If we get project 2025 and even more fascist judges, it is all over: they want to eliminate trans people and push all gay/lesbian people underground.
@pettter@ajroach42 The VCs also win if the mid-size company gets bought out by a big company, for a profit, and that's basically the goal for a lot of smaller VC funded companies. But either way, the VCs will making things worse to extract all the money that they can.
@Jugi There's an algorithm, but it is a simple and transparent one: your followers see all your posts (unless they've muted you or muted a hashtag you included). If you use a hashtag, people who follow that hashtag see your post. If someone boosts your post, the followers of that someone see your post (and if that someone is @lisamelton a whole lot of people see it). There's nothing else that artificially boosts or limits your engagement. The users, not the owners, choose what gets seen.
@hikingdude@davew@aral I think it has to do with identity. They want every user to have a persistent identifier that persists across hosts. That does have some advantages, it makes migration easier. But it seems that everyone would register with them, so they'd control the user database. Caveat: I don't know if their final system will work that way, maybe it will be more open.
@davew@aral Perhaps; there are certainly issues with ActivityPub. But correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that the BlueSky approach to federation keeps BlueSky as the central authority. While that can simplify some issues, given previous experience with billionaire owners of social media platforms it isn't comforting.
@VE2UWY@Gargron I think the movement might well go in the other direction. Threads/Instagram users might realize that they can escape the ads and the algorithm without giving up connections to their friends. If threads.net becomes yet another fediverse server why not choose a better one?
@mcc When you download a large file, you have to start in first gear, and the download is slow. You have to smoothly progress through the gears to speed things up. If you don't shift smoothly your download will stall out, and you have to start over at the beginning. No other way is provided to download a file.