evergoe's recent activity
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Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech
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Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech
evergoe Link ParentFunnily that's probably a pretty great recommendation after all. I recall finding my way onto the homepage of a private tracker a few years ago, and being intimidated and vaguely impressed by the...Funnily that's probably a pretty great recommendation after all. I recall finding my way onto the homepage of a private tracker a few years ago, and being intimidated and vaguely impressed by the fact that to gain membership, you apparently needed to pass some kind of quiz on topics like encoding standards administered over IRC.
I didn't end up going through the trouble at the time, but in the context of this thread that seems like a reliable way to select for genuinely interested people. -
What internet discussion sites remain?
I'm using the phrase 'internet discussion site' pretty informally, so I hope my meaning will become clearer as you continue reading. I got rid of Snapchat around 4 years ago now. At some point in...
I'm using the phrase 'internet discussion site' pretty informally, so I hope my meaning will become clearer as you continue reading.
I got rid of Snapchat around 4 years ago now. At some point in 2023 I noticed a sharp downtick in discussion quality on Twitter, and got rid of it as well. About two years ago, frustrated with the lack of human interaction and the vying for attention, I deleted Instagram. Near the end of 2025, I stopped using Discord. The final nail in the coffin has now arrived, since I'm unfortunately coming to the conclusion that Reddit is no longer worth visiting, leaving me almost entirely cordoned off from internet communication at a time when more humans are using it than ever before.
I won't bother repeating my personal reasons for this exodus since I feel confident that most people on this website have feelings on the matter that at least approximate my own.
Realistically this is a sign that it's time to prioritize interaction in the real world, and that's certainly a worthwhile thing to pursue. But bluntly society has restructured around the internet in a pretty substantial way, and I don't think it's an unreasonable ask to find various forms of forums on which more meaningful discussions can take place.
Here is my personal survey of the current landscape:- tildes.net: Basically good. I really enjoy this website and I think in a lot of ways the 'bar/pub/cafe' model for a forum, where you can peer through the window but require permission to gain admission, is the only viable model for future online discussion places as the internet becomes ever more saturated with bots and bad actors.
- lobste.rs: Also basically good, for the same reasons as tildes. In some aspects, limited by the fact that it has a particular focus. In other ways, that's a really good thing. Maybe in a perfect world there would be a lobste.rs equivalent for every hobby, and we would return to an early internet forum world.
- Hacker News: Also basically good but perhaps a bit less so than the above two. I think most of the things posted on there are interesting, but a lot of the discussion has lately felt less insightful than it used to. I think a different tildes post noted this as well, but it's very caught up in the AI news cycle, often to an unfortunate degree.
- Rateyourmusic: The core site is enjoyable, and the forums are usually fun to check in on every now and then. Certainly a worthwhile place to visit if you enjoy music.
- Stackexchange networks: This is cheating since this is obviously many sites. I'm a mathematics student and I've found MSE and MathOverflow to be really wonderful places to learn and converse, albeit with some very arcane and strict rules for posting. The philosophy SE seems also generally of a high quality, and there are many other SE sites that I occasionally stumble into and am pleasantly surprised by. Unfortunately I expect its time is finite, since the UX has slowly but surely been degrading and the site traffic dropping.
- Fediverse networks: These sites clearly have potential, but for whatever reason it's still just not there. I drop into lemmy and Mastodon occasionally, but the posts are rarely of high quality. In many ways they just feel like "Reddit/Twitter but with a different name".
Surely these can't be all, right? It's a little soul-crushing to think how many people are online at any given time and how hard it is to find a place not drowning in noise. Maybe this is just my lament.
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Comment on Who’s buying SpaceX and Anthropic? in ~finance
evergoe Link ParentI think most people aren't concerned so much about the long-term existence of these companies as they are concerned about the market-cap/reality mismatch. Anthropic does seem to be one of the more...I think most people aren't concerned so much about the long-term existence of these companies as they are concerned about the market-cap/reality mismatch. Anthropic does seem to be one of the more viable AI companies, but it seems like they will be entering the market right in the middle of the hype cycle (which admittedly has been lasting far longer than anyone expected) and it's unclear what sort of adjustment its valuation might undergo in a more normal market.
Similarly, though airing my feelings on Elon Musk would violate the tildes Code of Conduct, I concede SpaceX is likely to stick around. But I have difficulty imagining a world where its actual value even remotely approaches its projected valuation. In a vacuum, if I were instructed to guess what a reasonable market cap for it would be, I would probably come up with a number in the range of 80-150 billion USD, i.e. ~5-10% of what they plan to list it at. I suppose that since TSLA also seems overvalued by a factor of 10, it might be a reasonable approach to assume the same will apply here, but I personally wouldn't be comfortable investing money on those grounds. -
Comment on Ageless Linux emerges to protest OS-level age verification laws in ~tech
evergoe Link ParentSo, I have the opposite reaction in reading that paragraph you quoted; I think that it is almost certainly written by a human, who probably very carefully chose their words, and has to do with the...So, I have the opposite reaction in reading that paragraph you quoted; I think that it is almost certainly written by a human, who probably very carefully chose their words, and has to do with the purpose of the Ageless Linux project in the first place. Namely, I get the impression their endgoal is to establish a legal precedent against the concept of age-verified OSes.
I have no idea what the particulars of the bill that prompted this project are, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the bill makes some kind of reference to 'covered application stores', and so they might be trying to establish some kind of blanket protection against mandated age verification for "publicly available internet websites distributing and facilitating the download of applications to users of a general purpose computing device".
I do, however, agree snippets of the project seem AI-generated. I would point out then that in this case it straight-up does not matter; this is not intended as an OS for actual use, it's intended as Supreme Court decision bait. If AI helps them get it up and running faster, then... whatever?
I think Discord is still good in some respects. There are definitely still communities worth interacting with on there. One big reason I left is I'm just not a fan of the messaging format; conversations get lost so easily that it feels like a very ephemeral medium. Small servers often have a slightly exclusive atmosphere, and in larger servers there's too much going on at once. The other reason is seeing the writing on the wall as far as the future goes for the platform; I think pursuant to the IPO it will be a long downward trend in terms of quality.