Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...

What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.

Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

"When you use Signal, your data is stored in encrypted form on your devices. The only information that is stored on the Signal servers for each account is the phone number you registered with, the date and time you joined the service, and the date you last logged on."

This isn't an ad, I wasn't paid for this post. Just to clear the air: fuck facebook, fuck elon musk and twitter, fuck anyone who thinks this is a paid advertisement. I wish I was paid for this shit, I just wanted to spread the word. Thank you. 😀 👍

"Systematic reviews of controlled clinical studies of treatments used by chiropractors have found no evidence that chiropractic manipulation is effective, with the possible exception of treatment for back pain.[8] A 2011 critical evaluation of 45 systematic reviews concluded that the data included in the study "fail[ed] to demonstrate convincingly that spinal manipulation is an effective intervention for any condition."[10] Spinal manipulation may be cost-effective for sub-acute or chronic low back pain, but the results for acute low back pain were insufficient.[11] No compelling evidence exists to indicate that maintenance chiropractic care adequately prevents symptoms or diseases.[12]"

Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you've been invited into.

It has been said that "if you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."

It has also been said that "the customer is always right".

Right here and now, you're neither the customer nor the product.

You're a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.

You're using a service that you aren't being charged for; but that service isn't part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you're participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.

You've probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it's one of the most popular websites in the world, but it's not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don't imperil the service itself.

The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They're not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they're also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.

Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.

Why YSK: because what seems like equal situation from surface isn't always equal opportunity for all. And even when equal measure of help is provided, it might not be equally useful.

Why YSK: It appears several Lemmy Instances are flagged as suspicious and at least 1 instance intentionally using the name of ransomware. A couple of the big enterprise monitoring suites (Fortiguard, ZScaler) will flag your account and may end up with you being pulled into an office for an explanation, or worse.

TL;DR: Keep browsing to your local instance at work for now.

Healthy gums don’t bleed, and are not painful to floss at all.

I’m in my 30s and only recently learned flossing technique and got my gums healthy. Flossing used to take so long and always involved a lot of bleeding no matter how delicate I was.

These days I’m absolute savage with floss and interdental brushes and never have any blood or pain.

Once you get your gums healthy you’ll be disgusted at yourself for ever not flossing. The amount of disgusting I can floss out on an almost daily basis is insane.

Plus you’re breath will not smell gross anymore.

It’s worth committing to the habit of flossing. Trust me.

There's some misinformation floating around regarding Lemmy not having a karma system. While many have discovered otherwise, this is for those who may not have.

While it's not exposed in the Lemmy default user interface, Lemmy does have a fully functional karma system and it is visible in third party clients such as WefWef and Memmy.

Do with that what you will.

https://join-lemmy.org/api/interfaces/PersonAggregates.html

Why YSK: These email tips are helpful for people who struggle with boundaries and want to communicate more assertively.

Why YSK: It's cleaner, cheaper and more convenient than toilet paper

In the past, laminated glass was usually installed in the windshield, with side and rear windows being tempered only.

The difference is that tempered glass is per-stressed so that when it cracks, it shatters into many tiny and dull pieces. Laminated is the same thing, but with layers of plastic sandwiched with layers of tempered glass. Laminated glass will still shatter, but will be held together by the plastic layers.

In an emergency, small improvised, or purpose built tools meant to shatter tempered glass will be useless if the glass is laminated.

Why YSK: When you cook meat, any water on the surface must first evaporate before much browning can occur. You want to get as much of a Maillard reaction as possible in the limited cooking time you have before the meat reaches the correct internal temperature. Removing the moisture first means that the heat of the cooking surface isn't wasted on evaporation and can instead interact with the meat to form the complex sugars and proteins of the Maillard reaction.

Why YSK: I’ve noticed in recent years more people using “neoliberal” to mean “Democrat/Labor/Social Democrat politicians I don’t like”. This confusion arises from the different meanings “liberal” has in American politics and further muddies the waters.

Neoliberalism came to the fore during the 80’s under Reagan and Thatcher and have continued mostly uninterrupted since. Clinton, both Bushs, Obama, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, and many other world leaders and national parties support neoliberal policies, despite their nominal opposition to one another at the ballot box.

It is important that people understand how neoliberalism has reshaped the world economy in the past four decades, especially people who are too young to remember what things were like before. Deregulation and privatization were touted as cost-saving measures, but the practical effect for most people is that many aspects of our lives are now run by corporations who (by law!) put profits above all else. Neoliberalism has hollowed out national economies by allowing the offshoring of general labor jobs from developed countries.

In the 80’s and 90’s there was an “anti-globalization” movement of the left that sought to oppose these changes. The consequences they warned of have come to pass. Sadly, most organized opposition to neoliberal policies these days comes from the right. Both Trump and the Brexit campaign were premised on reinvigorating national economies. Naturally, both failed, in part because they had no cohesive plan or understanding that they were going against 40 years of precedent.

So, yes, establishment Democrats are neoliberals, but so are most Republicans.

Why YSK: These tips may help you pick a more ripe, juicier, sweeter watermelon.

Imgur now blocks several VPNs and have issues loading embedded previews in several fediverse platforms. So instead of using imgur, you could use one of the following alternatives for uploading your images.

https://postimages.org/
https://imgbox.com/
https://imgbb.com/
https://www.imagebam.com/

Guys check out pixelfed. Its better than Instagram.Same concept of fediverse as Lemmy and Mastodon.

Website: https://pixelfed.org

Servers: https://pixelfed.org/servers

Even has a android client called pixeldroid on fdroid.

WYSK: There funded by dark money PACS, but some good reporting has brought out these names: David Koch, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Harlan Crow, and Michael Bloomberg. Some of there members are most famous for stopping big bills. Joe Leiberman, for example, single handedly stopped the single payer portion of the ACA. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsen Simena kept the John Lewis voting rights act from passing, and famously kept the senate from repealing the filibuster.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-03-28-tetris-used-prevent-post-traumatic-stress-symptoms

This is not an attempt to convert Lemmy users, nor is it a slight on Lemmy. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why Lemmy works better for some, and I love the fact that we not only have multiple choices, but multiple choices that allow us to interact with each other regardless! It's amazing. Lemmy is great, no shade.

With that said...

Why YSK: I see a lot of users posting frequent questions about Lemmy that are currently answered by kbin.

For example:

• The ability to block a whole domain, or subscribe to one
• The ability to subscribe to individual users
• A built-in search tool to find communities all over fedi (kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon groups, etc.) with an indication of how active they are
• Mitigation for the "tracking pixel" issue

I find that almost every day, I see Lemmy users asking about features and I think, "well, kbin does that." I think it would be worthwhile for more users to check into both platforms and decide which might be best for them.

Why YSK: The term "Genuine Leather" is a marketing term to sell the lowest quality leather possible.

When purchasing a leather product, look for full grain leather or top grain leather instead. These will provide a much higher quality cut of leather that will look and feel much better and last for much longer.

While it is no secret that exploitative practices are interlaced with capitalistic tendencies, the practices are becoming intolerable. Signing up to pay usually takes only two clicks that are prominently visible whereas cancelation options are hidden away in deep settings requiring multiple clicks. Pricing often feel arbitrary with no reference points. Every large company grows with the intention of exhibiting monopolistic behavior. This is not sustainable and should not be tolerated.

Why YSK: Choosing an instance with defederation policies you're most comfortable with is important to make your Fediverse experience smooth in the long run.

Here is a chart showing the defederation count of each instance.

You can get it by going to the instance's instance list and scrolling/Ctrl+Fing down to "Blocked Instances". To find the instance list, go to https://your-instance.url/instances, for example, https://lemmy.world/instances

Why YSK: Because you deserve to have peace of mind. Your privacy can mean your safety. I found out about this today, and in this comment I mentioned it and said I would make something more detailed.

I bet you heard that Google tracks you, as have I. But it's insanely daunting to see every movement, app and thing you have interacted with on your device for the last 8 years just laid out in front of you neatly. When you add your google account on your phone(or any device), it tracks this, with a timestamp, including:

-any app you used(including Contacts, Calendar, Phone, and when you pressed your home screen button-it is regarded as Samsung UI Home etc.)

-apps you viewed on google play

-map area on maps(you don't even have to search a specific place in order for it to get logged)

-if you called a place from maps(if you press the call button from maps to call a place and make a reservation, for example)

-images you saw and searched for on your browser

-location, video and voice notes and more

It is mentioned that if you log in on another device, it can keep track of this on that device as well.

#What can you do?

The first thing you can do is turn it off. Log on your google account, press the icon on the top right, then press on "Manage your Google Account". On the left side you will see a panel, choose "Data and privacy", and scroll on the center of the screen to see History settings, and press on My activity. You can choose to turn it off if you want. Make sure to stroll around to manage your advertisement settings, location settings, subscriptions and so on.

I also recommend switch to Proton Mail if you can.

#How I found out?

Recently, as you probably know, Youtube decided to be foolish(yes, more than usual) and force its users to either consume ads or buy Premium, blocking you after three viewed videos if you use any form of ad block. I said ew, no. Let's use yt clients that don't scrape your data and allow you to have privacy and no ads, it's about time I jump ship.

I didn't want to have to manage every subscription and videos in playlists manually(it would take days). I wanted something for my desktop, and I stumbled upon FreeTube. They have a guide that tells you how to export subscriptions and videos, the whole thing.

Following the instructions, I inevitably stumbled upon my managed data. It's a weird feeling seeing all that was. I vaguely remember how I felt in those years, but I never thought I would see what I was doing or what app I was using then. Inevitably we forget some trivial things in our lives, but this is what gets to be remembered, and this is the proof that we existed. It's strange.

Ending note: I assume most people here probably already know this, but I just wanted to pass this along for awareness purposes. I knew that I wanted to have random stats at the end of my life to like, review and read, but not like this.