I stopped using Spotify long ago because of their shitty business practices. Producing a product they killed support for within just a couple years without reimbursing customers and producing huge amounts of e-waste. Jacking their subscription prices twice in one year. Apparently, they also donated to Trump despite not being an American company?? That’s to say nothing of their shitty recommendation algorithm, which just plays your most played tracks over and over. Good riddance.

For those interested, I use Tidal now. I’m satisfied with, their recommendation algo is fine and the higher quality streaming is really nice but nothing I’ve used has ever been as good as Google Play Music, I found so much good music though that service and could upload whatever I was missing. Once Tidal inevitably pisses me off, I’m going to move on to self hosting.

Authorities: Quit complaining and get back to work, peasant!

So are you saying that because George Floyd had a criminal history he deserved to be slowly murdered without due process, face down in the street with a knee pressing into his neck so hard it prevented him from drawing breath? That all despite him serving his sentence for his convictions, reintegrating into society, and expressing regret over the wrongs of his past (source).

Don’t you see what you’re doing? “He had a rough history so no wonder he was the victim of unjustified police violence. Surely that would never happen to anybody who’s never done a bad thing in their life like me.”

Edit: It’s totally fair to approach news reporting with a healthy level of skepticism. But justifying authoritarian violence based on the fact that news outlets sometimes withhold information seems like poor judgement to me. When they violate anybody’s liberties, they violate yours too. And when they do come for you, how will you feel about the public reaction being, “meh, they probably had it coming”.

It’s a defense mechanism. If people are having their liberties stripped away and are being subject to violence over something so little as a harmless meme, then it could happen to anybody including yourself.

But if there are details not being reported on that would give the border agents a legitimate reason to assault the victim here, like real threats against government officials, being a menace through customs, or otherwise something any normal person would not do, then the victim deserved it and normal law-abiding people can continue to feel secure knowing they’re safe from this treatment so long as they don’t do whatever the victim did to deserve that treatment.

There’s a similar effect for sexual assault victims: “They were asking for it because of what they were wearing/who they misplaced their trust in/where they chose to walk alone at night”. It’s all designed to put fault on the victim in order to maintain a false sense of security for the average person.

Remember when the craziest news was that Trump nominated him for Attorney General?

Same here! Though I took a 6-month break in between quitting Reddit and joining Lemmy. I remember hoping it would amount to a feeling of liberation but in reality I just felt out of touch with world events and started scrolling through my Google feed instead, which sucked…

Encryption should be no more a crime than locking your house or storing your valuables in a safe.

Cries in Star Wars: Battlefront 3

Dave the Diver!

Jumping to Linux for sure. The hardest part is going to be finding time to learn it first…

Or how about you just stop buying from that cancerous blight on our society altogether?

I’m a senior software dev that uses AI to help me with my job daily. There are endless tools in the software world all with their own instructions on how to use them. Often they have issues and the solutions aren’t included in those instructions. It used to be that I had to go hunt down any references to the problem I was having though online forums in the hopes that somebody else figured out how to solve the issue but now I can ask AI and it generally gives me the answer I’m looking for.

If I had AI when I was still learning core engineering concepts I think shortcutting the learning process could be detrimental but now I just need to know how to get X done specifically with Y this one time and probably never again.

This guy looks like he tried to fuck a power outlet.

Generally, I believe the convenience of cheap shit delivered to your door comes at the invisible cost of exploitative labor practices and/or excessive consumerism by the means of low quality crap that will need to be replaced regularly or through “buy more and save” deals. If you want to avoid supporting that, you’re probably going to have to spend a few extra bucks buying from a smaller business or buying secondhand.

Convenience isn’t free and if we want to reduce our dependence on harmful institutions we’re going to have to make some sacrifices.

Easy fix, don’t buy from Amazon.

My impression is that Lemmy and the fediverse are a manifestation of the dissatisfaction with the current “normal” and “mainstream” social media platforms which are in decline due to hyper-capitalism. Is it no wonder the majority of its users’ ideology doesn’t align with what is “normal” and “mainstream”?

That being said, this system is designed so that communities can exist independently from one-another. You’re always welcome to create your own. Otherwise, lemmy.world is just about as “normal” as you’re going to get out of Lemmy.

Is this the fediverse’s answer to Instagram?

While the whole situation is shitty, I find it hard to believe a massive company would shut down services for 12 hours, losing millions in revenue and likely millions of users, all as a PR stunt for a foreign leader.

Finally free from the Golden Handcuffs, I’d use my extra time to do something I’ve always wanted, like music production, which would also inevitably be taken over by AI.