• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • I think it’s mostly subjective or anecdotal, but what comes to mind:

    • The community generally is more friendly. Absolutely, there are still jerks or trolls around, but the ratio of jerks or trolls feel way less than reddit.
    • I feel more active here myself. This one I can’t explain. The community is smaller, so maybe I’m not subconsciously worrying about being drowned out by other comments? On Reddit, I’d average about 1 comment a month at best. On here I usually leave a few comments a week.
    • This point might not mean much if you didn’t join reddit when it was younger: I joined reddit when it was still young. I think back in '08? Lemmy feels like a young reddit, back when I enjoyed it most. Again, I can’t really explain this since it’s just a feeling, but one example of what I mean by “young reddit” is community wide memes. Wayyyyyy back in the day, everyone on Reddit was ravaging about “The narwhal bacons at night” or something like that lol. There were also a bunch of dickbutt memes… if you know, you know. Well, my first week on Lemmy everyone was posting beans for a good couple of days. No reason. Just beans. A few weeks ago there were a bunch of “Taylor Swift going to Australia,” Taylor Swift taking a swim," “Taylor Swift spotted at the airport,” titled posts, but all those posts were pictures of airplanes. The rotating meme right now I think is Jeans??? Idk. This is just a symptom of a younger community, and why I like it more, but there’s more to enjoy about it than rotating memes. This place just feels more genuine as opposed to artificial if that makes any sense.
    • I feel like I’m not missing out on anything on Reddit and I have a healthier relationship with social media on this site than with reddit. Every once and a while, I log back onto Reddit to see what’s going on. Most of the “Big news” that’s posted on there is also posted here, but the experience now feels more bloated compared to here so I don’t stick around as long. As for this site… Yes there is less content. Yes there is less to scroll through. At the same time though, you can scroll for a very long time if you really want to. This eventually led to me being on my phone less and being somewhat a little more productive as opposed to doom scrolling.
    • Lemmy absolutely has better third party support for well, anything. Sure, it doesn’t have official apps, but go to the app store and count how many different Lemmy apps there are vs reddit. Nearly all of these apps are better than the reddit app IMO. Most of these apps are also FOSS; they’re free with no ads. Yes, there are still few paid apps as well if that tickles your fancy. I know Sync for Reddit came over to Lemmy as Sync for Lemmy as an example. This shouldn’t stop at apps though. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are browser plugins.
    • You have more say in your experience here. Again, with the smaller community, your voice is louder. On top of that, is your server’s admin doing something you do not support? Your instance is doing something you don’t like? Create an account on other instances! Lemmy is federated, so most of what you see should be the same as in other instances, but you aren’t under the rule of one toxic CEO anymore. I myself have like 4 accounts on 4 different instances lol.
    • Piggy-backing off of the previous point: if reddit is down, it is down. If your instance is down here? Sign into another instance!
    • On the opposite end of the spectrum, does some instance have a bunch of members or just communities you don’t want to see? Lemmy might not have native tools out of the box, but some Lemmy apps will let you block entire communities.
    • One fun thing I like about Lemmy is you can post pictures in comments!

    Thumbs up

    If anything, the only reason why I still use reddit is for smaller, niche, communities. To that end, yeah Lemmy is smaller, thus the smaller reddit communities are even smaller here. If I find myself wanting to make a post on a given niche topic, I typically post on Reddit AND here. Sometimes, my post on Lemmy will somehow get more comments than reddit still though. Reddit posts seem to fall off after a day or so, that’s not typically the case for Lemmy if you do trend something.

    At the end of the day though, this is just a social media platform, and the enjoyment you get out of it comes down to you. ☺️ One tip I do have though is to sort by “Top of 6h” or “12h”. I don’t like the “Hot” sorting on here that much.

    I don’t think this is definitively “better” than reddit. The functionality of the site is more bare bones. No big hidden features or anything like that. What you see is what you get as far as interfaces go. But I am enjoying it. It reminds me of a much younger Internet and much simpler times. I am loving that Lemmy servers are run by your average joe who just wanted to start up a Lemmy community. No single CEO who only cares about how profitable a site is.




  • PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) are their own categories of websites and they do indeed have the ability to behave like an actual app. They are much more than just a shortcut, which apple is reducing them to.

    On android, my PWA that I developed for fun can go full screen and appear as though a browser isn’t wrapping the page, I can send notifications, I can access the microphone and camera, I can do nearly everything you could expect an app to do, I can support offline mode, I can store data locally, and I can manage my PWAs permissions as well as uninstall my app at an OS level. My entire family uses my PWA, and they see it as an app.

    Are there some things native apps can do that PWAs can’t? Absolutely, but that is not the point. PWAs are an open and clearly defined technology to the web. Windows supports them as well.

    Apple is refusing to accept that though. They are removing notifications, badges, etc, and reducing them to what you have described, just a shortcut to a Safari window. They are citing security concerns even though other operating systems are able to implement security around them just fine.

    The real issue is Apple wants more control over how you use your device and is acting against the consumer.







  • Yeah I have no idea where this idea came from because it simply isn’t true in other countries if you are from the US.

    Sure, modern rail starts falling short when you start doing long distances like from New York to Los Angeles.

    However, for medium long distances, this is absolutely false.

    Distance wise, a trip from Beijing to Shanghai is comparable to Chicago to New York or about 100 miles short compared to Dallas to Chicago.

    Sure, a flight does that same distance in 2hrs 18minuties on average.

    But compare that to the train cost only being $30 and showing up every 30 minutes as opposed to 4 times that amount for a plane ticket. If you miss that plane as well, then you’re SOL so you better show up to the airport two hours early according to the FAA!

    No, I’m not some user from hex bear simping over China either. The sleeper car I was referring to was from Paris to Venice. Was like $70 for two. Departed at night, went to sleep, and woke up in the morning to keep enjoying my vacation. Sure, not as fast as the Chinese train, but this European train is also dated compared to that bullet train, plus there are way more mountains to traverse in this route. And it was absolutely lovely as opposed to playing $500 per ticket for a flight to the same destination.

    A proper bullet train setup in the US, especially through the Midwest, not only would make travel cheaper, but you’d make rural towns more attractive to live in if a 2 -> 4 hour drive to the closest big city turns into a 30 minute train trip.


  • A lot of posts here have given out wonderful and helpful ideas! I can’t provide any more on top of this, but I want to speak to this:

    How long to grow a community

    However long it takes. Some communities never take off, some communities that seem obscure will sometimes propel to popularity. However long you keep at it is 100% completely up to you! As long as you are finding some fulfilling or enjoyment out of it. You don’t owe anybody anything in this regard. If you are tired or stressed from it, there is nothing wrong with dropping the community you tried to grow. You tried to start something, and that is commendable in itself.

    With that said, I enjoy geocaching every few months or so when I look into it! Unfortunately there aren’t that many caches near me. I’ll subscribe and maybe make a few caches of my own!




  • I’m kind of surprised nobody said Kia (and for that matter, Hyundai) yet?

    JD Power has ranked Kia in the top 3 in dependability for the past few years and gave them the #1 spot last year. They also have a 10yr/100k mile warranty so theoretically they’ll survive for a very long time.

    They do have a bad wrap with the car thefts going on, but that issue is addressed with their newer models. I do suppose though that to a dumb “thrill seeker” that doesn’t mean you’re immune to attempted thefts.


  • I was the same way and then I found American Family. I also only started watching it to have something on in the background which is actually probably the reason why I “adapted” to embarrassment humor.

    I looked up from the computer/phone/chores to appreciate funny moments bit by bit, started appreciating the characters in wholesome moments, tune out when cringy things were going on… Eventually I got invested into the story of some of the episodes to the point where I started to tolerate cringe and even laugh at it.