I also would like to merge with TikTok.

I was born in 1981 so, in the United States at least, I’m considered an “elder millennial” rather than Generation X or a Baby Boomer. It’s a silly thing but we give our generations names.

When I was growing up, Google didn’t exist (much less YouTube) so watching a video was a pain in the ass. It took whole ass minutes to download, you needed RealPlayer/codecs, and then half the time, it could have been a text article that took 30 seconds to read. So, asking someone to watch a video that could have been an article was considered rude. Now, it’s probably the opposite and video is preferred.

It’s a bit similar to “this meeting could have been an email” but I meant no disrespect. It’s just that I’m old and prefer text Internet to video.

I apologize. I’m an elder millennial so asking me to watch a whole video instead of read something violates the social contract that once was. I’d delete but I’d rather leave it up as a cautionary tale for other old people.

Is it my dishwasher? Or does it have to shaped like a human for no reason?

I say snack. The liminal space between dinner and bed can be a digestif or coffee or tiramisu. But it’s not a proper meal.

They probably were using “start up” wrong but there’s no police force hunting down people who lied about being non-accredited investors. You just have to sign a standard form that says you’re an accredited investor and it basically just means you can’t sue anyone if you lose your money.

If a company fails, they might still have some value. In the medical company example I used, maybe they fail Phase III safety trials and don’t get approved. So, they sell all their laptops and beakers or whatever. You don’t get to sue anyone for shenanigans¹ if you lied about being an accredited investor.

¹ Shenanigans is not a legal term but don’t invest in risky start ups with founders you don’t know if you aren’t able to absorb the loss

It’ll take longer than 2 years. It’ll take a decade.

In the United States, you have to be an “accredited investor” to invest in early stage start ups. To be an accredited investor, you either have to be wealthy — $1 million in wealth (not counting your house) or have income over $250,000 for 2 consecutive years — or pass some of the tests generally required to be a banker (like the Series 7 exam).

That’s what makes start ups different from a normal small business. If you open a bar or restaurant, you generally get a loan from a bank and are profitable when you open. If you want to raise rounds and lose money for years, only “accredited investors” can invest. Basically, the government bans people who aren’t aware of the risks or able to take the L that often comes from investing in risky start ups. You have to prove you’ll be fine if the company fails (or that you know what you’re getting into).

Start ups usually lose money while they’re getting established. You have build the product, hire the team, and then get customers. So, you lose money for several years — which is why Angel Investors, venture capital firms, etc. exist.

Take a novel medication, for example. You aren’t making a dime until you get FDA (in the U.S.) approval and so you do fundraising rounds to hire staff, do clinical trials, scale up manufacturing, etc. Then, once you get approved, you (ideally) make a fortune.

Ideally for the early stage investors (and staff that was partially compensated in shares), you “make an exit” — get bought by a bigger company or go public. And that’s when everyone gets paid. If a company stays private forever, you repay early investors with dividends or share buybacks (or everyone is just sort of fucked and waiting for an exit). Shares in a private company have value on paper but no store takes SpaceX shares as a payment method.

From what I can tell from the outside:

• Linda Yaccarino Is the CEO of X so presumably her
• Gwynne Shotwell definitely runs SpaceX
• Vaibhav Taneja and Tom Zhu seem to run Tesla (but Elon obviously designs the trucks)
• Steve Davis is CEO of The Boring Company
• Jared Birchall is CEO of Neuralink and CFO of xAI so he’s probably running both

I have little to no respect for the man but Elon’s real job is raising money, which isn’t nothing. Start up CEOs often spend a lot of their time raising money and networking while the company is unprofitable. Tesla might be the only one that’s mature and turns a profit. (SpaceX could be profitable and it’s Falcon launch division probably is but between Starlink launches and testing Starship, I’m guessing the company is still in “start up mode” and losing money.)

I’d be able to slam dunk on anyone who guarded me. People would be like, “Won’t this guy stop dunking on people?” Can’t. I wished on a monkey paw.

NBA 2K26 would have to rewrite the game engine like when EA had to introduce “vision cones” to Madden so Michael Vick wasn’t better than Payton Manning.

Don’t be a dick to service workers. Your entire life will be better.

I mean, SSL certs are free now:

https://letsencrypt.org/

https://certbot.eff.org/

Maybe not worth $50 a year to change your setup but there’s no reason to pay for them anymore.

I’d like to think so because I’m generally ethical and don’t really care about money (except in the sense that we all have to). I certainly don’t think rich people are smarter or more capable than poor people.

That being said, based on all the billionaires in the world, it seems that once you hit a certain level of wealth, you become an insecure twat and start acting like a victim and posting rot on the internet. So, maybe I’d just become a bozo clown who thinks being an investor is the same as being an inventor.

I wouldn’t overthink it. It’s just a youthful rebellion/protest thing. Old people banned an app young people like and young people were like, “Ok, fine. We’ll use a different app, assholes.” And they found one even more Chinese just to be obnoxious.

But to answer your primary question, Instagram is a bloated app with a terrible algorithm made by a garbage company owned by a garbage person. But just as important, Instagram is also where TikTok users’ parents are. Youths don’t want to hang out with friends where their parents are watching. Hell, I’m middle-aged and I was annoyed when my mom followed me on Instagram. Like, “Stay on Facebook, mom. That’s the boomer app.”

I’m sure almost every TikTok user is a YouTube user too. But YouTube Shorts isn’t the same as TikTok. Shorts are basically a way for established creators who make longer, professional videos to make little casual ones between their main video releases. It’s not a drop-in replacement for TikTok. The vibe is different. (If Shorts had been released as a totally separate app with a separate algorithm, it’d be a drop-in replacement for TikTok but they just duct taped it onto YouTube proper.)

Plus, the data and national security excuses were always horseshit. Congress was trying to protect American dominance in social media and during the debate, members of Congress said their issue with TikTok was that it didn’t have an Israel boner. https://forward.com/culture/688840/tiktok-ban-gaza-palestine-israel-antisemitism/

Forward is a publication aimed at a Jewish audience, for the record, so that’s not some antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Bacon, lettuce, tomato, and guacamole

The ID checks will only make things worse. Like 4 free “tube” sites based in America and that are trying to be mainstream and ad-supported (Pornhub and ???) comply with Louisiana’s current ID check law while the 5,000 sites based anywhere else on Earth don’t give a shit. Most probably don’t even filter for CSAM.

Half the internet is porn. Reddit has porn. There’s a Lemmy instance for NSFW stuff. To imagine they’re going to stop teens from finding smut because the “reputable” site checks ID is just willful naivety.

Also, I realize the goal of the Texas law is to label anything GLBT+ as “porn.” I’m not the naive one in this case. But the arguments in the case aren’t about the hidden agenda of conservatives.

It’s vice signaling. There’s nothing virtuous about Meta or Zuckerberg. Let’s not forget his first try was a hot or not clone with pictures of women he used without consent.

And that new perm he got definitely isn’t virtuous.

It’s not something where any one person can really host their own instance long term — though people still do (for now). But AtProto is designed so a reasonably-sized company (or maybe a well-funded foundation) can host their own instance and either make a clone or do something novel.

As I understand it, the core difference is just the scale of what you’d have to host. ActivityPub only downloads what users on an instance interact with so you could easily run your own one-person instance on a home computer. A BlueSky instance downloads everything so you’d essentially need the scale of BlueSky (which is already in the terabytes)

The upside to AtProto for users is that your username and content are all portable and you can switch providers (or even use multiple) and not lose anything. ActivityPub’s downside is that it can leave you at the mercy of your admin. Not a big deal on the main instances but there’s been some drama moments where some admin freaked out and those users essentially lost their account.

AtProto/BlueSky was originally envisioned (pre-Musk) as Twitter being semi-decentralized so it’d essentially be the hub of a wider ecosystem. But, obviously, the world’s worst truck designer had other plans.

I don’t want to rain on everyone’s parade but I think the law bans all apps with over 1 million users that are based in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea (“foreign adversary controlled applications”) where you can make a profile and share content. WeChat would definitely count. So, Red Note is probably/possibly going away soon too. I guess VKontakte is Russian and still in the app stores.

The media is focused on creators and TikTok, obviously. But a WeChat ban would probably suck for people with grandparents in China since that’s the “everything app” there. (I don’t know what China bans but even if there’s other messaging apps allowed in China, teaching your elderly Chinese grandma to use a different app on a ~12h time zone difference is probably not a fun activity.)