There’s no single individual that made it happen, but no doubt that Linus and RMS were the two biggest. Bear in mind that there were lots of additional contributors to the kernel and GNU as well.

I also think Red Hat was also one of the biggest contributors to Linux’s success. So many of the most important technologies that we use today came out of RH. I don’t have a lot of love for them today, but their contributions in the '90s and '00s was immense.

I actually think that a large part of the reason why PCs are much better open platforms than mobiles is because there is no Red Hat of the mobile ecosystem. Google started it out with AOSP, but then closed it up when they monopolized the market. Makes you wonder if RH would have done the same if they had the same kind of success.

Article is light on details. I’m curious how they define what is “algorithm”-generated content and what isn’t.

Ad personalization is hard to verify because it’s all happening on the backend. What you see in a feed is much more visible, so maybe that will make it harder to work around. I haven’t read much about how the legislation works and how it defines algorithms, but if it’s something like, “only show me people I’ve subscribed to”, then it would be pretty easy to verify whether they are showing that or not.

But in general, I agree. Big tech companies always find a way to work around this legislation. Enforcement is the issue, not the laws themselves.

Lemmy is like that to some extent. The fact that users have to pick an instance is, for a lot of people, too much overload and drives them away. But I see it as a filter. You have to have some absolute minimum baseline level of understanding and proficiency of the platform you’re using. That’s why the massive number of people on Facebook, etc. are oblivious to how they’re being exploited by the platform, because they don’t understand what it is or how it works.

s/gift/bribe/

Smartphones ruined the internet.

When you needed to sit at a computer, use a keyboard, and spend a bit of time to write out thoughtful content, the quality of the discussion and community on the internet was so much higher. With smartphones, they had to dumb down the UI, consolidate content and reactions into likes and emojis, and generally just had to deal with smaller, more unsubstantive and rage-baity comments.

Plus, there’s just the undeniable fact that computer users are more tech-savvy than people who only know how to use a smartphone. Making the internet smartphone friendly opened the floodgates up to a sea of low-quality engagement.

Before smartphones, we would go outside, live our lives, then come home and see what happened on the internet that day. When the internet started following us around in our pockets on crippled devices that are designed for consumption and cheap-ass engagement, that’s really when the internet went to shit.

Internet tech companies have perfected the art of enshittifying a service. Internet services these days practically follow a playbook of, 1.) hook users, 2.) build a walled garden, 3.) exploit users. Basically the EEE of the user-driven web. Pretty much every company at this point, both old and new (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Reddit, TikTok, Discord, Twitter, Netflix) follow this exact pattern.

Modern UI design, dark patterns, deprecating services while raising prices, “install our app!”, etc. We didn’t have this in the days of IRC, Usenet, all that other good stuff before corporate web came around.

Remember when Microsoft was forced to give a “select your web browser” prompt when setting up a Windows computer?

Quaint times, those were…

Fair, he was due to retire.

But at the very least, there’s a good chance that Apple will start trying to shoehorn integrate AI in a lot of places. How much and where remains to be seen. Especially as a new CEO, there will be a lot of pressure to respond to all the criticism they’ve been receiving about their approach to AI.

That’s probably about to change with their new CEO too:

“It’s becoming clear that AI is not a fad, is not something that will go away in the next two or three years,” said Jeronimo. “It’s something that will dictate the future of most tech companies and indeed all companies.”

He reckons AI could be “the most consequential technology” for Apple because it could either help it maintain its lofty position or create a set of daunting challenges.

https://www.dw.com/en/can-new-apple-ceo-john-ternus-fix-the-tech-giants-ai-woes/a-78575898

It’s pretty likely that AI was the reason why Apple is changing CEOs in the first place, because they have been getting criticized for not being as hopelessly stupid about it as other tech companies are.

It’s solid because it’s so simple. And the documentation is great too - the handbook has everything you need!

Sounds like the distro is kinda of a clown show (see this comment: https://reddthat.com/comment/28643289), but it is really nice to see derivative distros coming off of Void. To me, it’s a sign that Void is gaining more relevance in the community which is great because I really think it’s the best distro out there these days.

And stop paying for Windows while we’re busy getting rid of it!