Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to embody your values and preferences with stunning accuracy.

Okay, but can it embody my traumas?

I was in the same boat. Banks are lazy and often won’t underwrite custom loans that fall outside their automatic software, but there are still some who will.

If you don’t have a score (which I’m convinced some mortgage people think means a bad score, because they’re fucking idiots who can’t listen), you can ask to speak to someone in charge or go elsewhere, but there are lenders who will work with you. Got ours through USDA, which took longer and was custom underwriting, but still got the terms about two weeks later.

Honestly, the ones who survive well are the ones who build communities that take care of each other: Sharing meals, sharing gardens, sharing skills and labor, sharing rides, sharing emotions and stories, etc.

Capitalism was always pushing the US towards a gigantic class divide, and Boomers and Gen X carried that torch at the expense of their descendants’ future. Communities of support are something that will have helped regardless of who is carrying what ideology and regardless of who is in charge, and they thrive in adversity.

So if you’re looking for advice, build your local communities. Strengthen your bonds with your neighbors. Participate in local governance.

Does linux support from manufacturer really matter?

Only they can truly answer for themselves, but from a business standpoint, yes. It might. Being able to get support direct from the people who made/sold the laptop, whether it be in the form of a warranty or tech support, could save you from having down time when you need to be working.

…you’re just mad they’re not as miserable as you want them to be. Or more likely not as miserable as they truly are on the inside…

This is probably more true than even they realize.

And even if we assume they work(ed) those alleged 14h days, 6.5 days a week, that does not mean the rest of the world must have the same work aspirations or methods. The idea that a silkscreen printer must work the same hours as the company president, for example, is arbitrary and insane.

Yeah, still a net positive. Not complaining, just informing.

I’ve just seen the “it’s federated (eventually)” and “it’s a public benefit corporation” tossed around on occasion like they’re exonerating evidence, and I would hate to see people get tricked into a false sense of security.

…as a public benefit corporation.

I would encourage everyone to read about what a Benefit Corporation is. It’s still for-profit, but being public benefit gives the officers a little protection from shareholders suing them when stock performance goes down. In theory, this protects them from being driven solely by profit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

However, there’s no real guidance or oversight on whether a company still qualifies for that designation. They can self-audit, they can vote to change to a normal corporation at any time, switch back again, etc. This is not a different tax classification, this is a corporate board promise, and I have no reason to think they’ll stay a public benefit corporation, even if they have the best intentions right now.

That’s why some people just create their own instances.

Interesting, but how?

This is just a manifesto and call to action. The “how” comes later, as people gather and put their heads together.

Seems like you have some thoughts about it. Perhaps you can join/share your ideas with them.

musk could just buy it. jack already sold twitter to him,

Yeah, certainly, or some other billionaire. I think it goes without saying that most of us here understand the flaws with centralized services.

I’m not saying it’s the best choice ever, but I’m hopeful that the choice to leave Xitter might do positive things to people’s mentality when BlueSky almost certainly repeats history. It’s not likely to happen right away, as even an offer to buy would take time to approve, so for now, I’m taking it as a net positive.

The Fediverse will continue to grow and change in the meantime, and we’ll all still be here to help them migrate to better things in the future.

People aren’t going to be convinced of social/communism overnight.

I celebrate the move to BlueSky as positive in that they are no longer propping up an apartheid tech bro who’s now running a meme branch of US Government, and also because many of them are doing the thing they were scared to do before: leave. They now know how that feels and what it will be like rebuilding friend groups and such.

It’s not the anti-corpo step many are deluding themselves to believe it is, but getting out of the muck and learning how to take the step to change something are both things I see as positives that can be guided to better things in the future.

1. That’s lazy journalism. There’s a functional search bar as well as trending hashtags.

2. There will never be suggestions by design, but there’s accounts like FediFollow and guides on how to get started with Mastodon. If you meet those people in the future, tell them to follow hashtags for topics they like, and encourage them to start using hashtags. They’ll find people that way.

3. This is also by design: there’s no suggestions, because there’s no algorithm. You decide what goes on in your feed (boosting is another important part of that). If you’ve looked at everything, explore a new hashtag, follow more people, check the Local or Global feeds, or Satan forbid anyone actually take that as a sign to take a break and go touch grass.

It really depends what you’re after. You’ll find cool people by following hashtags, certainly, but if there’s somebody in particular you like, follow the person, too. Do both.

Also, some people bring their bad habits from Xitter and the rest, so it helps to have all the options.

Tldr, to help fight patent trolls:

They’re asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology – referred to by patent lawyers as “prior art” – that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information.

They use this info to essentially undercut and invalidate the patent trolls’ filing, killing their ability to file suit on that patent again.

There’s also a contest with a $3000 prize for anyone who can help kill a current one on their plate.

https://patroll.unifiedpatents.com/contests/s3vQkRdTC6coNkjyx

"States should decide everything!

…no, not like that!"

(Note that hypocrisy is fully expected, but they don’t get a pass from me pointing it out simply by virtue of it being their expected MO).

For anyone here who wants to switch to Mastodon, I recommend checking this guide first:

https://fedi.tips/

And don’t expect it to be Twitter. Expect better.

Good. The more people leave the cesspit, the better off they’ll be.

Inb4 some speciously-reasoned lawsuit from the “Department of Government Efficiency” comes for BlueSky alleging anticompetitive practices or something equally ridiculous.

Hardly. The Fediverse spans multiple apps and services, and it existed before Elon bought Twitter and it will continue existing regardless of what the billionaires do, because it’s not run by just one person.

The whole point is decentralization, not growth, so unless the billionaires can take out every server hosting an instance, the Fediverse isn’t going anywhere.

Conservatives will have a majority in all branches. Repealing or revising constitutional amendments isn’t out of the question, and there’s a lot of damage they can do before midterms (if there’s even a chance to vote in different people).