I wonder what it would like if they rolled out the OG circa 1998 page-rank algorithm on todays web. What would that algorithm find if we ran it now? Would it be garbage or would it undercut all the SEO and find good stuff?

I have a hunch that the current search is bad, not because they cannot do better, but because it is profitable for it to be this bad. The most powerful SEO tool is probably your checkbook.

It seems likely that every human culture has had some concept of gender and norms related to it. Those roles can be permissive or strictly enforced. They can match the expectations our culture gives us, or they can be surprising to us. Beside average size, and childbearing, there is unlimited flexibility in how a culture might define the roles and how they might enforce them.

While it is a tempting thought, it seems unlikely that we, here and now, have somehow managed to create the absolute worst human culture in the millions of years we have been at this. I agree that we should be watchful of that pitfall. Western self loathing, is in itself another way of assuming that we must be the main characters in the human story.

I run windows on the desktop, Linux on my server, and iOS on my phone.

I used android for years and had all kinds of fun rooting and installing alternate OSes. Modern android devices (the mainstream ones anyway) are loaded up we undesirable apps and services and partner bullshit.

I would have agreed 10 yrs ago, but, it seems to me that the landscape has changed. Last year I decided to change with it. The iPhone is a compelling mobile experience, I doubt I will go back to android, but we will see what comes.

They don’t gain much adding fediverse users to the content mill. I have a hard time believing anyone at meta wants to give us access to “their” content without the reciprocal user data and ad attention in return. Hell, Reddit just imploded to rid itself of “freeloaders”.

They saw an opportunity to take twitter’s users, they probably used activitypub because it was fast. If they start federating, we can decide how to handle it. They will win the war for users, but we can have a nice space that they aren’t allowed to touch if we want it.

After the 2008 financial crisis (when the article claims the divergence started). The US and the EU chose different paths. The US chose bailouts and the EU went with austerity. Both were very unpopular, but one of them was also stupid. Helping the “wrong” people, it turns out was a better choice than trying to actively hurt all the people.

I’m sure there is a lot of other factors at play but EU governments getting religion about belt tightening and small-government in ‘09-‘12 was phenomenally stupid.