Otter
I waddled onto the beach and stole found a computer to use.
🍁⚕️ 💽
Note: I’m moderating a handful of communities in more of a caretaker role. If you want to take one on, send me a message and I’ll share more info :)
- 1.72K Posts
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Otter@lemmy.cato
Fediverse@lemmy.world•FYI: Reddit trademarked some community names (Digg link)English
12·20 hours agoPredictions
Showerthoughts
I had no idea Reddit invented having deep thoughts in the shower, or making predictions
🙄
Am I the Asshole?
Yea they can keep that one
Otter@lemmy.cato
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•Should I switch to Qobuz or Tidal for music streaming?
2·1 day agoNo problem :)
What are the optimizations? I seem to be getting a worse experience vs. using it in the device browser since there’s no adblocking
Otter@lemmy.cato
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•Should I switch to Qobuz or Tidal for music streaming?
18·1 day agoUse the free trials with both and see what you prefer!
For podcasts, if you’re on android, check out AntennaPod
edit: Adding some more information
- The podcast format was designed to be decentralized and open. Most creators still do direct distribution, so you can follow your favourite podcasts without needing a centralized entity like Spotify to collect it for you
- The exception is the platform exclusive paywalled stuff that Spotify produces themselves. Joe Rogan is one of those iirc, but I don’t think that affects the majority of people here
- If you listen on multiple devices and want to synchronize your listening history, see here: https://antennapod.org/documentation/general/synchronization
Otter@lemmy.caOPMtoLemmy.ca's Main Community@lemmy.ca•2025 Fedecan Instance Census is now openEnglish
1·2 days agoRealistically, maybe a few weeks or a month minimum 😄
Right now the plan is:
- cleaning up the data (removing rows that are clearly errors, tests, or duplicate submissions)
- figuring out the best ways to graph each question
- cleaning individual data rows into a format that’s easy to graph
- generating some basic image graphs
Then once we post those, we want to have the interactive version on our site as well. We’ll be working through all that during off hours from work / other life tasks
If you have a specific question you want to know the results for, I can give you an approximate breakdown sooner. I assume the data won’t change significantly during the cleaning, most of the responses look legitimate
Otter@lemmy.cato
Lemmy@lemmy.ml•[Help Design Lemmy] Joinlemmy website and New User OnboardingEnglish
4·3 days agoI appreciate that you are gathering community feedback!
Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.
Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:
How about the instance selection wizard (click “join a server” on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?
This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add ‘region’ as a field, or ‘regional’ as a topic? For our instance, I think that’s how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means.
pangora.socialseems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing thatAnother biased opinion, I agree that it’s better to have large instances near the top since they’re more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there’s less pressure to pick the “correct” instance.
And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.
Could you potentially collaborate with https://lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)
If I were to try and critique the site in excessive detail, from top to bottom:
- Could you make the logo have a rectangular / circle background around it? Right now edges look odd over the dark background. The hover effect looks nicer, maybe with different colors
- In the header: News, Docs, & Contact can be collapsed into a dropdown under ‘About’ or something similar, since those are pages that someone would go searching for
- Instead of ‘Join a server’, ‘Donate’ and ‘See all servers’, it might be better to have one massive “Join a Server” button/card on the front page that leads to the instance list page.
Join a serveandSee all serversare very similar for a user that’s not familiar with how this all works, and they end up in the same place. So instead of a popup, could you have it as a responsive widget on the instance’s page? That way users can quickly figure out how the instances are tagged- Since the donate button is already in the header, it might be better to have a large section on donations further down the page.
- The paragraph is a large block of text. I’d prefer something closer to what Peertube did
- The screenshots could be larger and more prominent
- The images give off ‘AI generated’ vibes, even if that wasn’t their origin. Could you have large cards with simple icons, similar to the 3 header cards on our site: https://fedecan.ca/en/
- I like the ‘Create your own discussion platform’ card’s format. It’s a bit hard to read, but otherwise nice
- The ‘more features’ section could be simplified down to the important points, and maybe even combined with what is being done with the screenshots area
On the servers page:
- The community explorer and fediverse observer are external sites, but they look like widgets right now.
- Is every instance under one topic, or would it be possible to let the user select multiple and have instances appear and disappear from the list live?
- I like Pixelfed’s join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what’s important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers
Otter@lemmy.cato
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are your thoughts on the mass implementation of AI?
4·3 days agoWell yeah, what I said was
It’s useful in some contexts while being hot garbage in others. Learning to use it for what it’s good at is fine, trying to shoehorn it into everything is stupid.
Same as relying on it for everything. That’s not adapting, that’s being easily replaceable.
Use it for the few things it’s good at, and ignore their false promises on the rest.
This post was about tech companies trying to shove LLM based “AI” into everything. I’m looking forward to when investors move on from this one specific type of algorithm and we can get back to innovating properly.
Otter@lemmy.cato
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are your thoughts on the mass implementation of AI?
3·3 days agoWell duh
How does that add anything to the points above
Otter@lemmy.cato
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are your thoughts on the mass implementation of AI?
6·3 days agoSeems like the key word in the post was “mass implementation”
It’s useful in some contexts while being hot garbage in others. Learning to use it for what it’s good at is fine, trying to shoehorn it into everything is stupid.
Same as relying on it for everything. That’s not adapting, that’s being easily replaceable
Otter@lemmy.cato
Asklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have there been shipwrecks that have been damaged by undersea communication cables (or even discovered because cables were being laid)?
101·6 days agoThe team wanted to set up here, but was held back by the lack of mod tools.
Lemmy hasn’t really improved on them yet, but there’s a revamped UI in the works. Piefed has a number of improvements already.
Maybe once things are looking good enough for their high standards, we can invite them back over to take a look 😄
Otter@lemmy.cato
Technology@lemmy.world•This CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it againEnglish
22·6 days agoSo they could have held paint drying Mondays instead, with the same overall effect
“Every single Monday was called Paint Dry Monday” Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could only watch paint dry. “You couldn’t have customer calls; you couldn’t work on budgets; you had to only watch paint dry.” He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody else at IgniteTech. “That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
Otter@lemmy.cato
Technology@lemmy.world•A generation taught not to think: AI in the classroomEnglish
45·6 days agoI always saw the rules against Wikipedia to be around citations (and accuracy in the early years), rather than it harming learning. It’s not that different from other tertiary sources like textbooks or encyclopedias. It’s good for learning a topic and the interacting pieces, but you need to then search for primary/secondary sources relevant to the topic you are writing about.
Generative AI however
- is a text prediction engine that often generates made up info, and then students learn things wrong
- does the writing for the students, so they don’t actually have to read or understand anything
Yup, it looks like generative AI + image editing after the fact
Image generators have trouble juggling multiple colors and patterns on clothing. It would be a weird stylistic choice to create that effect with image edits alone
Also if you look closely, she has 3 arms. Two arms holding the phone up, one arm holding a soccer ball against her body?
Otter@lemmy.caOPMtoLemmy.ca's Main Community@lemmy.ca•Fedecan Instance Census 2025 will close in a few days! You have until January 15th to fill it outEnglish
3·6 days agoFor sure! I’m looking forward to seeing more NodeBB content, it federates over nicely
Otter@lemmy.caOPMtoLemmy.ca's Main Community@lemmy.ca•Fedecan Instance Census 2025 will close in a few days! You have until January 15th to fill it outEnglish
3·6 days agoSorry about that 😅
Otter@lemmy.caOPMtoLemmy.ca's Main Community@lemmy.ca•Fedecan Instance Census 2025 will close in a few days! You have until January 15th to fill it outEnglish
8·7 days agoPrevious related post here: https://lemmy.ca/post/57328037
Otter@lemmy.cato
Cool Guides@lemmy.ca•A cool guide to move away from big tech and discover new and better tools!English
14·7 days agoI like the site, it’s clean and straightforward
I appreciate your work!
Otter@lemmy.cato
Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•Important video of a pudú fighting a rhinoceros you should watch
9·7 days agoLooks like one user has been doing the majority of the posting, they might not know that people have issues with imgur / of better options
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@alam@lemmy.world is also on the threadiverse, and may post updates about this as it develops