German trans woman (female pronouns) pursuing a cryptography-PhD in the Netherlands.

https://tech.lgbt/@Fiona

https://fiona.onl

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  • 38 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Higher education is truly a scam.

    It really depends. From what I hear about the US a lot of it is there. But in some ways that is also the exception.

    Compare Germany: By most rankings KIT is one of, if not the top university for computer science in the country. The requirements to get a spot there are literally just that you are qualified to study (aka: have the right high school diploma) and haven’t lost your right to study computer science at a public university by conclusively failing to do so at a different German university. When I was there until 2019 we payed a bit over 100€ per semester in administrative fees and got a limited train ticket in exchange.

    The only selection criteria were “did you pass your exams?” that during the bachelors were almost all written exams that were the same for everyone. What you learned was to an extend up to you, it was a university, not an apprenticeship, so there certainly was a significant focus on theory, but especially during the masters a lot just fully depended on what you wanted.

    The main cost at the time was just general housing and living costs, which in my case was payed for by my mom, but for those for whom this is not an option, provided that they were either German citizens or legal residents for reasons other than the education, there was BAföG, which comes down to an interest-free loan from which you only have to pay back 50%.

    And yes, I definitely learned a lot of useful stuff there.


  • Trace the execs

    Importantly you need to trace the execs who copied it, not the ones who decided to try it the first time. Giving things a try and not immediately throwing it away when it isn’t perfect is a good thing and behavior that needs to be encouraged. The problem is when others start copying it blindly because it is new before it could demonstrate benefits. It’s the people jumping on hype that are the problem, not the people giving new things a try, even if they may fail.



  • I’m not saying it’s an easy line to draw because you obviously don’t want to create incentives for bad journalism, but don’t want to make it too high of a bar to get into in the first place. I think you’d need to take things like the number of readers, the factuality of headings and content, the originality and the investigative value into account and be able to at least temporarily cut of bad outlets that spread fake/hate/… while at the same time ensuring that inconvenient truths make it out.

    It’s not an easy task, but I feel there is more room to get somewhere useful than with the current model of billionaire-owned media that outdo each other with rage-bait and inaccurate/misleading/falsly balanced/biased reporting…




  • just imagine the bank would give your payment info to insurance companies for example

    That would be a very severe violation of the GDPR and whatever bank-privacy laws are in place. On top of that, which insurance would even be affected by it? I don’t own a car, health insurance comes at non-discriminatory rates here and why would my liability insurance be affected by what I buy? Like: It’s genuinely a non-issue here.

    And even if, cash is still a much better option for everything.







  • I’m not advocating against a seatbelt, I’m advocating against not wearing it, “because I am confident that I can hold on to something in case of a collision” or similar stupid reasons. Expecting that blocking does anything to hide public posts that you can simply open in another browser (or in the same browser in private browsing mode) is not a seatbelt, it is the equivalent of a slightly stronger handle on top of the car window that is being advertized as a feature to protect you in case of an accident.

    This change first and foremost makes it clear that that handle does nothing meaningful and that you should wear an actual seatbelt (follower-only posts, ideally with restricted followers) instead, if you are worried about a collision. Twitter is a public forum. You can’t tell people to leave you alone, shout with a megaphone across the marketplace and then be annoyed when they hear you. If you don’t want them to hear you, don’t use a megaphone.


  • Fiona@discuss.tchncs.detoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldTeach the children.
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    2 months ago

    I don’t like discord, but it is a MASSIVE improvement over all the meta-garbage. Stop using Facebook, instagram, whatsapp and really also twitter first. Discord is the smaller evil compared to those.

    Yes forums have their application and are better than discord for a lot of things, but discord is really more a competitor to IRC-chats with a focus on life discussion, rather than long-living content. And it isn’t discords fault if some people completely misuse it as something that it really isn’t trying to be.

    Need to use their bloated (web)app.

    Which means that it works in a regular browser, which is so much better than a lot of other infrastructure that is increasingly mobile-app only.

    Charges for basic functions.

    Does it though? It charges for certain emojis and the like, but that is honestly a MUCH more healthy business model than what a lot of other places on the internet are doing. And if you just want to use it as intended, you really aren’t missing out on anything.

    I’m really not saying that it is great, but I wonder whether some of the people ranting about this may get signal boosted by meta to distract from their even worse cesspool…





  • As much as I despise Musk and Twitter and hope that both die a painful death, what is actually proposed here is honestly a change for the better: It’s not about preventing people from blocking users, it’s about blocked users being able to see public posts, which they could also see by just logging out. This is being honest about what a block does and avoids giving people a wrong sense of privacy that they simply don’t have on the platform. From what I’ve heard there is a possibility to post for followers-only which in combination with requiring approval to follow and that isn’t going away here either…


  • To be fair though: While circumventing that was as easy as logging out, the inability to see things while logged in was kinda stupid and gave people a false perception of privacy. In that setting that change is just a case of being honest.

    With the ability to view posts without account largely removed, it’s a bit of a different story, but I have to admit that if it’s public on Xitter, it’s still kinda public, so hiding it still kinda missing the poin.