Zedstrian

joined 1 year ago
[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago

Russia doesn't have peace intentions, making helping Ukraine at every turn the only rational option.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 1 day ago (8 children)

"You can't sell them until I've flooded the market with all my shares first!" -fElon, probably

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

RT is a Russian propaganda outlet, full stop.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The problem is that Apple's extensive marketing of Apple Intelligence has led to expectations that far surpass what the final product is likely to be.

Most people think generative AI is magic coming out of a hat, so even if Apple delivers at the same level as other companies, people will feel like they've been misled.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's a symptom of Google holding a monopoly over search results.

Real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI-generated propaganda, and if the former has a paywall and the latter doesn't, people will inevitably end up reading the news that takes the least effort to produce, to the detriment of actual news reporting.

Requiring Google to both carry such content and pay for it at least ensures that it has an even footing with websites seeking to push propaganda instead.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The problem is that society has transitioned to a point where most people essentially go to Google and Facebook for all their information. Given the monopolistic power of such platforms on public opinion, there is a very strong societal interest to ensure that actual news, not merely the propaganda of the highest bidder, is what people have access to.

The responsibility of Google to pay for it can be argued, but as real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI slop pushed by propagandists, there is arguably a public interest in that as well. The alternative is legitimate news more often than not ending up with more ads and paywalls than propaganda, which will just result in more people reading sources based on less reliable reporting.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (6 children)

If that's what the French want, then it's Google's obligation to comply and simply adjust advertising rates as needed.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Even so, there is a societal interest in objective news being available to the public, which means that search engines should be required to carry such content, profitable or not. All the more so due to Google's monopolistic grip on the search engine market.

 

In using the 'Controversial' sorting option for my All feed, I found that it was consistently only able to load a limited number of posts before erroring out.

Sort by controversial loading glitch demonstration.

Edit: After testing in Safari via the regular Lemmy client, the same behavior occurring seems to indicate that it's a bug with Lemmy itself, rather than Arctic specifically.

Edit: Confirmed with the Lemmy developers that it had indeed been a bug in the backend, but has already been resolved in a development version of the software testable on voyager.lemmy.ml.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

That won't keep them from harvesting user data.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Not the corporate one, with 680 employees in Washington, D.C.

To keep Radio Free Europe from degrading to the level of Russian propaganda, any and all fascist influence must be removed and kept out of its administration.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 4 days ago (4 children)

If Radio Free Europe gets EU funding, it should be reincorporated in Europe and the remainder of its US operations relocated to Prague to avoid any American influence on its reporting and continued defense of democracy.

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Most should offer alternative support options, even if they can't promote them directly in their apps (a monopolistic practice on the part of app stores), given that forking over 30% of a subscription's cost to Apple or Google isn't something I'd want to do just to support an app's development.

 

While I've made use of title and domain filters for a few weeks now to filter out unwanted posts from communities I otherwise don't want to block, I noticed today that if you press the 'Add Filter' button for Title, Domain, Community Name, or Username filters, but leave the filter blank, all posts will be hidden.

In the case of Domain filters, oddly up to three recent non-URL posts seem to be able to appear when a Domain filter is blanked out, but not all non-URL posts in general.

For some reason, the same problem doesn't seem to occur when blanking out a Content filter, as far as I can tell.

Here's is a demonstration of the glitch, using a blank Community Name filter:

Blank filter glitch demonstration.

 

Most people probably wouldn't notice it, but the gap between 'Search' and 'TRENDING COMMUNITIES' is inconsistent.

I marked the initial height of it with a line in the example GIF below. It gets shorter after tapping the search bar and exiting out of it, and then taller after the page is refreshed.

Search tab spacing inconsistencies example.

 

In the 'Content' section of the Settings page, 'Embeded Crossposts' should be 'Embedded Crossposts'.

Not a bug per-se, but thought I'd make a note of it all the same.

 

In recording the example videos for my prior bug report, I at one point accidentally entered 'Stean' instead of 'Steam' into the search box, subsequently re-recording the video to correct the typo.

Since then, however, when I enter the word 'Steam' into the search box, conduct the search, and then tap on the search box again to edit the query, it selects the word and suggests a reversion to 'Stean', rather than placing the blinking cursor after Steam to let me edit the text as normal. The issue persists after restarting the app.

After some trial and error of figuring out how I had triggered the glitch in the first place, I replicated it with the word 'Worry' and its typo 'Worrt' for the example GIF below. If it helps in determining the cause, the glitch does not seem to apply to words beyond a certain length, as my initial idea of 'examples' and 'examplez' did not trigger the glitch, nor did 'tomatoes' and 'tomatoez'.

Typo memory text entry glitch.

 

In perusing the Lemmy community list, I've noticed several times the dormant !ukraine@lemmy.ca community mentioning a consolidation with !ukraine@feddit.kyiv.ua. As the latter instance has since gone offline, I inquired with the !ukraine@lemmy.ca moderator about switching the consolidation to one of the other two active Ukraine communities.

I was subsequently informed that the change had indeed already been made, but that the version of the community on lemmy.dbzer0.com didn't reflect it. As the updated version is visible on both the original lemmy.ca page, as well as the lemmy.world version of it, is there a reason our version of it is out of date?

Edit: Seems that subscribing to the community to federate it updated it successfully.

 

Normally, the search tool takes the input query, applies it to the search type selected (Community/Comment/Post/User), and outputs the corresponding results. The user then has the option of switching to another one of the three tabs to repeat the search with a different search type. This functioning normally is demonstrated in the first GIF below:

Search tool working normally.

If the user switches to a different tab before the search completes, however, the search is unable to be applied to the newest tab. Tapping on the search box and pressing enter also doesn't enable the query to be processed in this case, without at least removing or adding a character to it first.

The first example is quickly switching tabs before the initial search is able to load:

Search tool quick switch glitch example two.

The second example is switching tabs after having completed the initial search and quickly returning to the original one:

Search tool quick switch glitch example three.

The third example is switching tabs after having completed the initial search and quickly switching again to a different one:

Search tool quick switch glitch example one.

 

If you open Lemmy Explorer and tap on the search bar before the community list loads, neither the community count nor the communities themselves will appear until you either enter something into the search bar or cancel the search.

Lemmy Explorer community loading glitch example.

 

While I'm saving most of my feature requests for after I'm done bug hunting, I thought that extending the same level of searchability to Mbin and Piefed communities would increase the number of communities users have easy access to, along with making it more likely that those communities get new Lemmy users to join.

Of the two, I'd guess that Mbin would be the easier one to implement currently, given that Lemmy Explorer on lemmyverse.net indexes them in a similar manner to Lemmy communities.

If the functionality were implemented, ideally the Mbin and Piefed communities would be searchable via the current Lemmy Explorer tool, perhaps with a filter option to toggle the listing of communities from any of the three services on or off.

 

Having curated my Lemmy Explorer list to specifically exclude subjects beyond my interests, I don't usually make use of the 'Random Community' button. After just tapping it a few times in a row, however, I noticed that it seemed to be drawing community names from a tiny subset of the 933 communities that I haven't blocked.

People with shorter block lists than me are likely to have a greater degree of variation from the randomizer. That aside, of the hundreds of options it should have been able to choose from, the randomizer only selected the following nine communities during my extensive testing of it:

Entries near the start of the list were chosen more frequently than those towards the end of it, for some reason.

Community randomizer bug example.

 

A minor graphical bug, but thought I'd still make note of it.

It's a distinct bug from the one affecting the Lemmy Explorer loading icon that I posted above a few days ago, as this one seems to affect all loading icons.

Cached loading icon bug example.

 

Typically, if you tap on a post's image, there is a quick animation that scales the image up from its current location on the screen until it fills the screen completely.

For some reason, sometimes when the post image is tapped on very quickly after the post is loaded, the animation is skipped.

It doesn't seem to occur consistently, but in recording it for the GIF below, it occurred on my fourth loading of the post, each time quickly repeatedly tapping on the post image as soon as it appeared. The GIF itself consists of the third and fourth of those loadings, with the third having the normal animation and the fourth lacking it.

As the difference is harder to see at low frame rates, I tried uploading a high frame rate GIF to no avail, so if needed I can share the original video file via different means.

Image loading animation glitch example.

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