The Fediverse is social media. Wouldn't instances be required to do age verification? I mean, I guess that'd only be enforceable on Australian instances, but it seems like the whole world is going in that direction.
It may be possible to federate with other i2p instances, if not, I'm guessing it would require fairly simple code changes to lemmy to be able to point to other .i2p addresses.
To federate with clearnet, I think an instance would need to kind of act like a bridge that uses both clearnet and i2p; so it wouldn't be "hidden." I see there is also an exit node network (ran by StormyCloud) on i2p now, but that may be too slow for federation.
Edit: I imagine most clearnet instances would not want to federate with a darknet instance due to the higher probability of illegal content being posted.
Are you sure? I remember seeing other legitimate roofing companies selling solar roof tiles too. I think I even remember watching an installation video. They weren't rigid tiles, they were flexible and nailed down similarly to shingles.
I think Paramount is in the process of a hostile takeover of WB Discovery, and Kushner is involved, so they'll probably get it, IMO. I think the fascists really want CNN at least.
They usually just release homeless people charged with petty crimes after the first hearing (24-48 hours) without bail. They can't pay fines, for commissary, phone calls, and all that; or work, so they're not profitable.
I think there are probably enough collectors, AV nerds, and people without consistent high bandwidth unlimited internet to keep physical going for a while. It'll just be niche, like vinyl, I suppose.
It is kinda weird that optical stopped advancing. You can fit more data on a MicroSD card than BluRay. You can fit something like 240 blurays on a consumer HDD (and much more if you further compress).
I think the situation in Appalachia is more about poverty and hopelessness than structure and identity. I.e. "shit-life syndrome." Community is a big one too, but that's already severely lacking in most of the modern world.
What I personally think will happen is that wages will get driven so far down where it doesn't make sense for the capitalists to automate. I.e. global south-like living conditions and slavery. The capital owners will not let go of their power or support anything like decent UBI/USI. They'll opt for company-towns and "charity" that serves their purposes.
It's fair to think that automation will continue to improve. I imagine it will improve quite a bit in the next 20 years. There may even be breakthroughs in that time that result in AGI or ASI.
A lot, depending on your interests and the hardware itself. I'm running a NAS (TrueNAS) on an old machine that also runs a bittorrent client and immich as TrueNAS "apps." I'm running an *arr stack and jellyfin on another old machine. I've got another old machine running an i2p router, hyphanet node, and a few other services. In the past, I've used old machines as routers (pfsense), openhab/home assistant machines, game servers, ZoneMinder server, etc.
Never had one fail. Bought a faulty one once. Took me months to figure out why I was having data corruption issues. Thought it was one of the old HDDs I was using in a ZRAID array, so I would swap one out and try again until I'd eventually get a corruption error again. Finally found the issue after about 10 minutes of running a memory test of a bootable USB.
I think it's ok for switching to be hard if the UI is built for productivity. I'm not really a "creative" worker in the most common sense, so I'm guessing GIMP's UI sucks even after you learn it, but I do know VIM is not intuitive at all, yet improves productivity compared to most IDEs/text editors. I've also worked on an application, working closely with our somewhat technical users, and they would suggest UI changes that were often not intuitive, but increase their productivity a bit (less need for using a mouse, less keystrokes/clicks and stuff like that).
I find it detrimental to my productivity when integrated into an editor/IDE. I've found the "autocomplete" causes subtle bugs that I end up overlooking because I'm trying to go fast and putting too much trust in the generated lines/snippets. Tracing down these bugs becomes a huge time-sink. I do use chatbots in the browser for various things; mostly as a kind of "search" for alternative ways of doing things, frameworks, libraries, and algorithms. Agentic vibe-coding is ok for small one-off tools/scripts you wouldn't need to maintain, IMO.
Well, this is a meme. But I personally am anti-surveillance. With the way things are going, these will almost certainly be "upgraded" to ALPR/"AI" systems for 24/7 surveillance and tracking; I'm guessing some probably already are.
Indeed, and I give them credit. China is unironically leading the world in scientific progress. I wouldn't recommend using their services though, for privacy reasons (same with the US).
I've been going down this rabbit hole myself. Already set up a solar Meshtastic node and MeshCore repeater. Kinda cool, very low bandwidth and pretty unreliable though.
It's my understanding that encryption is illegal on amateur radio bands. I'm thinking about getting a license anyways; looks fun.
HaLow, BATMAN, Reticulum and stuff like that also look cool, but I haven't messed around with those yet.
I think radio will always have bandwidth/congestion problems. It's like everyone within range is using the same "wire."
I also like overlay networks like Tor and I2P, but it's possible those will eventually be blocked or made illegal in many countries, if governments keep heading in the direction they seem to be heading.
As states, they're very similar. You'll see people flying the Confederate flag in rural parts of all states, and pockets of significant hispanic population in nearly all states as well. I've been to all those places. Many states have kind of a "fractal" geo-demographic phenomenon that kind of mirror the US as a whole (I.e. Ohio with backwards south, liberal-ish north, plenty of hispanic people, and fairly diverse cities). The differences between states are quite minor, IMO.
The Fediverse is social media. Wouldn't instances be required to do age verification? I mean, I guess that'd only be enforceable on Australian instances, but it seems like the whole world is going in that direction.