Yeah, that’s what I heard from my microblogging colleagues too. They tried Mastodon during the first wave of Twitter exodus, found it too frustrating/difficult, tried Bluesky and stuck with it ever since.

read about embrace/extend/extinguish to see why

deleted by creator

I only have one to read stuff locked behind a login wall. But even for that I seldom use it.

not billionaire owned, but a bunch of VC firms led by one called Blockchain Capital already put a 15million USD bridle on them

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

Yes, I much prefer following topics over people. Every time I glance at microblogging, there is just so much noise. At least lemmy-style forums have upvotes to surface quality content rather than the jumbled mess that microblogs are. No matter how much I like someone (even IRL friends/family), I won’t be interested in their every passing thought, it’s just exhausting.

They are really bad for getting correct information and putting it in context: Information literacy and chatbots as search

I’ve read that the transition itself is usually a smaller part in addition to what has been already dealt by nature

This is unfortunately not the case for most trans people. I think it’s quite rare that a trans person would consistently be able to pass (=blend in) before HRT.

There are some trans people who are also intersex, which is the condition when one’s biological sex (without medical intervention) doesn’t fit neatly in either the male or female boxes. But most trans people aren’t intersex and about half of intersex people aren’t trans.

Edit: But I do agree with your main point, there’s simply no way an app like this could identify trans people with the vast range of facial features humans have. It will both exclude many cis women and allow many trans women, as Giggle did a few years ago.

Switching to Linux means you might have to say goodbye to certain proprietary software and games. Applications like Adobe Creative Suite

as someone whose job mostly involves Adobe programs and whose many hobby is gaming, I think I’ll stick with a Windows with all the AI crap disabled via group policies and O&O Shutup 😐 For now…

I used Feedly for many years, but recently switched to Newsblur, and I love that it lets me filter out posts by tags or keywords, finally don’t have to use external tools for it.

I also have limited understanding, but these are huge corporations with huge userbases. If they start giving “helpful” input on how the ActivityPub protocol should develop, it may exert a strong pressure/influence due to their sheer size.

I know it’s not the same situation, but it reminds me of how Google keeps trying to push shady stuff into Chromium, even though it’s supposed to be free, open-source software.

I think this is their attempt to EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) the Fediverse, so I’m strongly in favour of immediately defederating corporate instances as soon as they are created.

My main game for the last 1-2 years has been Genshin Impact, and a cursory googling says that it does use kernel level anti cheat.

I never tried Linux, but I consider it every few years. However if I weigh that

• O&O Shutup10 and group policies can remove all the telemetry and intrusiveness from Windows +
• most of my work involves Adobe products +
• my main hobby is gaming, with the vast majority of my games not having a Linux port

there are simply too many factors that would make Linux to be more hassle, have less performance or downright impossible to serve as a substitute for Windows, while for me personally not really offering any practical benefits over Windows.

As a somewhat contrary opinion, while I agree that Le Guin is a fantastically good worldbuilder, sadly her stories and characters often barely reach mediocre quality. I still strongly recommend The Disposessed - it shifted my politics massively towards anarchism and I re-read it every few years.

Otoh many of Le Guin’s works feature strong misogyny, and The Word for World is Forest is one of the worst examples.

While the depicted native culture is interesting, we see very little of it in proportion to all the violence and destruction.

Then there’s The Left Hand of Darkness which I’m quite on the fence about. I’m fascinated by the gender and sexual dynamics of its society, but sadly we experience the whole story through the thoughts of a very sexist cishet guy. Imho that spoils it a lot.

My second favourite Le Guin novel after The Disposessed is The Telling. Here, too, we see very oppressive societies, and as symptomatic of Le Guin’s works the pacing is uneven and the plot feels unfinished - but in its entirety the novel still feels like a beautiful poem about cultural and personal resilience in face of oppression.

For actual conversations, yeah. I still check one subreddit daily for game leak updates, but that’s pretty much it.