I’m not directly involved in either project beyond reporting bugs and suggesting features yet, but I follow both projects closely. My sense is that the Mbin community is prioritizing collaboration around UX improvements while Kbin is focusing on scaling/performance issues… which makes sense as kbin.social is more than 10x the size of fedia.io (https://fedidb.org/network/instance/kbin.social vs https://fedidb.org/network). I opened a bug about the UI for altering link images at https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/1365. When I tested the same steps in Mbin, the issue i was seeing in Kbin had already been solved in Mbin.

Kbin is a great PHP implementation of ActivityPub for reddit-like communities, but requiring all major changes to be made/reviewed by a single person is a real bottle neck.

It would be great if Kbin could figure out some form of goverance/delegation that would allow more contributors, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in that type of change so for now we have 2 project with different priorities and governance models… and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The link to the FAQ is also in the footer in the Help column.

Beware of the “whatever” aproach.

Many years ago I was brought into a project where many variables where named after cars. Before I got there, if the team couldn’t agree on a name, they’d use a car and move on. There was also a module in the code call “bucket”. Didn’t have a logical place to put a function? Add it to the bucket.

I’m sure they saved a lot of time not discussing what to name things up front, but by the time there was enough turnover on the team to change the variables and rewrite, it took months to fix.

Another, more product approach is to ask the “variable naming guy” to write up a naming policy document that would result in the names he has been suggesting. If there is logic associated his side of the “argument” it should be easy to document.

Have everyone on the team discuss and approve the policy. Hopefully you never spend time in a meeting arguing about this again.

actual, verifiable digital ownership… using a distributed database technology that is designed to require a massive amount of computing resources to update.

I think where some of us who work in spaces using databases to verify something in critical business processes get stuck in accepting that blockchain has value is that our jobs have always been to verify “ownership” as quickly and efficiently as possible. We typically do this by defining a canonical source of truth and our success is judged on how many milliseconds transactions take and the datacener or cloud costs.

Saying that everything about blockchain is “dumb” isn’t a very nuanced analysis… but it’s a understandable reaction to hearing the hype that blockchain is going to change everything for years.

I’ve never seen anyone argue that the massively distributed nature or the public read access of blockchain technologies aren’t interesting. It’s the tradeoff that has to be made in speed and costs that make it hard for many of us to see any value in the approach for most applications.

So are Europeans just more honest and ethical than Americans? Or do all gas stations have better theft prevention systems? In the US, there is often 1 cashier managing 12 pumps AND ringing up vice sales (cigarettes, lottery tickets, junk food). In some states there a pumps with no human on site at all.

What’s to stop someone from driving off after filling up in the EU?

https://www.clever.com/ is used to handle single sign on and providing a dashboard for hundreds of other education apps/services. It can be used to build a solution with FAR more functionality than what Google offers, but it’s $$$ to do that and requires someone with some technical skill and UX experience to do well.

They prefer a more polished UI? I know there are several mobile apps that improve on the default browser experience of visiting https://lemmy.world/, but you have to admit that the initial UX of Lemmy leaves room for improvement. This is the same reason many open-source projects gave up on IRC. The die-hard FOSS advocates raised the “but Slack isn’t an open standard” argument only to be shouted down by a larger part of the community with “IRC’s UX sucks and is a barrier to new contributors”.

https://kbin.social/ has a lot of issues (like calling communities magazines and general performance/stability), but the UI/UX is so much better than Lemmy.

which shouldn’t be difficult as the “rest of his life” will likely be just a few days

The 13 Rules of a Roman Emperor: How to Stop Giving a Shit and Live a Fucking Good Life

Why bother with a book? What you’ve described was the structure of a dozen “documentaries” created for Netflix last year.

I appreciate the effort, but this version ends with…

took his children to protect them from the occupation’s missiles, but

But what?

I don’t own a timeshare. Feel pretty good about that decision.

The numbers they were showing us seemed to make sense. If we spent an average of X on vacations for Y years compared to the cost of the timeshare and fees, the timeshare was cheaper AND we could trade our week in a ski area for timeshares anywhere in the world. How could we not buy into this? Might have signed, but when they told us we couldn’t take any of the information with us and had to decide NOW, I knew something wasn’t right. Had to say no for almost an hour, but but we were eventually allowed to leave the “no obligation presentation” required for our “free” weekend.

When I did more research, I found dozens of people trying to unload their purchases for far less than the company was selling weeks to new members.

I’ll NEVER own anything using that kind of sales strategy.

I think the best way to deal with the issue includes education, digital skills, and parental oversight of Internet use including the use of personal filters or blocking tools if desired.

As a someone who works in technology and is a parent to 2 kids < 10, I’m already aware of what a niave statement that is.

I keep my kids’ iPad locked down and have a router with some basic parental control features, but as the number devices in our lives that are able to browse the web increases along with the number of wireless networks my kids can connect to, trying to police this myself is futile.

And I’m not even concerned about them occasionally seeing “normal” porn. As a former Reddit user, I’ve seen some things I wish I hadn’t. Things I’m not able to fully process as an adult.

I can handle the conversation about…

“you know how people drive in Fast and Furious isn’t how people drive in real life? That’s what porn sex is like compared to the sex you are going to have.”

I cannot explain some of the darker corners of Reddit.

If you applied Geist’s logic to alcohol, it would be up to parents to keep kids from going to liquor stores. Sure I can stop my kids from drinking the alcohol I have in my own home, but I rely on laws to make it very difficult for them to do something as a community we’ve agreed they aren’t mature enough to make good decisions about.

Why can’t we apply the same policies on to internet services?

The fact that teaching media/marketing literacy reduces its effectiveness is not new.

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. - Marshall McLuhan 1964

It isn’t just vaping that would be effected by teaching kids to be more aware of marketing. I work in marketing on the marketing automation or marketing ops side of things in higher ed. If teenagers were more aware of the techniques we use to influence them to borrow tens or even hundreads of thousand of $$$ to enroll in a 4 year degree, fewer would… and that would probably be a good thing.

Bacon doesn’t need marketing. A marketing campaign using facts to change consumer behavior is just marketing. Not really the same as and effort to educate kids to recognize marketing.

I work in marketing so I recognize it in all its forms. I am very concerned about the amount of influcing my kids are exposed to through “safe”, “ad free” channels like YouTube Kids.

I also consider myself well informed about environmental issues. I consciously eat less meat for both environmental and health reasons, but bacon doesn’t need marketing. I want bacon because I REALLY enjoy bacon.

I used eBay for years buying everything from computers to expensive bikes. I even helped a friend who bought a car from eBay.

Now? Full of knock offs and scams. My last transactions were garbage designed to last long enough for a product photo shoot. Using any of these products for their intended purpose is a real safety risk and returns require a back and forth with automated systems designed to try to make you give up before you get any $$ back.

I haven’t used eBay in ~8 and likely never will again. The thing about critical mass and network effect is it has as much (if not more) of an impact during a service’s decline.

The free market solution would allow communities to negotiate contracts that DID hold the provider liable and allow competitors to emerge that would focus on different aspects like reliability, renewable production or integration with other grids.

If you aren’t aware of the story of Central and Southwest Corporation (a Texas power company) and thr “midnight connection”, it’s the type of story that I’m sure is nearing the top of Netflix’s documentary todo list.

On May 4, 1976, a power company based in Texas sent electricity from a substation in Vernon, Texas, to Altus, Okla. By doing so, they were breaking a deal among power companies in Texas to keep electricity within state borders.

https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2022-09-08/texas-energy-island-the-disconnect-vernon-midnight-connection

If what Texas has with ERCOT is neither free market nor a public utility, what is it?

we don’t have the kind of political system YET…

Roughly 50 American voting jurisdictions — from small cities to states — have now moved to a ranked choice voting system, according to tracking by the advocacy group FairVote, and it’s shaping up to be one of the political subplots of 2024.

Advocates say ranked choice voting could help take some of the toxicity out of American politics while giving voters access to a broader swath of ideas.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1214199019/ranked-choice-voting-explainer

This YouTube video show some screenplay from Mouse, an upcoming noir based FPS game. The game will take full advantage of the public’s right to reuse1920s era cartoons, particularly Steam Boat Willy, in new and innovative ways.

https://youtu.be/kNad1vG1QG4?si=QywRxIhPpQpq6GPM

Princess Bride

I always thought a sequel where the roles are reversed and Fred Savage is reading to an ailing Peter Faulk would have been a great way to start a sequel.

Is there a list of magazines with great, custom CSS? I’m not sure if it’s how I use KBin, but I haven’t noticed many customized magazines.