Sound's like somebody's got a case of beaver fever.

BSD is BSD-like

It certainly is that, yes.

I don't know why I forgot this, but there is of course already a solution for this; mbin/kbin, which has both Lemmy-like and Mastodon-like interfaces on one platform.

Not that I'm actually suggesting anything you understand. Just recalling that this is a thought process someone's already had at least once!

A plastic nob is cheaper than a touchscreen, yes. But if you've already got a touchscreen as part of the design anyway (for things like satnav or car maintenance data), it's cheaper to not include any other buttons or inputs and to bundle them all up into one interface.

Would you go so far as to say that you're "eager for beavers"?

BSD is more UNIX than Linux is, to be fair.

In this day and age, if it's actually important they'll probably immediately send you a text message/WhatsApp/etc. anyway.

A regular reminder that ChromeOS is Linux. It's Linux you can buy from a bricks and mortar store, preconfigured for the average low-knowledge user, and with minimal to no maintenance overhead.

We enthusiasts obviously mostly hate it, but we're not its target audience. Its target audience (non-techies who mostly just like to use their phones) get on great with it.

People need to accept that any Linux distro made for mass market is going to look more or less like ChromeOS. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as traditional distros also continue to exist. But people need to get out of their heads that the "year of Linux on the desktop" looks like Ubuntu or Fedora or Mint. What it looks like is ChromeOS.

You can use Mastodon to interact with Lemmy content and vice versa, but generally speaking the user experience isn't good. Lots of manually typing URLs and trying to figure out what you're looking at when you get there.

In theory you could host a Lemmy and Mastodon server under the same domain (using subdomains, e.g. lemmy.feddit.uk and mastodon.feddit.uk), but they'd be different servers in most ways that matter. I presume they would maintain separate user account databases (without some concerted hacking).

Considering the fediverse microblogging scene includes Threads, which claims to have hundreds of millions of active users, I'd say its death is greatly exaggerated.

Yes, I know a lot of Mastodon servers refuse to federate with Threads, and yes I know their active user figures are likely very different from what they claim. But at the end of the day, it's an ActivityPub microblogging platform with a considerable userbase and a very rich corporate backer.

If something has hundreds of "centralised" platforms owned and run by a diversity of different people and spread all over the world geographically, then that's "decentralised".

I can't really think of another way in which something could be decentralised.

With ActivityPub, there's nothing stopping you hosting a server literally just for yourself. It wouldn't get much more decentralised than that.

We don't have a Mastodon server, do we?

I joined Mastodon years ago, but the server I joined was always a bit moribund and I sort of lost interest. Wouldn't be against someone doing a Fedwitter.uk...

(It should not be called Fedwitter.uk under any circumstances)

"Never" is a strong word. API translation is a technical hurdle, but rarely an insurmountable one. If Blue Sky wanted to add an ActivityPub interface to their platform, they probably could.

This issue isn't technical per se; it's a matter of priorities. Blue Sky doesn't want to federate with Mastodon/Threads, because they want users to switch to their platform.

Threads (for better or worse) demonstrates that that's not a fundamental obstacle for fediverse microblogging.

If someone wanted to launch a Mastodon fork with algorithm-driven content discovery, they could do. Just as with Lemmy/kbin/mbin, the beauty of the fediverse is that different servers can take quite different approaches to use experience design whilst still maintaining compatibility with the rest of the community.

Heck: phones. Phones are federated. I pay for my phone service through one company, and you pay for your phone service through another, but I can still call you as long as I dial the right number.

The issue isn't really that federation makes things hard. The issue is that it's not how people are used to social media, and very specifically social media, working. And people are strange creatures of habit who hate change.

Intel as a company isn't going anywhere any time soon; they're just too big, with too many resources, not to do at least OK.

They have serious challenges in their approach and performance to engineering, but short of merging with someone else they'll find their niche. For as long as x86-derived architectures remain current (i.e. if AMD is still chugging along with them) they'll continue to put out their own chips, and occasionally they'll manage to get an edge.

The real question would be what happens if x86 finally ceases to be viable. In theory there's nothing stopping Intel (or AMD) pivoting to ARM or RISC-V (or fucking POWER for that matter) if that's where the market goes. Losing the patent/licensing edge would sting, though.

261,471 are classed as “long-term empty,” meaning no-one has lived there for six months or more.

If all empty homes were brought back into use, the housing crisis would be solved at a stroke and, arguably, the government would not have to build 1.5m new homes.

I know number literacy is not journalism's strong point, but surely even the author can grasp the basics of "which number is bigger".

Bringing 0.25 million houses into occupancy does not "arguably" negate the need to build 1.5 million houses. At best it reduces the required new builds to 1.25 million.

The larger figure (700k) is a meaningless figure for this discussion, because short term vacant homes are by definition not a problem that needs to be solved. Most of them will be homes which are vacant "between occupants", e.g. ones where the tenant has moved out and a new one hasn't moved in yet, or the homes of the recently deceased whose estate is still in the process of winding up.

Heck, even a proportion of the 250k "long term" ones won't be actual problem vacancies; some of those will just be ones like those of the recently deceased for whom the process takes longer than 6 months. A relative of mine recently died, and it took maybe 4-5 months to sort out probate, another couple of months on the market before an offer was accepted, and as far as I know now (about 6 months on again) the new owner is still in the process of renovating it prior to moving in. That's "long term vacant" in those stats, but it's not a problem that needs anyone to solve it- it's just that sometimes things take time.

Dealing with genuine long term vacancies is legitimately a worthy pursuit in these times of housing crisis, but pretending that it's literally the solution to the problem (and not, you know, building stuff) is a cheap dream.

Ha, my thoughts exactly. I've dipped out of Lemmy for a few weeks, just dipped back in today. "I wonder if it's still wall to wall Musk?" I thought, logging in; and this was the first post I see.

There's nothing truly like a Framework, because they're a whole unique category of one. But if you just want something that is user serviceable there are other options.

I'm a big fan of my Star Labs laptop. It came with complete disassembly and reassembly instructions, and pretty much every part is available to buy individually as a replacement. It's not magically "plug and go" like a Framework, but if you're comfortable with a screwdriver you should have no trouble.

They're a Linux specialist small independent producer, too. And being based in the UK, imports to Switzerland should be more straightforward than imports from the States.

The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

Also, it'd be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?