My hot take:

Biden has been the best President we've had in 30 years.

He's exactly who we needed when we got him. He got us out of Afghanistan. As much as a debacle as it was, he not Trump and not Obama pulled us out. His deft handling of the Ukrainian conflict where he used soft-power and influence to let the EU and NATO members come to decision to enact the super harsh sanctions themselves. Knowing that if the US pressed, they'd resist. It had to be their decision. He's continued to say and do all of the right things. His attempt to forgive student loans his huge. Some of the measures worked even if all of them didn't. He got the most meaningful infrastructure bill passed that I've ever witness. Neither Trump nor Obama could make it happen and Biden did it with a split Congress That infrastructure bill was also the most meaningful environment legislation that we've ever had That bill also paves the way for significant investment in our broad-band across the country Passed the Safer Communities Act ...actual gun related legislation since the Brady bill. Again, with a split congress. Gave us our first public defender SCOTUS justice. This might not seem like a big deal but I think its pretty significant given the amount of case law that exists that, so far, hasn't had a public defenders 'say' in it.

I could go on but I gotta go eat dinner.

People want to shit on Biden, but I actually like him. He's not perfect, but he's been insanely effective given everything he walked in to. Including him diligently and quietly rebolstering the executive branches that were gutted and had people leaving in droves in the last admin. Eg the Department of State. He's assigned quality folks into key roles and its making a difference.

I voted for him without hesitation because well, the alternative was terrifying, but I was not expecting much from him at all. He's surprised me.

edit: I literally can't figure out how to make this a list. Sorry for the wordblob.

Yep, and while working from home should never be in lieu of actual child care, cutting out 2-3 hours of commute time in each side and being able to help at lunch is HUGE.

Even if you still put your kids in daycare, you would still spend more time with them and it'd be less stressful if you were working from home. You can get a daycare close to your house vs on the way to work/near work.

I gained weight working from home :(

Even a boring day at the office with little "extra" walking had me close to 10k steps.

I can go for a 2 mile walk everyday I work from home and barely get 8k it seems.

Plus ironically I eat more garbage. When I was at the office there were decent healthy options like salads and stuff. At home...it's way to easy to grab a box of wheat thins and eat the whole thing.

It feels like this fight is 5-7 years late. I am glad the EU actually tries to regulate on behalf of the consumer vs what the US has been doing lately(almost nothing), but the EU does it in a ham-handed way half the time.

I don't necessarily want a user replaceable battery on my phone. I prefer it not be chonky and I prefer it to be water and dust proof. All of those features impact me sooo much more than being able to change the battery.

Also batteries have come so far this past decade it almost seems like a non issue.

I'm gonna throw this out there:

If Meta is going to join the fediverse (or implement something with activitypub) there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them.

It's an open protocol. They can use it.

The only thing we can do is force them to follow the AGPL and/or fork the code if they get crazy with change requests.

Okay, so I am gonna check those two off my lists of ways I want to die.

It's also incredibly important to note that they are making this explicitly opt-in. So none of that 'dark pattern' mumbo jumbo with the tyranny of the default--where companies opt you in and most users dont realize they have to opt-out.

All in all they are going about this the right way it seems. The devil will be in the de-identifying technical details imo.

All the drama and pisspoor management by spez aside, ultimately the way I used reddit is through RiF. To me, that's reddit. I can't stand their official app and their official website is horrendous.

They forced my app to close down so I guess that's that.

I stopped using RiF and consequently reddit in protest. I held out hope this was a shitty negotiation tactic by Reddit and they'd eventually back off somewhat. But they've tripled down on it.

This forced me to reevaluate my relationship with the platform and I decided to check out Lemmy kbin and mastodon. I also checked out some old forums I frequented before reddit took over.

I reinstalled a newsreader and set up RSS feeds for my favorite things.

Basically, I'm realizing I don't need reddit as much as I thought I did. I actually have enjoyed the fediverse,beehaw in particular, more. I never used Twitter but mastodon has really great content and engagement as well.

I'm not saying I'd never go back to Reddit. I probably would if RiF somehow survived, but reddits lost its luster for me and I don't trust it anymore. So why waste time actively participating there so I can have the rug pulled from under me again?

Reddit may not see a mass exodus like Digg or Myspace, but it's been poisoned and over time the rot will set in and it will fester. This will be the moment people point to as the turning point.

The "right to be forgotten" rules are, with all due respect to the EU regulators, pretty shortsighted.

I think the initial "right to be forgotten" lawsuit that Google faced from that Spanish guy-- where he claimed bankruptcy years prior. People( potential lenders?) kept finding that information online through google searches. He sued to have Google remove those sites from the index. He won and the Spanish Judge told Google they had to remove those results from searches.

But it didn't change that the information was still on each site. Those sites, the ones that actually held the information didn't get sued, just Google.

It also opened the door for oppressive governments covering up human rights abuses or hide other information they dont want widely available.

Google appealed and won: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49808208

I also want to point out that this Spanish guy's situation is very different from "posting publicly on social media". He was getting written about by others and the courts eventually said "no, this can stand. This information should remain available". So I imagine, public statements made by an individual certainly wouldn't qualify to be forgotten.

At the end of the day, to me, this is a technical decision not a privacy one.

I truly can't imagine a world where they do it in secret. They'll advertise it and slap their branding all over it.

got away from ageism

No way, old man winter!

Just kidding! I remember being on a gaming forum back in the early 00s and having a couple of "old" guys on (in their 30s-40s). We'd always give them shit, but at the same time looked up to them and thought it was cool they were still gaming.

They also had great perspective and wisdom to share with us teenage idiots.

Now I get to be the 'old' guy in my 30s. It's fun to engage with the younger crowd, and not dismiss them because of their age, because the younger generations have interesting perspectives too. I'm like paying it forward.

I wish the article included a map of the gains. It's tough to visualize/understand the progress without it.