pineapple

Link to the Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/

Reddit’s unpopular decision to revise its API pricing in a move that’s forcing third-party apps out of business has taken a weird turn. In an AMA hosted today by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, aka u/spez on the internet forum site, the exec doubled down on accusations against the developer behind the well-liked third-party app Apollo, which the company had previously accused of operating inefficiently and not being a good “API” user.

Despite community backlash — which includes a site-wide protest from thousands of communities known as subreddits — Huffman’s AMA confirmed the company has no plans to revise its coming API changes. What’s more, Huffman continued his accusations against Apollo, calling out the developer, Christian Selig’s, “behavior and communications” as being “all over the place” and saying he couldn’t see Reddit working with the developer further.

Other third-party apps are also closing down, including Sync, RIF and Reddplant, to name a few.

But Huffman seemingly has an ax to grind with Selig in particular, first accusing the developer of extortion, per Selig’s extensive post on the situation between himself and Reddit.

ISTANBUL – The Turkish authorities on Tuesday seized and jailed a 16-year-old boy for drawing a moustache on an election campaign poster showing re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, media reports said.

Several media outlets close to the opposition, including daily newspapers BirGun, Cumhuriyet and private TV station Halk TV, said the youth from the south-eastern town of Mersin was accused of defacing the poster near his home with a pen, scribbling “a Hitler moustache and writing insulting comments”.

He was arrested after he was identified through CCTV camera footage, media reports said.

The authorities interviewed him at his home, where he reportedly “admitted drawing the moustache” while denying writing the accompanying comments.

Taken before the public prosecutor, he was found to have “insulted the president” and was jailed at a nearby youth facility, according to Halk TV.

Mr Erdogan extended his 20-year rule over Turkey after winning the May 28 second round of the presidential election to embark on a new five-year term.

According to the Justice Ministry, “insulting the president” is one of the most common crimes in Turkey, resulting in 16,753 convictions in 2022. AFP

Universal Pictures has set its sights on The Legend of Zelda as its next big video game movie adaptation. According to Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider, Universal is in the process of closing a deal with Nintendo and the animation studio Illumination to make it happen.

“I’m told that Universal is, in fact, closing a ‘big deal’ with the Nintendo corporation for The Legend of Zelda,” Sneider said on the latest episode of The Hot Mic podcast. “Zelda is looking like the next big Illumination-Nintendo franchise, which we were all sort of expecting. I’m told that is happening.”

He went on to say that it will cost Universal a “pretty penny” following the massive success of The Super Marios Bros. Movie, which has raked in $1 billion worldwide on its way to becoming the highest-grossing video game movie adaptation.

The Rivals have been pushed back for the moment, but only just in time for a brand new threat to rear its ugly head. An insidious lithophage, a sickness of the very rock beneath our feet, has struck Hoxxes.

Nicknamed the ROCKPOX, this planetary pathogen is spreading through the caves, infecting the rock and even directly affecting the local fauna. Even the hardy Dwarves can feel its insidious grasp.

Prepare for PLAGUEFALL!

Coming November 3rd, 2022 to Steam.
Coming November 17th, 2022 to consoles and Windows Store.

I didn't spot coverage of this story on more major news sites. This Indian source seemed less editorialized than others:

Environmental activists break into Sylt Airport in Germany and spray an orange color on a Cessna Citation corporate plane.

It appears that the aircraft operator will incur higher costs. On one of the Twitter accounts, a video of some of the activists painting an airplane with orange paint is shared. The engine is fortunate to be covered while they are painting it.

OH MY GOD I'd heard about Windows 11 calling a zip file a 'postcode file' in UK English because of really lazy translating but it's ACTUALLY HERE ON MY PC like not even in beta this is actually happening right now in publicly available Windows

Screenshot of tweet:

Found via https://twitter.com/nirbheek/status/1666563969514090496

Using AlphaDev, we have discovered fixed and variable sort algorithms from scratch that are both new and more efficient than the state-of-the-art human benchmarks. The fixed sort solutions for sort 3, sort 4 and sort 5 discovered by AlphaDev have been integrated into the standard sort function in the LLVM standard C++ library. This library is used by several million users including universities and numerous international companies. In addition, we analyse the new algorithm discoveries, compare AlphaDev to stochastic search optimization approaches and apply AlphaDev to further domains to showcase the generality of the approach.

From the Metaverse to AI, tech giants continue lure us with false promises of "the next big thing." This week, Adam is joined by Dan Olson, a perceptive YouTube personality known for deconstructing narratives and the modern tech landscape. Together, they unravel the reasons behind this technological hype cycle and discuss potential pathways to break free from its grip. Find Dan's channel at Folding Ideas.

NYC ranked first among major cities for the worst air quality worldwide today, according to IQAir, a Swiss air monitoring company.

The smoke from ferocious Canadian wildfires cast a sickly pall over much of the eastern United States today, worsening air quality for millions of people. The air was acrid, skylines looked orange and municipal officials told people to stay indoors. The National Weather Service does not expect things will get much better tomorrow.

About 98 million people in parts of 18 states from New Hampshire to South Carolina were under air quality alerts this morning for both wildfire smoke and ozone.

“This is a historic event. We’ve gone back to our smoke data and not seen anything of the same magnitude and size on the East Coast,” Burke said. And for New York City, “it’s by far the worst in the last 18 years.”

Wednesday — once data is analyzed — could be the worst day of smoke in the U.S. in nearly two decades, Burke said.

This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781

It has also been posted to lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/591991

Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it's important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone's politics, and I'm certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.

My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.

Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.

This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing "orientalism" as the reason for the ban.

Screenshot of my own instance's modlog, as viewed by an admin

I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in !worldnews@lemmy.ml that had been removed with the reason "Orientalist article".

Screenshot of banned user's history on lemmy.ml

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Here's the article that was removed, titled "China may face succession crisis". It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having "a slight to moderate liberal bias" and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/

I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml's rules that would suggest that "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance's front page, and not in !worldnews@lemmy.ml.

Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml

[Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml](https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/pictrs/image/9a5a8a2d-cfac-4658-8ef5-77a885079756.png)

There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.

This is where I went from confused to concerned.

Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml's moderation log.

Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It's hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance's mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I've done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can't be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.

Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China's racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don't know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn't behave like China. by @balerion@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance's or community's explicitly stated rules.

Banned @0x815@feddit.de reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Rule 1 and 2

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml's moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It's only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.

I'd like to raise some awareness about this, and I'd like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.

I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don't share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml's rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.

This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781

Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it's important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone's politics, and I'm certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.

My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.

Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.

This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing "orientalism" as the reason for the ban.

Screenshot of my own instance's modlog, as viewed by an admin

I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in !worldnews@lemmy.ml that had been removed with the reason "Orientalist article".

Screenshot of banned user's history on lemmy.ml

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Here's the article that was removed, titled "China may face succession crisis". It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having "a slight to moderate liberal bias" and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/

I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml's rules that would suggest that "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance's front page, and not in !worldnews@lemmy.ml.

Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml

[Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml](https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/pictrs/image/9a5a8a2d-cfac-4658-8ef5-77a885079756.png)

There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.

This is where I went from confused to concerned.

Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml's moderation log.

Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It's hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance's mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I've done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can't be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.

Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China's racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don't know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn't behave like China. by @balerion@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance's or community's explicitly stated rules.

Banned @0x815@feddit.de reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Rule 1 and 2

Screenshot of lemmy.ml modlog

I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml's moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It's only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.

I'd like to raise some awareness about this, and I'd like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.

I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don't share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml's rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.

Microsoft just gave itself a full-screen ad in search results by faking an AI interaction. This “search result” is juicing Microsoft’s own product instead of respecting its users’ intent.

We recently worried out loud whether Google’s new Search Generative Experience would prioritize ads over actual answers, but it looks like we won’t have to wait to see how brazen these companies can get. Unless there’s strong pushback, I would expect the ads to win whenever it’s profitable or convenient.

Spotted via https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/3259