If I remember right, Mastodon and the Fediverse in general isn’t included in this ban. Therefore it’s interesting to see if Australian teens somehow find the Fediverse, starting a rush of new users.

I don’t think libertarianism works, it relies naively on how the free market is omnipotent, how freedom is everything and how having a small government is somehow good. There are no countries that are entirely libertarian, that also tells a lot about the ideology’s applicability in practice. A brilliant book about why libertarianism doesn’t work is a book “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear”. In the book, a group of libertarians decides to take over the small town of Grafton in New Hampshire en masse as part of their “Free Town Project”. Of course this group cares neither about the town’s original inhabitants nor their rights. What’s the result? They hollow out pretty much everything from the library, to the school, the fire department and the police. No regard is given to any laws on hunting or food disposal, and that lures in bears, who turn so aggressive that they invade people’s homes. In addition to bears, sex offenders and all kinds of criminals are also lured into Grafton. It’s pretty entertaining book, I recommend it.

Another reason why I dislike libertarianism is that it can function as a gateway to fascism. This is a known phenomenon. Several key figures in the alt-right for example used to be libertarians. I stumbled into a clip from some American Libertarian Party convention where Richard Spencer was with Ron Paul. I had to rub my eyes a bit.

Similar discussion is happening also here in Finland. However, if something is to be banned from kids, it has to be clearly defined. What is considered “social media”? Is it platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat? Does it include messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal? Most of this discourse is also based on works of Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff and Jennifer Twente, all of which have received a fair share of criticism. There is also a considerable amount of a classic moral panic sprinkled in.

Alice Marwick, an academic that has extensively studied kids, technology and social media, was on Taylor Lorenz’s podcast earlier this year. Her organization published a report, where the following is stated:

We strongly believe that reform of social platforms and regulation of technology is needed. We need comprehensive privacy legislation, limits on data collection, interoperability, more granular individual and parental guidance tools, and advertising regulation, among other changes. Offline, young people need spaces to socialize without adults, better mental health care, and funding for parks, libraries, and extracurriculars. But rather than focusing on such solutions, KOSA and similar state bills empower parents rather than young people, do little to curb the worst abuses of technology corporations, and enable an expansion of the rhetoric that is currently used to ban books, eliminate diversity efforts in education, and limit gender affirming and reproductive care. They will eliminate important sources of information for vulnerable teenagers and wipe out anonymity on the social web. While we recognize the regulatory impulse, the forms of child safety legislation currently circulating will not solve the problems they claim to remedy.

Dr. Candice Odgers is also a vocal critic of Haidt, accusing him of cherry picking with a pre-made agenda in mind:

The cross-country comparisons, you know, they’re they’re often a starting point to see whether there might be something interesting correlationally going on, but it’s a very slippery place to start and I think you know, unless you start with the pretty clear hypothesis about what should explain those differences, if you’re just looking at trend lines and then going backwards and starting to fill in an explanation, it’s hard to follow where it goes and whether or not we’re just fitting these lines to our existing theories, but I’ll leave it.

This is a message board platform, period.

A similar inquiry should be done in Finland, here all the restrictions were dropped during Spring 2022. At least one association of entrepreneurs has wanted an inquiry to be done so that they would have tools to prepare for a possible next pandemic.

Let’s not get excited too early!

At last, there were lots of rumours! Plus that controller looks like it has a face.

Dang it, I mean Ninja Gaiden Sigma, the original from 2004 was for Xbox only. I have the Master Collection.

I have been going down the rabbit hole of overclocking and undervolting Nintendo Switch. So the games I have been playing are Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Ninja Gaiden (2004). Thanks to overclocking, the former runs at stable 40 FPS, the latter of course doesn’t need any.

In the 2000s, Nokia was full of hybris and ignored many trends, such as the iPhone, and things started to go downhill quickly after it switched to Windows Phone in 2011. Had it acted differently, it would have been successful in the phone industry. However, Nokia’s network business has been quite successful, and the dispute with Huawei that you mentioned has increased its popularity. In that sense, the Nvidia deal is a logical continuation.

Let’s get normies aboard the Linux train by creating more distros with celebrity branding: imagine Taylor Switft Linux or BTS Linux.

I have to admit that I’m not really familiar with that website. Kotaku on the other hand is a site whose links I never click, unless archived.

Sopuli is hosted on Hetzner, so no problems whatsoever.

Their styles certainly are similar.

Been mostly playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The game is now a decade old, so the timing is good. Of course pirated, as I’ll never give Konami any money.

Perhaps the spammer got tired and many admins stepped up their game. As an instance admin I remember having to remove helluva many posts featuring Nicole. Hopefully anything like that will not happen again for a long time.

Got Pop OS with Nvidia’s driver packages and it worked like a charm. And of course updating can be done through the package manager. No problems whatsoever, at least for me.

Trump should start selling flip-flops bearing his name.

“It’s harder to oppress a minority if they have guns.”