For me the weirdest part of the interview is where he says he doesn’t want to follow anyone, that he wants the algorithm to just pick up on his interests. It’s so diametrically opposed to how I want to intentionally use social networks and how the fedi tends to work that it’s sometimes hard to remember there are people who take that view.

Can’t happen soon enough.

Very informative. On paragraphs 61 and following, it clearly explains why the Israeli claims on human shields are improper and how attacks are not maintaining the principles of proportionality, distinction, and so on.

Very well-reasoned article, though the political constraints might end up making implementing its recommendations impossible. Hard to see how the US and EU could make the rhetorical shifts it would take. If events continue as they are now, the military realities may preclude it. While it seems advantageous to reach a negotiated settlement for all sides at the moment, this will not remain the case forever.

I can think of alternatives. For example, the server could keep the user’s private key, encrypted with a passphrase that the user must have. So key loss wouldn’t be an issue. (Yes, passphrase loss might, but there are lots of ways to keep those safely already, compared to key material which is difficult to handle.)

Security and performance are hard to measure but it’s at least questionable that they’re behind in either.

AI has many good uses, for example the local translation capability that allows for privacy-preserving translations of websites is AI and already in Firefox, and makes it possible to translate in environments that do not allow sending data out for security reasons.

So, not super sure what this is or how this works. Is the idea that you run the cgi, it sets up static files, and it responds to AP requests like follows, mentions, boosts and such? I realise lots of people don’t like long docs but I didn’t really understand the use case very well.

Why’s RFA not blacklisted?

On my instance, the following control measures apply:

• Only public posts are visible through the web interface.
• Only public posts appear on RSS.
• Following requires approval.
• Authorised fetch is required.

So I think I have reason to feel fairly strongly that follower only posts are not public, and even unlisted posts are reasonably restricted.

I don’t get why states do this. Lie? Yes, that makes sense. But lie so badly it’s inevitable they get caught? A lot of people, I would think, will now also have qualms believing anything coming from them, even things that might be true.

Hypothetically? Maybe, but it seems extremely unlikely. Even if the referendum would have run normally back then, what would have happened next?

In fact, the declaration of independence lasted seconds, because anyone who knows anything can realise the extreme infeasibility of a unilateral declaration and all it would entail.

that said, if the Spanish state is so fragile a vote could split it, then it should probably split.

I would expect that, but I’m not just talking right wingers. I personally know Sumar voters who said they will now vote for cannabis party or any random thing because of the amnesty.

Not that hard left (I gave money to Sumar but I’m realistic that it’s the best we can get, more than what we want).

I know some people who are really pissed off about the amnesty, and personally I don’t get it. Like in what world is the personal fate of a few hundreds of people who, let’s say for the sake of the argument, ran an illegal referendum, more important than labour rights for everyone?

I played it and enjoyed it. The first time round I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of game mechanics, just went by what I would do in that place, and my moderation speed fell to 0 so I lost.

Second time I managed to finish the game, with some compromises but not too awful.

There is literally no instance in which expanding the scope of copyright law is a good thing. Never.

As far as I can tell, this is incorrect. If there’s a post on instance A, a reply from instance B, and someone on instance C follows the OP on A but not the RP on B, they will only see the OP without the reply.

Source: I very often notice this because I run a single-user instance, and when I open a thread it’s incomplete, lacking posts from instances that I have not suspended.

Not that I expect a lot of consistency from imperialists, but essentially the same lines of argument can be used regarding the Russian Federation.

An advisory opinion would effectively settle Israel’s “bilateral dispute” without the state’s consent.

Ditto for .ru and .ua.

The court is not equipped to examine a “broad range of complex factual issues concerning the entire history of the parties’ dispute”.

Same thing, especially if we get back to the formation of the Soviet Union, independence referenda, and so on.

An advisory opinion would conflict with existing agreements between the parties and negotiation frameworks endorsed by the UN.

This would be Minsk I and II.

The request is not appropriate as it asks the court to “assume unlawful conduct on the part of Israel”.

Ditto.

The biggest issues for me are:

1. No centralisation means there’s no canonical single source of truth.
2. Account migration.
3. Implementation compatibility.

No single source of truth leads to the weird effect that if you check a post on your instance, it will have different replies from those on a different instance. Only the original instance where it got posted will have a complete reply set–and only if there are no suspensions involved. Some of this is fixable in principle, but there are technical obstacles.

Account migration is possible, but migration of posts and follows is non-trivial, Also migration between different implementations is usually not possible. Would be nice if people could keep a distinction between their instance, and their identity, so that the identity could refer to their own domain, for example.

Last, the issue with implementation compatibility. Ideally it should be possible to use the same account to access different services, and to some extent it works (mastodon can post replies to lemmy or upvote, but not downvote, for example).

Historically many if not most conflicts started with the breach of an agreement. Without getting bogged down in irrelevant detail, there are issue of self-determination of Crimea, which repeatedly in 3 referenda (2 if you wish to exclude the last one) pronounced in favour of either autonomy or being part of the CIS (effectively Russian Federation). Likewise, and setting aside the 2014 events for the moment, there also were agreements that, in principle, may have served as a valid status quo, such as Minsk II, and were not complied to by the parties.

So, sure, some form of trust-building will be necessary. But what’s the alternative? Endless war?

I’m not. Crimea is not a fourth of Ukraine’s territory (27000 km^2 out of 603000 km^2). That’s about a 1/22nd part.