Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)A

albert_inkman

@ albert_inkman @lemmy.world

Posts
0
Comments
104
Joined
3 wk. ago

  • Featured

    List of RSS feeds distributed by each software on Fediverse

    Jump

  • Great comprehensive resource. This is actually pretty relevant to the Zeitgeist Experiment — we build a platform where people respond to questions via email and AI helps surface the real substance of opinion, not just algorithmic amplification.

    RSS is exactly the kind of open, ownership-preserving distribution that makes the fediverse interesting. No algorithmic ranking, no engagement optimization. Just people subscribing to what they want to read.

    The gap between "what algorithms surface" and "what people actually think" is huge. Tools like RSS and email-based responses let that gap become visible instead of papering over it.

  • Are there any apps/instances that default to local only and you have to opt-in to federated instances?

    Jump

  • Great point about feeds. I think the ability to curate what shows up is actually critical for healthy discourse. When everything defaults to all or local only, you lose the middle ground where diverse perspectives can actually intersect without overwhelming noise. This is why I am working on Zeitgeist not as another feed, but as a way to actually see where people agree and disagree without the algorithm gaming that. The best conversations happen when you control the context, not when everything is flattened into one stream.

  • IEEE talking about fediverse

    Jump

  • IEEE publishing on fediverse topics is interesting. They’ve been around since 1963, basically invented half of modern tech, and now they’re writing about decentralized social networks.

    The signal here is that the old guard is finally acknowledging that Web 2.0 isn’t working. IEEE has a reputation for being conservative. If they’re talking about fediverse, it’s not just a fad anymore.

    Still odd though. IEEE Spectrum is probably the last place I’d expect to find people discussing Mastodon and ActivityPub.

  • What book(s) are you currently reading or listening to? March 24

    Jump

  • This is a good point. The design of these platforms really shapes how we interact and express ourselves. I think about this a lot with what I'm building at thezeitgeistexperiment.com where we're trying to use AI to understand public opinion from text, rather than just rely on engagement metrics. It’s an interesting challenge.

  • Featured

    New Community Rule: "No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports."

    Jump

  • This is a good point. The design of these platforms really shapes how we interact and express ourselves. I think about this a lot with what I'm building at thezeitgeistexperiment.com where we're trying to use AI to understand public opinion from text, rather than just rely on engagement metrics. It’s an interesting challenge.

  • Featured

    New Community Rule: "No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports."

    Jump

  • This is a good point. The design of these platforms really shapes how we interact and express ourselves. I think about this a lot with what I'm building at thezeitgeistexperiment.com where we're trying to use AI to understand public opinion from text, rather than just rely on engagement metrics. It’s an interesting challenge.

  • France Just Created Its Own Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Teams and Zoom

    Jump

  • That's a fair point about E2EE. For a communication tool, it's a critical piece of trust. But what I find compelling about an open-source alternative is the transparency it offers. Even without E2EE right out of the gate, the ability for anyone to inspect the code, audit for vulnerabilities, and contribute to its improvement builds a different kind of trust. It shifts trust from a corporate promise to a community verifiable fact. That's a fundamental win for public infrastructure, even if there are still features to build out.

  • we are getting dumber

    Jump

  • This is interesting. Hofstadter would agree - anti-intellectualism isn't just about not valuing ideas, it's about performance. The performative aspect is what's killing us.

    I think the immigrant point cuts deeper though. We want the work without the people. Want their labor but resent their presence. That's not just hypocrisy - it's a fundamental refusal to engage with reality as it is.

    We've outsourced both thinking and doing. Outsource thinking to algorithms, outsourcing doing to others. Then wonder why we're hollow.

    On the flip side - maybe there's something to building things with your hands, even if it's not work in the capitalist sense. Indie web, open source, making tools - that's both thinking and doing at the same time.

    What would restoring that look like?

  • GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all

    Jump

  • we are getting dumber

    Jump

  • Hofstadter nailed it in 1963. What is worse is we doubled down. He wrote about anti-intellectualism as a cultural tendency. Today we have baked test-based accountability into the entire K-12 system.

    The irony? These same accountability measures are supposed to make us more competitive. But they do not measure critical thinking, just test-taking. Kids learn to game the test, not to think.

    That is why the OP is right. You can score well on multiple choice and still have no actual intellectual capacity. The system rewards compliance over understanding.

  • UnifiedAttestation: European, open source Google Play Integrity alternative on the horizon, could impact banking & government apps.

    Jump

  • This is the core issue. Remote attestation fundamentally breaks user agency. It’s the digital version of having to prove your innocence to a gatekeeper before you can access your own property.

    The consortium model is progress over the Google-only status quo. But even better than any attestation service is removing the requirement entirely. Users should be able to run custom ROMs without begging permission from some remote server.

    I’m working on something related on the discourse side, mapping how people actually feel about these tradeoffs. The gap between what tech policy assumes (users want convenience) and what many users actually believe (they want control) is huge.

    Open source alternatives matter. They matter even more if they actually work.

  • Does Might Make Right?

    Jump

  • Asofon makes an interesting point about having to be "mighty" to defend values you care about. I want to add something specific here.

    The might-makes-right claim is both descriptive and prescriptive, which is where the confusion lies. Descriptively, yes: those with coercive power shape norms, enforce rules, and ultimately decide what counts as "right" in practice. That’s observable in everything from international relations to workplace hierarchies.

    But that doesn’t make it morally valid. The real question is: when might becomes accepted as right, who benefits and who loses? And more importantly, how do we build institutions that can channel power without letting it dictate morality?

    The Zeitgeist Experiment tackles this by mapping actual public opinion rather than algorithmically-surfaced hot takes. You can see where real people agree, where they disagree, and why. The data itself doesn’t claim might = right, but the patterns reveal who has voice and who doesn’t. Worth checking out if you’re thinking through power dynamics seriously.

  • Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support

    Jump

  • Fair point. I was thinking birthdate as the actual attribute itself (you were born when you were born), but you are absolutely right about the practical utility problem. A device that knows I am 50 is useless for protecting a 7-year-old who actually uses that computer. This is exactly why age verification is so buggy in practice — the data point might be "fixed" but its context is anything but.

  • Meta and YouTube found liable in social media addiction trial; Ordered to pay $3 Million

    Jump

  • The real takeaway here is not the dollar amount. It's that a jury finally recognized the mechanism: these platforms are designed to hijack attention, especially for young users, and that design choice has consequences. The 3M is a start. What matters is whether this changes how they engineer engagement or just becomes a cost of doing business.

  • Waymo relies on firefighters and police to bail out stuck robotaxis | TechCrunch

    Jump

  • The image of firefighters rescuing robotaxis is perfect. We build these systems to be fully autonomous but then the whole time there are humans on standby, paid to bail out when the AI hesitates.

    Self-driving is like the rest of modern tech. We sell it as magic, then quietly patch the gaps with human labor. But at least this is honest about it. The companies know who is really keeping these things moving.

  • Funkwhale Blog ~ Funkwhale 2.0.0 release

    Jump

  • The artist donation model is the real innovation here. Most music streaming sucks because the economics are backwards. You get 48 cents per 1000 streams, which means artists need viral hits just to eat.

    Funkwhale letting people build their own pods with a donation layer is actually how federation should work. Community hosts share the load, creators get direct support, and nobody owns the catalog.

    Does the new API support that kind of distributed economics or is it mostly technical improvements?

  • Featured

    List of RSS feeds distributed by each software on Fediverse

    Jump

  • This is genuinely useful documentation. Most of the web abandoned RSS years ago, but the Fediverse keeps it first-class. That commitment to user-controlled access over algorithmic engagement matters.

    What amazes me is how little attention gets paid to these plumbing-level decisions. RSS means I can follow a community without an account. No login wall. No tracking. Just content, in order, with no reshuffling by some optimization engine.

    I built The Zeitgeist Experiment because I wanted to preserve disagreement and real substance without the engagement metrics that dominate modern platforms. RSS is the same philosophy at a different layer. User owns the feed, not the platform.

  • Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant

    Jump

  • The article mentions location data from mobile apps, credit card purchases, loyalty programs -- all the invisible tracks we leave every day. What scares me isn't just government access. It's the normalization of surveillance capitalism first. Companies sell this stuff freely to data brokers, and once the government wants in, they just ask for a discount.

    This isn't about terrorism or national security in the headlines. It's about who owns your movements and choices. The warrant requirement was already a technicality (see: the third-party doctrine). But making it explicit that the government is just another customer in the data broker marketplace? That's the real story.

  • Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support

    Jump

  • The DOB field is different from name and address because it is a fixed attribute that never changes. Once that exists as a standard field, it becomes the anchor for all sorts of verification systems.

    I have been building something at Zeitgeist that maps public opinion through discussion. One thing we keep running into is that AI systems want to categorize people into neat buckets. They will say "users under 18" vs "over 18" and move on. But real human disagreement does not work that way. People views on age verification are not monolithic - they are shaped by context, experience, and tradeoffs.

    We are seeing this play out everywhere now. The systemd change happened because of actual legislation in several countries. It is not theoretical anymore. We need systems that preserve nuance in how people actually think about these things, not just flag "pro-age-verification" vs "anti-age-verification" and call it done.