BananaTrifleViolin

If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.

Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you’d have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.

I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It’s mainly about ensuring you don’t inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything you produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you consider leaving or an exit plan, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.

I think that’s true but South Parks humour has also changed over time. That’s the nature of satire - it lampoons human folly and vice, including the ideas of offence and moralising which are so often borne out of hippocracy.

You mention taboo topics like 9/11 as if it’s a no go area but actually that has been a rich source of comedy and satire due to the level of hippocracy displayed around it. The hippocracy of Uber patriotism, religious nationalism, racism (you mention people having to be careful about the target and culture of jokes, but many groups found the exact opposite after 9/11 - certain ethnic and religious groups were all tarred with the same brush, particularly in the US) and more. Even the idea of self censorship out of fear of causing offense. Some of this is being replayed right now with a contemporary conflict.

South Park is in a similar tradition to other satire such as Private Eye in the UK, or The Onion, or various other TV shows. South Park is just a sometimes more extreme version more willing to be deliberately offensive. But satire moves with the times like any other type of humour.

Essentially the engine is more modern, the graphics are nicer, and the simulation seems to be better. It is also hopefully a better base for newer mods.

I love CS1 but the engine is 8 years old and PC gamers in particular have been hitting the engines limits in multiple ways for years. There were also some fundamental design decisions which limited the scope of what could be done with the game going forward - it is definitely time for a sequel.

To be fair though, CS1 is going nowhere and has a massive amount of content available for it (including the massive free community content). It will probably take a couple of years before CS2 surpasses it. Although for Console gamers it'll probably quickly surpass what CS1 was and is able to offer.

I get where you're coming from, but in fairness the model can work. Cities Skylines 1 DLCs did mostly add substantial content to the game which over time built it to what it is today. At launch CS1 was a good game, far better than the premium Sim City 2013. I have over 1000hrs in the game so for me I think it was good value; and a lot of people bought the game over the years on heavy discount with a lot of the DLCs bundled.

The downside with this model is when they release half baked games and withhold core game mechanics to engineer DLC. From what they've released of Skylines 2 that doesn't seem to be the case - it seems to be a fully featured city builder with more at launch than CS1 had. Obviously it will depend what the game is actually like and launch and there are obvious hooks for DLC already.

I compare that to a game like Sim City 2013 - that released as a premium game, with a shitty reduced game scope, basic missing features and an always on-line DRM requirement, 1 crappy expansion and then completely abandoned by EA in a crappy state despite selling 2 million copies.

If I had to pick a model I'd pick Paradox's.

So the other 55% of the time it's a Lemmy user? I.e. the majority of the time!? There is so much irony in your post.

Yeah I found the article a bizarre read. It talks about ActovityPub and Mastodon but fails to mention the fediverse at all. Instead it talks about the "pluriverse", some random new term pulled from some paper, and paints a vision of people spread across various commercial social media platforms.

Either it's a blind spot In their research or an agenda so deliberate omission, but regardless it seems strange to talk about the disintegration of social media and even Mastodon but not what Mastodon is a part of.

But I agree the general themes are there - it's basically talking about the impact of enshittification but without using the term.

This doesn’t make sense. It’s more likely we’ll pack more into a high end device then say goodbye to them in tasks like gaming.

Computing power has been constantly improving for decades and miniaturisation is part of that. I have desktop PCs at work in small form factors that are more powerful than the gaming PC I used to have 10 years ago. It’s impressive how far things have come.

However at the top end bleeding edge in CPUs,.GPUs and APUs high powered kit needs more space for very good reasons. One is cooling - if you want to push any chip to its limits then you’ll get heat, so you need space to cool it. The vast majority of the space in my desktop is for fans and airflow. Even the vast majority of the bulk of my graphics card is actually space for cooling.

The second is scale - in a small form factor device you cram as much as you can get in, and these days you can get a lot in a small space. But in my desktop gaming tower I’m not constrained such limits. So I have space for a high quality power supply unit, a spacious motherboard with a wealth of options for expansions, a large graphics card so I can have a cutting edge chip and keep it cool, space for multiple storage devices, and also lots and lots of fans, a cooling system for the CPU.

Yes, in 5 years a smaller device will be more capable for today’s games. But the cutting edge will also have moved on and you’ll still need a cutting edge large form factor device for the really bleeding edge stuff. Just as now - a gaming laptop or a games console is powerful but they have hard upper limits. A large form factor device is where you go for high end experiences such as the highest end graphics and now increasingly high fidelity VR.

The exceptions to that are certain computing tasks don’t need anything like high end any more (like office software, web browsing, 4k movies), other tasks largely don’t (like video editing) so big desktops are becoming more niche in the sense that high end gaming is their main use for many homes users. That’s been a long running trend, and not related to APUs.

The other exception is cloud streaming of gaming and offloading processing into the cloud. In my opinion that is what will really bring an end to needing large form factor devices. We’re not quite there but I suspec that will that really pushes form factors down, rather than APUs etc.

Maybe it’s making a final upload to the cloud.

Yeah I agree they went too far. Season 2 was disappointing; they seemed to want to spend their time indulging themselves with musical shows and cross overs. It feels like they alternated each episode - one moment you get a serious episode and the next a silly one.

However the season also gave us Ad Astra per Aspera which was one of the best star trek episodes I’ve seen in a long time. Among the Lotus Eaters wasn’t bad; they just didn’t need to shoehorn Khan in - it undermined what was actually otherwise a nice character driven story for La’an. The “should I kill hitler/my grandad” bit at the end was something that could have been impactful but was just didn’t feel right.

Among the Lotus eaters and Lost in Translation were decent serious stories. Under the Cloak of War was an another attempt at a serious episode; it just didn’t come off in the end.

And for me, Those Old Scientists was actually one of my favourite episodes. It was not Ad Astra Per Aspera good, and it was undeniably silly, but there was just something very warm and wholesome about the episode, and it actually reflected much better on Lower Decks than SNW; Boimler and Mariner felt a bit more fleshed out by the episode and it made me more appreciative of the show and what it’s doing.

I think all in all, it was a decent season. It didn’t maintain the high level of quality of the first season, and there were some really poor episodes (the opener Broken Circle and Cherades were terrible, and the muscial episode was just too far EVEN in a season with a crossover with a cartoon) but the highs were high and most of the other episodes were decent even allowing for some silliness. Season 1 was masterful TV in my opinion. Season 2 was decent.

Did they overdo the gimmicks? Yes. I still enjoyed the show despite the flaws but I sincerely hope they reign it in in season 3.

Just on the “There are so much socialists/communists around, including Lemmy’s founders. Even the ‘subreddits’ called communities.”

You really need to learn to tolerate and listen to the views of people you disagree with. Just cutting those voices out entirely and not wanting to hear them really is putting yourself into an echo chamber. You are an individual - don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to belong to a “group” and agree with all the thoughts in that group and disagree with all the thoughts outside that group. It’s important that you are open to being challenged and hearing other peoples world views, even if yours is ultimately unchanged. Otherwise you’ll just be a sheep thinking how others are directing you to think.

Also, the idea that the word “community” is socialist/communist is the most rediculous thing I’ve read in a while.

It depends what you use it for.

If you’re watching your own content within your home then Jellyfin is better. It’s free, open source and private. Your Jellyfin instance is yours and secure, and entirely under your control.

Plex’s differences are mostly behind it’s plex pass pay wall, and you sacrifice privacy using their platform. The key difference is really offline and remote viewing of content which is easier and slicker with plex (but doable with jellyfin), and the plex App maybe available a few more devices. There are also some credits and ad skipping features. That’s about it - I struggle to see the benefit in plex. The only other thing I can think of is some people prefer the interface?

I used to use Plex and got annoyed when I couldn’t view my content, which I host locally, because their login servers were down. Made me realise why did I need them so I researched a bit and switched to Jellyfin.

To be fair, they can “prempt” Threads.net by blocking the domains. That’s basically how they block other instances.

I personally think the default should be to block Threads.net and federate if and when a server wants to, rather than waiting for Meta to pull a switch. However I disagree with OP’s approach of blackmail and threats, and his idea he “owns” the communities he moderates.

This is true - the bigger impact would be on Kbin instances that are both Threadiverse and Microblogverse facing.

However, if you go on Mastodon you can see Lemmy threads as posts which you can click through to the hosting instance and also boost (but not downvote). So for Lemmy if Threads.net federates, the biggest impact would be exposure of content to Threads users who then come in to Lemmy instances but not logged in or who could boost content and distort things.

For Kbin instances and also Mastodon it could mean being swamped with content from Threads.net.

Personally I do think overall the Kbin/Lemmy/Mastodon servers should probably not federate with Threads.net. The content appears to be poor and it could flood the fediverse with crap, when really it’s still small and needs to grow organically. Threads.net is at 70m users already and rising rapidly, while Mastodon is at 8m (1.6m active) and the Threadiverse is more like 130k across Kbin and Lemmy. Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy need time to establish what it means to be an independent federated social media network. They can always federate with Threads.net in the future - rather than it being Meta’s choice, it should be the communities choice if and when they want to federate with a behemoth network.

I think you’re probably best shutting “your” subs and moving anyway - if you want to dictate how a server runs, you’re probably better off hosting your own instance. I’m not sure we need people in the fediverse who thinks a moderator owns a community - it’s just the other extreme from Reddit’s attitude that they own a community.

I happen to agree with defederating, but I don’t like threats and the idea of blackmail to a community.

I like and trust Proton Mail, and they support setting up custom domains while hosting your email data (for subscriber users).

You can then access it via their web mail box, via their Android and iOS apps, or via a desktop email client if you install their “bridge” application. The bridge application basically maintains the secure encryption ethos of their email system by ensuring all email traffic between your desktop and their servers remains encrypted, but can still be accessed via your preferred email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook. The bridge is available for Windows, iOS and Linux.

I personally recommend Protonmail as it’s primary focus is security and encryption, yet it does this in a very well developed and slick interface, so you get the best of both worlds. I’m a subscriber and moved from Gmail about 2 years ago as I wanted better privacy and security (they even have great tools for importing your old emails from major web providers). I don’t have a custom domain but from my experiences of everything else they provide, I’d be confident it works as intended.

EDIT: In terms of cost, its €4 a month for the first tier which includes support for 1 custom domain, 10 email addresses, and 15GB of storage, or €10 for 500GB, 3 domains, 15 emails. They also include VPN, calendar, drive storage and a password manager in both.

I’d say the biggest reason is culture and identity. The threadiverse is small at present - about 120k - and the microblogverse is bigger - 8m - but still smaller than the Threads.net 70m already and potential 1bn if meta leverages instagram. Why would a smaller and growing new independent social media platform want to be swamped by a commercial tidal wave? There isn’t really a benefit to the independent parts of the Fediverse.

It’s better for the independent parts of the fediverse to grow organically, remain independent and grow it’s own identity rather than disappear into useless oblivion.

Also if I understand it correctly, the Threads.net is a microblogging site so while they may both use ActivityPub, Lemmy does not support microblog content. For Lemmy, it would mainly be the Lemmy content appearing within Threads.net. Federating with Threads.net is more of an issue for Kbin (which does both Threadiverse and Microblogverse content) and Mastodon (which does Microblogverse content) - the content would be visible in both directions. So for Lemmy it might be a big influx of users so may be manageable, but for Kbin & Mastodon it may also be a flood of content which might not be mangeable. But correct me if I’m wrong on that.

Big companies going startup rarely goes well. If they’re doing what you think, then it’s already on a path to failure as they’re doing their work in isolation without input from the people who know the current system well, or the many legacy intricacies that need to be addressed.

Migrating from an old backend to a new backend written by people who don’t know how the old backend works sounds like a recipe for disaster. They will also be under pressure to deliver whatever it is they’re making in a way a startup is not - so expect a cluster fuck of chaos as a rushed migration to a half written replacement is forced through.

If you don’t trust your new CTO and he’s not sharing a vision for the future but instead seems to be building a new private kingdom, then ask yourself is that the kind of place you want to work. You’re a dev working in a company where the CTO doesn’t respect your or your team enough to keep you updated. Maybe it’s time to be thinking about moving on if you can’t get any concrete assurances. That doesn’t have to be immediate but maybe time limit how long you will work for the company and have an exit plan ready to go early.