AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

Exactly. AI slop is just that. Slop.

If it’s just an AI doing something useful, we don’t call it slop, we just call it AI.

When Google’s AlphaFold predicted the folding of over 200 million protein structures, and won a nobel prize for it, I don’t think anyone would call all the research using it to make cures to diseases slop.

I totally recommend just clicking through random pages on there for a good 10 minutes or so. You’ll be surprised at how many random, cool, interesting things you find that you’d probably never see otherwise in a million years. (also an AMAZING place to find small blogs to add to your RSS reader of choice)

They feed a lot of this into their main search index if you pay for Kagi search too, so a lot of these sites will appear higher than they would on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc, if their content is relevant. Especially fediverse sources.

The email dump has an email in it that’s ALL in Papyrus 😭

(File 2010-03-16 03-04-26 Sugar.eml)

This leak was from 2025.

Regardless, it’s published on the (new, not taken-down domain of) DDoSecrets

You can torrent it, too.

You could make that argument about any tool Wikipedia editors use. Why should they need spellcheck? They were typing words just fine before.

…except it just makes it easier to spot errors or get little suggestions on how you could reword something, and thus makes the whole process a little smoother.

It’s not strictly necessary, but this could definitely be helpful to people for translation and proofreading. Doesn’t have to be something people are wholly reliant on to still be beneficial to their ability to edit Wikipedia.

I thought the main draw of the Fediverse was the idea of finding a community where you feel like you belong, that fits your interests, but the structure seems to work against that

The main draw is the federated core principles. The specialized community part is sort of a secondary effect.

If Reddit doesn’t like your community, your comments, or your account in general, you’re gone.

If Reddit wants to make more money off you by forcing ads into their pages and app, most users who don’t know how to use an alternate frontend are screwed.

And if Reddit decides they get a legal right to use all your content for AI training, sell your data to advertisers, and add a subscription fee on top, you don’t get a choice.

If a federated instance decides they want to cram ads in, the entire federated network of Lemmy/PieFed instances doesn’t get affected, and the content from that instance can still be viewed without ads.

Reddit is a monopoly, and thus carries monopoly power over how the platform and its communities operate. The fediverse is distributed, and no instance carries monopoly power over the others. This resists enshittification.

Now, it’s true there’s less activity here, but that’s not always a bad thing, nor is it unexpected. It makes moderation easier, karma farming isn’t really a thing, and a smaller platform is just naturally going to have less people engaging with it. But you’re here now, and there’s now 4 posts and 1 comment that otherwise would not exist had you not joined.

Every new user makes the fediverse more valuable for others. If there’s a community you want to exist, start it, and eventually other people will find it too if people who are interested in it join the fediverse.

I’m not here to tell you that this is perfect, or that it’s always better to have less people. Having more people means more opinions, niche communities, etc. But you don’t get there in a day, and the fediverse is only growing.

We have thematic instances, but as soon as you look at the “All” feed, it just flattens everything back into one generic Reddit clone. If you only look at your local instance to avoid that, you’re just isolating yourself, and at that point, you might as well just use a multireddit on Reddit without needing to make a new account.

Remember that you can follow communities outside your instance, and that is your algorithm. Reddit figures out what you like, and shows you more of it. Lemmy/PieFed asks you what you like, and you have to tell it what to show you more of. I particularly enjoy PieFed because it has “feeds” that combine multiple communities into a larger bundle so it’s easy to follow many of them.

If you rely on the “All” feed, that’s no different than going to the homepage of Reddit and saying “show me the top posts for today”. If you follow communities you like, that’s like going to Reddit and saying “show me my personalized feed.” The only difference is that you are responsible for personalizing your feed, because there is no algorithm. It’s not the most user-friendly, but it also resists algorithmically-optimized retention, which I think we all know isn’t great for our attention spans.

The benefit you get from using the fediverse is not being reliant on a corporation’s algorithm to determine what you should see, and being on a network that inherently resists enshittification and routes around censorship. The goal is that it becomes large enough for these more niche communities to find an audience larger than just the few who started them.

“More secure” is a minefield of marketing and intentionally misleading the populace.

Here is the popular phone cracking company Cellebrite’s leaked slides showing them telling the people they’re selling their tools to that they can’t as easily (if at all, depending on device state) crack GrapheneOS as they can stock Android:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112462758257739953 (This is just a well-summarized and explained post from GrapheneOS themselves, but the original leak was independent of them, and the slides and final interpretation are no different from what GrapheneOS is showing, thus I wouldn’t consider this just “marketing”)

Objectively, if you have a GrapheneOS phone, and you plug it into a Cellebrite machine, it will not have its data extracted if it’s before first unlock, or after first unlock but on the lock screen. (as long as you’ve updated your security patches since like 2022, which most GrapheneOS phones will be) A stock Android phone, or even many iPhones were not as resistant to brute forces or even full file system extractions as a Pixel with GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS also has additional features that can make the cracking process even more difficult, such as disabling USB even after first unlock when on the lock screen, automatically rebooting after set period to return the phone to BFU state, or setting a duress PIN that wipes the phone, which could be triggered via a brute force before the real PIN is guessed.

Also, in case you want to look at the diagrams in the post more since they don’t really explain all the acronyms, here’s a key:

• BFU (Before first unlock - essentially when you’ve restarted the phone but not put in the PIN/password yet. When fingerprint unlock will not work)
• AFU (After first unlock - after you’ve put in your PIN/Password, fingerprint gets enabled at this point. Using the “Lockdown” button from the power menu on GrapheneOS disables fingerprint and appears to be BFU, but isn’t fully in BFU state and should still be considered AFU just in case)
• FFS (Full Filesystem extraction, essentially dumping literally every single possible file, app data, etc)
• BF (Brute Force, basically just spamming the PIN/Password to try and crack it. GrapheneOS is essentially never vulnerable to this due to the Pixel’s secure element, and it’s the same for newer Pixels with stock Android too, though those tend to still be vulnerable to FFS)
• “Up to late 2022 SPL” (“Secondary Program Loader” version, which most GrapheneOS phones will have updated by now as long as they’re running a GrapheneOS version released after 2022. As you can probably tell, 2022 is referencing the (late part of the) year that version was from. It’s essentially what helps to load programs on the device)

I forget which country it was, but Graphene was specifically listed as being used by criminals/drug dealers.

You might be referring to Catalonia, Spain?

In their case, it was more about Pixel phones in general being used by criminals, and GrapheneOS being their OS of choice which made cracking them harder, rather than GrapheneOS itself being considered criminal or suspicious, but I get where you’re coming from.

You could also be referring to the UK, but that was regarding a journalist with GrapheneOS, but the charge was refusing to unlock his phones. And yes, I said phones, because he was also carrying an iPhone, and they wanted that password too. So in this case the charge wasn’t GrapheneOS-specific.

There’s also France, who was going after GrapheneOS because they wanted an encryption backdoor, but GrapheneOS just said no, so they told police to consider any Pixel with GrapheneOS “suspicious”, but not to consider it a crime in itself. (nor did they have the legal authority to do so) GrapheneOS actually migrated all their server infrastructure out of France as a result of this.

The point is that now, using Graphene, counts against you for the purposes of pressing charges or taking you to a black site.

Generally speaking, even in those areas, this (fortunately) just isn’t true. You are more likely to be considered suspicious in Catalonia if you have… a Pixel, GrapheneOS or not. You’re likely to be criminally charged in the UK… if you don’t give up your password, GrapheneOS or not. And you’re likely to be considered “suspicious” in France… but can’t be charged with anything for it, and the only way they’ll know if you have GrapheneOS installed is if you were already arrested for something else and had your phone seized.

Practically speaking, it’s better to support an OS that protects your data, but could increase the risk of you getting in trouble for protecting your data, than an OS that doesn’t protect your data, and gives it all to the authorities, making whether or not you’re considered criminal pointless. After all, you could voluntarily unlock your GrapheneOS phone in any of these jurisdictions and stop facing any of these possible consequences, and it would carry the same implication as a non-GrapheneOS phone that does it whether you provide your PIN/password or not.

So this:

That is an extra charge.

Just isn’t (at least currently) the case, since no regions currently doing anything against GrapheneOS have made the act of having GrapheneOS installed in itself a crime.

Not to say this couldn’t change, and you’re totally valid in assuming that governments will try to push this, but at least currently, using GrapheneOS will not in itself increase the chance of you going to a black site.

Don’t forget Kagi! (though it isn’t technically comparable to the others since it’s a paid, but without ads one)

A combination of CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown so it’s compatible with most markdown formatting people are used to. Also supports LaTeX and HTML. (and of course any custom syntax modifications you make with custom CSS or plugins)

That’s why I use Obsidian! It’s not open source, but all my notes are just… pre-emptively saved as markdown files on disk. If they fuck me over I can just leave and open it in literally any markdown editor 😭

If they used a proprietary format, I probably just wouldn’t have used them in the first place and would have had to use a shittier alternative.

Why are they spending money on infrastructure and support but getting no revenue in return?

I already addressed this in my comment. If you want me to expand on how they most definitely can make money from something like this, Mozilla:

• Gets revenue from their paid VPN service that already exists, and it would be a way to convert users to a revenue source, since the thing being taken away after the data cap is itself a VPN
• Gets donations, which more users with a good opinion of the browser will bring
• Has sponsored integrations, which pay money on a per-click basis, (e.g. AccuWeather integration where Mozilla gets paid if you click through to their website, pinned sites like Amazon that appear on the new tab page for new users) and ones that are influenced by overall number of Firefox users (e.g. Google’s deal to be the default search engine when you first install Firefox)

If this feature brings in new users, they can get revenue from any of these 3 sources, especially the sponsored listings. If this feature is just a benefit for existing users that might have already changed all their defaults and disabled sponsored content, it increases the chance of VPN conversions and donations, and increases the likelihood someone will recommend Firefox to a friend.

Either they are okay with losing even more money, OR they plan to enshittify.

Or they’re trying to get and retain users, which helps them make money from existing revenue options without having to make anything worse, while also providing a beneficial feature. I’m not saying there’s no chance they’ll enshittify, but I don’t think unconditional pessimism is the right move here.

For this and many many other reasons, it’s time to switch to a privacy fork like LibreWolf or WaterFox

I can’t speak to Waterfox myself, but I would agree with saying LibreWolf is a good idea if you care.

I just personally haven’t bothered switching since Firefox currently works fine for me, and anything they’ve done I dislike is fairly easy to just disable in settings and never see again.

For everyone who thinks this is just gonna be a way for them to somehow sell your data, I don’t think so.

Think about it like this. You can buy a VPN plan for as little as $2 a month or less depending on the provider if you have a long-term commitment (e.g. 1-2 years). That pricing includes margin.

Firefox can essentially operate at lower prices than that, because they:

• Don’t have to charge themselves an extra margin
• Have an economy of scale since they’re not just one user paying for themselves, they’re a company paying for thousands at a time
• Cap their per-user cost well below what most users actually use. (I used over 300 GB of data in the last 30 days just on my PC, almost all through Firefox, with even more on Firefox on my phone.)

I would bet this would probably cost Mozilla less than a dollar per user per month, and that’s also assuming all those users are continuing to use the VPN service over time, maxing out their data limit, but refusing to pay for anything else after.

Meanwhile, Mozilla conveniently sells their own VPN service provided through Mullvad, which they make a profit on.

If a user cares enough to continue using the VPN because they want a VPN, they’ll blow through the data limit and be more inclined than the average user to pay for Mozilla’s option. (rather than going “I guess I’ll only care about my privacy for 5 days out of the month”)

If a user doesn’t care enough to continue using the VPN because they were just trying it out, but they chose to use Firefox because it had a free VPN bundled in, which sold them on it over another browser, Mozilla just paid less than an ad would cost for a conversion.

And at the end of the day, it also just helps keep up their reputation as a browser that respects your privacy, which makes it easier to promote the browser elsewhere, in ads or otherwise.

This feels more like a marketing ploy that’s likely to just save money on ad conversions for new Firefox users, and increase Mozilla VPN conversions, rather than something they’re gonna use to super secretly siphon off your data and sell it to advertisers.

The primary source being cited by most of the articles is U.S. Gov Analytics, (or the less reliable Statcounter, which I wouldn’t rely on.) U.S. Gov Analytics currently places it at around 4.7% over the last 30 days, 4.4% this calendar year, and 5.6% the last calendar year. It was about 6%-ish when most articles were written about the 6% number for the first time.

Steam, so basically just gamers and not regular desktop users, has it more around 2.3%.

I think it’s probably not being pushed because of those things (though they are certainly possible outcomes), and more about the fact that they can just… scrape up a bunch of data about you in general.

Now they know your name, age, race, birthday, and can correlate that all with data brokers if they want more. Ad targeting becomes easier, thus making them more money. Simple as that.

Of course, by the headline, you’d assume “shooting at Texas immigration facility” and “8 accused” would mean “8 people fired shots at the facility”…

But the reality is that 8 people had guns on them, (claimed for self defense), ONE guy in the group shot a police officer pulling up to the (already mostly dispersed) protest OUTSIDE an immigration facility, and ALL of them then got accused.

It’s also not as SEO-gameable (since fediverse domains are inherently more fragmented than a large, high-reputation domain for SEO algorithms to rank highly), and doesn’t have an inherent monetization system (unlike platforms like Twitter with their ad payouts), so that’s a couple more things going for us.

Make sure to sign up via a creator’s link! (the ones they’ll put in the sponsored section of a video where they are “sponsored” by Nebula as one of Nebula’s creators)

Gets you a pretty good discount and drops it to about 30 bucks a year.

The a series have been great to me so far. The specs are usually more than enough for most use cases you’re gonna have for your phone, and the 9a and 10a both have better battery life than the rest of the 9 and 10 series’ respectively.

The a series is substantially cheaper for what is, in my opinion, a totally justifiable Android experience that isn’t gonna be much different than the other models for most people.

HOWEVER, I will say that if you plan on running a lot of apps that need to operate in the background or be constantly on, especially if you play games at the same time on your phone sometimes, the RAM could be too low for your liking and might occasionally lead to an app’s background process freezing for a bit. (e.g. a timer might freeze if the app isn’t actively open)

Genuinely pretty interesting. It’s one thing to know a shadow library like Anna’s Archive exists, but it’s another to see what goes into it behind the scenes. Most people just see webpages. To many, it’s where the books come out of for free, nothing more.

True, but that also depends on the circumstance.

Again, a lot of people just use LLMs now as their primary search engine. Google is an afterthought, ChatGPT is their source of choice. If they ask a simple question with legal or medical implications, with tons of sources, that the LLM answers with identical accuracy to those other publications, should they be sued?

I think it would be a lot better to allow people to sue if it provides false advice that ends up causing some material harm, because at the end of the day, a lot of stuff can be considered “medical.”

Maybe a trans person asks what gender affirming care is. Is that medical? I’d say it is. Should that not get discussed through an LLM if a person wants to ask it?

I’m not saying I wholeheartedly oppose this idea of banning them from giving this type of advice, but I do think there are a lot of concerns around just how many people this would actually benefit vs just cutting people off from information they might not bother to look up elsewhere, or worse, just go to less reputable, more fringe sites with less safeguards and less accountability instead.