I just had a random Reddit message from someone who lives local to me, as it turns out they play #eveonline and are in #dreddit

This sent me down a little reminisce of my time playing the game and all the work I put into Auth. Nine years ago... wow.

Of course, I'd do it all again, I've found some real good friends through the game (many of which I need to catchup with after COVID stopped the world)

Also, Dreddit/TEST are to thank for my current IT role. Crazy.

@alakest And speaking of Usenet, I've posted my own piece on why it died. I'm not claiming to be right, though it's been generally well-received. I'd be happy to see cogent critiques.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c3xyu/why_usenet_died/

@annaleen

#Usenet #WhyUsenetDied #Dreddit

@Dave_von_s Yes, they (SASOL) did, and as of at least 2005, still do:

https://www.sasol.com/media-centre/media-releases/sasol-produces-15-billion-barrels-synthetic-fuel-coal-fifty-years

I thought I'd mentioned that on the #dreddit, though search says otherwise.

The US also attempted to develop a coal-based synfuels technology between 1928--1953, and there was even a Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act (1944). History here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120111183405/http://fossil.energy.gov/aboutus/history/syntheticfuels_history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Liquid_Fuels_Program

#Synfuels #FischerTropsch #SASOL #SouthAfrica

I usually delete subreddit "Cakeday" posts.

This one I think actually captures the Zeitgeist perfectly.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/quxwoo/happy_cakeday_rdredmorbius_today_youre_8/

#Reddit #Dreddit #Cakeday #TheAlgorithmIsAware #ButNotSelfAware

Reddit stands for disinformation. Fuck Reddit.

Reddit CEO /u/spez dismisses rampant and motivated disinformation campaigns with "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy".

There's a mythological belief, unsupported by evidence, that some "free marketplace of ideas" will arrive at truth. When examined, this is revealed to be, as much of what is transacted in that marketplace, nothing more than propaganda, here selling the idea of the free market itself. [1] The process by which truths come to be known and established is not debate, but experience: empirical study, the pragmatic recognition of models of ever-greater usefulness and accuracy, of observation and experiment. At best the marketplace trades on that commodity against the competing goods of attractive and self-serving myths, lies, legends, and distortions. Markets reward the shallow, short-term, convenient, and readily-expressed. Truth is often none of these, most especially complex and inconvenient truths. ...

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/pby7de/reddit_stands_for_disinformation_fuck_reddit/

#dreddit #disinformation #reddit #FuckReddit #FakeNews #covid19

@vortex_egg Somewhat paradoxically, the infoglut is in large part a consequence of the loss of gatekeepers.

The total amount of information being created hasn't actually changed ... all that much (a huge explosion in population and literacy over, say, the past 200 years notwithstanding). But the amount of information generated from, say, 2001 to 2021 is ... within reason, about the same.

What's changed is that people can now publish far more. Publishers previously served multiple roles, a key one being gatekeeping. Queue Clay Shirky: it's not information overload, it's filter failure".

(Cory Doctorow writes on this a whole lot.)

The other side is that distribution has become far cheaper. So now instead of, say, a handful of broadcast TV channels, a local daily paper or two, and a few magazine subscriptions, 5 billioin people on Earth now have access to pretty much any serial stream anywhere. Mind that a lot of those simply re-publish the same stories. Or memes.

A daily paper would typically run ~100--500 original-content items (more in the Sunday edition, for English-langauge pubs). The news wieres -- AP, Reuters, UPI, AFP --- run about 1k--5k items/day. (I'd looked this up a few years back, on the #Dreddit).

Hacker News keeps a daily record of the top 100 items carried (https://news.ycombinator.com/front/), which makes an interesting time-capsule to go exploring. But there are thousands of items submitted per day.

Facebook IIRC sees on the order of a billion items posted per day. The vast majority of those are of course seen by nobody.

Attention is the inverse of content abundance. More content means less attention to each item.

(This is frequently lost on those promoting "new media" and noting how high-quality or exemplary it is in its initial stages. This too shall pass.)

@woozle @seachaint @kensanata

A Modest Proposal: Universal Online Media Payment Syndication

A constant challenge for any creative type is making a living. And it's hardly a new problem. In the case of broadcast media, commercial sponsorship has been the primary model for the past 94 years, along with a few others: public / membership model, pay-per-view, subscription, and sponsorship by a public or religious institution in the case of college and religious stations. A payment syndication model might address many existing frustrations of publishers, journalists, authors, musicians, and artists....

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/

To my earlier suggestions, I'd say: roll an all-you-can-eat print media subscription to all broadband and mobile digital subscriptions. $100/yr broadband, $50/yr digital (quite possibly lower), scaled by wealth. All the books, news, and articles you can stand. Pro-rated payments on a quality metric scale to creators.

#UniversalContentSyndication #InformationIsAPublicGood #dreddit #advertising #micropayments