The algo bettors aren't using kiosks at the track. They're using dashboards and monitoring live video feeds. At least in my experience in the US.
Most of the serious younger bettors are feeding daily form PDFs into an LLM and getting analysis, and placing bets using custom apps, rarely using UIs from the larger ADWs (advanced deposit wagering company). Older bettors are using phone wagering for larger bets.
There is never a shortage of kiosks available for casual fans. Most tracks are either owned or partnered with ADWs that all have mobile apps, or sites for placing wagers, and casuals are encouraged to use those as they're more sticky after they leave the track.
Even if algo bettors are influencing the odds because they're throwing money around, the house doesn't care because its percentage cut is the same (parimutual), and the casuals aren't bothered because they can't even tell what's happening.
The totes are the ones analyzing fraud and abuse, and they don't care what tea leaves you read to place bets. They just care about avoiding government oversight and ensuring profits for the ADWs and tracks.
I credit Neopets with the reason I have my degree and career.
There were many places on the site that let you inject your own HTML/CSS into the page to customize the appearance. I did this basically all through high school learning the in and outs of graphic design and front end development. It's the reason I knew really early on what I wanted to do and gave myself a clear goal.
A few years ago, I was able to get my old, old account back (2004). Some of my pages and code were still there. It was a treat to see them again! Oh and the actual pets too I guess...
Same here! My introduction to programming was trying to customize my Neopets shop, creating graphics in MS Paint, making little "blogs" to share with friends. In reminiscing, I just found this page https://www.neopets.com/shopblogs.phtml and wow I don't think it's changed at all in 20 years (spiffy text!). Haven't thought about Neopets in so long, it's bringing back so many fond memories.
BRB while I take a break from my mundane corporate software job to try and get back my old account/childhood. :')
I have a Gigabyte B550 board, my particular board isn't listed but I know many of the boards on there share nearly identical components as well as the updater software. Probably safe to assume it's affected too?
I would be mortified walking into a karaoke bar with a group of friends and they ask me and my husband to leave but continue to serve our friends because they don't want LGTBQIA+ people to use their microphones.
I shouldn't have to lookup which minorities/protected classes your public business refuses to serve.
Easy to stand with her when you're not on the receiving end of that discrimination.
She didn't get to the Supreme Court because she was forced to serve a client whose conduct she disapproved. In fact, this case doesn't involve a specific client at all. This case is about the would-be client that hasn't even walked in the door.
And the court isn't considering whether LGBTQIA+ people fall into a protected class category, that's not this case. Metaphorically, this case is whether or not she can put up a sign on her business's front door that says "No ___ allowed." And according to the article, this conservative SCOTUS appears to be sympathetic to the "No ___ allowed" sign.
It appears SCOTUS is trying to draw line between public accommodation businesses and businesses that create speech, a distinction I believe Justice Sotomayor and KBJ countered aptly.
I could imagine an ISP denying the use of its networks to LGBTQIA+ people because they have sincerely held religious objections to transmit those customers' data across their network.
Marrying someone of the same sex is a behavior, and the designer is refusing to design websites relating to that behavior. The designer didn't refuse to design a website for say, dog walking just because the client is gay.
The debate is over Colorado law that, according to the article, "bars businesses open to the public from denying goods or services to people because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and certain other characteristics."
I understand wanting to make the distinction between objectionable behavior and the intrinsic characteristics of clients. But that's not a distinction the Colorado law considers. And if stuck down, SCOTUS could establish that there would be nothing baring a business to refuse service to LGBTQIA+ dog walkers.
> Smith explains that she decides whether to take on a commission based on the message that the work will convey, rather than the person requesting it. This means, she says, that she would “happily” design graphics for an LGBTQ customer who runs an animal shelter. But she will not take on commissions that would be inconsistent with her Christian beliefs – including, she says, by promoting same-sex marriage – because a custom wedding website would “express approval of the couple’s marriage.”
> Smith warns that allowing the 10th Circuit’s ruling to stand would mean that artists will be required to engage in speech that violates their conscience. Calligraphers who support abortion rights can be compelled to create flyers for anti-abortion activists, she says, and musicians who are atheists can be required to perform at religious ceremonies.
Pretty clear a good portion of the Twitter users moving to Mastodon don't understand that it's a federated application, and expect a centralized Twitter clone.
If your complaint is Elon's flavor of moderation on Twitter, moving to a Mastodon server with an admin with their own fun and unique ideas about moderation isn't the tea.
>moving to a Mastodon server with an admin with their own fun and unique ideas about moderation isn't the tea.
Well, that's supposed to be the benefit of Mastodon, isn't it? Every platform has moderation rules and owners/admins, and every platform will have these things change periodically. Mastodon is built around the idea that you can easily migrate your data to a different instance without having to leave the platform if you disagree with how it is being run. You can even be your own owner/admin of an instance if you feel strongly enough about it but still be on the same platform as other users you follow.
Totally agree, that's the fundamental principle of Mastodon and I like it.
But I think some people are just looking for "the other Twitter." Mastodon is a philosophically different idea to Twitter's centralized moderation.
I think other conversations about the network affect are apt here. Yeah, you can move to a different server all you want but in reality people want to be where other people are and don't actually want to migrate if they can help it. People aggregating in one place is the antithesis of the Mastodon federation.
If Mastodon does really catch on, it'll be a single digit number of high population servers that probably all end up having similar content moderation policy to Twitter to attract the most number of users. There won't be a grand utopia of a flat distribution of uniquely moderated servers.
IME, none of that actually matters at a practical level.
I think the biggest mistake Eugen had made is simply listing the number of users on an instance. Users will almost always pick the instance with the highest user count, which is counter productive in all sorts of ways.
Instead, we should push users to find an instance that matches their interests, and then show them the federated timeline. That's really all you need to take a user from Twitter and get them comfortable on mastodon.
But then again, Eugen dropped the federated timeline from the official apps because mastodon.social got too big to handle it, and now new users are more confused and mastodon.social is a worse experience than ever.
My general recommendation to everyone is to find a smaller instance that sounds interesting, wade through the local timeline to be sure you like the vibes, follow some people, then dive into the federated feed
Those decisions should not be taken at server level but at the level of the user. The way Mastodon is organised it is up to the server administrator to decide whether you get to interact with users on other servers. If the administrator has a bee up his bonnet on some specific subject he'll block any server which doesn't fit his idea of wrong and right with regard to that subject. This quickly leads to islands of server-groups which do not communicate with each other and as such increases the polarisation of the (small-n) netscape. Those on the "progressive" island won't hear much from the "conservative" island and vice-versa.
I've seen several comparisons between Mastodon and email servers where server administrators also have the power to block communication with other servers but those comparisons do not hold since I have yet to find a mail server administrator who blocks communication with certain other servers on ideological grounds. Mail servers are blocked because they are sources of spam, not because they host users with different opinions. Mail content itself is not moderated other than through spam filters which (for now?) do not censor on ideological grounds, "Tweets" and "Toots" are.
A better solution would be to have users select their own moderators just like they can choose their own content filtering (e.g. uBlock Origin) rule sets but I do not see how something like that can be implemented given the way Mastodon works.
You do have control here. You do select your moderator, and you do have the power to change that.
You select which server your account lives on. If you disagree with the admin at such a fundamental level, this is probably not the right server for you. You can simply select another server.
You also have the option to run your own server. It's not hard to handle just a few accounts, and there's even places you can pay to host and configure it for you. I know several people running their own servers, and a few of them just have one account.
Let's compare to Tumblr for a second. They've had a wild ride with content moderation over the years, and this has led many people to leave the platform. Those people lost their accounts and their followers forever with no recourse. If your mastodon moderator starts getting scared by nipples, you can simply migrate to a new server and keep all your followers.
The real trick about mastodon is that you can take full control if you really want to. However, most of us don't want to deal with running a server, so you just have to trust someone else to do it. If you find a community that matches your interests, it's actually a very pleasant place to be
What happens with you "followers" when you change servers? Do they follow along automagically or do they have to undertake action to re-connect to @you@new.server?
As to running your own server - something I have been looking in to because I support the decentralisation of the 'net - I am under the impression that Pleroma is a lot easier on the hardware than Mastodon. Does you concur?
Anyone following your old account will automatically follow the new account. The only thing that does not transfer is your post history, for mostly technical reasons.
I don't know anything about pleroma, sorry. I do know that mastodon uses a ton of resources when you get a lot of users, but for <5 you can use anything including a raspberry pi
This will not happen is the Admin of the server you are one chooses to block the server you want to move to....
Mastodon has long become a political project ever sense their very public dispute with Gab... They ceased to be a neutral project and clearly showed the limitations of the federation space when it comes to putting users in control, as that control is largely symbolic and just like centralized system unless you run your own server, and you do not run afoul of the project dev team so you do not get put on a default deny list then you are not in control of your data
No, it sounds like censorship. Apart from the fact that Gab is not a "Nazi server" just like your average Mastodon server is not a "Communist server" even though there may be some neo-Nazis on the former and are sure to be a number of communists on the latter it sounds like a petty action by the project maintainers if certain servers are blocked by default.
It sounds like a form of digital McCarthyism.
I'll have a look at the Pleroma source to see if they also engage in this type of ideological censorship. If not it sounds like Pleroma is the better alternative, being both lighter as well as (hopefully) free from censorship.
If it sounds petty, you should find the actual story. People generally don't take such extreme measures as banning an entire server from the network with no reason.
Having checked the Pleroma source [1] I can state that there are no default domain or user blocklists. It does support blocking on domain and user level but it is up to the administrator to provide blocklists.
Huh? 250+ citations that support their assertions are all just some part of a narrative? The CEO being a holocaust-denying anti-semite is just coincidental? Their SEC filing saying Gab is meant for nationalists and conservatives was a mischaracterization of their own platform? Being dropped from a litany of service providers for violating hate speech policies (and abject / nonexistent moderation against it) were fabrications?
"they're not neo-nazis, they're just self-identified nationalists and anti-semites! and yeah okay the platform has a ton of neo-nazis, and the CEO of the platform is a holocaust denier and says Jews should die, but c'mon! free speech!"
> you can easily migrate your data to a different instance without having to leave the platform if you disagree with how it is being run.
As long as "your data" doesn't include your history, as far as I understand? You can leave your home server as long as you're willing to leave everything you ever wrote.
> Mastodon is built around the idea that you can easily migrate your data to a different instance without having to leave the platform if you disagree with how it is being run
I’m not super clear on how it works. If you do this, what happens to the people who follow you? Since they had to type in your address (including instance) wouldn’t you lose all followers in this case?
The migration tool publishes a message to the instances of each of your followers informing them of your new handle, which in theory then gets updated seamlessly.
It was pretty rough when first introduced but seems to be solid now.
Ye, seems like a good fit for the terminally-online Twitter users as their main complaint about Elon is him wanting to be fair in terms of moderation and not favouring their side. Even launched their Twitter clone called "Tribal" to have a "fascist free" alternative without wrongthink..
I think I'll go look at forks of the Mastodon/Pleroma code, see who's working on a clustered mega-server to give people a more Twitter-like experience at one place instead of relying entirely on federation. Then again, maybe the people doing that are not being so obvious about it. Pretty sure there's someone, though. Probably even a VC or two throwing money at them.
Lex here, not bad for remote work, low cost of living, access to surrounding metro areas (Lou, Cinci), and Lex usually has something going on. Just got access to gigabit fiber so you're not disconnected from the rest of the world either.
I rebuilt Wordle from scratch using the same word list. There are actually two word lists, one from which they select the answer, and another from which they validate real words. They are just arrays of strings hardcoded in the JS bundle.
When you submit a guess, it checks to see if your guess is in either array (or at least that's how I implemented it). And just does some relatively simple string comparison.
Your progress is just stored in local storage. You can blow your data away by deleting it via dev tools.
My version just lets you try again by refreshing, I'm not storing any data.
The viral factor of the original Wordle, IMO, is the share function and the little emoji grid it generates.
Most of the serious younger bettors are feeding daily form PDFs into an LLM and getting analysis, and placing bets using custom apps, rarely using UIs from the larger ADWs (advanced deposit wagering company). Older bettors are using phone wagering for larger bets.
There is never a shortage of kiosks available for casual fans. Most tracks are either owned or partnered with ADWs that all have mobile apps, or sites for placing wagers, and casuals are encouraged to use those as they're more sticky after they leave the track.
Even if algo bettors are influencing the odds because they're throwing money around, the house doesn't care because its percentage cut is the same (parimutual), and the casuals aren't bothered because they can't even tell what's happening.
The totes are the ones analyzing fraud and abuse, and they don't care what tea leaves you read to place bets. They just care about avoiding government oversight and ensuring profits for the ADWs and tracks.
Source, formerly a SWE for an ADW