Did you see the story about classified info regularly being sent to random people in Mali because they send it to .ml instead of .mil by mistake?

But yeah honestly I doubt it matters what he knows, having him parade Infront of people saying how awfull the west is would play well to the home crowd, they can pretend to have gotten great secrets from him and he'll be given all the luxuries North Korea can spare... A small concrete room and almost enough food to live!

I'm sure it's not lack of technical skill it's a mental block, I've helped so many people set up software that is literally clicking ok a dozen times then they're like 'oh let me print this, hang on I need to compile a firmware update and flash it using a telegraph key...' big brands have the shittiest software, but people feel they should be able to understand because it's professional but something like an open source federated social network is nerd stuff so they feel the the shouldn't be able to.

Case in point, I installed MPV on a friends laptop because VLC wouldn't play the file without crashing, the install process is super simple but they have green on black hacker terminal output instead of a process bar and you type Y when prompted instead of clicking yes -- it gave her anxiety just watching me do it, said maybe we should try uninstalling VLC and reinstalling instead... Of course mpv played the video flawlessly and used less CPU and ram doing so which warmed her to it. There's no way she couldn't have understood everything and done it herself but the fact it's not as corporate as VLC would have written it off (and wow that's a crazy thing to say, I love that there's so much great open source software that VLC is middle of the road)

That's true, only Canadian instances would have to block Canadian news sites

We might have to ban it too if Canada is going to charge the instance owners for every Canadian news story posted

Oh now there's a game I could really play on a long journey, is it on play store?

My controversial opinion is that candy crush is actually brilliant, yeah they want you to buy gold but it's more fun not to. The same goes for a lot of advert funded / in app purchase games - they're fantastic mobile games if you ignore the money option.

Morrowind ports and similar aren't great mobile games, they're great games but candy crush I can pull out my pocket when I'm waiting for a bus and get totally drawn into a few rounds. Airport control is another example, draw lines to direct landing planes and avoid a crash - super simple and repetitive but its complexity grows, cut the rope likewise is a true game in my definition because you learn skills and develop your personal ability beyond just learning game mechanics. They're engaging and enjoyable with a complexity ramp and nice easy to understand ui and graphics - they're everything a mobile game should be.

There are some great horror and story games too, especially the Indy ones

That's how a lot of open source works tbh, often devs have jobs to make money and work on their project in free time then if the project gains traction they start making enough off donations or whatever to drop their other work.

Yeah but that will change over time, I think we've got the potential to make much better tech communities than Reddit had especially as this increasingly becomes the defacto nerd hangout

I think it'll take time but as things settle a bit I wouldn't be shocked to see a lot of uses spring up that draw in users without them really being aware they're even using the fediverse.

For example one of the main draws to Reddit was always the tech knowledge of the users but us nerds are all here now so it's only a matter of time before Twitter and Facebook have screenshots of Lemmy posts rather than Reddit posts, all the rabbit holes that used to lead to Reddit will start pointing here.

There are already interesting bots being written for communities here, I saw a chat GPT one and no doubt anyone making a fun toy is far more likely to design it to work here where it's not going to have API access destroyed and everything is more flexible - I know that next bot I write will be for lemmy rather then Reddit which I'd normally use. I might even get round to writing the community RPG game that was going to work on its own subreddit, I could have it as a custom instance instead and allow members of federated communities to play.

There's so many more possibilities and as they evolve they'll slowly draw people over and when they have their toe in I suspect meny will stay. I've got a hundred ideas for things to make and with ai coding helping I'll probably actually get round to finishing a dozen of them before the end of the year - I went to try new ways of visualising discussions, of working together and against each other to reach a common goal, I want to make games and mobile apps that work with communities in interesting ways and this is the perfect platform to do it on so I know I don't be the only one

It's so sad that the war on drugs people Keep making their rediculous arguments against it now there are so many places where it's legal and nothing has happened beside increased tax revenue and lives no longer being ruined by the police.

Maryland started selling recreational a few days ago and if you weren't looking for it you'd barely notice, certain shops now sell good quality, fairly priced weed to anyone over 21, society hasn't collapsed.

We absolutely need more trams but this image is slightly misleading as it assumes all the cars are going to the same place as the tram - integrated transport networks are really complex and I worry that if we try to gloss over those complexities it'll make it harder to convince people to take it seriously

First I would bang on a neighbor's door and pay them to follow me with a camera then run into the fairly nearby motorbike shop and yell 'quick I'm doing a Mr Beast challenge I need to spend a million dollars in the next half hour!' all four guys working would jump at it especially if I said 'give yourself 10% commission on each one'

The only other shop near that isn't just groceries is a wedding dress shop so I guess while they're getting the paperwork ready I'd run in and buy their most expensive white gowns so that we could ride in style - though the train might get caught in the chain...

Oh and I'd run into the pub and tell them to ring up as much as possible before the time runs out so we can all go there after to relax.