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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Not many U.S. cities have a subway. I think the only substantial subway system is in NYC. The city I live in has a very short commuter rail line that doesn’t go to/from anywhere people want to go. Buses are gridlocked in traffic like everyone else, and have to make frequent stops, so it can take something like 2 hours to travel 10 miles. The low-wage workers I know without vehicles just spend $40/day on Uber to commute to work and back (which is a significant percentage of their pay).



  • If I use a private window, and don’t log in I get a lot of right-wing stuff. I’ve noticed it probably depends on IP/location as well. If at work, youtube seems recommend me things other people at the office listen to.

    If I’m logged in, I only get occasional right-wing recommendations interspersed with the left-wing stuff I typically like. About 1/20 videos are right-wing.

    YouTube Shorts is different. It’s almost all thirst-traps and right-wing, hustle culture stuff for me.

    It could also be because a lot of the people who watch the same videos you do tend to also watch right-wing stuff.

    In general, the algorithm tries to boost the stuff that maximizes “engagement,” which is usually outrage-type stuff.


  • Corps frame it as an individualist problem because they don’t want regulation, which is really the only viable way to attack the problem (and regulations needs to be backed by treaties with teeth since it is a global problem).

    You can’t expect every consumer to research every product and service they buy to make sure these products were made with an acceptable footprint. And if low-footprint products/services are more expensive or somehow not quite as good, there will be a financial incentive to use higher footprint products (if individuals acted “rationally,” this is what they would do).






  • I’m not a crypto supporter. I do find the tech a bit interesting. I guess, tech-wise, Lemmy would be more comparable federated crypto like Stellar or Ripple (dunno if these are still federated, or if more popular federated crypto exists; been a very long time since I kept up with it). Without some sort of “trust” decentralized systems are too expensive (resource-wise) to be worth it, IMO.

    Off-topic, but I’m kinda surprised p2p networks haven’t really advanced since Gnutella. I believe they had the concepts of trust/reputation and self-organizing networks with “super-peers” way back then.