That Luminous vs. Kaplan case is a good example on how the popcorn crowd fuels fires. And, sure, some tankies are too combative*, but neither side here was one — it was mostly an anarchist and [I believe] a liberal.

From my PoV the whole thing went like this:

1. Deceptichum@qokkau gets banned by Kaplan@reddit.world, allegedly for “trolling”; in practice for criticising the Fedihost foundation. Bad admin behaviour from Kaplan, who’s clearly emotionally invested into his reddit.world foundation. Popcorn crowd goes like “Zionists! Zionists!”, even if the immediate matter is another.
2. Luminous@AN bans Kaplan from AN, allegedly for “zionism, genocide apologia". I do not know if this is accurate or an overreach; if it is an overreach, it’s bad admin behaviour from Luminous. Popcorn crowd still chanting “Zionists! Zionists!”.
3. Luminous was using a childish username, “murder all Zionists”. The underlying message (don’t tolerate Zionism) is sensible, if read in the right context and in good faith; problem is, people in bad faith will remove it from the context. And that’s exactly what Kaplan does, to justify defederating a whole instance (AN) without previously contacting neither other LW admins nor other AN admins. Now the popcorn crowd chants “Death threats! Death threats!” [Rimu goes here.]
4. Since AN is part of the flotilla with /0 and quokkau, the “pact” between all three instances is evoked, escalating things further. Popcorn crowd makes sure reddit.world sees the flotilla as “all terrorists” and the flotilla sees reddit.world as “all Zionists”.

All of that while the folks in the flotilla consistently ignore why reddit.world censors pro-Palestinian messages (pressure from the German government), but not pro-Zionism ones (no such pressure exists). While reddit.world “conveniently” keeps doing this immoral shit because “we just follow orders”. (And because banning the whole topic altogether wouldn’t sit right in an instance that sees itself as the spiritual successor of Reddit, and other instances as those inconvenient stones in its path.)

Without the popcorn crowds, the most you’d have are two admin teams solving their issues in private. But because of the popcorn crowds the whole thing blew out of proportion.

Worst part? I’m not even sure if I’m not part of one of the crowds now.

* or should I say too “screechy”? If they actually spent that energy fighting for the causes, it would be great. But they’re busier using it to screech at random people on the internet.

Thanks for the link! Relevant to note, one of the comments there linked this thread, where Nutomic (note for the onlookers: Nutomic is the Lemmy backend developer) criticises what Yogthos did. I’ll quote it here:

Responsible disclosure is still important because it takes the developer time to develop, validate and release a securit fix. Keep in mind that open source projects like Piefed, Lemmy and others are developed by volunteers in their free time. So it is irresponsible to publish security problems without any private warning. For all the infighting that is happening, we need to remember that our enemy is Reddit, and not anyone on the Fediverse.

And even then. I disagree with what Yogthos did, but what he said holds some merit (if a large model can find it, an attacker can do it too, so devs need to be proactive).

What I’m really disliking to see, though, in all this PieFed vs. Lemmy talk, is not even dev behaviour. From either side. It’s user behaviour; the “popcorn crowd”, throwing petrol into random fires, and burning the house down because it wants to see pretty flames go brrrrr. I’ve seen this in plenty other situations, but the threads both of us linked shows it really well.

Every one [platform] is incomplete to varying degrees

And as typical for software, none will be ever complete! Or should be.

And on a related note, Rimu is stepping backwards a bit from directly contributing so much to PieFed, as it is leading to burnt-out

That might explain why some of his recent takes have been a bit… over-simplistic, to say the least. Odds are he isn’t informed on the drama going on, and it’s easy to jump to conclusions.

At the same time the Lemmy devs are attacking PieFed, e.g. by running AI to identify vulnerabilities and then rather than offer even so much as 24 hrs notice go ahead and publicly disclose them (yes they “can” do so, but is it “friendly” to have chosen that route?).

I’m not informed on that. Do you have some link where I can read further about it?

Regarding the rest:

I feel like the problem regarding Lemmy features might be what you said about being difficult to work with, plus that there’s way less people who can contribute with Rust code than Python code. However: I’m no programmer, this is just hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt because it might be incorrect.

That said I like the concurrent existence of Lemmy and PieFed, and I’d really like if there was more “Fediverse forum” platforms. It might split efforts a bit, but every new platform brings new stuff into the table; Lemmy was there at the start, then Kbin trying to “tie” the forums with microblogging, and then Piefed with the improvements you mentioned. More importantly, that concurrence allows us to not need to have “faith” in any specific platform, since if the devs for some reason go MIA the rest of the “Fediverse forums” survives.

Ah, got it! It’s a sensible approach. Lemmy AFAIK doesn’t do anything similar; it should.

You also set the list in your profile Settings menu, so it’s not this humongous list of all possible languages but just those that you choose to show.

You’re talking about this list, right?

There’s an equivalent one in Lemmy:

However both are for the content you see, not for the content you create. I just think having some way to “pin” a few convenient languages would be great. PieFed’s “last used is the one you’re expected to use” strategy works fine for 1 language, but for 2+ it still means digging through a huge list.

Based on other comments it defaults to the last language used, right? (It has been some time since I used PieFed.)

I feel like people get tired of those of us who constantly say that PieFed offers SIGNIFICANTLY more features than Lemmy does, or will ever do, but OTOH…

People make a whole ruckus because of the political views of the individual devs (from both sides), and also because of Rust vs. Python, but at the end of the day I like how PieFed adds new things to the table. Every new piece of software brings a different vision, different “I can’t stand this papercut issue so I’m fixing it”, and with it a bunch of new features.

Although… for the Python vs. Rust thing, I get Rust might perform better but I kind of expect people to be more likely to contribute with a Python project.

The selector is there, at least in Lemmy’s default web interface… but it’s a pain to use.

I think Lemmy should let you configure one language as default, and as many languages as you want for quick access. Then if you don’t mess with the “select language” menu, your posts/comment get your default language. And if you do need to mess with that menu, you’ll have an easier time finding the language you want, like this:

(Replace the languages in the “quick access” list with the ones you want.)

“Undetermined” should only appear if the user actively unselected the other languages.

Note by my example you should be allowed to tag a post/comment with 2+ languages. The OP is a prime example of that, sometimes content shows multiple languages at once and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Also note this should be separated from the configuration of which languages you’re willing to see, that already exists. Being able to read some stuff in a language is definitively not the same as being able to write with it.

Petition to rename the following places:

North Pole → Iaeland
Greenland → Ibeland
Cornwall → Iseland
Brittany → Iteland
Aquitaine → Iueland
Aragon → Iveland
Valencia → Iweland
Oran → Ixeland
Adrar → Iyeland
Gao → Izeland

I was expecting fuckery regarding diacritics*, but this is way worse.

*such as writing ⟨Ç⟩ with the bottom of the cedilla on the same level as the letters, instead of below them. Or an extra-short ⟨Ã⟩ to give the tilde some room. Both look disgusting.

Given it sounds unfortunate in Portuguese too, I also think so.

Oh well, life is suffering. But at least the suffering is bearable if it includes cats 😺

Sometimes I feel like Kika (my cat) might be doing this when I’m sleeping, because of all CLASH KLANK MMMRRRROOOOWN MRRRROOOOWN KPFAF! It’s usually because she rummaged my paper bin for new toys.

Sadly no amount of forehead kisses will prevent it. The most it’ll do is to make her look at disgust, as if saying “EEEEEWWW HUMANS HAVE COOTIES”.

DMZ-Black. It’s one of the cursor themes provided by default by Linux Mint. I see no reason to change.

You can also change it in the settings. Look for “search assist”; values are “never”, “on demand”, “sometimes”, and “often”.

But yeah, to be frank I use mostly DDG nowadays, I focused on Google due to the OP.

There’s an extension called Disable AI that gets rid of those intrusive Google Search AI “replies”. I strongly recommend people to use it, because… seriously, they are convincing but misleading trash.

The two phonemic transcriptions of “disregard” in the first picture are a prime example of that. I could go on a full rant about it, but to keep it short: compare them with the ones provided by Wiktionary, and play “spot the differences”. (Bonus points if you also play “spot the undeclared assumptions”.)

This might be fake but goddammit it’s still funny.

The next episode should clarify most/all of those questions. Just one thing: the contracted spirits have nothing to do with Cecil being the “android prince”, they basically do what their master wants them to.

What a great episode. Even if you know what’s going on, you can’t help but worry about the characters, and cheer for them.

And it shows really well what’s wrong with the heroine and what’s right with the villainess: both are reincarnated and clueless muppets acting as if their new world was still following game logic, while derailing the story with their mere existence; but only Bertia genuinely cares about the others, Heronia only cares about herself.

Sentenced to Be a Hero: initially I thought “meh, yet another series where they fight the Maō”, but right in the first episode there was a “hero” stealing stuff, then I was like “well, this is going to be fun”. And as the series progressed I started genuinely enjoying its cynical and bitter tone.

Mayonaka Punch: I didn’t bother with the series at the start of the season, because you can be pretty sure “arsehole influencer doing dumb shit” is not my cup of tea. But mid-season I got bored, gave it a try because I thought the vampire looked fun (and quickly noticed she was voiced by my favourite voice actress, Fairouz Ai), and really enjoyed it, because the interactions between characters were fun.

Yup, spayed a few months after adoption. I only give her treats rarely though, she’s now overweight. (Kind of weird to compare, she’s heavier than when she was pregnant.)

She has been living with us for almost 10 years now. Even the grumpy older cat got used to her.