Notices by Justin du Coeur (jducoeur@social.coop)

With #Discord gradually moving along the #enshittification path - https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/discord-confirms-its-moving-toward-becoming-a-public-company-as-it-hires-a-former-activision-executive-as-its-new-ceo/ - I'm paying more attention to the alternatives.

So a question for the Fedimind: do folks have recommended #Matrix hosts for communities of various sizes? I’m in everything from small 50-person personal Discord servers to 5000-person open-community ones. What's out there with good service and reasonable prices for personal use?

(And are there better alternatives than Matrix?)

Based on the enemies they're making, Wikipedia is clearly doing something right…
https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/113868325221306547

@pluralistic is back with a new novel, firmly anti-enshittified as usual (yay for supporting Libro.fm, which is where I now get most of my audiobooks), about the early days of enshittification: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

Apparently already done, so this looks to be one of the fastest-turnaround Kickstarters I've seen. Check it out!

@nomad2035 @kbsez @cstross I'm a little disappointed that they don't have Orion in that listing yet -- still beta, but I *think* it would score pretty well. (It's been eye-opening using it this past year, and seeing how many sites it blocks by default.)

I've said for some time that I care less about technologies than I do *business plans*. Here's a good example of why: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/30/ai-tools-may-soon-manipulate-peoples-online-decision-making-say-researchers

I don't mind LLMs in principle: they're just a tool. But when the users are being sold to advertisers (especially when the companies are VC-backed), the incentives go way beyond “perverse” -- they become downright inhumane, focused on manipulating, even controlling, the users rather than informing them.

This is, BTW, why I'm such a passionate #Kagi enthusiast. Their technology is good, but their business plan -- subscriptions instead of advertisements, bootstrapped instead of VC-based -- matters way more. It means that they *have* to focus on what's good for their users, not what pleases the current whim of the stock market and the billionaires.

I dearly wish more companies would catch that clue…

Useful, short, informative post from @siderea: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1822650.html

The title kinda says it all: “#Covid exhalate drops only after 8th day of infection”

So basically: yeah, if you come down with Covid, please keep masking longer than five days. (Which always seemed suspiciously short, but now there is evidence to confirm that it's generally insufficient.)