I used to watch that all the time when it was randomly on - never in the same timeslot, and I think the local network just used it as filler - but I always forget that it existed until someone randomly mentions it.

“Look what I can do!”

“He look’a like a man”

Coffee Monster

We had that show. It was called “Star Trek: Voyager” but she went by “Janeway”.

Guess that just illustrates that social media addiction is a real problem. I’ve never found myself in that position, but every once in a while I’m reminded that it exists.

I’ve been here since the API exodus in 2023 and have seen it enough times to know that it’s typically someone coming in new from reddit, seeing that the feed of new stuff here has an endpoint and recharges slower, so they want to make a repost bot so there’s more content. They’ll never actually read that content, but they just want it so they have something to mindlessly scroll past. I don’t think they’re going for popularity contest, at least not primarily, anyway.

Giving them the benefit of doubt, I think they’re just highly misguided.

I could totally be wrong. This is just based on my observations and the occasional post in c/Fediverse when some new user talks about how it feels inactive here and suggests reposting crap from Reddit. I also try to go with the most charitable explanation for behavior I see.

Technically speaking, yeah.

But the instances that run on donations are more likely to get donations to cover the growing hosting costs from a 100x increase in real users as opposed to one bot spammer spewing out 100+ user’s worth of content each month. Ideally, that 100x increase won’t be concentrated on a single instance and will be spread out among many instances.

While the amount of content from such an increase would be the same, the posting patterns are more organic from real users compared to the indiscriminate torrent coming from people running bots to repost everything from Reddit. That allows for a lot more granular management of resources.

In short: it’s low-engagement spam.

In longer form:

It’s just blasted out via a bot and not posted organically. It makes scrolling by /new impossible because of all the noise. It’s bad because it strips away any identity the Fediverse has and makes it a literal cheap copy of Reddit full of bot-reposted slop no one wants to engage with.

Instances are run by volunteers and rely on donations from users or in some cases the admins foot the bill entirely. It costs money to host Fediverse instances. Each sloppost from a repost bot takes up space in the database, consumes CPU resources sorting through it, bandwidth to federate it out, and takes up storage space with the local thumbnails. And that’s just on the home instance where it originates. Add in the bandwidth to federate it out to who knows how many receiving instances which each also have to store it in the database and store the thumbnails.

It’s just so much waste. And for what? It’s just noise. Content for content’s sake so someone can mindlessly scroll past stuff they’ll never read.

If you feel this place lacks content, post something. Every time there’s a new influx of users, some genius thinks “It’s a lot quieter here than Reddit. I know! I’ll write a script that reposts stuff from Reddit. People will love it! I can’t believe no one has thought of this before! I’m so smart!”

If one wants that kind of slop, there are dedicated instances that do nothing but repost reddit garbage indiscriminately. alien.top and lemmit.online. Find an instance that federates with them (many instances de-federate from those because of the noise) or sign up there.

I’m not gonna out the user since that would put this post in violation of one of the rules here, but it appears they’ve set up camp and created their own communities to botspam to. I DM’d the admin of their home instance but who knows if they’ll see a problem with it.

Edit/Update: That spammer now appears to be banned on their home instance.

For me, it’s the people that come here and feel the need to bring all of Reddit with them. Like, do they also bring their shitty exes and all their baggage on dates with their new SO?

And it’s not like instances are largely (entirely?) volunteer run and rely on donations or admins footing the bill for hosting. Oh, wait. They are. 18,200+ posts (as of this comment) from a two month old account with the associated thumbnail images, each federated out to who knows how many other instances that store copies and local thumbnails is a pretty clear abuse of the platform. I’d also wager that the userbot in question isn’t donating to their home instance, either.

Every time there’s an influx. :bangs_head_against_wall:

I like the concept because it’s reminiscent of the early computers I grew up with (Tandy CoCo, Commodore 64) and I basically just dock my laptop with its lid closed anyway (screen is too small and resolution too high for my old person eyes).

But considering it’s literally a keyboard PC, you’d think they’d have put more effort into making it a nice keyboard. I hate those “chiclet” low travel keys. Put a PC in a good mechanical keyboard or at least a membrane keyboard where the keys have some travel, then we’ll talk. Until then, it’d be a tad ridiculous to plug a good keyboard into my keyboard PC lol.

It’s not much cheaper than an equivalent laptop, so who’s this for, exactly?

I guess if there were an LCD shortage instead of memory and SSD, it would have a lot more potential.

If I was going to fall off the wagon after 2 years, I hope to gods it would be with something better than Bud Light.

[Tina] Fey / [Robert] Carlock

They’re the team behind “30 Rock”, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and several others.

Also Jack Burditt who produced both of those and many other shows I’ve enjoyed such as “Just Shoot Me” and “Frasier”.

That gets PBS more exposure, sure, and that’s great because they put out quality content, but do they get paid for that? I’m genuinely curious here as I know little of how YT pays content creators. I’ve had a recurring monthly donation going for years now, and I just don’t yet understand if/how simply subscribing could replace even a portion of that.

How does that work? Does YT pay out to creators based on the subscriber count alone? I’ve only ever heard “like and subscribe to help fund this channel” mentioned when the videos are monetized (e.g ads or sponsors).

Or does PBS monetize their videos and uBlock just shields me from that?

Not that I don’t want this to be true since it’s an easy way to help fund them, but I am curious how (or if) this works.

I’m about to have my house powered by fusion energy.

Mine’s only for people I know personally, so it’s backed by my LDAP server and registration is disabled in Synapse. I use my regular onboarding process to create the new LDAP user and grant access to Synapse.

In theory you might be able to pass yourself off as some kind of supernatural figure, but not without knowing anything about their belief system first.

Nice. I’ve pretty much just used LibreTranslate for that, but will check that out and see if it works any better.

I just want more games to let you quit to desktop from the game without having to first “Quit to main menu -> Are you sure? (yes!) -> Loading screen + main menu animation -> Quit to Desktop -> Are you sure? (Yes, i’m goddamned sure!)”

so it’s 30% not 20%

Fair. I was going by population numbers vs votes cast and didn’t have the voter turnout numbers handy when I originally wrote that out and was paraphrasing from that to save time.

But that’s still far from half, and I’m tired of people using the misconception/phrase to justify their xenophobic rhetoric.

“Half of Americans voted for this”

No, half the people who actually showed up to vote voted for the guy, but not necessarily all he is and has been doing. It’s actually only about 20-22% or less of the population that actually voted this guy into office and fewer than that are on board with current events. Far from “half of Americans”, so just stop it.