Asklemmy

Was social media a mistake?

I used to think social media was good because thanks to them, governments couldn’t fabricate false narratives. But it turns out that they are still doing it.

www.justice.gov/opa/media/1366261/dl

So when are we going to start saying “the 20s” instead of “the 2020s”, we gotta make it cooler

What do you do to kill time at work?

Other than going on Lemmy lol.

What I have done throughout the years (as an office worker) is the following:

• reddit/lemmy
• chess
• selfhosting/homelab
• chores/planning
• writing

Getting tired of all these, looking for something to do when I have nothing to do but still looks like I am active on Teams/online.

Your FOSS apps for health check?

What FOSS app do you use guys to measure health?

• app for tracking steps?
• meaby one for sleep tracking

Any recomendatitions?

What does this dog breed called?, I'm not sure about EU or USA but if you lived in Asia or Latin America this dog is like the default skin for street dogs

Alternative ways to build a development board enclosure?

I’ve been working on a development board for a while now. To finalize the product, some people recommend printing a case (I don’t have a 3D printer). Do you have any other suggestions (the most fun ones are also welcome), or should I invest in this type of machine?

Dev board

www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-rlcd-4.2.htm

Some cases

printables.com/…/1763772-enclosure-for-waveshare-…

printables.com/…/1780357-slim-snap-fit-case-for-w…

Please give me as many practical ideas as possible, I’ll make my selection later.

How do phones find the city of a phone number?

Crossposted from lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48779421

I’m writing a program that can find info about a phone number. One problem appears to be that Google’s phone number library doesn’t provide enough info. For instance, take this number: +1 (613) 745-1576. My iPhone correctly says “Ottawa, Ontario, Canada”, while Google’s library doesn’t return the city? How does my iPhone pick this up but not Google’s own library? Is this provided by cell carriers? Is it something with the 745 block? If so, where can I find this info?

What are your favorite YouTube channels?

What’s your love language?

I’m pretty sure there are only 5 love languages. But if there are more I’m unaware of please let me know. I’ve listed mine below from most important to least.

1 physical touch 2 quality time 3 words of affirmation 4 acts of service 5 gift giving

Anyone else giving up becoming a public person due to cancel culture?

There are insights I’ve learned through my life as a Buddhist and neurodivergent person I’d like to share on platforms, and occasionally, some contemporary topics I’d like to weigh in on for the same reason. I’ve also been encouraged by different people in the space based on what I’ve shared.

Politically I’m a Centrist, with most of my opinions being politically correct; Anti-Trump, Pro-choice and pro women’s issues in general, No problems with how people live their lives sexually or otherwise in terms of LGBTQ. I’ll vote left cause there’s no alternative, but dream of a non-two party system.

But I honestly don’t feel like sticking my neck out in the current culture. It doesn’t feel to me as if the “bad people are being cancelled”, while that does happen, it feels more to me that we’re “waiting for someone to trip up”.

And once you’re out, you’re out. There seems to be no space for people making mistakes, learning, and growing. It’s like we’re all meant to be perfect and there’s no learning curve whatsoever.

And occasionally I like to question topics or nuance views, and that just gets hit with these extremely tribalistic opinions where I’m either “with us or the fascists”, which just doesn’t reflect where I’m coming from at all.

As an example, sometimes as a neurodivergent you really can get far by developing strategies around your weaknesses, but I see people getting torched for “victim blaming” and all kinds of really strong reactions, based on them just trying to help, not at all trying to minimalize anyone’s experience as far as I can see.

So honestly I’m just staying out. Everything I’ve learned in my life has been through trial and error, being wrong and then getting wiser, and I just don’t feel safe in this culture. I feel like everyone’s waiting for you to trip up, and if I was to make a mistake, or have a bad opinion, there’s no chance to grow, it’s just instant banishment and goodbye.

Anyone else feel like this?

Edit: Upon reflection, it feels like we live in a “Suspicion Culture”.

Why is searching the Internet so frustrating now?

A few years ago anything you wanted to search for would generate hundreds of pages of results. From sources all over. If you structured your query well you could dramatically cut down the irrelevant results and then spend a bit of time skimming through the offerings until you found your target.

Searching felt like a hunt, it could take you to far flung corners of the web, and hitting the jackpot on some obscure forum was part of the fun.

Now searching anything feels incredibly frustrating. You know what you are looking for is out there somewhere but it feels impossible getting to it. Basically we have only two main routes now, Google and Bing (and I swear Bing is just copying Google’s homework). I’ve tried a handful of others and they all fall very short.

Something has changed dramatically under the hood.

It seems like the results are very shallow and no amount of prodding will get either search engine to produce anything besides the laziest output. Any subject has a limited pool of sites they lean on and then pretend that that’s all of the Internet.

It generalizes very quickly and if you try to counter by putting things in quotations it gives up.

Even in the rare moments I’ve buckled and used their stupid AI, it takes even more time browbeating the program to just deliver the damned specifics.

What is going on??

How do we get our old search back?

I swear every day of trying to navigate the web feels worse than the day before.

How did we get here?

There’s got to be something better, right? Or something we can do to pave a new structure that benefits the denizens of the web better than the lazy slop our tech overlords scrape off the table for us. What can we do?

What are some 90s website tropes?

Working on a website for my sister. I got some grainy gifs and a visitor counter. What else?

What do you do with a broken heart?

If a puzzle is too hard for you to solve does that make the puzzle smarter than you?

What’s that one, video-game cut scene, you hate and want to skip fast?

Ocarina of time —- running into the owl and accidentally pressing a to skip, but you have to hear it again if you press a to skip. Becomes frustrating.

Pokemon blue/red—- the slow ass POKE-CENTER

And to add on; to save the game, it asks so many questions.

Well, tell me your frustrating parts in any games

What's the weirdest thing you saw on the road this year?

I have a fairly long commute, so naturally encounter a lot of weirdness on the road. If I had $1 for every truck I see on the way to work, I wouldn’t even have to clock in anymore. But one of them stood out amongst the others.
It wasn’t the truck itself, but more what was on the truck. I kid you not, it was an OnlyFans truck. Now I know what you’re thinking, some guy just put OnlyFans decals on his lifted pickup.
Nuh, uh. This was a 40 ton, full container length semi-truck with a white trailer cover with big blue letters reading “OnlyFans” on the side and back. Even the Mudflaps had it spelled out.
This wasn’t for a specific OnlyFans creator, just OnlyFans as a brand itself, which I’m not sure whether it makes it better or worse.
This trailer cover must’ve been custom made and costs a shitton of money.
I’m not sure about the persons motivation, but I definetly respect the dedication and the execution.

What happened to mander.xyz?

I was a happy user of mander.xyz, and it had some great communities. What happened to it?

How to choose a watch band size?

Repebble is releasing their Pebble Round 2, and I think I want to get it.

But I am not sure how to choose between 14mm vs 20mm straps.

I had an LG smartwatch 3 that had a 20mm strap, and I did not like how clunky the strap was.

But are there upsides/downsides to 14mm vs 20mm? How do you usually choose, and or what is your preference?

Are there any decent sites where you can meet people online?

I liked OkCupid’s question system, but since that place has become unusable there is no good way of meeting people online without investing considerable effort sifting through discord servers and whatnot. I had high hopes for Matrix, but Matrix turned out to have a fair share of rooms full of really mentally ill people set on evading moderation.

I’m not talking about romantic or sexual dating, that is not the aim. So far I’ve only met one person online who proved to be a consistent friend.

The whole conundrum is so troubling to me that I have started thinking about building a crude matching algorithm and using that for a FLOSS chatting site that doesn’t have pictures, bios, searchable profiles and all that jazz. Just: ‘yes’/‘no’ and 6 pt scale questions. Maybe also a contrast mode to discover radically different people. The biggest obstacle here would be certain legal questions (especially around liability.)

Before I start doing that I want to ask if anyone here knows of a decent site to meet people.

What's the best way to organize?

I’m looking for specific suggestions of what I can do to find a group that I can join for the purpose of building a real revolution inside the USA. I’m trying and finding it very difficult. The closest was PSL but honestly my local branch seems kind of limp. That and I’m not academically inclined enough to get through Capital.