Perhaps. But it will likely be a hard break from the current setup, since the current one is not even close to working.

The main ones are that certain users or groups of users end up dominating each community, and that mods become abusive over time. Brigading and bigotry are big issues too. You also mentioned echo chambers, which I agree is another issue, although that is present in many social media platforms.

Unfortunately, federation doesn't solve these issues. At the very least, some kind of basic improvements are needed. Ideas like preventing large communities from dominating the front page, removing or limiting the effect of downvotes, or having more checks and balances for what mods can do, are necessary. But none of that happened. So this attempt at a Reddit clone is just ending up as a bad Reddit clone. Which is probably why Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin will slowly fade away, once people realize that it is just a Reddit clone.

This won't be the final attempt at creating a replacement for Reddit. Eventually, enshittification will destroy Reddit, and something else will replace it. But it probably won't be the Fediverse's attempt at it.

Again, that doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems of a Reddit-clone.

Anyways, our opinions don't matter. If I'm right, the communities we're on will quietly fade away.

So many instances block Hexbear and others. We are well on the path of creating separated communities, just with the added headache of having to police federation. Not to mention the problem of power users and out-of-control mods, which federation makes worse rather than solving them.

Ultimately, I think a real Reddit replacement will have to think hard about fixing the fundamental problems of this form of social media, rather than attempting to use buzzwords or cool new ideas.

Federation makes sense for a Twitter replacement. Not so much for a Reddit replacement. I get the feeling that we are at an end to the experiment. Eventually, people will realize that we cannot replace Reddit with a Fediverse based solution.

The Harris poll is garbage: https://www.thecrimson.com/column/forging-harvards-future/article/2024/3/26/bodnick-/

They're quietly removing all such accounts. They won't even allow accounts without email addresses anymore.

My recent realization is that the very high-end of the GPU market is totally unnecessary. A 4070 can play practically any game at 4K with decent framerates. And if you are fine with just "high" settings instead of maxed out, at very good framerates too.

It’s why Google is secretly in big trouble. Their biggest and most successful ideas were from well over a decade ago. There’s very little real innovation going on at Google now. They’re just throwing crap at a wall and hoping something sticks. Eventually, their cash cows will dry up and they won’t have anything to fall back on.

This is also known as "Libertarian Socialism." Interestingly enough, this idea predates the current definition of Libertarianism by decades.

Google is basically ran like Boeing. Their goal is to maximum the stock price regardless of long-term consequences.

Then you are creating an imaginary set of problems for hydrogen. We already have hydrogen cars that can go 400 miles. The range problem is already a solved problem. Future innovations will improve this even further. We already have hydrogen drones and bikes too. So there is no problem scaling down. Not to mention SUVs make up nearly 80% of the market these days. You're basically inverting how the real world car market works.

As we run into the fundamental problems of batteries, such as needing charging stations everywhere, and very high powered ones if we want fast charging, it will eventually become obvious that no amount of advancements will solve some of those issues. We will want to look at alternative solutions.

And again, BEVs are not competitive right now. They are a artificial market propped up by governments around the world. ICE cars still rule the world. And likely BEVs will retreat in the market as subsidy reductions and trade wars make them even less uncompetitive.

Hydrogen got a tiny fraction of the subsidies that batteries got. We probably looking at well beyond $1 trillion for the latter, if you include everything, such as all the subsidies and government loans from China. If were serious about making hydrogen a thing, we would've increase subsidies by a factor of something like 100x.

Battery cars have not "won." In fact, they are barely alive as a self-sustaining industry. ICE cars still dominate, and if anything they are gaining ground with blended solutions like hybrids or PHEVs. This is what I mean by "drinking the kool-aid." BEV fans are making claims that fly in the face of reality. And it's more than likely that if we take away the subsidies, the BEV industry would quickly collapse and shrink to a tiny niche.

The problem is that BEVs only really make sense as urban commuters for people with garages, and smaller ideas like e-scooters or e-bikes. It's not really something that make sense for larger vehicles or long-distance vehicles. And trying to force the issue just means a lot of SUV sized BEVs, which are definitely not a solution to anything. By admitting they're not perfect is admitting we should scale back BEV subsidies and start seriously promoting alternatives.

We are nowhere near capable of replacing all cars with battery powered cars. Their supporters are just handwaving away the problems. In particular, we have no straightforward way of both converting the grid to 100% renewable energy, while also massively increasingly electrical demand for things like BEVs and every other electrification proposal. In reality, it's just a big fantasy.

The "success" of battery cars right now is really due to huge subsidies and a willingness to overlook fundamental problems (such as mining challenges, child and slave labor, no way for non-homeowners to charge conveniently, etc.). If we actually looked at those problems honestly, we'd realize that they are as big or even bigger than the challenges of building a hydrogen infrastructure.

This gets much more problematic once we look at heavy transportation or industry. We have no method of electrifying airplanes or ocean-going ships and many other things. So all of the expense of electrifying cars is just one part of a much larger decarbonization process. And that larger process absolutely requires a hydrogen infrastructure somewhere. So we pretty much have to build a hydrogen infrastructure anyways. As a result, dismissing hydrogen is just not taking climate change seriously.

A much better question is asking what happens when it is not sunny? Because the scenario is always constructed in such a way that exaggerates the efficiency of battery cars. Of course, a solar powered car would be even more efficient in that scenarios, but we don't talk much about those.

The problem is that we have to store energy, often for very long periods of time. For the grid, this is called grid energy storage, and usually includes a wide variety of options. One of which is hydrogen itself, since it is the best to store energy for very long periods.

So in practice, there's not much difference in efficiency, since every idea requires some kind of compromise somewhere. BEVs will often need hydrogen to back it up. But the main point is that once you make the switch to some kind of EV, the issue of efficiency is mostly moot, since you already well beyond ICE cars in terms of efficiency. The rest of the argument is a distraction, mostly made by people who want to promote one idea specially.

It's the primary source of this type of rhetoric. And you sound like someone who fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Battery powered cars are well over 100 years old. They only exist in number right now because of huge subsidies and because governments are mandating they happen. They would not be popular at all otherwise. If we subsidized hydrogen cars to the same extent, we'd be talking about the success of hydrogen cars right now.

The problem is that battery cars are not a viable alternative to most types of ICE cars. People have drank so much kool-aid that they forgot this obvious fact. So they engage in this delusion where the BEV industry is somehow already ascendant, when in reality it is barely a viable business. Which is also why Biden is raising tariffs on Chinese EVs (the OP BTW). Only China is subsidizing BEVs to the levels needed to make it work. Something few other countries are willing to do.

It is another way of converting chemical energy into electricity. Basically, another way of building an EV. And since you don't need nearly as big of a battery to power an EV, it is a sensible way of reducing cost, weight, etc. while still achieving zero emissions. There are absolutely situations where those upsides significant outweigh the downsides.

If people were honestly in favor of EVs or zero emissions in general, they would definitely look at fuel cells seriously. But unfortunately, they don't, because they are mostly Tesla fanboys who want Tesla (and only Tesla) to succeed. So they demonize it, alongside everything else including PHEVs and hybrids. Which is why you see posts from "EV fans" that hate most types of EVs.

The idea that fuel cells are bad or impossible is marketing from Tesla. It's the reason why you see posters talk negatively about fuel cells.

Yes. There are too many Tesla fanboys (still) that have a misinformed understanding of the facts. They don't realize that Tesla is just lying to them. Tesla don't want people to think that there are better cars or better technologies out there.

It's called electrolysis, and is now at 95% efficiency: https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-hydrogen-mass-production/