souperk

I have been using for the past month. I am not a power user, I mostly use it when I need to access libgen. Previously, I was using nordvpn. I feel proton is faster both when connecting to a server but also the connection is faster/more reliable. For example, if I forget to turn it off, I can watch a yt video without any issues.

I can provide some context from Greece.

First of all, the unemployment rate is high. The official figure is currently at 12.5% but has been steadily decreasing from its peak of 27.7% in 2013. The real numbers are probably higher since people that haven't been employed within the last few years are not accounted.

As a result, labour rights are non-existent, overtime is rarely paid, wages have been stagnant since 2008, it is really common to work in unsafe conditions, and worker abuse occurs so often noone bats an eye.

While we do have unions more often than not they are powerless. For example, last year we had a major train accident (57 people died), the goverment blamed the train workers, their response was pretty much "our strikes for the safety issues that lead to the accident were deemed illegal, while our attempts to raise the issues were dismissed by the ministry of transportation".

We have had major nationwide protests with more than a million of people taking to the streets, but noone feels like that ever lead to anywhere.

IMO one of the greatest problems is the lack of information. Mainstream media are corrupt, and independent media are sabotaged or persecuted by the government. People do not know their rights, we have been trying to survive for so long that we cannot imagine a better future, and that allows employers to freely profit from laborers.

One interesting development is that lately more collectives are popping here and there, from coffee shops to softwafe development houses, more and more people are fed up and try to take matters on their own hands (even if in absolute numbers they are still very few).

I am stealing that phrase, thanks 🙏

I find it helps navigate certain quirks and get the help I need to thrive. For example, after disclosing I have ADHD, people are much more open to move when I am affected by background noise.

IMO it's not about what metric is used, but how it is used. The current approach, completely avoiding any karma like mechanism, solves the farming issue, but IMO does not cater to the needs of every user.

For example, I have ADHD and if accumulating karma gives me much needed motivation and feel good chemicals, I am going to take them.

At the same time, holding a user to a higher regard because of their karma is stupid, it's better to build real connections with usernames you recognise through continuous communication.

Personally, karma was an easily digestable piece of information about how my outreach into the social media is performing. Accumulating karma helps me feel connected with the community, feel accepted.

Weed can be addictive for people with ADHD, it's one of most common of forms of self medicarion but in the long run it probably going to make things worse.

Source: I was addicted for 3 years, at first it did wonders for my sleep issues and increased my productivity. At some point, I had to smoke daily or I would get headaches and huge cravings, my tolerance would constantly increase, and then it didn't help with my sleep issues anymore.

Now, I am only using it recreationally once every few months. It's fun but I have to be careful otherwise I know things can turn sour really fast.

I think you are spending too much effort to engage with a person that is not engaging back with you. Regardless if your behavior was creepy or not, you are worth more than that. That person wasn't matching your effort in maintaining a relationship (friendship in this scenario). Remember it takes two to tango, no matter how much you want it, you won't be able to carry a relationship on your own...

For context, I am the top donor at my instance, I recognize that there is a need for funds. BUT, I believe it's important for the fediverse to be accessible to everyone regardless if they have the funds for that.

Dopamine received, initiating hyperfocus protocol!

As a rule of thumb, we’ve observed that a team of 5 trained moderators appears to provide ample coverage and redundancy for servers of about 1,000 active users

That's a fascinating bit of information. I would expect 5 moderators to provide coverage for more users. I am wondering how they came up with that statistic (will update the comment if I find an answer).

Remember that offliine/IRL community management experience can be just as important as online experience

Interesting idea, wondering what's the IRL presence of the fediverse...

If you’re building toward participatory or democratic governance, consider establishing a proposal and voting system (some teams we spoke with use Loomio, but multiple options exist) for major policy decisions.

That's soooo important, I love when communities create polls to decide on policy changes.

Avoid promoting brand-new members unless you already have a pre-existing relationship with them

I have followed some discussion on multi-level hierarchies on the fediverse, wondering if there are any instance implementing that...

Consider charging for accounts or offering paid memberships.

Hell no!

We hope there will be more resources available in the future, particularly tooling around legal compliance. This is one of the big infrastructural gaps we point out in our main report

That's a big issue, I would be interested in hosting an instance available to other people, but I don't want to end up in jail and I lack the resources to make sure that won't happen...

That was an interesting read, it seems there is an in-depth analysis of the report here.

Can someone ELI5 so I can get enough dopamine to go read the whole thing?

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not but I found this review.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/14/5/858

I had done some research about a year ago, but I don't have the papers saved.

While the consumption for AI train can be large, there are arguments to be made for its net effect in the long run.

The article's last section gives a few examples that are interesting to me from an environmental perspective. Using smaller problem-specific models can have a large effect in reducing AI emissions, since their relation to model size is not linear. AI assistance can indeed increase worker productivity, which does not necessarily decrease emissions but we have to keep in mind that our bodies are pretty inefficient meat bags. Last but not least, AI literacy can lead to better legislation and regulation.