• 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 6 days ago
cake
Cake day: April 10th, 2025

help-circle
  • Assuming you are serious:

    Bluesky is … arguably ‘federated’, but it is centralized, not decentralized.

    https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20241128-bluesky-decentralization

    Their model (AT Protocol) relies on a central, authoritative … ‘Relay’, that all ‘federated’ users and posts on federated PDS (personal data servers) must go through, to actually reach the ‘AppView’, ie, what people can actually see.

    So, this is not a many to many, tangled spider web of connections, the way lemmy other parts of the actual fediverse are.

    It is a top down hierarchy, a pyramid.

    And Bluesky runs the Relay, the chokepoint.

    If Bluesky cuts off the PDS your account is on, everyone on it is now gone.

    The actual fediverse, Mastadon, Lemmy, etc, runs on ActivityPub.

    In that model… every instance is essentially self contained, and every instance that is federated communicates with every other instance that is federated.

    Each instance can decide what other instances they want to federate with… and users on each instance can personally block other users, communities, or entire instances if they choose to, but that only effects them

    That is what you call decentralized, approaching, or also having elements of being ‘distributed’.

    To bring up an example without getting into the drama that led to it:

    The ‘Tankie Triad’ of ml, lemmygrad and hexbear have had a number of other instances defederate from them.

    But, there are also a good number of instances that have not done so.

    So that means if your account is on hexbear… you can’t see or post on an instamce that has blocked your instance.

    But, if you (a hexbear…ian?), post on a neutral instance… users on that neutral instance will see the post.

    But but, if a user from an instance that has defederated from hexbear goes to to the neutral instance… they will not see the hexbearian’s post.

    This sounds complicated, and it is, but … thats the whole point of a decentralized system. It is more complex in the abstract… but the entire system ends up being more robust, more adaptable, more customizable… without a central authority in direct control of the entire system.


  • Technically, its complicated, but basically, NHTSA both sets the standards by which a manufacturer should assess whether or not to do a recall… and they also issue recalls themselves.

    They do investigations, compile data, and if it looks like a certain make and or model has a serious flaw, they’ll issue a recall if the manufacturer hasn’t.

    If they are gutted, specifically as they have been by Musk, well then there are no more people actually investigating self driving capabilities and onboard computers, there are no more updates to any of those policies, and nobody issues a recall for such a category of defective vehicle.



  • Yep, my first thought on seeing this was … ‘and who will be enforcing this?’

    No one, the answer is no one.

    While the information about Elon’s history of making false claims, hardware and software details are accurate… there is no official body that has ruled as the title of the article suggests.

    A more accurate headline would be ‘should’ not ‘has to’.

    There is basically zero chance that this guy’s desire would be effectuated in the US … as the US agency that regulates cars… was recently gutted by Musk’s DOGE idiots.

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/car-safety-experts-at-nhtsa-which-regulates-tesla-axed-by-doge/

    Maybe the EU or China or other governments could… legally agree with the author, and order a similar command…

    But uh yeah, the Trump admin is currently blatantly telling the Supreme Court to go fuck themselves, the law will soon be whatever the hell Trump and his orbiters want it to be, has already told the entire world to go fuck themselves and also beg and grovel at the same time.

    Elon would just… continue doing whatever the fuck he wants, even if another country mandated a recall/replacement.

    Sorry, but uh yeah, we have a fascist government now, the rule of law is dead, the law is now whatever the fuck the Trump admin says it is.


  • Do you know if there are significant differences between the Korean language of North Korea, and the Korean language of South Korea?

    Or are they still very similar?

    I only really know one word in Korean… I would sound it out as ’ gam zeh hah mee da '.

    I asked some local, older aged, shop owners of South Korean descent how to say ‘thank you’ in Korean so I could thank them with more respect when I shop at their stores… I may be pronouncing or spelling my pronunciation wrong.

    Apoarently it is 감사합니다 in Korean… but that is likely South Korean, and it seems that South Korean and North Korean use different words, or pronounciations, for at least some terms…

    It would be interesting to learn if there are more differences between the two forms of Korean. :D






  • i apparently cannot figure out ascii shrugs, nvm

    I don’t know exactly how that post counter … actually, technically counts posts, but:

    1:

    Zip going down could have uncounted all posts anywhere made by zip accounts.

    2:

    There could have been some kind of… propogating post count negation effect, as various other instances reacted differently to zip users posts on their instances could not pull them anymore, on different time scales.

    3:

    If a zip user had a … top level comment, on another instance, its possible all lower level comments responding to that comment may also have poofed out of existence, in some respect.

    I may be misusing some terminology here, and this is just spitballing, but yeah.

    Almost all of my .zip account’s posts/comments… are not on zip itself, and its possible that that is fairly common amongst .zip users.




  • My only quibble is: Great Depression 2.0, not Great Recession 2.0.

    This will be much, much worse than 07 08 09.

    Also IMO absolutely yes, Obama should have let the US auto industry collapse if they didn’t accept being completely nationalized.

    Play stupid games, win stuoid prizes.

    Thats how capitalism works, right, right?

    Oh wait no, its actually uh, bribe politicians to subsidize your inefficient and mismanaged business, and then also fund a bunch of PR to convince people that… that isn’t happening, that isn’t your business model.

    Instead we got basically this situation where US auto mfctrs are stupendously subsidized by the US gov… yet have no accountability to it in terms of high level, long term business strategy.

    That lead to all of C Suite just chasing as much profit as possible by basically just saying… fuck making a reliable cheapish car, everything is now a luxury priced giganto sized pavement princess with horrendous maintenance problems.

    If they’d accepted being nationalized, well then at least we would have kept actual ownership domestic, and the GAO could have just done audits on these entire companies and then everyone would know where all the mismanagement was going on. …

    Same thing with Boeing. Boeing is massively subsidized, is a near text book perfect example of how to do regulatory capture, and wow what a surprise, it was run in a manner to maximize balance sheets at the loss of fundamental ability to actually deliver a reliable product.


  • When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that … this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.

    They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn’t real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.

    Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content… well, actually even worse conclusions… and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals…

    But you’ll still get people saying ‘brainrot isn’t real’… when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies… etc etc…





  • The entire original comment chain that lead to what I replied to … was all about playing word games with slogans, progoganda, public relations.

    The law may be ‘clear’, but it is clearly bullshit.

    It is absurdly deferential toward the rights of megacorps and hostile to the rights of consumers.

    Laws are supposed to reflect and codify morals and ethics, arise from them… not determine them.

    But, as we slip more and more into a cyberpunk dystopia of hypercapitalist megacorps being able to basically just buy legislators, judges and laws, it will become more evident that the government is just entirely a facade directed by them.

    This whole article is about a lawsuit in America, you know, the land of the fee, home of the early and very expensive grave?

    The place with the ongoing fascist coup that’s dismantling all the government agencies that regulate corporations, after the richest man in the world just bought an election, and more recently openly tried to buy a state judge, and though he didn’t succeed, will likely face no penalty for doing that very obviously illegal thing?

    Also, as far as at least acquring a pirated game?

    Its not that hard.

    Now hosting them? Sharing them?

    Yep, you’re right, that’s a bit more difficult… but hey, be clever enough to not get caught, and thats the same as being rich enough to write your own laws.



  • … Meanwhile, the bond markets are continuing to freak the fuck out, and the yield curve has now inverted and univerted three times before an actual ‘official’ recession has begun.

    For those that don’t know, a yield curve inversion is when short term bonds offer a higher yield (interest rate) than long term bonds.

    That… it not how that is supposed to work.

    Generally speaking, a longer term bond should be riskier due to the amount of things that can possibly go wrong in that longer amount of time, as compared to a shorter term bond that pays itself back in less time, with less time for unforseen nonsense to happen.

    Every single US official recession in the last … 50, 100 years? has occured after first, the yield curve inverts, then it uninverts, and then an ‘official’ recession follows quite rapidly.

    …Except fucking now.

    Now we are in a situation where the yield curve has inverted then uninverted three fucking times without an ‘official’ recession actually starting.

    This is unprecedented.

    As of right now, the 6 month T Bill and the 5 year T Bond have roughly the same yield, and everything in between has a lower yield, the lowest point being the 2 yr.

    … Its supposed to be basically a line going upward on the y axis of yields, as you move rightward on the x axis from shorter to longer term debt/bonds.

    The bond market right now is more or less saying we are gonna be in for 2 years minimum of economic decline.