Good point but I will say even with immutable distros users are given a lot more control than Windows or Mac.

In Bazzite, installing software, for example, works differently than under a typical distribution.

This is true, but it’s also on the whole a lot more familiar to a non-Linux user (open app store, search, download).

“Stuff in my feed I don’t want to see in my feed” is kind of the exact problem the Fediverse set out to solve. Nothing gets “injected” to a feed here so if you are seeing it, it’s a choice to continue to do so.

“any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state” is not the common definition of “independent media” (it’s not even the definition given in the hyperlinked definition). “Independence” in this context refers to journalistic independence.

Zorin is another distro that (very successfully imo) does a windows-style taskbar with GNOME and is parent friendly, though like I said before, I think today I would go with something immutable for a non-techie because they’re very hard to break.

KDE is the easiest for coming from Windows, you almost never never need the command line or anything “extra” to customize it (beyond what even Windows will allow).

GNOME (especially in Ubuntu) by default is more Macintosh-like which might appeal to some people, it’s “simpler” but any customizations will require navigating the add-ons (and in my experience inevitably the command line too).

I think KDE is the one for most people who just want a functioning PC. GNOME could be good for the PC you might make for your parent. Bonus points for an immutable distro which are even harder to break.

Bing and all Bing-based engines stopped being able to show Reddit results.

Not accurate, actually!

The moderator to user ratio on the fediverse is orders of magnitude higher than commercial platforms. Even Lemmy.world (a large, loosely moderated Lemmy instance) has again, orders of magnitude more eyes on its content than reddit.

This means that even if a chatbot gets invented that is impossible to distinguish form a human, mods will more readily be able to tell if it is pushing a narrative/shilling products.

Save yourself some clicks: https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV

If the article doesn’t define what “AI” means then the article doesn’t actually mean anything. Market research studying what people know about a vague and undefined term like “AI” can ultimately only produce undefined results.

It’s like asking people their feelings on “woke” or “god”. If everyone is talking about something different then nobody can have more or less understanding of it.

Activitypub accounts are portable actually. Lemmy is not as slick as Mastodon with this feature yet but will likely get there.

The kickstarter is official too, Daniel tooted it recently.

Is something finally going to federate with bluesky?

From an e-waste perspective not having a battery is really cool. The article doesn’t mention this, but the plastic appears recycled too. I wonder how it types?

I’m surprised nobody has yet jail-broken Samsung and LG TVs and made a custom Tizen ROM

Truly amazing how many journalists have drank the big tech kool-aid.

I don’t get why people are so interested in the fediverse.

Because Mastodon is Twitter without the possibility of an Elon Musk and Lemmy/Piefed is Reddit without the possibility of a Steve Huffman. You clearly feel that you can do better than the collective efforts of the ActivityPub devs so I am rooting for you!

“Lemmy” is actually not a platform like Reddit, it’s software and the network of instances running that software is decentralized (Lemmy uses the ActivityPub protocol) meaning each instance is operated by a different person (or group). There are also other similar softwares like Piefed and mBin that work pretty well with Lemmy. That is all to say that if an Admin or Mod is “getting fascisty” you can block that instance, join another, or even create your own. That’s the beauty of ActivityPub!

I’m with you. Tiktok is about as “healthy” as vaping. There are other just as bad (if not worse) apps out there, and the reasoning is stupid and has some first amendment concerns. But I won’t die on the protecting Tiktok hill.

Bluesky takes advantage of self hosters for more distribution and reliability, but still maintains centralized control over content and user management.

This is what I don’t understand, why would anyone choose to host when there is zero advantage? I sort of feel is by design so they can claim “decentralized” while still having full control over the data.