Jo

As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

Voat died because it was landed with a big chunk of the toxicity ejected from reddit. This isn't the same thing at all.

The risk to the Fediverse from huge commercial players is described well here: How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore. And started a long quest to create a messenger, starting with Hangout (which was followed by Allo, Duo. I lost count after that).

As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.

And it's not an accident:

What Google did to XMPP was not new. In fact, in 1998, Microsoft engineer Vinod Vallopllil explicitly wrote a text titled "Blunting OSS attacks" where he suggested to "de-commoditize protocols & applications […]. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market."

Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. The specifications of those extensions could be freely downloaded but required to accept a license which forbid you to implement those extensions. As soon as you clicked "OK", you could not work on any open source version of Kerberos. The goal was explicitly to kill any competing networking project such as Samba.

This anecdote was told Glyn Moody in his book "Rebel Code" and demonstrates that killing open source and decentralised projects are really conscious objectives. It never happens randomly and is never caused by bad luck.

Misleading title.

Reddit only handed over the details of one user

Reddit pointed out that the anonymous speech rights of its users shouldn’t be violated, as long as the filmmakers have other ways to obtain the information.

It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company

Uh huh.

Disclaimer: this is based on the UK, other jurisdictions may vary.

The purpose of references is to confirm that you are who you say you are. You don't need someone to vouch for your brilliance and dedication, only your existence. Any former school or employer should be willing to confirm that yes, you did work/study there when you say you worked/studied there. Get in touch with them and ask who reference requests should be directed to.

No one should expect you to provide a reference from a current employer until after you've been offered the job. So if you need to use your current employer, just ask them to hold off until the pre-employment phase.

If he took the test too, he knows about it. If he wants to talk about it, he will. And if he wants to know why she didn't raise it, it's because he is still her dad.

If I invite you to my party and you start insulting my friends, am I oppressing you if I ask you to leave?

What if I don't ask you to leave and you continue ruining the nights of everyone else present so they are forced to leave instead? Why is it OK to oppress them by default just because some random dickhead wants to be a dickhead in my space?

What if I run a bar?

(Link above is to the best non-reddit, non-twitter version of the bar story, not the original posts.)

Freedom of speech means the government can't lock you up merely for expressing an opinion. It doesn't mean anyone else has to put up with your shit.

This has been happening to me on readit.buzz so maybe a kbin bug?

I don't think that's true? It might be true of USian Christians because the Christian right has run riot there for the last 40 years. But I don't think it generalises?

There is a Christian right in the UK but they're not really that prominent outside of the Northern Irish context (where they are sadly all too prominent). I think most British people would associate Christians with feeding people, and cardigans. Our Christian churches are mulling over whether to perform same-sex marriages, not trying to ban them for everyone.

And the UK Muslim vote is firmly on the 'left', of course. But I don't know how that breaks down by heritage vs belief (or centre vs actual left).

Power Delete Suite is very easy. No download, just drag to your bookmarks toolbar, log in to reddit and go to your profile page, click the bookmark. You'll get some options on what to delete and you can also add some text to bulk edit instead of bulk delete.

That's not true in the US. They have a tipped minimum wage; there, if you're not tipping you're stealing someone's labour.

It is a sucky system, as the buried lede in that article shows:

However, data from the very checkout system that prompted tipping revealed disparities in pay. Neitzel noticed that Black employees were earning less tips than their White counterparts.

But, until it is burned to the ground, that is the system and (in the US) you should not use it to exploit people.

I linked an article about how that stat became widely cited, based on almost nothing. It's not uncommon in medicine, especially when it suits Pharma. I teach medical students and the first thing we teach them is that half the course will be out of date by the time they graduate and the other half is already out of date.

That's not to say that addiction rates can't be kept very low with responsible prescribing and there's nothing wrong with reassuring patients who may be concerned about swapping one problem for another. But this particular factoid was cultivated by drug companies wanting to encourage irresponsible prescribing. And they succeeded.

There's a brilliant drama on Disney/Hulu called Dopesick which tells the story (including of this statistic). It's an excellent, and enraging, watch.