some cables can lose some signal strength after a few years of usage

Roughly how many years are you thinking about? I’ve been using the same 10m ethernet cable for more than 20 years. And my expectation was that only physical wear would damage it (eg. rolling and unrolling it to deploy in a different place; possibly closing a door on it accidentally… that kind of thing).

Their official reddit account also tripled down by saying “here is our official response” (and then quoting the Mastodon post). So they’ve explicitly made it the company’s view - not just the CEO’s view.

Oh, don’t bother! Sometimes it feels like even asking for people to explain their downvotes invites more downvotes for some inexplicable reason.

Without referring to the specific post in question, I have some comments about that.

Different people downvote for all sorts of different reasons. Some downvote if they disagree with a statement, some downvote because they don’t like the way the statement is presented (eg. I often downvote posts with huge embedded memes, even if I like what the meme says); some downvote because they don’t think the context is appropriate (even if they agree with the ideas said, they might be seen as the wrong time / place); some downvote due to a misunderstanding or perhaps an ambiguity in the post. etc. etc. And very often, posts with more than one idea in them are downvoted by people who agree with part of it but disagree with another part (even if the second part is minor and insignificant).

So then, if someone says something like “I’m being downvoted because xyz”, they’ll almost certainly be downvoted by a heap of people who had a different reason in mind. If a person says “show me where I’m wrong”, that apparently ignores the other possible reasons for downvotes - and can sometimes imply arrogance and stubbornness - which of course will invite downvotes. And if someone just asks “why am I being downvoted?” it might be interpreted to mean “I don’t deserve to be downvoted” - which of course will also invite more downvotes.

Who gives a shit? Many people, obviously. And for many different reasons. Here are two simple reasons why I care:

• The CEO stating support for Trump suggests that either their values align with Trump, or that they are bought / corrupted. Either way, I see that as a sign that Proton is likely to make moves that I disagree with. People’s values guide their actions, and this CEO is showing values that I disagree with. So I can no longer trust their actions.
• Even if the Proton products are perfect, if the CEO openly supports Trump then we get a ‘Nazi bar’ type effect. Whenever I share my proton email address with someone, it will signal to them that I frequent the Nazi bar. … I don’t want that association.

Yeah, that’s true. But going on to say ‘therefore support Trump’ is … not good.

I think it’s unwise for Proton to try to support any political party. Agreeing or disagreeing with decisions and policies is fair and good; but to say “this is the party who supports the little guy” is a bullshit and unnecessarily divisive.

You presume an awful lot about my values and my goals, simply because I told you that Mastodon is not in a death spiral and does not need to take over other social media. To me, that suggests shallow thinking on your part. Your post is insulting and unhelpful.

Wow. Several of the instances described are quite clearly rape; with some horrible scarring and degrading stuff through in; exploiting power-imbalance to make it possible. What I struggle to fully understand though are the text messages mentioned in the story. Gaiman argues that there was consent, and there are things said in those text messages that might support him. But the other circumstances, and the pattern of behaviour across multiple victims surely is enough to overrule that.

I assume the primary reason for Valve supporting Linux is to protect themselves against possible hostility from Microsoft. So yeah, it’s a business decision to protect Valve’s profits; but frankly - it’s also beneficial to everyone who isn’t Microsoft.

Overall, I’m not a great fan of Steam. (And generally it’s me talking down Steam; recommending itch.io and GOG; and sometimes even defending Epic against what I think are unfair attacks.) But here I’m just saying that I don’t really see the negative of Valve creating Steam OS. Although I don’t intend to use Steam OS, I think I’m already benefiting from the support Valve has given Linux to create Steam OS.

Ok. Yes. I guess this wasn’t quite the right place for me to post my piece.

Mastodon can in fact interact with Lemmy. If you get the fediverse link of a lemmy post (the one with the colourful network logo), and you put that into a mastodon search, you can find the post. From there you can ‘favourite’ the post to upvote it, and you can reply to the post to… well, reply to the post.

Obviously that is not a very practical way to use Lemmy, but it does mean that you can browse an arbitrary Lemmy server without logging in, and then post to it from your unrelated Mastodon account when you want to.

An “irreversible death spiral”? Dude… Mastodon has been around for almost 10 years. It was alive and in use before the corruption of Twitter. It may not be big, but it definitely is not in any kind of death spiral. The Mastodon community is as vibrant and healthy has it has ever been.

I think people tend to forget that the numbers must go up mentality only really applies if you’re trying to squeeze money out of people. A community doesn’t have to conquer the world to be a useful & enjoyable & friendly place.

I’m not sure that Valve working to making Linux gaming a smoother experience is a strong example of them being money grubbing and anti-consumer.

I don’t really understand this buzz about Steam OS displacing Windows.

Windows is a general purpose computer OS; whereas Steam OS is a game-platform OS designed for the Steam Deck and similar devices. It doesn’t seem to be the same use case. Obviously Steam OS could be used as a general purpose OS, if you just switch modes and install this and that software… but then what are you waiting for? There are already heaps of high quality general purpose Linux OSs already designed for that purpose. Linux Mint is a drop-in replacement for Windows, and has no problems whatsoever with games.

I mean, if you want to use Steam OS on your main computer, then that’s fine - but I just don’t really see a reason to use that rather than something that is already available, and already a desktop OS rather than a console OS.

So your plan is to fuck everything up in order to motivate ‘status quo idiots’ to do something, so that you don’t have to. Is that about right?

It seems to me that instead of trying to make things worse, you could instead try to make things better. But I guess activism is much easier when you don’t actually have to do anything yourself.

I’ll attempt to translate.

I suppose that if lemmy.world didn’t want worldwide news (eg. post about Germany), then perhaps they should have chosen a different name.

They are trying to tell you that “EUgerman spam” you are complaining about is in fact not spam, but rather it is a normal part of a world-wide discussion.

Do you think Eugen has been personally moderating all Mastodon instances up until now?

He hasn’t. Obviously the moderation system has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

bluesky has more funding for self-promotion.

You could call it temporary if this was part of a clear plan for a better future. But it isn’t.

The Trump victory doesn’t lead to anything good. It isn’t ‘temporary’ pain for a long-term fix. It is simply going in the wrong direction, and it won’t turn around by with magic or wishful thinking.

Back when I was on Twitter (a couple of years ago now), all links to Mastodon were explicitly marked as “unsafe”, and posts containing such links were demoted. So it’s apparently kind of normal for these social media companies to attempt to choke new competition as early as possible.

One advantage of Pixelfed is that it not a commercial company. So unlike Instagram, they do not have financial motivation to addict and exploit. So for people who are interested in seeing and sharing picture galleries, that seems like a good option to me.

(Personally I don’t use Instagram or Pixelfed, or any other similar service.)