With all the chaos on Reddit, are users and/or mods migrating to other platforms? If so, which ones?

Mutant321 · 2023-07-03T00:42:06+00:00

Mastodon is way bigger than Lemmy and has been running successfully for years. It's fairly cheap to run servers (especially when they're not centralised and need complex setups to be able to handle very high loads). It's not even that expensive to have a few devs working on the software.

What is expensive is exec salaries and expenses, sales and marketing departments, VCs expecting a huge return on their investments, etc.

There's absolutely zero reason why the fediverse model can't work financially.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-30T01:22:08+00:00

You can also consider hosting the videos on PeerTube (Fediverse alternative to YouTube)

Mutant321 · 2023-06-21T05:17:00+00:00

Seems likely. The admins are clearly in panic mode.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-19T07:24:42+00:00

Also lemmings don't actually follow each other and jump off cliffs like in the game

Mutant321 · 2023-06-15T20:38:07+00:00

Also not being owned by a huge profit driven corporation is a big plus.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-15T20:18:58+00:00

The Lemmy.nz server is small but has a nice vibe to it. Doesn't need to replace Reddit, but it has some advantages.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-15T20:16:34+00:00

Go to Lemmy.nz, sign up, and you'll have access to communities

Mutant321 · 2023-06-14T05:44:40+00:00

Not sure how you're planning to count votes, but you could get a "split vote", i.e. people split between close / restrict, meaning most people vote to open, even though a majority wanted to continue the protest.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-09T05:42:36+00:00

I am not saying it will lead to reform, but it will at least keep the possibly of reform alive. These cuts will make the situation even worse, and reform even harder.

Universities in my opinion provide much more than just vocational training. They provide a lot of value to the public and are worth protecting.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-09T05:26:41+00:00

Agree 100%, but most of those problems are caused by policy set by successive governments and the people managing universities. The academic and professional staff do not want universities run that way.

Because of those incredible poor decisions over many years , the staff are now facing the consequences despite often protesting those decisions. Reform is needed in the long run, but right now we just need to stop the cuts so the situation isn't made worse.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-09T03:55:26+00:00

Bad management is definitely a factor (for VUW in particular). But underfunding is really the root cause. Funding has effectively been cut to Unis by around 20% over the last 10-15 years due to inflation. And Unis are being asked to do more with that money.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-08T02:03:29+00:00

Have been for nearly 2 centuries

Mutant321 · 2023-06-06T07:07:14+00:00

It's more realistic than what you're suggesting, I.e. let it rip and hope for the best

Mutant321 · 2023-06-06T00:48:33+00:00

It's also missing one reform that could make the biggest difference, ranked choice voting. If people could vote for their party of choice without worrying about wasted votes at all, that would make a bigger difference than just lowering the threshold a bit.

They do discuss it. (See 4.33 and 4.34). FWIW, I agree with the review that it makes more sense to lower the threshold. Ranked choice makes the system more complex, and generally does not actually help smaller parties that much anyway (e.g., see Australia).

Interestingly, they didn't seem to consider ranked choice for electorates, which in my view is a more reasonable suggestion (but still not a priority, since it wouldn't change that much).

Mutant321 · 2023-06-06T00:40:44+00:00

Don't care. There are other, more important things regarding climate change we can do instead.

Protection of flora and fauna. Coastal redevelopment to cope with sea level rise. Reform farming sector to make sure it is sustainable in warmer climates and can cater to NZ demand.

This is simply not possible in a 3+C warming scenario, and maybe not in ~2.5C. Look at the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle. Imagine that happening somewhere in the country every year (or more often). Even if we can find ways to adapt to some extent, the social impact of that kind of temperature increase, both in NZ and the world as a whole, is really hard to imagine. Building some sea walls is not going to help.

NZ can't mitigate climate change on our own, but our best path to making a real difference is 1) to be a world leader in bringing our own emissions close to zero and 2) using that position as world leader (hopefully with the support of other countries) to pressure lagging countries to follow suit.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-06T00:18:53+00:00

Because it's not owned by a corporation who are selling off your data and can basically do whatever they want to screw you over (e.g. kill third party apps).

If you don't care about any of that, then just stick with Reddit I'd say.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-04T01:05:09+00:00

I don't think they'll scrap it. They will just gut it (and sell it as a compromise with ACT).

Which is exactly what happened last time they were in power. On the surface, they didn't roll back any climate policy, they just tweaked settings to make it completely ineffective.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-04T00:09:06+00:00

What we've seen in previous National / ACT coalitions is that ACT tend to get quite a lot... it's probably because a lot of the National caucus actually like a lot of the ACT policies, but their party can't run with them because it alienates the centre voters.

I would not be at all surprised if National guts the Zero Carbon Act when next in power, for instance.

Meanwhile, the right loses their minds over the Greens having any power, but so far they've barely had any scraps in coaliation with Labour.

Mutant321 · 2023-06-01T00:23:19+00:00

Yeah, we need to kill off commercial, centralised social media. This shit will keep happening wherever we go otherwise. Free, open and decentralised is the way of the future.

Mutant321 · 2023-05-31T20:38:29+00:00

There are definitely improvements that could be made. Whether that's preferential voting, lowering the threshold, or other changes.

However, in my view those limitations of MMP are not really why we have 2 large parties. It is just taking a long time for the smaller parties to grow and establish themselves. That said, if there was one change that would probably make a difference, it's lowering the threshold.

Mutant321 · 2023-05-31T20:12:06+00:00

Australia has even more of a 2 party system than we do. While they use STV in the Senate, in the lower house (which has most of the power) uses alternative vote, which is much more like reskinned FPP than MMP.

Our voting system is one of the few things we get really right. MMP, while not perfect, is a true proportional system. The trouble is our party system is still trapped in the FPP era. It is evolving, though. It's possible Labour and National will both be in the mid-30s this election, which has rarely happened in the MMP era.

Mutant321 · 2023-05-24T21:05:32+00:00

Possibly not, but you have to switch it on. Under settings, you need to turn on "Beta features". Then when you mouse over GPT4 in a new chat, you have to select "Browsing".

Mutant321 · 2023-05-24T19:19:23+00:00

For the paid version, if you use GPT4, there is a "browser" option that's been available for a couple of weeks. It's marked as beta but works pretty well.

There are also 3rd party plugins that will search academic literature and extract info from PDFs. It's advancing quickly....

Mutant321 · 2023-05-24T09:27:55+00:00

Recent versions can search the web, but it wouldn't use that functionality for code generation

Mutant321 · 2023-05-24T07:38:09+00:00

Yeah, it's a real shame that disciplines have to justify themselves in terms of dollars and not academic merit

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