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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • Good to know. I’ve only been using Proton for like 4 months now and have thus far generally liked the experience, but that’s too bad about your experiences with the Drive client. I’ve used several paid business suites over the years through work and they all have their issues though. The only one that was generally solid was Google’s and I’ve gradually taken steps to remove their products from my life so there’s no going back to them for me. It was also almost 10 years ago since I last used Google’s paid email/Drive, so maybe it’s also gone to shit.




  • That’s a very good question as it sure doesn’t feel like misinformation has declined much in this timespan. My guess would be that the traffic is finding its way to smaller websites, like those used in astroturfing campaigns, though the article speculates that Facebook’s algorithm changes may have lessened the flow of traffic to rightwing sites, and I’d guess that’d include these one-offs. Maybe X is picking up the slack there? They’ve certainly gotten fully unhinged and pandering to this crowd.

    Could YouTube be another possibility? I think the algorithm is going strong there in favor of extremist content. My disabled dad, for example, spends his days jumping between watching shows like Cops, and watching YouTube videos of sovereign-citizen types harrassing cops. That’s mixed in with all the other garbage his algorithm throws at him. Over the years he’s gone from economically centre-left to fully buying into the Trump bandwagon (and we’re not even American).

    Whatever the answer, I think people are still getting this info from somewhere and apparently in droves.


  • I’d looove to see this but an international plan to stop climate change is also technically possible but I’m not gonna get my hopes up based on what we’ve seen in that arena thus far. That latter is also an outright existential threat to our species.

    It’s also technically possible that anyone can win the lottery but the odds are decidedly stacked against them.

    I hate that I’m so goddamn pessimistic about this stuff, but it’s hard to see a path to betterment until shit really hits the fan in catastrophic ways. (Moreso than we’ve seen thus far.) Between the rich holding ridiculous power and the 30-40% of the population they’ve utterly brainwashed, an optimistic future seems pretty far fetched. Not that we shouldn’t try, of course, I’m just venting my frustrations. That said, as an elder millenial, I have a good degree of hope for the younger generations. Overall they seem much more progressive and don’t buy into the illusions about our current system that we do.

    I spent sooooo much of my teens and early 20s involved in leftist activism and spent the next decade utterly apathetic as we never seemed to accomplish much of anything. Now I’m just trying to get by and help those who I directly have the power to help, such as coworkers and the kids in my life.



  • It looks like eligibility is limited to permanent residents. I can’t imagine this would help that much in this case? Someone already living there already has a leg up on finding a job (especially, as the article states, the issue with enlistment is already-high employment).

    I’d think they’d have better luck opening this up to non-residents in a French Foreign Legion sort of approach. It seems like a much better value-proposition to someone from an economically-disadvantaged country, especially if it opens the door to AUS citizenship. This veers pretty close to the Starship Troopers “service guarantees citizenship” and as such I’m not saying they should do this - just that I wonder if they considered it if they’re having that much trouble reaching enlistment targets.


  • It seems like the consensus of this thread is that the name isn’t holding it back. That was my thinking going into it, but the article makes some very valid points such as the name (being related to a sexual and sometimes derogatory word) making it a non-starter in some organizations.

    I have it installed on all our computers at work for basic image editing, but we’re a small business and never gave it much thought. I can absolutely see it being problematic in a school setting, however. More to the point, Adobe has ably demonstrated: get them hooked on your software in school and you’ll dominate the market. Imagine if kids had been learning GIMP instead of Photoshop all these years.

    Anyway, I’ve got no dog in this fight. Just pointing out what I see as a valid point in the article.

    Also, I like their original name possibility of IMP much better. The mascot could have been a cute little imp instead of … whatever it is now.