This is indeed a difficult problem. Especially as laws and their interpretation are highly dependent on the hosting location.

Hiding posts behind warnings or only showing them only on user request are on the top of my head.

Very interesting blog post! Thanks for sharing.

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any moderation. But there’s a difference between deleting a post and preventing whole communities to be accessed because of a subjective sense of what is the correct viewpoint on [topic], be it political, ideological or else.

I could imagine a setting where other instances’ posts/communities aren’t shown on the All page, but could still be subscribed / viewed by the user if he requests it.

Even though I don’t particularly like or agree with the attitude or points of lemmygrad users, I still think there should be no blocking/defederation on instance level.

IMHO it’s a fundamental design flaw of lemmy, that the instance administrators have the ability to prevent their users from accessing content from certain other instances just because of their different (political/ideological) orientation. Being exposed to other opinions, even though you don’t like or agree with them, is very important. Yet this seems to become an increasingly rare phenomenon. Even if an instance doesn’t want to promote the posts of another, the users should still be able to decide on their own, which community to subscribe or block. I’d love to see more features for that.

From reading the comments in this or other threads, I can see that it wont take long until lemmy will go the same echo chambered and biased way reddit went and ultimately this will be its demise. Alienating everyone who questions the current development with “Just go somewhere else” or “Get lost and host your own instance” is certainly the best way to go for ensuring only the right people stay for the infinite circle jerk…

Slightly off topic, but I would welcome an .onion of .i2p link as an alternative mirror for lemmy.ml.

If the configuration isn’t too difficult, it would allow users of tor or i2p to browse with more anonymity.

I’m certainly more of an exception than a rule regarding those types of relationships, but I use a personal website instead of any social media to publish my projects (I also refer to it when applying to jobs) and frankly don’t give a damn about any childhood friends.

But I can see why, this approach may already be too “radical” for many people.

you’re interested maintaining some sort of connection with them but you don’t have their phone number

Well I’m not an expert on any form of relationships, but why not simply ask for the number?

What do you mean with “honorary”? Ukraine is literally in Europe.

So, which crypto did they use?

Having to work while being in school is not ideal, but also not uncommon. Lots of people (me included) have done it successfully, so it’s absolutely possible with the right strategy.

If you already have problems with your mental health, this should be a priority. Make absolutely sure you are fit for uni, before starting! Otherwise the additional stress of the course load can have a big toll on your overall health and make you drop out. Seek counseling before attending.

The problem with multitasking (for a computer as well as for a human) is context switching. Constantly having to change between tasks (e.g. studying/work) costs a lot of mental resources, because you basically always have to focus anew on the current situation. So try to work and save the money during the lecture breaks and vacations, to focus solely on studying during the semesters.

Depending on your program, you might choose which classes to take for your degree. Find out exactly what classes are available and how they will be graded. In my experience classes that have final exams in the end of the semester are harder compared to those requiring the submission of a paper/essay or (group) projects. Exams always stressed the hell out of me, because no matter how good you were during the semester, the last few weeks always boil down to cramming books for different courses while the task of writing papers or doing projects can be distributed over a longer timespan. Choose the classes by the easiest grading methods, not so much by their topics.

It‘s an unfortunate trend, that also kinda feels artificially propagated/normalized by articles like this one.

There are good reasons to personally decide against having children. But this decision should come from one self and not be instilled by fear mongering media or an emotionally skewed perspective on the current state of the world (both seem to be the most common reasons, when I talk to people about it).

In the end, your kids are the best way to ensure your own values and beliefs outlast beyond your life time. And I personally think future generations will be in dire need of good values and beliefs.

That is highly dependent on your University / program. I went to a German Uni where you can often show Professors your transcript of classes and they can acknowledge them for the program.

It helped that both Masters were at the same department and many courses / Professors overlapped.

One was in general Comp Sci., the other focused on Statistics and Data Science, which was a brand new (basically unknown) field at the time. Good thing was, I was able to transfer more than half my credits to this program, so I only had to do the few math/statistics focused ones (and a second thesis).

I went for Comp Sci. (B.Sc, two M.Sc. and a PhD). The most important part ist finding your own personal learning type. Theres a distinction between those who learn best listening to lectures, reading textbooks, explaining a topic to others, etc. Start by finding what suits you best.

Here are the things that helped me most (after years of trial and error):

• Going to all appointed lectures and exercises (treating Uni like a job, basically)
• Actually doing the assignments of my Prof gave me
• Avoiding my Laptop/Tablet/Smartphone at Uni. I uses a thin notebook for each lecture and wrote my notes with a pen (more focus on class)
• Using flashcards (I wrote them by hand, but there are software alternatives) for topics, that require a lot of fact memorization
• Making friends with fellow students to help explaining topics to each other and share notes

In which context?

Good points! I have to admit, I rarely consider the “inner workings” of a platform like lemmy from a moderator point of view, but this is an important aspect to be thought of.

I would still disagree on subjective votes as a good thing on a social network. All the “echo chamber” effects, that already have been discussed to death, come to mind and I am personally not a big fan of metrics that, in a worst case, stem from pure ideological or current-trend driven opinions of people. People may also never really fathom why they are being down voted, because of the features anonymous nature.

Your argument that “Votes still leave the content in place”, also sounds questionable, considering how often posts on big platforms get “down voted to oblivion” and completely disappear from the first few pages (Not saying this happens here, but the example of the mechanism applies, imho). Sure the content is technically still existing, but will the information reach the people that request it?

I personally think, old timey internet forums and even certain imageboards feel much more objective content-wise, even if they are more chaotic moderation-wise.

No technical solution can prevent bad human behavior… Still wish mechanisms like up-/down-voting would be avoided, though.

I feel like there’s a lot to unpack here. This impending sense of doom can be a very powerful emotion and has the nasty property of distorting our sense of reality so it can present itself as an objective state of the world/truth.

We all have certain emotional biases depending on our environment (like the social media, discussed in OP), the people we interact with the most, how we were raised, our genetics of course and probably a dozen other factors. All this things influence our perception of the world, none of them are objectively true. Looking at the same situation, from another perspective, could paint a completely different picture which is just as valid.

I completely agree with you on focusing on the causes, not on the effects. This is something that is done way too little, these days. But how we deal with the causes we found, is now entirely dependent on our perception of the world. Many people feel helpless/depressed when opposed to “big” abstract ideas like you listed: Capitalism, Fascism, Climate Change [we need to differ between the term itself and the concrete effects], etc., because they perceive them as ubiquitous and omnipresent. But taking “a step back”, putting these things in another (maybe historic) perspective or breaking them down into small solvable problems, can help to form practical solutions, even when they are on a small scale, and escape this emotion of helplessness.

On a side note: My father was a historian with the early 20th century as his field of interest. Growing up, he often read to me from his textbooks, showed me the pictures from that time and visited with me museums and historic places all over Europe. All the hardships from just a hundred years ago, the wars, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, the political uncertainty, are completely incomprehensible in our modern times. I often try to compare our problems today with the problems people had back then and I wouldn’t trade.

A lot of people seem very pessimistic about the future in general, because they are bombarded with negative posts, news, messages, etc. 24/7. This is imho one of the most devastating effects modern technology (i.e. internet, smartphones, social media) has on our culture today. This technology is so effective, because it exploits the fundamental mechanism of our psychology and neurology. Until we collectively decide to reduce the use of those technologies (some would even say we destroy them completely) and start opposing this trend, we will always be negatively affected by them.

This short video may be relevant in this context: Why social media preys on negativity

Here’s the thing:

We don’t live in the end times, with the doomsday clock just about to hit twelve! In fact, we may even never lived in better times, depending which metric you apply, and we still have much better times ahead, if we don’t dwell too much on negativity, but keep our optimism and start working towards a better future.

Leetcode is famous for being a perfect platform for practicing coding problems and to master coding interviews

It is famous for being yet another malicious HR tool to filter out applicants, playing them off against each other and depress wages of professionals. Leetcode “problems” have basically nothing to do with actual day-to-day software developing work, a fact many interviewers seem to be oblivious about. Answering those questions about abstruse algorithms or abstract problems isn’t a indicator of how well you do on the actual job. Gaining experience through working on small (Open Source) projects on your own, interning at different companies or being able to integrate fast in existing workflows/project structures is.

Before wasting your time grinding those useless questions and stupidly memorizing the answers, ask yourself: “Do I really want to work for an employer who treats his applicants this way and puts so little effort in understanding the actual requirements of this job?”. Because the way applicants are treated speaks volumes about the rest of the company.