Mozart was a child prodigy. He started playing piano at age 4, and at age 5 he started composing piano pieces that are still played today. He wrote a symphony at age 8 and an opera at 14. There is a legend that as a child, he heard a choir sing an Allegri piece and went home and transcribed the entire thing from memory.

Gold, frankincense, and myrrhuana

First thing that comes to mind is Lamborghini which would not exist today if it were not acquired. It was on the verge of bankruptcy and ended up getting passed around a few times before being acquired by Volkswagen/Audi. I think the general consensus is that access to Audi’s technology brought some sophistication in the form of AWD, traction and stability control, and a bump in quality and reliability. I know they only make obscenely expensive cars that few people ever get to enjoy, but they were able to maintain a headquarters and factory in Italy with a few thousand employees which would have definitely shut down without the acquisition.

Edit: On the topic of cars, another example would be Red Bull Racing which originated as a small F1 team started in the 90s. It was bought by Ford and rebranded to Jaguar F1. Ford didn’t have much success with it, so they sold the whole team to Red Bull for $1. Red Bull went on to dominate from 2010 to 2013 and again from 2021 to present day.

I know, and it drives me nuts when iPhone users complain that it’s my fault for owning an android phone. Like um no it’s quite literally your fault if you stick with Apple and defend their decision to make your life worse. Apple’s business model is basically Stockholm syndrome.

Agreed, I’ve been on lemmy for like a month and already had to make several accounts on different instances because I’m just trying to see everything and instances keep defederating. I understand lemmy is young and growing fast and there will be growing pains, but threads isn’t even on activitypub yet and they’re already being blocked by half the instances.

The admins of lemmy.world are generally opposed to defederating and have apparently announced via mastodon (i haven’t seen the official post but several comments have said) that they will wait and see what threads federation looks like before deciding whether or not to defederate.

They don’t even need to go that far. All data on lemmy is publicly available to anyone. You don’t need an instance or even an account. Defederating from meta/threads won’t stop them from reading all data out of the fediverse.

I was a loyal RIF user, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s getting a lemmy version. I’ll try any new lemmy app that pops up, but I think there’s a good chance i stick with jerboa.

I still don’t understand how that would kill the fediverse though. The people who want meta content can make accounts on meta services. They’re obviously not going to convince you and I to sign up there. And i would guess most others on the fediverse right now are people like us who are happy to be moving away from companies like meta and twitter. If there’s some mass exodus where all the meta fanboys left lemmy, i think the rest of us would be okay with that.

Now if they actually find a way to break the activity pub standard, then that would be a serious threat, but I’m not sure how defederating would solve that.

If meta gathers a ton of users and then defederates, then wouldn’t we just be back to exactly where we are right now?

I’m just saying I’ve seen a lot of vague comments about how evil meta is (and i don’t disagree) but very little discussion about how they would actually destroy the fediverse. At this point, it seems more likely that the fediverse destroys itself when all servers defederate from all other servers out of paranoia.

I’m not sure where you draw the line, but you don’t have to look too hard to find self-described communists defending the actions of the current Russian government which is very confusing to me. From what I understand, that is a good description of the people who run lemmy.ml, and they have allegedly been deleting comments by users discussing the Ukraine war, so i wouldn’t be surprised if this comment is deleted.

Damn, i can’t believe how many people immediately jump to the astroturfing accusation instead of discussing the points you raised. I think we can all agree that meta is evil and we shouldn’t trust them. The solution should be to build a network that’s resilient to bad actors rather than thinking we can just block all the bad actors. As long as there are independent fediverse servers supported by their communities, it’s hard to see how meta could totally take over the entire fediverse.

My bigger concern is that meta could gain influence over the activitypub standard, but that’s not a battle we can win by simply blocking meta servers.

I agree, threads connecting to the fediverse seems like it would be a positive step for everyone. I’m not sure how meta could kill the fediverse as long as independent servers exist. If meta is flooding the fediverse with spam or other influencer bs, then we can all just defederate.

I have an alternate theory that threads is never planning to support the fediverse. They are trying to attract users who are looking for a Twitter alternative, and right now the most compelling option is mastodon. But if threads announces activitypub support, then some would-be mastodon users might join threads instead, thinking it will all be connected. But if threads ends up winning all those users anyways, then they’ll just say fuck it, we don’t need activitypub.

I agree with most of what you said, but the problem is not everyone has brand new hardware. And it sucks that people have to buy new computers just because software devs are lazy and their program uses 10x more memory than it should.

I think the end of Moore’s law will push more software efficiency since the devs won’t be able to count on free hardware gains. As compilers and other dev tools get better, i think the optimizations will become more automated.

I’m pretty sure it’s because a line of coke can also be called a rail.

It’s strange, but the 3 day poop challenge meme that swept through lemmy the other day reminded me of what Reddit used to be. It felt like an actual community where people were actually interacting, and sometimes bizarre posts turned into legends. I hadn’t noticed the slow transition to just endless bot reposts. With all the spez drama, i decided Reddit was dead to me, and that was sad to acknowledge the sudden end of an era like that. But lemmy showed me that the things that made me love Reddit have been gone for a long time, and I feel more at home here.

I don’t think the problem is earning a profit, the problem is the need to earn even more profit than last year. Investors aren’t content to buy into a company like Reddit just to let it continue in a steady state. They want to double their money in a few years and then cash out. They don’t care if they destroy a valuable service that many people enjoy.