I agree, it seems like they’re doing everything they can to force users into the mindset of “you’re going to have to spend money here.”

However… I don’t think that’s going to work. It’s a tactic that relies solely on Apple not allowing the user to customize their icons, which combines into a double whammy of “give me money to fix the thing that I broke.”

Why do I have to pay when Android users don’t?

Why is Reddit being greedy?

This other site is free and doesn’t make me feel like I’m being taken advantage of every turn.

Reddit is trying to capitalize on goodwill they already spent months ago. And the quality of the site is just going to get worse from here.

Ryobi is just so cheap that it doesn’t make sense for me to buy any other cordless brand with the number of batteries I have.

But for hand tools and corded stuff I get the cheapest I can find, until something slows me down too much, then I’ll upgrade.

That’s how I’ve built a small empire of tools.

If you’re in the US, the Affordable Connectivity Program is available to low income families and it covers $30 a month off your existing internet bill.

PCsForPeople (not sure if I can provide links on Lemmy) offers a free mobile hotspot plan with unlimited data that you can use as home internet, if you qualify for the ACP.

Just an FYI, since there are programs that help, but not everyone is aware of them.

u/AngryBeaverBeaver : OP, why do you even bother posting here when 90% of replies are bots?

OP : I’m sorry, but as an AI language model…

Could you even tell?

After all, we are in the era of advanced LLMs.

Refusing to hire a babysitter with a history of sexual abuse isn’t “punishment for pre-crime”. It’s just being smart and avoiding extreme risk to your children.

In the same vein, we all know how Meta/Facebook will behave, we know they’re going to do everything they can to exert total control over everything they touch. It’s practically a legal requirement for them to extract maximum value from the very air we breath.

So giving them the benefit of the doubt is nothing less than reckless. It’s like trusting a crack addict with your wallet.

I’m all for improving the user experience here on Lemmy.

But what I find not so appealing, is targeting mass adoption in a way that dumbs down the community we’re building here.

As long as we just make Lemmy a great place to be, the right kind of people will keep joining.

Meta knows exactly what to do to bring a billion new users to a new social media site, and all you have to do is look at Threads to see the kind of community they are cultivating.

Lemmy does not, and never will, have the moderation power to contend with that many bad actors. I’m perfectly fine with Lemmy having a tiny learning curve to keep out the dregs.

I really like that idea.

It would absolutely demolish the risk of a community turning into a meme sub, or one of subs where people just post pictures of their Raspberry Pi in some retail case over and over again.

And as long as pictures are disallowed on the main post, people could still be free to post links to guides or other important content that contains pictures.

It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends

That’s a straight no from me.

We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose, but Lemmy is one of the only general discussion areas left on the internet that isn’t full of the stupidest people on the planet.

Bringing our family here will just result in real identities taking over and limiting discussion to what’s acceptable in all our little social bubbles.

That’s definitely the smart way to buy laptops.

I just wanted to remind people that Framework’s pricing is competitive in the segment they are targeting.

Personally I’m with you, buying a 1-2 year old premium machine can save up to 75% off the new retail price, while still getting most of the latest features.

Absolutely, and the actions that “go against the sustainability and self-interest of the fediverse” will need to be analyzed and codified into fediverse “law.”

If we make specific and firm rules about what is disallowed on an instance, it makes enforcing those rules simple.

“List all the countries outside the continent of Africa” does indeed work per my testing, but I understand why OP is frustrated in having to employ these workarounds on such a simple request.

I find it interesting that they don’t offer a version of GPT 4 that uses it’s own language processing to screen responses for “unsafe” material.

It would use way more processing than the simple system you outlined above, but for paying customers that would hardly be an issue.

Anyone who has used ChatGPT knows how restrictive it can be around the most benign of requests.

I understand the motivations that OpenAI and Microsoft have in implementing these restrictions, but they’re still frustrating, especially since the watered down ChatGPT is much less performant than the unadulterated version.

Are these limitations worth it to prevent a firehose of extremely divisive speech being sprayed throughout every corner of the internet? Almost certainly yes. But the safety features could definitely be refined and improved to be less heavy-handed.

Even in relatively corruption-free countries, there are often shadow mechanisms the governments uses to decide who they charge with a crime.

Prosecutors can just say they don’t have a case, or they can fumble the case purposefully in the initial stages to give credence to the “no case” idea.

We don’t have to look any further than how police charge themselves to see how the laws don’t fairly apply to everyone. And a simple google search will reveal that Sweden is not immune to police corruption, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

“Disobeying police orders”, which is what Thunberg was charged with, is one of those catch-all laws that are purposefully vague in a way that allows police total discretion over how to enforce it.

I guarantee in this case that calls were made all the way up the top of the Swedish government before police decided what to do here.

Basically, my point is that there are so many strings to pull, even in developed countries, that it’s often possible to suss out the motivations of the administration just by examining how charges proceed.

What this says about Thunberg getting charged for her actions? Probably nothing significant. Sweden cannot allow activists to freely disrupt their economic infrastructure, especially those involving energy. So they charge her as “normal” regardless of her celebrity status. Though they will be very careful to do everything by the book with so many eyes on the case.

It detects if you’re idle and refreshes the page?

That’s some horrible attention hacking bullshit.

I’m 100% going to find another instance if I see any content from that nightmare. I’m not on Twitter, or Facebook, for a reason.

I pay a few bucks a month for access to a giant plex share.

It’s worth it to just, watch stuff, basically anything, instead of fiddling around with different apps and subscriptions and all that.

I’d happily pay a lot more for the same legal service, but it doesn’t exist.

Studios, if you want my money, make everything available in one spot for a reasonable price. Or, continue your bastardization of everything, and I’ll just keep watching your stuff anyway.

I believe the only instances that should be defederated are corporate, self-harm, profanely illegal, and political extremist instances.

Anything further than that and the whole network is going to devolve into a series of micro echo chambers.

Or maybe it won’t, maybe the vast and free instances will flourish while the restrictive instances die out.

Either way, trying to control a community based on wishy washy ideology is not a good look.

I think in these early days we’ll see a lot of power drunk admins who are too eager to push the button, just because they can.

I was gonna say the same thing but then I saw the 2200-something upvotes.

This community is doomed to be exactly like the low effort meme sub r/piracy if people keep upvoting this lazy content.

Maybe if you spec them out.

But it’s like $1000 for the midrange model with the latest hardware, which is in line with the competition.

And the first upgrade you do will end up saving money, since you won’t have to replace the whole laptop.