IMO there are big risks consuming news & opinion from any single source.

Whether it’s the CCP manipulating the TikTok algorithm, Russia buying ad space on Facebook, or American conglomerates pushing narratives on western mainstream media, there will be implicit biases everywhere.

The only real answer is to get news from multiple sources with diverging perspectives, try to find where facts overlap, challenge your own implicit biases, and form a perspective in line w/ your values.

Seeing America blame TikTok for pushing propaganda is the pot calling the kettle black – and honestly more of a distraction than anything else.

The real important issue is that people are dying, and the existing power structures are doing jack shit to stop it.

Star Trek is the only reason I’m paying for Paramount+.

If Lower Decks and/or SNW go, I go.

Additionally…

Uyghurs when they’re detained sent to a concentration camp free job training program:

Chuckles. I’m in danger immensely grateful to the glorious Chinese Communist party for graciously offering me this tremendous opportunity.

Oof yeah was not aware of these at the time of my original comment.

LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as “bad” after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).

Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.

A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn’t really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say “I’m sorry” at one point which was pretty meme worthy.

The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.

Different people have different conclusions – some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.

But that’s just me – I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.

Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don’t know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.

I get that this is just a meme, but comparing YouTube drama to the reckless behavior of a multi-billion dollar oil conglomerate causing incalculable amounts of ecological damage feels like a bit of an overreaction.

No that actually helps a lot! I was actually trying to filter an entire instance, but thought I had to do so but putting the domain of that instance into “Domain Filters”

I really hope stepping down as CEO leads to Linus surrounding himself with people he trusts to call him out when he’s missing something.

He strikes me as the kind of person who is susceptible to a few certain mental traps you kinda don’t want to see in a leader of a large influential organization:

1. Taking an “ends justifies the means” mindset (e.g. stepping on the “growth” gas pedal and accepting sloppiness because it will get better later with Labs)
2. Letting “objective facts” justify big subjective decisions w/o much consideration (e.g. thinking the Billet Labs video didn’t need to be re-shot because the “objectively” product rec conclusion wouldn’t have been different)
3. Substituting actual solutions to problems w/ commitments to solving them (e.g. implementing “Accuracy KPIs” instead of slowing the pace of video releases)

None of these constitute outright malice, IMO, but boy can they lead to a problematic working environment.

I’m sure there will be quite the flame war as a result of this, which I think is a bummer. Linus strikes me as someone who’s acting in good faith, but has an unshakable habit of making rushed decisions without considering the full scope of their impact, and is (or has been) lacking the appropriate feedback structure to help him learn to either a) make more thoughtful decisions, or b) fully delegating those decisions to folks who are better equipped to make them.

Here’s hoping this leads to positive change.

I try to structure my commits in a way that minimizes their blast radius, which usually likes trying to reduce the number of files In touch per commit.

For example, my commit history would look like this:

• Add new method to service class
• Use new service class method in worker

And then as I continue working, all changes will be git commit --fixuped to one of those two commit’s hashes depending on where they occur.

And when it’s time to rebase in full, I can do a git rebase master --interactive --autosquash.

I’m absolutely thrilled to have sync on the Fediverse, and will happily pay for a yearly subscription to help ensure LJD has sufficient compensation to keep the app up-to-date with whatever changes come to the Android/Lemmy APIs years down the road.

The problem with (even excellent) free apps for platforms like this, is they require consistent maintenance to keep up with both the platform they run on (Android), and the platform they serve content for (Lemmy). That is not a trivial amount of work, and is absolutely deserving of continued, recurring compensation IMO.

A one-time payment might make sense for a simple native game that gets produced once, has no web component, and never needs another update for its entire lifetime, but not for this. You aren’t paying for a singular product, you’re paying for a service. You wouldn’t go to the barber and winged about needing to pay every time I get my hair cut.

I know I’ve been commenting a lot more w/ sync.

No, but there are copyleft licenses that require anyone using a fork of some open-source project for for-profit purposes to subsequently open-source any changes they make.

Honestly I’m using, and especially posting on, Lemmy much more often now that I have sync back.

I had been using Sync for Reddit for so many years that it became muscle memory. Now I have it back and things just feel right.

I fully recognize I’m in a position of relative privilege, but I am more than happy paying an annual subscription of <$20 for an app like this.

Building an app of this quality with this level of polish is a massive time investment, and I’m more than happy to reward that time with less money per year than I spent doordashing lunch this afternoon because I was too lazy to make myself a sandwich.

This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.

It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.

Most of the comments here are talking about the x% of time Linux gets messed up it can be really intimidating for new users and getting the right help can be a challenge, or simply more time than it’s worth.

I think this is true, but I think there’s another thing that irks people:

Software Compatibility

The general public primarily interacts with their computers through established applications that commonly aren’t available on Linux w/o intimidating work around (if at all).

A noob who switches to Linux isn’t going to know the limitations up front, and the second they decide they want to learn Adobe Premier for work, they’re kinda fucked. They’ll either spend hours/days of online research trying to figure out if it’s even possible, or they’ll ask for help only to have someone tell them they’re wrong for trying and to use some FOSS alternative because Adobe is an evil megacorp.

It’s a recipe for frustration.

Honestly that strikes me as perfectly reasonable of Beehaw.

Maybe a little kneejerk to de-federate preemptively, but given their stated moderation goals I totally get it.