But it does matter. Maybe not to you directly, but the January 6th treason attack was a direct result of his influence. Obviously people who follow him are massive bell ends, but they still matter and they still vote. America’s democracy is far from perfect, and has definitely struggled to cope over the past few years, but it put him in the most powerful position in the world for four years and despite all the evidence, enough people are still supporting him that a second term still can’t be ruled out.

It beggars belief, it really does, but you really should care about it and a single person being a martyr has historically changed the world.

He’s hardly the first rich American to escape justice if he continues to do so. Rich folk in America have literally gotten away with murder. (OJ for one)

Those fines are insultingly small. But putting him in jail would only make him more of a martyr. The law is still struggling to cope with this man.

Isn’t humanity itself a damaging invasive species?

I deleted my 11yr high karma account on 1st July. I had another before that which was a couple of years or so old.

I did it in protest but as an interesting side effect, my mental health has improved slightly. Guess actively engaging with toxicity does have an effect.

That’s a surprisingly well written article.

Ah yes, the “Right to be forgotten”

You are correct, of course. However, they are well within their rights to not delete your data. Look up “Legitimate interest” - it’s a huge GDPR loophole and widely abused. (Certainly in charity fundraising in which I used to work)

The LI can be for their own business purposes, including profiling, machine learning and of course, advertising.

It can also, and usually is, need to keep data in case they receive a legal order to provide it. In the event of Reddit being used for terrorism purposes (which I’m sure it has, along with every other messaging platform), they will be required to produce that information. Which they can’t if it’s gone.

We wave the GDPR around like it solves all our problems. And whilst it does add a huge amount of public protection and it’s impressive it made it into law given those objecting to it, it does not give you the right to your own data above all else.

Whilst I totally understand your comments and even appreciate them, I still believe I am right.

About four years ago I used NukeReddit - a similar script that loads your comment history, edits each posts, replaces the text with nonsense and saves it. Then deletes the post. I did that because someone got close to identifying me IRL and I didn’t want them to, and wanted to tidy up my own data leakage.

After that, I continued using Reddit until the recent nonsense when I decided to leave to good. First, I used Power Delete, repeating it over several days to delete thousands of comments and hundreds of posts. About a week after that, I submitted a GDPR data request. Another week, I deleted my account. About a week after /that/, I received the GDPR response containing several CSV files containing my data. That included posts and comments I’d made from 11 years ago when I had created that account.

That data had survived two quite thorough scrubs and deletions, and whilst I no longer have access to that account, I believe my data and my account are still there - just unavailable to me.

I do know a little about data and databases, and in many mature projects, deleting posts simply sets an is_deleted column with the date it’s deleted. Editing a message simply creates a copy of that message, sets the original as is_deleted with a date, and sets the copy with the edited text. That’s standard and honestly, I don’t know why Reddit would not do that.

Also consider that Reddit may be under a legal obligation NOT to delete data. If there is a criminal investigation at a later date, they will need to be able to provide that information. “Sorry Mr Government, we deleted Bin Laden’s posts where he incited terrorism to dozens of other suspects” is not going to be received well.

The bottom line is that only Reddit architects will know for certain, but I’d put real money on betting that I’m right.#

You didn’t wipe your comments, you only created a new version. And if you deleted them, it’s only a soft delete. Reddit still holds your data. I proved this by doing a gdpr request and received stuff I’d wiped and deleted four years before.

That’s a whole lot of “fuck spez”. Well done, strangers.

Me too, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.

Musk is not a likeable person, and I’m definitely not a fan - but he has changed the world. Not many people can say that and Reddit’s distaste for him has spilled over here recently.

Paypal - first and still biggest widely trusted online payment handler.

Tesla - Started a ground-breaking electric car market that’s changed the entire face of motorised transport, and is still the leader in the sector. Their motors and battery packs are still way ahead of anyone else.

Starnet - Bringing low latency, high speed internet to remote locations around the globe. Even in the developed western world where other technologies have deemed it unaffordable.

SpaceX - Seriously, who can fail to be impressed by seeing a rocket LANDING intact?

All areas where other companies dicked around and really achieved very little through lack of vision, drive or funding.

Yes, he’s had failures (Boring Company, Twitter) and yes he’s a category ten arsehole (accusing people of being paedophiles without grounds, manipulating stock prices illegally, pot smoking on live tv, having complete disregard for human beings’ feelings and lives, etc etc) . Does that give him a free pass to act like a knob? Of course not, but the man has actually achieved genuinely amazing things.

It’s hard to get noticed on Reddit (unless you make a typo!)

Unless you’re the first to post on a new topic that goes on to be popular, then no matter what you say you get read and gain karma. If you comment on something a few hours old, nobody ever reads it.

You’re one voice in a city. Whereas here, we’re a village. Less anonymous, friendlier, easier to get talking to your neighbour.

Same! HA is a really interesting thing to get into. I moved to it from Domoticz, which is easy to get going but you hit some hard limits after a while.

That’s an interesting idea - have a special tier on one or more cloud providers paid for out of that source, or even a flat payment to any server provider based on number of users/activity or something like that?

Totally agree. Really do not want this to become too popular, because then you get bots, fraud, fake news, trolls and shitposting. Being too small to interest those guys is a good thing.

I think you’re missing that point.

If you’re paying to provide a free server, and along comes another server owner who wants to peer with you. Only they’re charging their users for the same thing you’re giving away for free. Why wouldn’t you be a little bit miffed that they want to take your freely-given service and sell it to their users - because that’s what would be happening in that situation.

Monetising something that’s intended to be free is very, very difficult. Not impossible (see open source software and the businesses that grow around that), but it’s a lot harder when it’s a service.

We went through it in the 80s and 90s here in the UK, only we called it “positive discrimination”.

Discrimination is discrimination, though. If you prioritise someone because of race, gender or age then it’s still discrimination and now it’s mostly acknowledged that any company practicing it is very open to legal action. (I mean, discrimination is a basic human trait so it definitely goes in, but it’s not overt). Where a job is given to someone less able and qualified, there have been a number of court cases.

Accusation that the Rebuilders provide nothing back to the community.

Actually, what Redhat are saying about rebuilders is that they “don’t add value” - and that’s for Redhat, NOT to the community which they patently do. That’s quite a badly twisted misquote there, friend.

Also, Redhat didn’t create open source software. They’re a big player, sure, but I remember writing and releasing my code back in the 80s and 90s when it was called Freeware and Public Domain and distributed on cassette tape.

Y’know, I felt that way to begin with and it certainly took a long time for my fingers to adjust, but I’ve grown to adjust to that.

And it’s better - you can do: “systemctl restart Service1 Service2 Service3” Before, with “system Service1 restart” you could only action on service at a time.

Plus, it’s linux, so you can set up aliases to change the order into anything you like, even carry on using the old muscle memory formats. (Although I don’t encourage this if you intend working on multiple servers!)