Notices by Joe (not2b@sfba.social), page 2

@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.

@DrJackBrown You will hear it when a mobster is on trial. Which is exactly what happened.

@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.

@capn_b @mcc You have to hold down the shift key while shifting, of course.

@stux A member of a group that was exterminated by the Nazis revealed that she was also a member of a second group that was exterminated by the Nazis (she was sexually attracted to women). That is what they are so upset about.

@freemo @Tengrain You realize that in the US, the GOP pays the expenses to get third parties on the ballot? If we had a system like Germany's where parties getting over 5% got a proportional share of votes in the parliament, voting for small parties would be great, but in the US, you either get outright fascism or you get an often disappointing middle of the road party.

@aral Certainly journalists should never use DMs on Mastodon *or* Twitter to communicate with sources. I was disturbed to learn how many journalists use DMs heavily on Twitter.

@futurebird @Cthululemon There were things I liked about their approach when we were looking for options for our daughter, but their antivax stuff was a red flag for us. This was pre-Covid, and a lot of their students didn't have their shots, in California. There were measles outbreaks.

@mastodonmigration Everyone should go to settings / notifications and click the box that prevents people with no follow relationship with you from sending DMs. People who want to allow the public to contact them (anonymous tips and the like) should list a Signal number or similar.

@Lizerreal Yes, this is so stupid. People who think that way will actually spend more money trying to make sure that no "undeserving" person gets help. Just let every student at school get a decent lunch, that is cheaper than a complex system to decide who gets lunch and who doesn't.