I’m pretty sure it used to be easier to get people to move to new things like new forums, Xfire, Ventrillo

In some respects it was somewhat easier to get them to be on multiple platforms instead of moving. Think of the original messenger proliferation, where sometimes people would be on IRC, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or etc. so much so that you had software like Pidgin and Trillian to help consolidate server/chat rooms and friends lists to more easily chat with all your contacts.

Even with Ventrilo, I remember being open to also switching to Mumble or vice versa if there was some hiccup with either.

Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn’t old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article’s coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn’t last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here’s an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it’s been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it’s no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some “convenience” features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).

If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, “anonymized/depersonalized” or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I’m concerned.

When other’s, be it corporations or people start to decide which information a person can and cannot access, is a damn slippery slope we better level out before AI starts to roll out en masse.

You highlight the bigger issue here than AI alone tbh. This is why another critical element is becoming literate and teaching each other methods of independent research, using multiple sources to develop an understanding, and not relying on any singular source, especially without careful review.

All the technology in the world can’t help a person learn and understand, who hasn’t yet learned how to learn, much less understand.

I would feel better if stories like this gave us background on the people involved. Who is Mike Macgirvin? I don’t want the person to dox themselves but I do want to know where he came from, what work he’s done before, what companies he’s worked for and what kind of people, organizations or groups he has worked with in the past. What school, university or program did he come out of? How old is he? What nationality? Where does he live and work now?

Did you miss the interview linked in the article? They interviewed Mike Macgirvin a few years back, and it goes into some of the background you’re wondering about.

Sorry, I’m afraid Google only knows how to minus

For some reason I thought The Verge was better about having transcripts for their podcasts. I was kinda interested but not around 28 minutes of audio interested. 😞

I’d argue, oddly, that it’s easier to hold a single corporate entity accountable for data breaches than mastodon instance owners.

It’s likely the case that both of are bad from a data security point of view, but at least with the corporations you know who to shout at.

I’m inclined to agree, albeit I’m of two minds about it. On one hand, singular entity is technically easier, but being corporate means it’s likely to have more wealth/resources to make it untenable for people to hold accountable. Whereas on the other hand, if you put in the effort to pin down a Mastodon instance admin or even a few admins, chances are they won’t have those kinds of resources to really defend themselves, so you may be more likely to hold them accountable.

That is, compared to a corporate entity which may drag things out for a slap on the wrist settlement/fine or the like. I can see the different angles to where you’re coming from though.

Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

Don’t Bluesky and Threads have similar serious privacy concerns? Those running them would, I think, have similar if not even more access to people’s information, depending on how much their respective apps request. Mastodon and its apps on the other hand, generally don’t request as much access to one’s information, meaning instance owners arguably have much less to snoop through.

I realize you’re asking for a list of sites with RSS feeds, but I wanted to highlight an easier method of sometimes finding feeds than that mentioned by Evkob: Feedbro add-on for Firefox.

You can click the icon for it while browsing a site to check for whether or not any feeds are available. Unfortunately it doesn’t always find them, I think depending on the part of the site you’re browsing or how the feed is being provided, perhaps both, but it’s been a pretty useful tool in my experience, especially for sites that seem determined to bury them.

To my knowledge, it hasn’t, but that’s not the main point of my comment so much as expressing my distrust of the parent company. In that respect, no, I’m not aiming to make a claim that Meta/Facebook have had to disclose messages from WhatsApp to law enforcement and essentially undermine its end-to-end-encryption.

Nevertheless, I think it’s reasonable and fair to be suspicious of Meta/Facebook given its history of questionable actions concerning people’s data. They’re in the business of using people’s data for marketing/advertising purposes, not safeguarding it, after all.

It sounds like it, although it looks like it’s a 6-digit pin instead from the image in the article.

There’s also this additional info directly from Facebook’s blog post about all this:

When your chats are upgraded, you will be prompted to set up a recovery method, such as a PIN, so you can restore your messages if you lose, change or add a device.

Personally I’m about as willing to trust this as WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption, given Meta/Facebook’s involvement, but thought it was worth keeping folks here apprised of the situation in the corporate space.

This is a good list although i generally wouldnt bother listing yacy. Its only as good as the people adding to the list and thats not a lot.

Isn’t that last point a good reason to mention it, to possibly increase the amount of people contributing?

I generally don’t believe in intellectual property, I think it creates artificial scarcity and limits creativity. Of course the real tragedies in this field have to do with medicine and other serious business.

But still, artists claiming ownership of their style of painting is fundamentally no different. Why can’t I paint in your style? Do you really own it? Are you suggesting you didn’t base your idea mostly on the work of others, and no one in turn can take your idea, be inspired by it and do with it as they please? Do my means have to be a pencil, why can’t my means be a computer, why not an algorythm?

Limitations, limitations, limitations. We need to reform our system and make the public domain the standard for ideas (in all their forms). Society doesn’t treat artists properly, I am well aware of that. Generally creative minds are often troubled because they fall outside norms. There are many tragic examples. Also money-wise many artists don’t get enough credit for their contributions to society, but making every idea a restricted area is not the solution.

People should support the artists they like on a voluntary basis. Pirate the album but go to concerts, pirate the artwork but donate to the artist. And if that doesn’t make you enough money, that’s very unfortunate. But make no mistake: that’s how almost all artists live. Only the top 0.something% actually make enough money by selling their work, and that’s is usually the percentile that’s best at marketing their arts, in other words: it’s usually the industry. The others already depend upon donations or other sources of income.

We can surely keep art alive, while still removing all these artificial limitations, copying is, was and will never be in any way similar to stealing. Let freedom rule. Join your local pirate party.

Reformatted for easier readability.

Probably all articles I have read on it by mainstream media were somehow wrong. It often feels like reading a political journalist discussing about quantum mechanics.

Yeah, I view science/tech articles from sources without a tech background this way too. I expected more from this source given that it’s literally MIT Tech Review, much as I’d expect more from other tech/science-focused sources, albeit I’m aware those require scrutiny just as well (e.g. Popular Science, Nature, etc. have spotty records from what I gather).

Also regarding your last point, I’m increasingly convinced AI creators’ (or at least their business execs/spokespeople) are trying to have their cake and eat it too in terms of how much they claim to not know/understand how their creations work while also promoting how effective it is. On one hand, they genuinely don’t understand some of the results, but on the other, they do know enough of how it works to have an idea of how/why those results came about, however it’s to their advantage to pretend they don’t insofar as it may mitigate their liability/responsibility should the results lead to collateral damage/legal issues.

Since it appears there’s precedent for this falling apart, hopefully Cleveland’s government will have done their research and be prepared, albeit I’m not necessarily optimistic either.

Thanks for added background! I haven’t been monitoring this area very closely so wasn’t aware, but I’d have thought a publication that has been would then be more skeptical and at least mention some of this, particularly highlighting disputes over the efficacy of the Glaze software. Not to mention the others they talked to for the article.

Figures that in a space rife with grifters you’d have ones for each side.

Until the law catches up with the technology, people need ways of protecting themselves.

I agree, and I wonder if the law might be kicked into catching up quicker as more companies try to adopt these tools and inadvertently infringe on other companies’ copyrighted material. 😅