Summary of the bill from Congress.gov -
This bill prohibits certain large online platforms from engaging in specified acts, including giving preference to their own products on the platform, unfairly limiting the availability on the platform of competing products from another business, or discriminating in the application or enforcement of the platform’s terms of service among similarly situated users.
Further, a platform may not materially restrict or impede the capacity of a competing business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features. The bill also restricts the platform’s use of nonpublic data obtained from or generated on the platform and prohibits the platform from restricting access to platform data generated by the activity of a competing business user. The bill also provides additional restrictions related to installing or uninstalling software, search or ranking functionality, and retaliation for contact with law enforcement regarding actual or potential violations of law.
The bill establishes affirmative defenses for the prohibited conduct.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice must designate whether an entity is a platform covered by the bill, and both must carry out enforcement activities.
The bill also provides for civil penalties, injunctions, and the forfeit of profits for repeat offenders.
Hearing a song I liked and missing the opportunity to listen to it again later is not a serious issue, just another piece of straw on the camels back.
My point is that a lot of little inconveniences add up to a significant life-style change, especially when the end-user is supposed to choose that life-style change.
Just a few weeks ago I used a dumbphone for 2 days in the US.
During that time
- I was called for work while out and the caller expected me to review their email and respond while on the phone with them. This would have been easy with a smartphone, but instead I had to go home, review their email, then call them back the next day. They were annoyed by the inconvenience and delay.
- I was called to schedule a doctors appointment while out, I needed to call the office back when I got home because I could not check my calendar without a smartphone.
- I was working on a project and wanted to take a photos for memories / share when explaining why the project was taking so long. I needed to leave the project site, go home, grab my camera, return to the site, take the photos, upload them to my computer, then email them.
- I wanted to log in to an account while away home, but I was unable to access my password manager or email without my smart phone.
- My family went out to eat and I needed to borrow one of their smartphones because I could not scan the QR code for the menu and the restaurant did not have paper menus available.
- I needed to deposit a check, so I would have driven nearly 20 miles round trip if I had not used remote deposit on my smartphone instead.
- I wanted to listen to an audiobook from the library, but I need to use the overdrive / libby app in order to do this.
- I heard a song on the radio and I could not use Shazam to identify it.
- I needed to display a ticket for an event, so I had a friend save my ticket on their smartphone and they used their phone for both of us.
- I needed to read a smart home monitor, but the only interface available was a smartphone app.
- Discord kept crashing on my desktop, so I used my smartphone instead.
I gave up using a dumbphone after only 2 days because smartphones are integrated so deeply into modern society that it felt prohibitively difficult to function without one where I live in the United States. Everywhere a person goes it is assumed they have a smartphone on them, so anyone without a smartphone needs to find workarounds for simple tasks and is forced to navigate dozens of inconveniences every day.
I am spoiled and addicted to the convenience that smartphones provide, but my experience persuaded me that systemic changes, instead of individual choices, are necessary to ultimately solve these problems. Evidently, it can not be expected that a significant portion of the public will choose to abstain from the convenience smartphones offer even when they are educated about the harms caused by smartphones. Therefore, the only solution I can imagine is regulation to mitigate those harms, and humane technology design that solves the problems of profit-maximizing technology design.
The reason for the opioid epidemic is not because the medical system has clamped down on prescriptions.
Pharmaceutical companies lied to doctors and patients about how addictive opioids are. Then, a series of studies concluded that many people are living with untreated chronic pain; so prescribing opioids more frequently was advised by medical associations and public health authorities.
It was only a matter of time until the truth about opioids’ addictiveness became obvious and undeniable. Only THEN did the “whole” medical system start clamping down on opioids.
The Sackler Family (owners of Perdue Pharma) directly caused the deaths of millions of innocent people by misleading doctors, patients, and health authorities. The Sackler Family is spending millions of dollars to launder their reputation and prevent the public from associating them with the opioid epidemic and the millions of lives they ruined for profit.
Look into Nextcloud calendar, you can use the default calendar application on your phone / desktop while offline and it will automatically sync with your Nextcloud when connected to the internet. Hetzner Storage Share is an inexpensive Nextcloud host with calendar enabled by default.
I believe the greatest factor is community. In my experience wealthier people, and wealthier areas, tend to have less community and weaker interpersonal bonds because they do not depend on one another to the same extent that poorer people do.
When your neighbor needs to borrow a tool, you need to sleep at a friend’s place, or you give a friend a ride to work you’re building relationships. The web of relationships between all the neighbors in a community forms a culture.
When people become wealthier they don’t need to borrow tools because they can buy their own, they don’t need to crash at a friend’s place when they can stay in a hotel, and they don’t need a ride to work if they have their own transportation.
In my experience some of the isolating effects of wealth accumulation can be mitigated with infrastructure that increases the inter-dependence, trust, and fraternity between neighbors. A few examples are walkable cities, cooperative organizations, social clubs, public parks, etc…
Companies have brands, people have personalities.
I have read too many books evangelizing hustle culture, and I have listened to too many MBAs preaching “selling yourself” by “promoting your personal brand”. It’s bullshit, I’m a human being - I don’t want to sell myself, or spend countless hours crafting a narcissistic professional persona.
All I want is meaningful work, a modest livelihood, and a stable community. None of which requires fame, and it doesn’t require tracking my every keystroke. Exploitative tech companies are so desperate to chase infinite growth that they will sacrifice and erode everything that makes life worth living in pursuit of profit.
Is it really any wonder that people just want to use the internet without being data-mined, judged, and manipulated?
I’m not sure if this is exactly the sort of solution you need, but check out Loomio. It is open source and self-hostable.
Rclone is the best program I have used for any cloud storage needs, you should be able to mount your google drive using rclone. It is a CLI program, but it is very easy and intuitive to use. As an added bonus you can skip cryptomator and use rclone’s built in encryption.
A great book on the topic is Brotopia by Emily Chang.
This is exactly the type of info I was hoping to find, thank you!
I found only one Low-Income Designated CDFI in my area. I think there’s a real void here. I need to find a volunteer opportunity or another way to connect with financial leaders in my area to learn more about my local credit unions and maybe help direct more funds towards serving the community.
It’s kind of disappointing that there aren’t better options in my area, but it is also reassuring to know I’m not just cynical! Thank you!
Check out https://frame.work/ it’s a pretty high-end and completely modular laptop.
There’s https://www.mercuryos.com/
Mercury OS is a speculative vision designed to question the paradigms governing human-computer interaction today.
If you’re wanting to self-host a cloud service, then Nextcloud is second to none. You can use NextCloud together with Cryptomator for easy client-side encryption, but If you need automatic syncing look into rclone instead.
If you are planning to use this for backups, check out borg backup and vorta(easy to use GUI for borg).
At least in my circles and where I live it’s pretty normal to shit on mainstream apps. Most people still use them, but if my opinion of those platforms comes up I never feel judged. In fact, since the social dilemma came out and after Facebook’s most recent controversies and name change I’ve heard more and more people speaking poorly of social-media, smart phones, and algorithms in general.
In my experience it’s almost as if using social-media is perceived the same as smoking was in the 80s-90s: everyone knows it’s terrible for you, but it’s normal. Now, in conversation there’s almost a prestige in saying “I don’t use Facebook” that causes people who do use Facebook to immediately justify using it by saying things like “Yeah, I only use it to keep in touch with family”, or “I don’t check it very often”.
Many of my friends and family half-joke about their addiction to their phones and apps, it seems pretty widely recognized now.
I don’t believe alternative apps, services, and platforms are necessarily better, so if I bring up the fediverse it’s usually in the context of me advocating for government forcing interoperability between social media sites to weaken the tech-giant oligopoly. Most people’s response is basically “huh, I didn’t even know that was possible”.
For using Linux I used to catch flak from my friends when trying to play games with them, but we don’t play games nearly as often anymore and anything we do play generally works on Linux now, so I don’t get teased anymore. Amongst every single non-techie friend I have they could not possible care less that I use Linux.
In order to identify systemic / cultural discrimination against certain demographics. If these types of questions were never asked we would only have personal anecdotes to guide decision making.
e.g. We are better prepared to address the gender disparity within the industry when we have surveys and studies reporting the massive imbalance of men and women. By asking the same questions year after year we are able to tell whether diversity programs and policy changes are working.
My understanding is that voice interfacing is already the most common way to interact with a smartphone in China. Chinese (and other non-alphabetic languages) are notoriously tedious to type, and all sorts of keyboards have been invented to make it easier, but they all have a learning curve. Instead, it is far simpler to simply use voice recognition. Over the last decade many companies have pivoted their focus towards the Chinese economy, so a lot of the voice assistants, customer service platforms, and other software innovations we enjoy in the west are the direct result of companies trying to break into Chinese markets (and other emerging markets) with voice-driven designs that are accessible to billions of people for whom typing is an insurmountable friction.
Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant’s User Friendly is a really good book for learning about state of the art UI / UX design and the current trends that are likely to determine what our computer interfaces will look like in 2025 - 2030.
https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/ , Fuchsia - Wikipedia - Another really interesting project. This is Google’s new operating system they are building from scratch to replace Android, ChromeOS, Windows, and perhaps even server Linux. Fuchsia is being built from the ground up to replace the traditional desktop metaphor with a conversational or “story driven” metaphor instead. The ultimate goal is to be able to tell your computer in human language what you want it to do and have the computer do it. e.g. “Ok Google, open the survey results Sarah emailed to me. Ok, now plot a histogram with markings at each standard deviation, oh and a pie chart too. Great, save that and email it to Kyle.”
I’m not aware of what Microsoft, Apple, or any other tech giants might be working on, but Fuchsia is at least currently open source under BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0 licenses.
I was looking into getting an eink display for my rasperberry pi so that I could have a minimalist terminal only computer similar to the light phone. Now, I’m really looking forward to getting a PineNote, loading a compatible distro on it, and avoiding having to build my own case!
Thanks for the suggestion! On the surface it looks like such a cool organization, I picked up a copy of William & Kathleen Whyte’s Making Mondragon, I’m looking forward to reading it after the holidays.
If you haven’t heard of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer yet, it’s a really good read to understand how things got to be the way they are. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, but at every opportunity we’ve doubled down on critically flawed designs.
These are really problems with stroads, car-centric infrastructure, and car culture rather than with the vehicles themselves.
I like to watch Not Just Bikes, he has a lot of well-done videos exploring why car-centric infrastructure causes all sorts of problems, and showcasing how The Netherlands successfully re-built their infrastructure to prioritize pedestrian traffic and public transportation.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many egregious scandals associated with Missouri’s Parson administration, and the Missouri GOP in general.
Most recently Governor Parson’s administration requested a study to be done to assess the effectiveness of mask mandates in Missouri. The results of the study showed that mask mandates were effective and had saved countless lives, so the administration refused to release the study and stated “The analysis will not change [our administration’s] stance against mask mandates”. https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article256266117.html
Your OWN research invalidates your position? Oh well, just ignore the facts!
Audius currently does not compensate artists at all, paying artists isn’t implemented yet. It also facilitates piracy by not verifying artists and allowing anyone to upload copyrighted content, if illegal content is posted there is supposed to be an arbitration system, but that also isn’t implemented yet. What is implemented is their VIP tier scheme where you can show off how much disposable income you have by buying Audio tokens. It’s clear where their priorities lie!
An unfinished product not ready for prime time is fine, but the problem I have with Audius is their product is not at all minimally viable, but they’re rolling it out anyway. Artists are not compensated, there is no accountability for posting copyrighted material, and they are trying to entice users to buy into their currently useless audio token.
Yeah, but I take every review with a grain of salt. I ordered desk-mounted camera stand a while ago and when I did I went straight to the most critical reviews. People were complaining that the clamp that attaches to the desk was breaking too easily, but that particular stand had a neck that was like 3x thicker than normal to accommodate heavier cameras. When people tried to adjust the neck while it was clamped to the desk the torque would break the clamp. I bought the stand, but I make sure to loosen the clamp and support the neck when I adjust it.
There’s no way to make a meme against a group or in support of an ideology without stripping away all the nuance and dehumanizing people. Many of the articles that are posted here are misleading and in some cases entirely untrue.
Yesterday, I down voted an article claiming “AP confirms no Uyghur genocide”. I read the cited AP article and found the post’s click bait title was completely false. The post’s author is pointing at a report that contradicts his beliefs and claiming that his beliefs are therefore correct because the article is lieing. It is fine to refute an article, but to twist an article’s words and then claim that the source says something it clearly doesn’t is just dishonest.
I believe misleading and dehumanizing posts should be downvoted in order to promote a space where diverse peoples can all feel welcome.
If you have just one then you haven’t read enough books!
Educated - Tara Westover.
Wild - Cheryl Strayed.
Capital and Ideology - Thomas Piketty.
Bowling Alone - Robert Putnam.
There are dozens more books that deserve honorable mentions, but these four have been the most personally impactful and deeply relatable to my own lived experiences.
I heard a story from a professor who used to be a contractor for the US Department of Defense, he was at the pentagon talking and walking with his boss when he followed his boss into a room where he didn’t have the clearance to be. It was an accident, and nothing came of it, but he said he saw a drone operator eating a poptart while surveying somewhere.
That image has always kinda stuck with me. We like to think of our institutions, governments, and militaries as exact infallible machines, but at the end of the day everything is run by regular people eating poptarts.
So, anytime I think “there’s no way a system could be that incompetent” I remember that everything is run by regular mistake-making people who are eating poptarts.
Just search “install steam Fedora” and the first result is https://itsfoss.com/install-steam-fedora/
In that guide it has the correct instructions to enable the RPMFusion repos, then install steam. It even provides the necessary terminal commands to copy + paste:
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install steam
Never mind that Linus could tweet “how do I install steam on Fedora?” or ask his live stream, he’d be flooded with the correct answer in like 3 seconds.
Kinda disappointed they shot down Fedora so quickly, that’s my favorite distro! I don’t think I’ve ever used a distro that “just worked” better than Fedora. I love that it does not adulterate packages with distro-specific theming, presets, or libraries / dependencies (eg. Livav), etc. that is relatively common practice on ubuntu-based distros. I’m going to change the default theme and settings anyway, so I’d rather use software untouched from upstream as much as possible to enjoy better stability and compatibility. Fedora packages are pretty much untouched from upstream and between rpmfusion, copr, and flatpak I have never encountered a third-party package that wasn’t easy to find and install.
If there’s a bug or incompatibility RedHat / Fedora is better about committing fixes upstream for all to benefit. This is opposed to Ubuntu who are infamous for having a very “fuck everyone else, we’re doing things our own way” attitude towards upstream, downstream, and the wider community (e.g. Mir).
Fedora is also the testing ground for RedHat / CentOS / RockyLinux which are the big enterprise Linux distros. Support and stability are paramount for RedHat, so in my experience it was always easy to find well-written documentation, and software compatibility with RedHat distros is really really good. Plus, the man, myth, and legend himself is a long-time Fedora user.
I love Linux and I’ve used it almost exclusively for 10 years. That said, Windows and MacOS have always been more stable for me than any desktop Linux distro.
For instance, when a Linux desktop starts getting overloaded it has been my experience that the UI will start to lag. MacOS and Windows seem to give a higher priority to processing UI elements so that even when the system becomes overloaded it still presents a smooth UI (even if programs are not responding). Similarly I have never had the window manager, or display manager crash on Windows or MacOS, but I have encountered DE instability many times on Linux.
Servers that I’ve run with Linux are a different story. Without a GUI or audio I’ve never had a single problem.
I was browsing through the forum at community.resonate.is, it looks like they are focusing all their attention on the webapp right now. If you have experience developing for android I’m sure they’d love to work with you. I doubt they would turn you away if you’re interested in developing an android app.
I think people will start eating less meat in general. For the better part of a century it has been common in the US to have meat and dairy for every meal. Instead of eating meat 3x per day I think eating meat 3-5x per week will become normal.
Vegan meat substitutes are already a drop-in replacement for the most in-demand meat products like burgers, chicken nuggets, meatballs, etc. Unless someone is a real meat connoisseur they probably can’t even tell the difference.
Even if lab-grown meat cannot meet current demand, it can steal a portion of the market-share from real meat.
Additionally, with drop-in replacements and lab-grown meat demand for real meat can be reduced by raising prices; this can be achieved through the elimination of crop subsidies for animal feed, a carbon tax, or directly through a meat tax.
Wednesday is my favorite day off on a normal week - Only working for 2 days in a row for any stretch feels so much more manageable than 5 days in a row.
When I’m taking paid time off I’d like to stack all three days off together, though. Gotta save those precious PTO hours!