Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia
(www.rollingstone.com)
from Gork@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Oct 2023 20:56
https://lemm.ee/post/12639632
from Gork@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world on 24 Oct 2023 20:56
https://lemm.ee/post/12639632
threaded - newest
Someone get this asshole to get into a submarine
In the Black Sea.
If only more billionaires tried to visit the Titanic.
Oh that’s dark 🤣🤣
They all say they work well under pressure after all.
That joke dives deep.
And if they have trouble surfacing they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps
.
A Titan submarine, right? We want nothing but best for dear old Elon.
Only the most “Innovative” of submersibles will do.
I don’t think anyone has ever made a submarine out of toilet paper tubes, masking tape and blu-tack. This is the peak of innovation.
Wishing other human beings dead might be everything that’s wrong with this world.
Yeah humans. Not ppl with a god complex
I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/27a0d268-bf63-40c0-b8aa-c53023bcc7b0.jpeg">
Deeply unwelcome. I hate that this is even a thought that he has had.
Buying and destroying Twitter started with a joke like this.
Unless Wikipedia is a public company with fiduciary responsibilities, can’t they just say, “fuck you. No.”?
EDIT: They’re a non commercial 501©(3). They can say “fuck you. No.”
Well I’m sure glad someone looked into that. Still, I’m anxious he might try to do Bad Things™ to it. Ya know, like he does whenever he gets some idea in his head about something, and then Bad Things™ happen to it.
There’s that, and the fact that Jimmy Wales might have a reverse uno card, as he is quietly developing a free and non profit social media platform of his own called trust cafe.
Did it?
Twitter was public. Wikimedia is a 501 non-profit.
He can’t buy it.
No, I know. Still feels less than good
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the middle of a wave of rampant misinformation, excessive hate speech, and endless harassment, X owner Elon Musk set his sights on Wikipedia.
Not to be outdone by his own tweet, Musk immediately followed it up with a challenge: “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.”
Beyond its status as the largest and “most-read reference work in history,” Wikipedia has long been heralded as a product of both massive fundraising and an internet full of people obsessed with very specific things.
Earlier this month, Musk called the internet encyclopedia “wokipedia,” after co-founder Wales criticized rampant misinformation on X.
(An October report from NBC found that the Community Notes program has allowed known war misinformation to thrive on the platform unchecked for hours.)
For Rauwerda’s own purposes, right now that includes the description of zoo animals as celebrities in 19th-century American news and a serial defecator in Colorado nicknamed the Mad Pooper.
The original article contains 772 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Summary is missing some context here. The article is an interview with Annie Rauwerda.
Then later
Unchecked for… Hours?
Hours??
That’s fucking amazing that they can get it down so fast! Honestly they should advise Facebook or something on how to not leave misinformation up for years. Hours is actually incredible.
Into the ground maybe.
The headline actually says “ruin”, not “run” so they’re already on board with you.
Does he have a billion dollars to spend right now? He’s already lost at least 30 billions of twitter.
Hes down 200 billion due to other stocks tanking so its much worse than that
This is probably a distraction from the DOJ going after Tesla for possibly being a death trap anyway.
Turns out the real Tesla Deathrays were in Elons cars.
Thanks for reminding me that some US Navy warships are armed with legit directed-energy beam weapons.
I’m sure this isn’t credible, but:
www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=63510bfb7999
Credible or not, the guy certainly isn’t searching his couch cushions.
You’re right, he’ll never be poor financially, even if he went to jail. Trump on the other hand, probably the same, lol. His followers would give him money.
Net worth ≠ has that money to spend. You can be worth Y amount yet have very little actual cash depending on the circumstances. Of course, you could also borrow the money depending on how much collateral you put up.
I understand it isn’t the same, but when we’re dealing with numbers that far beyond human comprehension I’m not sure it matters all that much any more.
Under normal circumstances, maybe, but this guy has made some mistakes lately that mean he’s pretty heavily leveraged and is under some heavy legal liabilities. He’s not as liquid as his valuation might suggest, and due to his liabilities, he doesn’t have the flexibility to just buy whatever he wants right now. Anyone paying attention to recent news can infer this about his financial disposition without knowing the specifics.
His shares of Tesla (660B), SpaceX (150B), Boring Co (7B) and Neuralink (5B) give him all the credit he needs. Plus he’s got some good investor friends (as we saw in the Twitter purchase). He doesn’t even need to liquidate any holdings.
I donated to Wikipedia, today. A few bucks to a very valuable site.
Wikipedia should run a fund raiser: "Give us a billion dollars or we'll change the name."
Donate today or else!
$1b = Wikipedia
< $1b = W
But for only $8 a month you are the only one who’s allowed to edit your site.
.
Amazing idea
Nah, he’d call it X again, like literally every other company he’s tried that with.
Xpedia
HHHHHHHUUUUUURRRRRRRRRFFFGRGHF
A porn enciclopedia…
. > 1 Bil should be “Elon is a cunt-apedia”
< 1 bil + = wikipedia
Wikipedia is not the Achilles heel of free access to information. The Achilles heel are the sources: libraries, websites.
Consider donating to the internet archive instead or as well. If the sources are poisoned, Wikipedia just repeats bullshit. It's secondary literature.
I’m not sure you know what Achilles heel means
Source: Wikipedia
I believe they mean that if Wikipedia dies, we are still able to get proper information from the actual sources.
Wikipedia just summarizes the primary sources.
Since we can still get the info, we don’t succumb. If the primary sources get altered, then nothing in reality can be trusted.
You don’t simply alter facts, logical reasoning and scientific standards.
You can: Ban books, burn papers, delete servers, hack articles, AI creations, talk louder than reality.
Wikipedia actually much prefers secondary and even tertiary sources to primary sources. They have rules against original research, and follows the guideline that “secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic’s notability and avoid novel interpretations of primary sources”. It’s only with exception that primary sources are allowed, in which the primary sources “have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.”
Not disagreeing with you, just a bit of nuance.
Technically, I think they only allow primary sources to be referenced if supported by a secondary source. They have weird and complex rules around that,
Wikipedia prefers secondary sources, but I think that is not what user Star meant by primary. Just the sources that Wikipedia itself works with.
You're right, but what would the internet be without a little pedantry and ignoring the point of the post? :D
A few years ago, I set up a monthly donation. Of all things I can use for free on the internet, Wikipedia deserves it the most.
can a wiki editor plz change his main profile pic to that balding paypal one he loves so much? k thnx bai.
As fun as that would be, we actually have standards, unlike Elon.
A commitment to the truth is a standard
Agreed. The hairline, much like the cake, is a lie.
He wants to fit
425TB428TB of content on his phone. Man is a fucking genius. I love how his own platform is calling out his bullshit 😂You can actually get all of English Wikipedia for the low, low price of like <= 130GB
Edit: the alligator was facing the wrong side
I was talking about the whole Wikipedia with all of its languages. If you look at the beginning of the article where they mentioned they Elon “implied” and had a line under it. That’s a link to one of his tweets that was fact checked by the community on Twitter. That’s where I got the 428TB number.
My comment was not actually intending to contradict you but rather point out a tangential and potentially useful F[reak]un[omic]-type fact
I got you. I didn’t take it as such. Just explained my comment in case it was a bit confusing :)
This does lend credence to the “He’s intentionally tanking Twitter” theory.
To the contrary, he’s trying to say what he made on Twitter has more credibility than Wikipedia.
Oh look, another article giving him the attention he so craves.
Can we just not?
.
Yup, hasn’t worked so far.
.
No I’ve started voicing the notion that we should collectively stop sharing content that does nothing but give him the attention he wants.
Sadly that seems to mean engaging with mouth-breathers looking for a gotcha moment.
.
Ignore who?
That’s the ticket.
As much as it sucks, this is newsworthy. Not taking him seriously is how Twitter got ruined. Well, super-ruined anyway. It was already kinda crap.
It’s really not. Him making a serious offer and then actually having to buy Twitter was notable tech news. Him musing about Wikipedia is not.
Him musing about Twitter was how it started.
No it’s not. He flirted with (and was encouraged to) joining the board of directors, and then called up Jack Dorsey to make a legitimate, and ultimately binding offer to buy the company.
This isn’t remotely the same thing. This article does nothing more than feed a troll.
And he joked about it even before that.
And? If he makes a legitimate offer and it goes through, that’s potentially tech news.
Taking it seriously is the only way that’s even likely to happen, so you’re proving my point.
Uh, no. This isn’t a fairy tale where wishes make it come true.
What are you talking about?
No, cause Wikimedia wouldn’t let him buy it in a million years
I mean arguably its moreso giving Wikipedia the attention it deserves and can materially capitalize up the ass. Sorry, this is one Elon Musk Show episode I can get behind. Its for the public good even if his intentions are inverse to that. Wikipedia is way fucking bigger than Elon Musk imao
We're pointing and laughing, that's different.
How do you point and laugh at something without giving it attention?
We may be giving him attention, but it's not like we're clicking his ads or buying his stocks (stocX?).
So? It’s still keeping him famous and therefore increasing his influence.
Alternate headline:
“Massive shitcunt threatens to destroy the actual best part of the internet to the surprise of absolutely no one”
is what they meant to say
Incidentally, do you guys remember when this fuckhead was a darling of the left?
These are strange times.
And when was this? I cannot remember a time when a celebrity capitalist parasite was a “darling of the left.”
They mean libs.
Libs==libraries now?
In other words… right-wingers.
it was before he was an actual celebrity and was only known for creating Tesla/SpaceX. He was also “only” a millionaire and well before Tesla stock went nuts, and he also wasn’t posting like crazy on Twitter so people only knew him via Tesla and SpaceX’s achievements, both of them legendary underdogs looking to overthrow the well-established big industry corporations.
Soooo… just the kind of person the left has despised for more than a hundred years now?
what? The “left” has always been the side of revolutionary upstarts and underdogs. The right is the conservative, old guard, established players.
you’re literally trying to rewrite history just to try to hate Musk a little more
It’s okay… you can just admit you don’t have the foggiest clue what it is you are talking about.
You can’t fix something if you don’t even admit to it, yes?
Of course they can; someone on the right has always been right and could never admit to not being right.
I will admit there was a time when he was pushing electric cars while traditional auto manufacturers seemed to be dragging their feet. It felt like he was on the right side of a big issue and shaking things up. I think it’s important to admit when we get it wrong. And boy did I get it wrong.
No. No, he never was. Any leftist will tell you that the only solution to the car problem is public transport… not silly attempts to make individual cars more “eco-friendly.” That’s not leftism - that’s what we call “green capitalism.” And leftists have understood that loooong before Phony Stark skipped South Africa to avoid being drafted into the SADF to uphold the white supremacist state he benefited so richly from.
100% agree with you now. I wasn’t at that level of analysis at the time yet.
Me neither. They really did a number on us.
Do you think you could be a little more careful in your angry smearing of conscientious objectors please?
My brother dodged the draft. He’s a theologian who spent years in exile due to his refusal to serve the corrupt apartheid government.
Give a fuck about Edolf Twitler or don’t but leave the rest of us out of this. Cunt is your problem now anyway.
Just, mind the facts while you rant if you don’t mind. Please.
Perhaps you need to stop smearing conscientious objectors by pretending Phony Stark was one - you might just as well pretend Donald Trump was a conscientious objector if you apply that label to Musk.
It’s out in the open now - Musk is as much a white supremacist as any National Party goon. And, like a lot of rich white kids whose families got rich off the opportunities and impoverished black labor the Apartheid-regime provided them with, Musk felt himself too entitled to actually do the dirty work himself. It was common knowledge here in South Africa at the time - the rich white kids from rich families got to opt out of the war, despite the fact thet they benefited the most from the Apartheid-regime.
It is true that some of those rich white kids actually were against the Apartheid-regime… but Musk wasn’t one of them. His blatant support for white supremacism and his enabling of right-wing ideology proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Exactly. If the reason you are “conscientiously objecting” is because you’re a rich Nazi shitheel who is too much of a pussy to fight for anything yourself, no one cares because you obviously don’t have a real conscience to be conscientous with.
He is clearly fine with sending others to fight his battles for him. Can he be any more the Gen X version of Trump?
Wait, is this a bad thing?
No, it’s a Musk thing - he claims him skipping out on doing his bit for the Apartheid-regime (the true reason for his family’s riches) was based on his (alleged) “stance” against the Apartheid-regime - but his overt white supremacism and his enabling of far-right ideologies kind of disproves all of that, doesn’t it?
You’re pushing a very niche view as if it’s universal, I get why you’re doing it but you’re wrong to. There is no single solution to transport requirements and while the vast majority of leftists of course agree public transport is vital it’s not a magic solution for everything and outside the car hate bubble is very rare for anyone, even a leftwing person, to be staunchly anticar.
You might not like it but it’s reality.
Oh, it used to be far, far more universal than it is now. They spent a lot of propaganda money to make it less universal.
Considering how the rivets seem to be popping off the western propaganda model recently, I’m willing to bet that it might one day be a lot more universal once more.
You might not like that, but that’s reality.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
universla
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t mean to be rude but you’re confused and delusional, there isn’t a transport authority in the world that thinks we can totally do without cars - I’m all for idealism but it should be at least grounded in some form of reality.
Riiiight… I’m confused and delusional because you want to live in a world where Big Auto’s profit margins are prioritized over the needs of the public.
Phony Stark might have a little blue check mark to sell you - he likes the way you think.
If I had my way then manufacturing would be publicly owned and based on open source principles, that wouldn’t change the fact that transport networks are still going to require cars.
Do we over use cars? Yes. Can we totally do without cars, vans and specialist vehicles? No.
They’re incredibly versatile and hugely efficient in certain usecase situations, the infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to maintain than any other alternative.
Ecologically they can make a lot of sense too, especially fleet managed electric self-drive which is without a doubt where we’re heading.
Investing in long distance passenger train networks isn’t a great strategy at the moment, by the time it’s half built it’s very likely efuels already on the market now will have significant adoption in aviation thus making flying a far less polluting means of travel than trains – but it’ll be too late to change because you’ve already released all that carbon from the huge steel works needed to make the tracks.
What we should be doing is creating car friendly transport hubs allowing people to do first and return mile by car and linking all those transport hubs with efficient, affordable, safe, and reliable short and medium train lines. Cities should have tube and tram networks that are accomodating to all and which include the protections required for safety of the passengers, especially from other passengers.
‘women getting harassed doesn’t matter’ isn’t an acceptable answer, ‘disabled people can just stay home’ isn’t an acceptable answer, ‘People who need to transport stuff can’t’ isn’t an acceptable answer… Until rail based public transport can actually fill all the needs of the people it’s not a viable solution in it’s own.
Mixed mode integrated transport network is what every single person who has any interest in transportation agrees is the best solution, everyone except the kneejerk flatearth anticar nuts of course.
You start off very well… but after that sentence you just take a running nosedive into bog-standard green capitalist apologia.
FTFY.
No. They absolutely fucking do not in any way, shape or form.
Never going to happen, genius. Just the massive infrastructure air travel requires makes this attempt of yours a joke. When it comes to efficiency, nothing beats trains - except ships. That’s not going to change any time soon - or possibly ever.
You’re saying a lot of things in strong terms but not proving any evidence for why you’re right and groups like TfL who are regarded as one of the most advanced public transport networks in the world are wrong when they say mixed mode integrated transport networks are the only viable option.
Just adding swearwords and huffing like youre some expert talking down to a fool is a fun tactic in a discussion but when you don’t have anything to back it up then it just makes you look like a bloviating jackass.
Do you really think that running train lines to every rural house is ecologically more sound than cars? And we run them all empty on the of chance that someone wants to use them? Do we run a cargo line to ever farm and factory?
There are use cases where ecologically speaking personal vehicles are the only even vaguely sensible solution.
If you had a heart attack would you like the paramedics to spend an hour waiting for trains then another hour on trains taking you to the hospital? Maybe special ambulance trains that wizz past the others and delay everyone hours because the schedules got messed up while they were in sidings? No? Then we’re building roads anyway and it would be silly not to use them.
And yes air travel using efuels is ecologically far less impactful then train travel even on legacy lines (i.e. lines which have repaid their initial construction cost (ecological), these don’t really exist much because maintenance continues to add significant ecological cost.)
Cost over the life of infrastructure per person mile is actually very low for aviation, airports are cheaper than trainlines by a wide margin and planes are about the same cost as trains per served mile, a bit cheaper but thats largely due to economies of scale so I’ll be charitable and handwave it.
We need more trains, we get more trains by being realistic about where they’re useful and proposing and supporting sensible developments. Personally I am angry at the endless green flag waving idiots that opposed HS2 because it was going though forests, that is an amazingly good use of trains and have been already reducing both car and lorry use on some of the UK’s busiest roads while also serving as a great starting point to a integrated cargo network requiring only last mile trucking - but it got shit all over by so many people including idiots that shout on Facebook about how terrible cars are and then say the HS2 cargo transport plan was bad because it was built around mixed mode rather than some magic transporter or what most the lunatics actually seen to want a return to barbarism and the destruction of our modern society.
Oh, look… hysterical hyperbole. Yawn.
Prove it.
Oh, look… more hysterical hyperbole. Yawn (again).
So what is your magic answer for emergency services in a zero car world? Or do you want to admit that yes roads and automobiles are kinda vital?
Oh… look - the person that can’t argue without resorting to hysterical hyperbole is mysteriously resorting to yet more hysterical hyperbole.
Who woulda thunk it?
What are you trying to do - win the prestigious “Right-wing Shill Of The Year” award?
Can you show me one person that has ever advocated for this (alleged) “zero-car” world?
So you’re saying we do need cars and a road network?
So I guess that’s a yes on the“Right-wing Shill Of The Year” award thing, huh?
I’d wager I’ve been an active member of more leftwing movements than you, certainly since you seem to be in the very naive mindset of ‘anyone who disagrees with me must be a right wing monster’
But I’ll accept that as a ‘yes we still need roads and you were right about the integrated transport network thing and first/last mile and the many areas where trains don’t make sense economically or ecologically’
I think it’s Mao in Contradictions that talks about how in the search for a better world you can’t afford to hold resentment against tools simply because they were once in your enemies hands, or maybe it was Deng, but the point is if cars can help us in the structure of a better society we shouldn’t reject them just because they can also be useful in a bad society.
Certainly we shouldn’t resist improving them simply out of some emotive grudge.
Don’t bet anything you might need now, you hear?
I don’t give a fuck what Mao or Deng has to say about anything - do tell… what reactionary faux-left organisations have you actually been in?
No wonder you are so ready to shill for capitalists.
Do you have any argument based on anything besides yelling and stomping your feet? So far all you’ve done is backtrack on your original statements and cry about how I’m not left wing enough, or the wrong kind of left wing or whatever your next childish attempt at defection from the topic is.
It’s ok you can just say that you don’t really understand the complexity of mass transit systems and that your original stance was nothing but kneejerk emotion - you don’t need to keep making yourself look more foolish.
I’m sure you’re very sweet really when you’re not all flustered like this, take a moment to breathe and try to remember that being wrong doesn’t have to be scary it can be exciting, it’s learning and putting you on a better track for thinking about things in the future.
Oh… look - the person that can’t argue without resorting to hysterical hyperbole is now hysterically (and hyperbolically) pretending I backtracked on something to save face.
Ho hum.
Oh… look - here’s my knee. And it’s still exactly where it was when we started.
Fancy that.
Yeah but have you noticed how I keep going back to the subject at hand and reiterating my initial statements but you’re actively ignoring all of that and instead choosing to just try and insult me in vague terms?
You obviously realise that I have enough interest in and understanding of transport infrastructure that your emotive and catchy slogan based arguments aren’t going to hold water as I can refute them with actual evidence based studies and the work of experts in the field. Possibly you’re also aware that my grasp of the importance of such systems in a left wing or socialist state eclipses your rudimentary idealism.
If this was a debate for points and prizes then you’d be making the only sensible move, but we’re not here for prizes - we’re here to try and broaden understanding of what’s needed in a better world and to determine how we can work towards that together for the benefit of all.
So stop being hissy and get back to the important matters, you seem like a good kid with a lot of passion and energy - if that’s directed right then you could be a real boon to the movement for a better world. Getting lost in ego and fear of admitting you’re wrong isn’t going to help anyone though, least of all yourself.
Let’s make friends and forget about all the angry stuff you said, and yes I have been mean and rude too and I do apologise very genuinely for that, I just care about this stuff and it gets me caught up when I feel people are making it harder to shill for urban modernisation through trams and track based cargo networks. I don’t want to have to be explaining the limitations of mass transit but also I don’t want to be part of groups that will make me look foolish and to have to start every argument in favour of trains with ‘yes obviously a lot of people who argue for trains are crazy and wrong but…’
When he was spending money on electric cars, solar, renewable energy storage and (relatively) low-cost space travel.
Yanno, before he got addicted to Twitter and became terminally online.
It honestly baffles me how many people have forgotten that Musk was heralded as basically being irl Batman because electric cars prior to Tesla were actual trash, there was little to no research being done on how to make space cheaper, and renewables only worked as long as the sun was shining and the wind was blowing (iirc the power wall was originally developed for renewable energy storage; Tesla also developed solar roof tiles so you could turn your roof into one big solar panel). He was using his money to actually help develop cleaner transportation, cleaner energy development and space travel instead of filling Olympic swimming pools with cash like most rich fucks.
Then he started posting on Twitter and everyone realized he was an idiot with too much money who got lucky with Tesla and SpaceX.
(Yes, I know he wasn’t the founder of Tesla; however it was his money and idiocy-induced stubbornness that made the company successful)
You mean… all those things that came from public institutions (ie, universities) and not parasites like Phony Stark?
Yes… by a media completely given over to licking the boots of the wealthy. Soooo… no leftists involved at all.
And how many of those people actually spent time implementing these improvements? Iirc, no one. Because the infrastructure wasn’t there for electric cars and developing the infrastructure was going to be expensive, making electric cars basically useless for anything except short drives.
…which is where public transportation should be used.
But public transportation doesn’t work in every situation, especially in a country where everything has been designed around cars, making public transportation retrofits obscenely expensive. Musk said, “I have a fuck ton of money, and that money is worthless if I’m not using it, so let’s build the infrastructure to make electric cars worth it”.
And so he did.
You know politics are a spectrum, right? There were a lot of people on the left who weren’t associated with the MSM who thought he was the hottest thing since sliced bread. I knew a lot of people ranging from moderate liberal to hardcore left who liked him. The reason why the hardcore lefties liked him was because they saw him as a necessary evil.
The general opinion among the more hard leaning left was that the world is burning and something has to be done, if a rich person is taking steps in the right direction, then we’ll back him until he stops being useful. We don’t have the luxury to wait for the revolution or sit with our thumbs up our asses hoping oil and gas companies will just suddenly keel over and die. We need to do more to save our world and anything is better than nothing.
The only people who couldn’t see that he was useful were idiots waiting for a perfect idol and were willing to sacrifice everyone for their personal, sky-high standards.
Edit: fixed a bit where I had inserted a sentence and forgot to actually connect it to something.
Probably not much… and probably because people at universities are smart enough to understand that electric cars doesn’t fix any problems at all.
When you’re in a hole it’s best to stop digging. Continuing to rely on cars because fixing the mess that was caused for the benefit of capitalist parasites is “too expensive” is pure madness.
Lol! Such as whom? I think you have a very weird idea of what “left” actually is.
Really? Leftists just up and forgot how capitalism worked because… why, again?
Leftists understand that capitalism will never fix the problems capitalism has caused. Period. None of this is new - this has been general knowledge amongst leftists for more than a hundred years now.
No, people at universities typically understand that a better solution would be to use public transportation, however they also understand that doing so is a pipe dream and you have to fight against trillions of dollars to do so. Otherwise they wouldn’t spend the time and effort to try and develop the technology in the first place. Seriously, what is the point of developing an electric car if you believe cars shouldn’t exist? In that situation you’re developing a technological dead-end.
In the meantime, our world is still burning and cars are shitting out more greenhouses gases.
Yes, because tearing up millions of square miles of suburban housing while displacing millions of people to compress it into a smaller space so that public transportation becomes feasible is definitely a realitic solution. New developments should be higher density and should have public transportation systems, however existing areas are kinda fucked from that standpoint.
The ones who were realistic did. You know people can believe something is bad, yet still engage in it or use it because the alternative isn’t feasible, right? How many people still use plastic containers? How many people still drive cars? How many people still use social media? How many people still consume food with high-fructose corn syrup? How many people still call the cops in an emergency? How many people still use Amazon and/or Google? There are so many things that are bad for us, yet we still do them anyway, either because there’s no alternative or because we lack the time, money and/or energy to cut them out of our lives.
Ideals are great, but they aren’t grounded in reality and compromises have to be made. If you can’t understand this, then you’re dead weight for the people who are actually trying to make a difference.
I know you’re trying to get a rise out of me, but c’mon, you can do better.
Well hallelujah, friends… the right-wingers have finally found a pretext that none of us can beat - they messed things up so badly that none of it can be fixed, and nobody should even try. I don’t know why they just don’t go public with that - they already have one believer right here.
You do understand that there are more uses for batteries than cars, right?
Plastic containers did’t fall out of the sky - neither did cars. The people who benefit from their production doesn’t live on Mount Olympus - we can strip them (and the political structures that enables them) of their power and fix these things. It’s not some pipe dream or an ideal - it’s literally the only way to guarantee humanity’s continued survival on this planet.
The only thing you seem to have “grounded in reality” is that the destruction of literally everything should be “compromised” with. It seems the only thing you are willing to do is compromise - but I guess that’s where the money is, huh?
Tesla “developed” those solar tiles as a fucking scam to sell investors on the Solarcity merger to bail his family out. It only ever came to fruition to keep him out of prison for outright fraud rather than just “fibbing”. He bet the wellbeing of every employee and shareholder on that absolute dumpster fire of a company, literally scamming investors, just to save his ass, and it was nothing short of dumb fucking luck that kept it all burning to the ground, as he himself stated in a deposition.
Like everything else Musk does, those solar tiles are a way for wealthy people to greenwash their decadent lifestyle, while also allowing them to stay NIMBYs who don’t want to ruin the look of their gaudy McMansions. Normal arrays cost fractions of what those tiles do, work better, and don’t require replacing your entire roof for them.
Powerwalls were just a way to get rid of out of spec cells to people at 10x what their value is in an automotive pack. A home ESS is much gentler on them comparatively, so even out of spec cells work fine.
You want to talk about clean transportation? He came up with the literal pipe dream of the Hyperloop to keep cities from funding actual high-speed and light rail projects, so people would have to buy his shitboxes.
Literally everything he does is to keep his game as a greasy car salesman/government welfare queen going (see, SpaceX), and nothing more. Any positive benefits conferred from this are basically just a coincidence.
Tbh I liked him when the whole GME thing happened, because when Robinhood screwed over all the GME holders Elon blew the lid off of Dogecoin and I basically made all my profits back. I also thought him poking fun at the SEC while all that happened was pretty ballsy and I respected that.
But now he’s made it known that he’s a conservative bootlicker, transphobe, antivaxx, corporate shill… 🤷♀️
I think it’s important to distinct what part of the left.
Most of the left on Lemmy? Probably not.
A lot of liberals who align themselves with the US democrats? There was a lot of support until the famous pedo incident.
Okay, so right wingers?
The Overtoon Window is so far to the right in the US that their “Left” are nationalist pro-business neoliberals and their “Right” are ultra-nationalist anti-immigrant anti-abortion neoliberals, so basically in what is the Right to Far-Right range in continental Europe.
Along with pre-pandemic (roughly) Musk, Sam Bankman Freed was also buddies with the left and even had a second co-ceo to court the right wing politicians while he hung out with the left wing (those that were dumb enough to believe in crypto anyway).
No offence intended… but this post has shown me just what a completely warped idea people have in regards to what “left” and “right” even means - very few people here seem to even know that anti-capitalism is where the left starts…
He was a darling because he was a literally unknown person who introduced themselves with a controlled media profile who sold a way to approach the fossil fuel problem. The nice thing about the left is their views evolve rapidly to current events and Elon has been inescapable in media, so naturally he reveals his true neocon form.
The nice thing about the left is that they have some critical thinking abilities.
Made it more broad and concise for you.
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i never trusted him
Wikipedia should counter-offer X changes its name to SeX for >= amount. Jimbo can even show Musk how to recruit and retain far more effective and cost-effective and robust moderation culture like the GOAT they are.
DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA TODAY
Wikipedia does not appear to be in any danger of running out of money: dailydot.com/…/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/
I think it’s a good thing they have an endowment to give the site more financial security, but… how big does it need to be before they stop the begging advertisements? They’ve already far outpaced the goal they set in 2016.
Lol WTF! After reading the article, I need a refund. They also started a for-profit? SMH
The for profit is to sustain the non profit. A business can’t be a non profit 503(1)© in the US after exceeding a certain amount, this a branch off is required to generate income. They’re just playing the corporate game.
The entirety of the Musk sycophant Twitter sphere lost their mind about Wikipedia’s finances this week. Only because this dipshit tweeted a lie. Crazy how people can’t fathom that a non-profit that runs one of the most successful websites ever has high costs because they pay their engineers well. These people truly believe that everyone working at a non-profit should get starvation wages.
Wikipedia does funnel money into charity causes that aren’t related to their mission of bringing knowledge to the world. I personally have a hard time reconciling that with the constant begging for donations. I’d rather they set up an endowment or focus the money on items related to the mission.
That being said, paying people well to get bright people working on their mission is a no brainer.
Sauce?
First I’m hearing this also - what unrelated causes to they support?
Wikipedia as an organization does this?? News to me so I’d love a source on that. I would not be surprised if people that work at Wikipedia donate to charitable causes or speak out about social issues, but that’s a very different thing called free speech
Even internally, there’s a lot of complaints about the tone of the donation drives. What’s scary is that these are the pleas that passed. Worse ones were vetoed by community vote.
I work at a very large non profit and I am paid quite well. The work is extremely difficult and anxiety inducing but the payoff isn’t really the money but the good I know I am helping to do.
As a fairly high up Fed that used to work for a well paid 501c3 same as you I know what you mean.
But the good pay makes it so you have the mental energy to dedicate to the job and not need to worry as much about your finances and maybe have to leave, or do a worse job. I’m for genuine non profit work still being paid fair wages and more within reason. So much of the world relies on non profit programs for something!
Might as well rename this community “musk”
Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.
I agree. Why do these people go crazy over this pile of shit?
And there’s really no excuse here. Musk actually buying Twitter was arguably a notable tech story. Him musing about Wikipedia is decidedly not.
Im assuming this is just more effort by him working for Russian interests. Wikipedia being too credible for the war in Ukraine.
He’s already ruined every technology subcommunity by being the only fucking thing people report on.
Then quit being a whiny dink and get to posting.
Didn’t read the article. Just stopping by to say how much I love this title. Thanks!
Super rich and powerful people hate anything they can’t have or control. They are used to getting everything they want if they pay enough money or pull enough strings.
The idea of a successful thing being completely beyond their reach torments them, they seethe with rage at anything their blood-stained, filthy dollars can’t buy, it galls them and I am absolutely filled with glee at the thought.
Stop giving this asshat free publicity for stupid shit, ffs.
He’s right! By my calculations if we all stop free publicity for Musk his publicity costs necessary to cover for the loss of free publicity will easily bankrupt him by 4045. Who will be laughing then Musk?!
You sound like someone that preheats the microwave.
Unrelated but your account is labeled as a bot account for me. Might want to check your settings.
Thanks mate, didn’t realize I had both Bot Account and Show Bot Accounts selected. Fixed. Big thanks!
Hmmm that’s just what I’d expect a bot to say.
Omg that’s a setting? I never knew!
is such promise legally binding in US? it would be fun to take billion dollars from him and i am pretty sure we could all survive wiki being renamed for a day…
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well maybe he did learn his lesson from having to buy twitter after all 😆
Did he specified on what planet?
I could live with this for a year:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0f0d3b18-3862-4324-91e2-d14d6673daca.png">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/77b9664a-2462-4563-b452-e815b16f3023.png">
I know it’s only text but I appreciate that you took the time to shop this instead of just typing it lol
since discovering that you can ctrl+v images directly into a Lemmy comment, paint.net has pretty much become an extension of my vocabulary lol.
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A real one huh
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0a8cf45e-2629-47a2-acda-3fbe5cfb46d9.png">
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What intermediary?
Billion dollars would cover all the costs of wikipedia for almost a decade, a year of dickipedia would be a very small price to pay.
Far longer, with a trust and prudent investment.
Absolutely not.
and you know that, or are you mistaking your thoughts and wishes with facts?
www.google.com/search?q=is+verbal+promise+legally…
Read your own link. There’s nothing resembling a contract here, and even your own link says this doesn’t apply given the amount of money involved.
Sit down.
which link says that? i suspect you didn’t even bother to click on it, did you?
The first one that Google literally highlights, if you click it, it says that verbal contracts are binding but purchases of goods over $500 is an exception.
If you’re not talking about the first search result, maybe link to an actual source instead of the search results.
It’s also only a contact if two parties agree. Has the Wikimedia foundation even replied to this malarkey?
The very first one.
But of course now you’ve tipped your hand that you didn’t even have a source in mind and literally just googled it without clicking a single result.
Seriously, sit down.
It’d be for 1 year minimum. And of course it is legally binding, these are the terms. Generally speaking, the only things that are not legally binding are contracts that involve illegal activity or contracts with a minor. Everything else can be enforced.
To address the arguments below…Elon Musk hasn’t drawn up a contract because the offer has not been accepted. Of course he would draw up a basic, legally enforceable contract with these terms…if Wikipedia accepted, and said yes, I want $1B. Please draw up contract. This is how the world works. 🙄 Contracts, legal obligations, ability to enforce them.
So what you’re saying is that, no, that tweet alone is not legally binding.
I completely hate how something that is a rare Bastian of maintaining free and reliable factual information for the world is just a silly game for him. It sickens me. This is the kind of cartoon character rich villain that throws money a people and shouts at them to dance for him.
Yeah and pollute it with fascist content.
bastion
WHY WON’T YOU DO WHAT YOU DREAM???
I can’t! I have to keep my feet on the ground! Man I loved the fuck out of that movie as a kid
Beautiful game
It’s literally a meme how you can’t trust anything you see on there except for the most objective, undeniable facts, because you never know what page has been camped by an editor with an agenda or just a possessive streak. On anything even slightly subjective. I know there’s good editors, I know it’s a majority of them, but the problem is that the bad ones exist and so you can’t trust any given page isn’t poisoned.
Also, relatedly, the entire backend is an ever-growing morass of petty politics and tangled policies that serve mostly as a barrier to entry. They’ve been saying admin and power-editor retention is a huge problem for well over a decade, and yet they keep making it worse. At this point, the majority of their admins are from 2005, with only 10% from after 2010, because nobody bothers getting started when the prerequisites to making even a small edit can be learning the wikipedia legal system.
It is an encyclopedia. It is not a place for subjective content. Just because you keep getting your opinion edits rolled back does not mean that that's a bad thing. A Wikipedia page SHOULD be filled only with objective facts. Again, it is an encyclopedia.
Also, you can trust that a given page is not poisoned by checking the sources yourself. They're all right there at the bottom. Anything without a citation can be ignored but most things of substance are going to have a citation, because an encyclopedia is a place in which to collect objective facts with sources to back them up.
I didn’t say subjective content, I said content about something subjective. Wikipedia contains a wealth of “one proposed explanation for”, or “a common theory is” on any event or phenomenon, (of which many are covered). Objective reports of subjective statements. And the choice of which to use, which perspectives to include, is a form of bias. The reporting of which proposed theories for causes of historical events or meanings for literature are included, and which are left out, is a form of bias. One that cannot be seen through simply by “checking the sources”. An article written with a slant is going to include sources that agree with its viewpoint and not include sources that do not, and checking the sources is going to show you those viewpoints, and not the ones that were left out.
Also, again, there are absolutely editors who will just wordlessly revert objective, factual edits, with clear, proper citations from accepted primary sources, just because it’s their page or it doesn’t line up with how they want it to be seen. Checking the sources won’t show you that, either.
Alright, you do actually make fair points here that I hadn't taken into consideration. I still stand by my statement but now I see that you aren't really necessarily disagreeing with me. Guess I'm going to have to start checking the edit history as well as the sources now...
That might be the misunderstanding. Primary sources are not directly allowed on wikipedia without very careful consideration that no analysis was done. Wikipedia article are, and should be, mostly derived from secondary sources to avoid bias. The Wikipedia page does a pretty good job of describing the guideline:
…wikipedia.org/…/Wikipedia:No_original_research
Just follow the sources then. Everything that should be credible is backed by sources, and if you can’t believe that source then ignore it , or admit your trust issues.
What is, on a controversial issue, one side is presented with sources, and the other side is not mentioned at all or given just a brief overview?
This often happens on Wikipedia, even when the editors aren’t trying to be biased. Suppose there was a dispute between the British Empire and a small tribe in South Africa. The British side of the story will have a lot of sources, most in English. The tribal side will most likely be known only to locals, with maybe some articles in Zulu and one in Dutch. How do you think the Wikipedia article will look?
To be fair, Wikipedia is trying to enact policies to address such biases, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
TIL: memes are a reliable source of information. As opposed to wikipedia
Can we please rename Narcissism to Elonissim already?
Don’t give him any more attention, that’s what he wants.
Problem is he’d love that.
Nah, he would get offended - just like he is now with Wikipedia. And even more offended when other people are named “after him” without his control. And even more when they turn out to be people he hates.
He is literally living out comedy sketches now.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
He is literally living out comedy sketches now.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is what we’re working with. A small child.
Small children don’t carry on like this. He’s an embittered teenager.
Wikipedia should’ve agreed. Imagine for minimum a year, the whole world opening Wikipedia, gets reminded on the clown Elon Musk, again and again.
Take the money then we would just call it the site formerly known as wikipedia. Similar to how x is simply formerly known as twitter.
Stop posting Musk’s fucking face. This isn’t tech
THIS oh gawwwd, couldn’t agree more. Tired of reading news about this guy talking unintelligent crap. Dear people, for him even negative publicity is still publicity and for us it is a waste of our attention, 1 cent of which he doesn’t deserve.
Media’s fault for covering him and the cheeto every five seconds
You’re not wrong but it’s also the people’s fault as well for engaging so much with this bullshit. I swear 90% of the internet exists simply to circle jerk about things people hate while the remaining 10% actually talks about things they like. I’ll never understand why people choose to talk so much about the things they hate, just fucking downvote and move on to something you actually like.
All publicity is good for these pieces of shit, stop feeding into the rage cycle and they wouldn’t be covered so much. Or they’d have to pay more for their coverage at the very least.
I’m so tired of seeing mean gross old white men scowling all over my damn feed any time anyone shares an article.
Pretty sick of them wrecking the world, some of us will get stuck with clean/ survival because of them.
Would it be fine if they were mean gross old black men? Or mean gross young white men?
I couldn’t say because it never really happens enough to make me sick of seeing them being such shitty people it regularly makes headlines.
I’m assuming you aren’t familiar with Clarence Thomas?
I am. I didn’t say it doesn’t happen just not enough to make me sick of seeing his face. Is this a test or something am I being tested for reverse racism or something because I mentioned white men??
I’ve been blocking these users.
Goodbye Gork.
Yeah I looked at their posts but didn’t see any muskness
Twitter saboteur wanting to move onto sabotaging Wikipedia, the biggest reference source in the world that’s only accessible via the internet, on his crusade against truth and facts? Of course it’s tech news.
He runs a social media platform of influence. It’s tech.
Don’t like it? Hide the post and move on.
I mean the post has convinced me to donate to Wikipedia. It’s newsworthy. I hate Musk as much as you, but I can’t just stick my head in the dirt.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to unplug from it, but don’t begrudge others for not wanting to.
Sure go for it. There's plenty wrong with Wikipedia already.
Since he's attacking Jimmy Wales how bout he buy and destroy Fandom too?
Don’t you dare fucking touch Wikipedia
…into the ground.
Please for the love of whatever you hold dear, do not touch that website
DON’T YOU THREATEN SOMETHING I ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT, FUCKER.
But seriously, I can’t imagine the fine folks at Wikimedia seeing what happened to shitter and thinking there’s any value in having him in charge.
You suck, Lonnie. Go away.
Yeah I can’t wait to read all articles with facts replaced by Republican fantasy. Trump actually won the last election with 99% votes? Oh it must be true then.
Is Musk in this thread?
Nah, but his paid meme troll farms probably are.
No but when he Googles himself - which I am sure he does daily, then he’ll know to stay within the confines of his X domain. We’re claiming back the internets. :)
Seriously though, some young person might still look up to him as a space role-model without ever knowing that the guy is a waste of space.
Oh I bet he reeeally hates Lonnie as a nickname 😂
Authoritarian DICKtator muskovite having a tantrum.
Out of context, your comment may sound somewhat childish but this all started with Elon’s comment:
Ive responded elsewhere in this thread, and think we are otherwise aligned against this cunt, so maybe, just maybe this is a good time to give Wikipedia one of your hard earned dollars? One dollar.
donate.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
Damn, finally got me to donate to Wikipedia. Years of successful ignorance down the drain - fucking thanks Elon. GUH
Well done
Done! Never did before, but I guess the headline had the right effect.
Well done
I gave them 10, just in case
Well done
Hmm, it says I can’t donate from my region
Make it monthly
I did literally in response to this.
Same
High five!
God-tier title
Hell no. Wikipedia is the last untainted place of the internet
Hahahaha, oh wow… Wikipedia is so biased on some topics that heads are spinning while reading some pages.
Yeah, it’s not perfect and there is some drama but it’s still amazing and one of the few remaining pieces from the dream many of us had for the Internet before almost everything else sold out.
Do you have an example? Just curious.
Personally I’d rather have crowd sourced bias than the bias of one really rich dude anyways.
A lot of ex-communist east european countries history is biased as fuck. But I agree with you, I don’t think Musk buying Wikipedia would benefit it in any way. Although how much of “crowd” bias is there now is arguable as a lot of them are probably a part of some NGO or something…
Not just NGOs, many groups are also involved in information warefare. This is a result of Wikipedia’s poor policies that favor profits more than its purpose.
Do you have a source to back this up?
And can you send this source to Wikipedia so they can update their pages since they strive for NPOS?
They are clearly not as biassed as you claim they are.
or we can have no bias at all. But you do you.
I mean, good luck with that. It’s near enough impossible to completely remove bias from any source of information… I think Wikipedia does a fairly good job, honestly, and the talk pages mean you can see different perspectives fairly openly.
[citation needed]
Some parts of wikipedia are biased as fuck… specially the ones covering politics of populist countries. There are armies of tankies bending reality to their likes and needs.
Then find a good source and fix them
Exactly. There was a page for the Jacobin founder that was missing a controversy over what he said about the Tsar’s children, but my edit that added it in was ultimately removed – and I totally understand why. I remember when it happened at the time, but when I looked for actual proof and sources, the only things I could find were very weak. The tweets had been deleted and only one had been dubiously archived.
Long story short, I had no evidence to back it up, even though I know I saw it. And that’s just how the cookie crumbles. If there isn’t a good source, even for something that did happen, it isn’t admissible. I can’t expect someone to take me at my word only, and I respect that Wikipedia doesn’t let that fly.
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Probablemente tengas razon, todos los articulos de wikipedia son escritos y revisados por pares en Washington… mala mia
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At least it reminded me to renew my annual donation to Wikipedia. Fucking Muskunt.
Hell I think this has concern me to start doing an annual donation. Fuck Musk.
Let the clown wring his hands over something he can’t control.
I love it when lefties experience mental breakdowns over Musk. This thread is gold.
Keep sucking Musk’s dick, good for you
You mean your ex-hero, the savior of the world, who became enemy no. 1 the second he bought Twitter? Sure, bro… Idgaf about Musk, just lefties hating him all of the sudden after worshiping him is funny af.
A hero doesn’t help others for their own greed/benefits
What about we all fund his trip to the Mars or whatever, but only one way.
Dude can afford to send himself to Mars, but I’d prefer we don’t and send him into the sun instead. Mars don’t need to be contaminated by filth like him.
He put his pudd in Grimes, multiple times. Just yuck. I’m not sure which one to be sorry for more.
Maybe Grimes has a problem when choosing boyfriends
It takes less fuel to eject him out of the solar system. No need to be wasteful.
Dropping someone into the sun and ejecting someone from the solar system both take a lot of energy compared to an orbital transfer to a planet with a similar orbital altitude.
Look, can we all just agree Musk needs to be sent somewhere to die in one of his rockets?
Just allow him to control his spaceship with a Logitech F710
Fun fact. Anyone going to Mars in the near future is going for a one way trip.
If they’re lucky! Some might get lost in transit.
That’s still a one-way trip!
I’d say it is a half way trip
If my 5€ donation from last year has any power, I will veto this.
Just a heads up, you can download all of wikipedias Text in a couple Gigabyte iirc. So we could easily “fork” and mirror it.
So he did get Twitter just to ruin it and take it away from the left. This proves it, because he wants to do it again to Wikipedia whilst calling it “Wokipedia” like a broken, right wing soundboard. Neither platform allowed lies and, since it’s the right and their only move is lies, in his view that makes them biased. Elon intentionally sabotaged twitter because it wouldn’t let him and his rich cunt friends lie and now they want to do it to Wikipedia. He genuinely doesn’t have a moral foundation, it’s just lies and manipulation all the way down to his shriveled, rotten core.
“Wokipedia” should not be confused with Wookieepedia the star wars focused wiki. Though it isnt as abjectly insane as Transformerspedia though there is some cross-over.
I can understand his anger, but only because of who he is and what Wikipedia is.
Wikipedia attempts to have a neutral point of view (NPOV). It is extremely nuanced but it basically means being impartial, relying on the verifiable facts & sources and not giving undue weight or emphasis on fringe views. The site also has a lot of active maintainers who go in and strive for that NPOV, deleting vandalism or other acts meant to shift away from it. It’s certainly not perfect but it clearly works in the main.
NPOV is a hard thing to take for someone like Musk. He says & repeats incredibly dumb things on a daily basis and is highly susceptible to misinfo. He also has a massive ego, narcissistic personality disorder and an incredibly thin skin. He doesn’t like it when somebody says something he doesn’t like to hear and he doesn’t like it when he can’t control the person saying it. I have no idea why Wikipedia is pushing his buttons but I imagine that their bio about Musk is not pretty and it riles him up no end.
Yeah. I assume Wikipedia has the words “massive fuck up”, more than once, in the section covering Musk’s aquisition of Twitter.
I could go read it, but I’ve read enough about that clown for a lifetime.
I found this interesting article when trying to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing with Twitter. What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter? - NBC News
That pressure campaign is against the Anti Defamation League which Musk has been trying to do.
So I guess he’s doing it all for far right adulation.
What a fucking loser
Please make this a post of its own somewhere. I’ve long suspected that the intent was to ruin Twitter for political motives rather than do anything socially constructive with it. Finally, this is undeniable proof from a court of law.
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Bluesky is another alternative, whilst not decentralized, its been pretty cool over there. I also have a mastodon account though
So what’s the point? enshitification will inevitably hit them as well and then people will have to migrate again and again
I love the fediverse, but it hasn’t fully solved the migration need problem. If I open an account on an instance which I later discover I don’t like, I have to migrate for that as well.
The point as I see it is just limited to who do I want to follow, and what platforms can I use to do so? If bluesky turns to shit in a decade, but I get value out of it for that decade, maybe that’s enough for my needs.
(FWIW, I am not on bluesky)
But at least the user content doesn’t disappear into a black hole. Like what happened to parts of reddit.
I may be missing the reference here?
For Mastodon there’s a feature for transferring your account from one server to another, with its history, etc.
Oh cool, is there anything similar for lemmy?
I haven’t had to search it for lemmy, so I honestly don’t know.
It’s certainly possible. I’m giving it a shot. I prefer federated systems, as I said, I also have Mastodon
sorry this is not open source. Who is behind it, what is their gain and how do I trust whatever they claim in their website?
According to their FAQ: https://wiremin.org/#/FAQ
EDIT: After having fully read the FAQ, I must admit, their DHT (distributed hash table) protocol sounds very neat. Being something of a protocol geek, I’ll be the 1st to admit that I may be biased, so if a 2nd pair of knowledgeable eyes could try burst my bubble, just in case I’m missing something. I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
According to them, albeit with no documentation, source plus a firstname.lastname@gmail address as a contact. The lead developer seems to be an O’Reilly publisher of MySQL books but I can’t confirm that until I hear back from the developer.
Basically, these are some features:
It really is quite impressive, technically & they seem to have coded themselves out of the equation as they can’t even see your password or recovery passphrase.
Be that as it may - as you rightly point out, all we need now is the source, without which, I doubt I could back it.
I’ve reached out requesting info on whether it will be full or partial source, roadmaps, transparency, funding for devs etc before downloading & trying this but it sounds fantastic - too much so, when compared to, say Discord or X.
PS: My interest in this mostly academic intrigue, I don’t work for them or know them, I just found out about this a few hours ago. Most of the wording here is copypasta. I once wrote commercial protocols in the IoT space that were loosely based around early XMPP - until Google killed it. Which is why I’m so happy about the fedi existing despite the best efforts of Google.
Anyway, this protocol seems to resemble the functionality of the FOSS app Syncthing, at least on the surface. Of course with the addition of other tech. I’d love to see one or two features like this in Lemmy or Mastodon, even if I had no interest in the code. The cost of infrastructure & the need to administer it, for example, would disappear overnight.
I feel like I just read a brochure for a product.
I was doing it more as a wishlist or an idea board to draw opinions from. However, as stated; as nice as it sounds, I’d rather admire the code than have the features without the code. Whoever did this though, was quite thoughtful about risks, including the - the ‘bus factor’.
As a comparison, I really liked the “Connect For Lemmy” app when I first joined up.
It has some great features, some of which are still not on Jeboa. The dev even said he’d open the source if there was interest. I gave up on waiting, uninstalled & now use Jeboa on mobile exclusively because Connect is still closed, as far as I know.
I am FOSS or nothing, if I an help it - especially in communications apps. If the source fails to materialise then I will forget this too - even if I can indulge in speculating on the methods used. There is a fair amount of skill & thought required to pull this off. The best part though, I’m hoping, is that as a protocol, it would be a great chat accompaniment to & not a replacement to Lemmy or Mastodon. Again, without the source, I can only guess.
Regardless, the fedi is young enough to be influenced by good ideas early, before it becomes too costly in time, effort & complexity, to undo or implement changes later.
The only thing though is that you spend a whole lot of time/verbosity describing in detail all the good points about the product, and then just mention it’s anti-FOSS nature at the very end of your long comment.
Usually someone very pro-FOSS will mention that negative up front.
Or seek to implement those features in a free & open way; but the features have to necessitate the effort & if the features are not clarified then no effort, especially a distributed one can even begin to replicate them. What do you suppose ought to be done first when building an app - the feature request or the code?
In any case, I wrote this right at the top of the post before getting to the good stuff, so you could have stopped there if you wanted to:
as I see it, the problem in your statement is that while you mention you’re pro-FOSS, you got overexcited by the claims of an unknown entity over technologies that you like and at the same time you have no source. Just promises. They could even be a startup that has just put all the buzzwords there while in fact on their code they don’t do anything of that and they just use a centralized server with symetric encryption and have the symmetric key stored in the code. The app will look like it works till proven that it is not. As long as they don’t want to publish their code, you getting overexcited (at least for me), is pointless.
There was an example with a startup that was doing something similar to that, not in that magnitude with a stored key, but something equally bullshit until they were exposed. Quite early in their journey. Cannot remember the name right now but there was a good analysis by a researcher. If I remember it, I will add it.
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I wonder if he didn’t have his family’s money, could he have been successful?
That’s the story of most ultra rich people. It’s hard to fail when you have that much money.
They do fail - upward. Everyone else gets to bounce off the ground & climb up again, they just move on to something better.
These wealthy entrepreneurs think they’re brilliant risk takers, but overlook the fact that what would be a huge risk for most people is not much of a risk for them.
When you have 1M$, making another one is easy. That first one is hard though.
It’s also really easy to lose the first 1 mil.
I think the connections were more important than the money. Reliable sources are hard to come by, but by all accounts he and his dad hate each other. Some accounts say he stole thousands of dollars from him, but it was likely less than a million that he was able to get. Moreso got lucky and had good connections so sell things.
You have a great point there.
nope!
Okay. We will change our name to dickipedia, give us the billion dollars.
musk hands over
dickipedia changes name to muskipedia
muskipedia changes name to wikipedia
New Wikipedia no longer needs to ask for donations.
isn’t wikipedia just lying when it asks for donations
I’ve heard that and decided to look myself. According to their fundraising report for fiscal year 2021/22, they received $165.2m from 13m people. Removing “major gifts,” $20.8m (only 18,000 people), it comes out to a bit over $11 per person. Additionally, they got $13.5m to their trust, the Wikimedia Endowment (average donation of $13.91/person). So definitely, most of their income comes from small donations.
As to whether they need it, according to their FY 21/22 financials statement, they’re sitting on $198m in assets ($51m of which is cash), with an additional $52m they can’t touch because they’re long-term investments. However, their expenditures made up $154m. In total, they’re reporting they netted $8m last year for additional assets, but assuming that everyone stopped donating, Wikipedia would probably die in a year, even with liquidation of short-term assets.
thank ya! I appreciate the effort you made for my silly comment. Ill read those links too.
Time to make the yearly offline copy of the English Wikipedia. It’s always handy to have an offline version.
Where would you even have heard such nonsense?
thats just being an ass for no reason, ya didn’t exactly contribute much besides bitchin’
Asking for a source is “being an ass”?
How do you figure?
I mean someone else already answered, I was just asking to see if it was true and proved wrong.
I mean full support to ruining the internet, its a shit hole anyways
Of course the community driven, anarchic nature of Wikipedia is a threat to the status quo of capitalists dominating society. Musk can’t stand this, because it shows how ultra wealthy, incompetent dicktators like him are unnecessary.
Can we just put a bell on him at this point and let him run around in his own birthday party?
Wikipedia is anything but anarchy. There’s so much bureaucracy it would surprise even Kafka.
I also don’t think Elon’s psyche is built around an abstract notion of economic systems. He’s simply a narcissist that desires shiny things, in a very basic and unrefined way. Rich people just want to add baubles to their menagerie.
Community driven? Wikipedia? That shit has mods worse than reddit admins.
Wikipedia is by its own standards a propaganda organ for the status quo (a mainstream encyclopedia that summarizes mainstream science, history and journalism).
Time to put your tinfoil hat on and refuse to check any references for yourself.
Ah. So this os the end goal - obtain very popular and influential things on the internet - in this case communication and knowledge/facts, and destroy them in such a way that only technofascists like himself can even find them remotely useful.
It’s the ultimate way to fuck up any democratic society and plunge the world further into chaos. What a dumpster fire.
What’s it feel like Musky to make a shitty world more shit because you’re an emotionally unstable needy little bitch? Where’s the fucking Mars colony you stupid whiney piss baby
Seize the means of information.
Is he just a greedy idiot, or is this part of some multi-step plan to make sure the internet is filled with disinformation? At this point I think both things are true. Can’t he just run off to Mars already
I set up a monthly donation to Wikipedia last night as a result.
W
I downloaded Wikipedia last night as a result.
We need a real life Trading Places where Elin ends up under a bridge or in prison.
Musk is always looking for his next high. He desperately wants that bong hit of attention that getting his name in the news brings to him. He’s an attention whore, who can afford to burn through billions of dollars. I’m surprised he didn’t buy Reddit years ago.
When he started talking about buying Twitter, I was quite sure his entire goal was manipulating how the website felt about him - as in, blocking the kid tracking his plane and banning people who offended him.
He now wants Wikipedia, and my opinion is only reinforced: he wants to edit his page.
He wants to shut down any sources of dissent.
“We must dissent.”
-Sister Miriam Godwinson
Unexpected, but welcome Alpha Centauri reference.
I need to replay this game. I remember really hating Sister Miriam
Please don’t go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
nerve staples
That’s what he wanted everyone to believe - offering 420 jokes as a share price he was willing to pay. He was ready to pay anything & even said so in an interview - that X is not about money, it’s more than that. Though he complained about how much he paid for it, he got a bargain for the ability to centralise, control, monitor & distort the dissemination of knowledge, perception of culture, international wars, to prolong or incite culture wars.
Imagine one guy deciding which governments could use it as an emergency response tool, tracking millions of accounts; many of whom were in positions of influence ie politicians, law enforcement, judiciary, reporters, authors, financial types, companies of all sizes, government agencies, local councils & everything in between.
I remember thinking what a bargain he got that ability for. How much would any dictator pay for this sort of ability?
You seem to be vastly overestimating the usefulness and adoption rate of Twatter, even at its peak.
Bits of data, ie user accounts when viewed singularly or in small numbers are information. In the 100 000s to millions, they become intelligence.
Reddit had no bluetick businesses, journalists, authors, government reps, entire countries used it for emergency news etc . . . he wanted to destroy those, while shit-posting at the same time.
Is Wikipedia even buyable by cunt muffins like Elmo?
It is a non-profit organization.
Not really, but Jimmy Wales is a ayn rand libertarian knob, so there may be parts of the org that he would happily let Elon fuck with.
Hes the ceo of fandom/wikia as well, the plague destroying game wikis with deep enshittification, so yeah. Not confident hes going to turn down this offer.
Elon, if you want to make money from the internet, move into a Skinner box panopticon where users can pay to give you electric shocks.
I would pay for that
He would make a fortune!
Someone should tell Elon that an unprofitable website and a non-profit website are not the same thing.
He isn’t doing it for profit, he wants control
he wants to write articles about himself
adds {{autobiography}} to every article Elon Musk writes
“What do you mean, ‘non-profit’ and ‘no profit’ aren’t identical?”
The difference is the goal of a non profit has nothing to do with making money for investors, it’s trying to actually achieve something, usually helping a group of people in some way.
Oof
I like how people are downvoting this and not commenting on why they think it’s a bad statement. Old message board habits die hard I guess.
Fuck no
Stop giving the attention whore attention.
He doesn’t need anyone to do that, he buys attention
so, lets not do it for free
This attention is only flowing donations to wikipedia.
Hasn’t he learned anything from Wikia/Fandom?
The WoWWiki and RuneScape Wiki communities ditched Wikia due to them plastering the fuck out of their wikis with tonnes of intrusive ads.
Heck, the WoW community had to ditch Wowpedia (WoWWiki’s successor) to found a new wiki because Gamepedia was bought out by Fandom, the company that Wikia eventually became. Fandom ended up pulling the exact same shit soon after.
As for RuneScape, its wiki is hosted by Jagex themselves.
Musk buying Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation would end in financial disaster. Nothing would be stopping people from jumping ship to an alternative.
If Musk bought Wikipedia I would demand my yearly donation refunded.
There is enough nazi information on Wikipedia already, the educational and informative kind of info that lets you see how bad nazis are.
Just wanted to note that Jagex does not host the 2 wikis, but they provide funding, domains and some other stuff but Weird Gloob is fully responsible for the wiki’s and servers it’s running on.
He can’t just buy a foundation, it’s a non-profit not a company.
He always talks a lot of shit and pussies out. He don’t do anything unless by court order.
Not really. When it comes to targeting our communication and transportation systems for hostile takeover, he’s doing a rather efficient job.
To be fair (not that I like Musk), he did try to back out of the communication one. But Twitter and the US court system forced him to pay all $44 billion dollars.
I’m not convinced that whole farce wasn’t just another stupid game.
I am waiting for the day when governments will have had enough of him (unless he bought those governments because that fucker is fucking rich) - and “Elon Musk” becomes “Felon Musk”.
🖕
He might be the person most addicted to social media on the planet
Tax billionaires out of existence.
One can only dream
he ain’t
Honey, Wikipedia was ruined ages ago
Musk aint honey. He’s cornsyrup with honey flavoring.
we should make wikipedia into an everything app
This sounds awesome! Just think what it will do for the fediverse! Is anyone working on a decentralized Wikipedia yet?
Why should someone decentralize Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a non-profit that exists for the betterment mankind. It already embodies the spirit of the fediverse, and has before the fediverse had existed as a concept. There’s no reason to burn it down for the sake of rebuilding it. Not to mention that Elon would do so much damage in the time it takes to get a working site off of the ground.
It’s created from publicly created content, which is great and was a revolutionary move. It embodies not just the fediverse ideal, but the original purpose the internet itself. I use it almost daily and I even make a small monthly monetary contribution to keep it going. But, afaik, it’s still centrally hosted and managed. All I’m saying is decentralize it so that Musk has nothing to “buy” or whatever he’s trying to do.
I’ve donated in the past and, thanks to the big baby, I think I’ll make a donation again
Why? Wikipedia makes a huge profit from donations that get put into trustees pockets. Fuck them.
[Citation needed]
source
Suggestion: Donate instead to long time contributors directly
that was 8 years ago, have anything more up-to-date?
It still exists in our capitalist world so probably even more now
Just look at the data Wikimedia releases themselves.
Is there anything that stops Elon Musk from buying Lemmy or Mastadon? Even if everyone were to migrate over to the Fediverse, what stops these websites from being bought as well?
Why would he pay for something that’s free…?
.
You can’t “buy” Lemmy or Mastodon any more than you can buy email or World Wide Web
Isn’t Mastadon run by an organization started by Eugen Rochko? Could this organization not be bought? Or does it not make a difference who controls Rochko’s organization? Sorry to ask such basic questions - I find the Fediverse pretty confusing.
He could buy a specific mastodon instance, or a specific lemmy instance if the person running the instance decided to sell their instance. It wouldn’t effect any other instance directly.
By buying the mastodon org he might be able to influence development of the mastodon software, but the software is open source and someone would just make a musk-free fork and thungs would keep moving.
Also, an overly simplistic summary of the fediverse is that instead of one reddit run by the reddit corp, anyone can run their own reddit (lemmy) instance. Each instance can talk to each other instance and access data from each other instance. So instances that talk to each other effectively function like one big combined instance.
So if Musk said to himself, “I’m going to buy Mastadon from Rochko and fill all the instances with ads!”, he would be able to do that but we could always just fork and create “Mastadon 2” and then everything would be normal again? Would our content and followers and stuff follow us from Mastadon 1 to Mastadon 2? Or would it just be that the instances would have to switch from 1 to 2 and nothing would really change in terms of user experience?
The best comparison here is email. So Google created an email service and serve ads with their email. This, of course, has no effect on anyone not using Google’s email service and since Google still follows the standards protocols for mail servers to talk to each other it doesn’t even impact their ability to communicate with other remail servers or vice versa.
The same idea works with Mastodon and Lemmy - there isn’t one centralized service that can be bought, the same way you can’t buy “email” or “the web”.
The absolute worst case would be Musk buying the rights to the server code and changing the license for all future versions to something closed. At which point, everyone else just forks the last open version and builds on it from there. So long as neither changes the underlying protocol this has no real effect on end users. If one of them does, then it creates a split between Muskodon and whatever the new fork is called akin to both sides defederating each other.
This makes sense, thanks for the explanation!
Mastodon is just one of the many frontends for ActivityPub, the protocol behind the whole thing. While Mastodon software indeed is written and maintained by an organization, it is nonprofit, and doesn’t have any control over the actual Mastodon instances since those are basically run by enthusiasts
This makes sense, thank you. I’m becoming so aware of how little I know about software (I had to look up the term frontend).
Is this right: Mastadon is an open source frontend and ActivityPub is the open source backend. And Mastadon is kind of like a tool that people use to create instances. The instances keep all of their data on their own servers, but the servers can talk to each other so every server has access to data from every other server. So if Musk bought Mastadon, he wouldn’t have control of all the individual servers’ data, and if Musk bought a server, all the users who wanted to could switch to another server without losing any of their data. Does this mean that every server holds a copy of all of the data from the whole network of servers?
The instances sync data only as needed - for example, if a user on a specific instance is following someone on another instance, and that someone posts something. Fetching and storing data from the entire Fediverse would require an absolutely enormous amount of bandwidth and storage, much more than most people will ever be able to afford and maintain :) (This is also why instances often purge old cached data - to reclaim storage space that is unlikely to be taken by useful data, per the nature of minuteness of social networking, and if you ever need a deleted resource, it can just be requested and synced back up to your instance, as long as it’s still available on the original one.)
As the end user, you should be aware that this synced data may, and most likely will at some point (not many instances achieve absolute 100% uptime, after all), get incomplete - especially if you’re using a smaller instance. When browsing user profiles, it is generally a good idea to look up their profile on their own instance, as it is guaranteed to have all of their data.
Also note that my explanation regarding “frontends” is oversimplified and technically inaccurate: a “frontend” is the user interface part on top of the software that implements the protocol. This, basically, means that you don’t have to stick with whatever UI your instance offers - there are other web and native clients that will talk to your (Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, whatever they come to support) instance, and your instance will still handle all things ActivityPub, such as fetching data from other instances to it and vice versa.
I don’t really know the legalitys, but there’s a few things in elons way:
I don’t know the answers to 2&3, but I’m pretty sure 1 holds true; Elon can’t buy something if the owner refuses to sell.
Lemmy cannot be made closed source due to the irrevocable perpetual license and the viral nature of GPL licenses, especially AGPL.
That seems exactly like something Elon would try to do, just like the idiot that tried to takeover freenode. I’d love it if the creators of Lemmy and Mastodon were able to swindle some money from him.
it is an updated blog concept.
Because it’s FOSS. You can’t buy open-source software. You can use it commercially, but you can’t buy it.
The fact that lemmy and mastodon arent websites, they are collections of connected instances which are managed by individuals and collectives. Elon could set up his own instance, or try to buy all the existing ones, but that wouldnt stop others from setting up new ones as well. The lemmy website is just an aggregator, each instance has its own website as well.
Ah, yes. Another intellectually impartial post. lmfao
It’s not possible to make liberal cesspools any worse, so… Things are looking up!
He’ll probably rename it “X-pedia”.
Dot commmmm
Too late it already ruined itself.
EDIT Wikipedia is bad place to learn about politics and history.
Sources:
.
😜 😅 😂 Let him be mad!!!
it is an engine ;0]
So he says he’ll give them a billion dollars if they change their name to dikipedia. As someone who has donated to Wikipedia in the past I’m 100% in favor of this move.
I agree. Then change it back after the check clears.
With Musk you shouldn’t do anything until after you get your money. Musk must pay in advance.
I agree, changing the name won’t change that much, more money for dikipedia I mean Wikipedia.
Just facists destroying faith in everything that’s not them. Normal modus operandi. These people need sheep who are so confused what to believe that they don’t trust anyone anymore and instead substitute trust for blind faith.
He’s still in this stage
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
He’s still in this stage
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Actually, if it would mean that they’d stop asking me for money every time I use it, I could get behind that
it would also mean a massive blow to our wealth of information, which would be replaced by calculated manipulation of it, including spreading falsehoods and promoting whatever political agenda benefits him in particular.
Wait… you would get behind ruining Wikipedia just so you wouldn’t have to see fundraising banners when you use it?
Is there an r/woosh alternative?
it might be /c/timetoexplainyourself - poe’s law
This guy seriously has the mentality of a three year old.
Don’t mistake intent for ability. Elon doesn’t feel cost or expense, he’s that rich. So while we can all laugh at the money it takes to wreck the communication platform called twitter, a person so rich could be doing exactly what they want; silencing and platforming anyone they choose, while swaths of people can be silenced or deplatformed for Saudi investors all while Elon muddies the waters of “free speech”. The cost is what we laugh about but consider the actions of someone who could dump that money for their own political ends and at the end of the day their feet still haven’t touched the ground.
It’s not a surprise if he were to eyeball Wikipedia and the thought should be a terrifying.
Has he ever built anything?
he defo be flexin’ with them mad dumps he be droppin’ on the throne
Nonprofit organizations that moderate a website should stay nonprofit, because at least they’re not prone to making crappy business decisions that’ll end up hurting them in the long term.