My wife is like this. I just set her up with Chrome’s password manager despite the fact that I’m a Firefox and Bitwarden user. Works in Chrome, on Android, and on iOS - she doesn’t have to use Chrome on iOS, you just have to install Chrome and set it as the iOS password manager and it still works with all apps and Safari. She doesn’t care if Google has her whole life on file and I’m not paid enough to care for her.

MetaFilter

But it still won’t put my friend’s popular posts at the top, right? I don’t want to scroll past 20 pictures of people’s dinner and then find out one of my friends got engaged, I want the “I got engaged” post at the top because it’s probably getting the most interaction.

I didn’t say it was a bad thing, I just said it’s one reason Bsky is more popular. People are busy and want algorithms.

I’d you go to a post you are always told that the host server may have more replies

Just yesterday I opened a post on Masto that had 80 boosts. I went to my home instance to boost it, and it said 10 boosts. I get that things will sometimes be out of sync due to federation and I don’t think those numbers need to be exactly the same, but that’s a huge difference.

If you don’t like the instance (why wouldn’t I?) you can just move to a different one. Yes, and restart my network. It’s not really a good solution.

Yep. I’ve moved several times and the process sucks. It’s ridiculous that your posts and followers don’t follow you. It’s technically possible to do it: just give every account a public/private key pair for identity, and if you migrate to a new instance your public/private key pair come with you so you can prove that you are still you, and then there should be no problem bringing your posts and followers to the new instance. But despite the fact that switching instances is a core feature of the Fediverse, the process sucks.

It looks like that’s popular posts by anyone, not just by people I follow. So it’s a start, but different people want to see different things so having a single firehose like Explore doesn’t really meet the need. For me, I want to see popular stuff by people or hashtags I follow. Other people might want to see other things.

Exactly, a lot of algorithms on for-profit sites are manipulative trash but refusing to have any algorithm at all is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I’m on both Mastodon and Bluesky. To me, Mastodon’s biggest problem is its refusal to have an algorithm to surface popular content. Yes there are problems with algorithms, but I don’t have the time or inclination to read every post in chronological order. A good algorithm would show me popular posts without manipulating me for profit.

Edt: a few people have misunderstood me. I’m not proposing “Mastodon shows me stuff from people I don’t follow,” I’m suggesting “Mastodon shows me stuff only from people I follow, but it shows me the popular stuff first.”

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500. I remember thinking it was so cool that it had 2 chips on the same board: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5

Chalupas (I think these are basically the same as their gorditas but with a fried shell)

And honestly their regular, basic beef soft tacos are pretty good, especially with some fire sauce (or whatever your preferred level of spice is).

This looks great, giving it a try now!

I agree there’s something to be said for this — If you have a above-board business that credit card companies don’t want to service because they think it makes them look bad, that should not shut you out of electronic payments yet that’s basically where we are at least in the US.

This is a little hard to balance with the fact that the same things that let you circumvent gatekeepers like credit card companies also make it attractive for genuinely immoral things, but that’s a trade-off. Every currency can be used for immoral things and just because cryptocurrency might make it a little easier doesn’t mean it’s inherently immoral.

That’s really the thing, isn’t it? In my experience cryptocurrency fees are quite high. I bet there’s a way to find a lower fee but then I’d have to do a ton of research and hope it’s accurate. I’d rather just pay a bank that requires me to do no research.

Thanks for your input, dingdong.

This isn’t Reddit, you don’t have to turn every discussion into a fight. I’m genuinely interested in cryptocurrency for reasons such as the article you linked: there are areas where traditional finance genuinely has failed to meet people’s needs. Providing a medium of exchange for the unbanked is a great example of something it could possibly help with, and I think that’s a good thing if it happens. But we should also be able to talk about the problems with cryptocurrencies and the cases where it doesn’t work as well as traditional finance. And if this prediction doesn’t pan out and cryptocurrency doesn’t become a major way of banking the unbanked, we should be able to consider what could accomplish that goal. It might be a different cryptocurrency, or a new thing inspired by cryptocurrency, or something that has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. After all, cryptocurrency is not a goal in itself.

See I think more nuanced takes like this are good. I’m not familiar with the Chinese banking issue that you are describing, but it sounds like deposit insurance (like the FDIC) might be a better solution than cryptocurrency, and it’s definitely better understood. Since the real world value of cryptocurrencies are so volatile they are a questionable store of value, and taking a risk on a poorly regulated bank might be better than taking a risk on storing your money in a volatile and unregulated security like cryptocurrency. Honestly it’s hard to know which is the better risk. So it could be better or it could be worse.

I agree with your point about transferring money internationally, and even within the US transferring money used to be a real pain. So I’m still interested to see if cryptocurrency can be a better medium of exchange or medium of transfer than traditional ways, or at least give traditional systems incentive to improve. But again the volatility is a concern so for most people the best move is probably to get in and out of the crypto market as quickly as possible or else risk getting a vastly different amount of money out of it than you put in. Admittedly it could appreciate, but when I’m transferring money to someone I don’t want that to simultaneously be an investment. The few times I have used Bitcoin to purchase something the whole process has taken hours, and there’s no guarantee there won’t be price swings — a lot could happen in those hours.

I appreciate the brutal honesty about cryptocurrency not being for the average Joe. It’s not that long since many cryptocurrency boosters were hoping it would replace fiat currency, but now that I think about it I haven’t heard as much about that recently. In its current state it is really not for the average Joe.

Sure, but what real-world problem does a trustless solve? I thought this was all very interesting years ago but now that we’ve had blockchain for years it seems it’s only good for illegal or morally questionable transactions.