this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology
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The loss of the forum like help threads will probably be the most impactful thing. We can build communities elsewhere, but the 8 years old post about a problem only you and the OP is having is super valuable.
I'd like to add a comment here just to add some visibility:
If you have an uncapped/unlimited internet connection, you should seriously consider running the Archive Team Warrior
They're heavily involved in scraping and archiving data from all over the internet (and, recently, most/all of Reddit) so that it's preserved, regardless of what happens to the underlying platform.
I run it on my home server in docker, but they have a lot of options for doing so and it basically requires just running it, and then forgetting it exists.
It can also be ran as an appliance in a virtual machine like VirtualBox!
Awesome, going to set this up later at home today!
I feel that. I posted about a Plex problem 2 years ago and the subsequent solution I worked out. Every once in a while I still get someone replying to that and thanking me.
There was talk of someone populating a Lemmy instance with reddit data.
There is a lot of reddit data on a torrent somewhere aparrently.
That's the thing that bothered me the most about deleting my account. I had multiple people say thanks for posting solutions and problems with solutions I had, even years later. Not specific to iphone but in general.
Good thing I've never been of any use to anyone then :)
... :'(
Not only that. But if Reddit really suffers badly from this it might also have an impact on small communities. It's really simple to set up a community on any topic on there. And it's currently mainstream enough that you can get people on-boarded pretty quickly.
Larger communities may find a new home elsewhere. But for smaller ones that feels much more difficult.
Thanks to last week's fiasco I discovered the fediverse and hopefully others too. I just hope it's intuitive enough that people don't get scared away.
That's a problem with every non-physical storage of data/knowledge - it's ephemeral and can disappear anytime
From time to time I do think about the Carrington Event and wonder what would happen if something like that happened in today's time. Because of exactly the reason of how reliant we are on electronical data.
How resilient is our infrastructure really? Especially satellites used for communication. I assume that most critical cold-storage is mostly fine. But all the small personal electronic devices will probably be toast.
Well, not only did this very nearly happen (a comparable size emission missed us by something like 12 hours), we have a pretty good idea what would happen.
Fires. Fires everywhere. Very little of our infrastructure is shielded, so basically everything would go offline... But that almost pales in comparison to the sheer number of fires started simultaneously
We do have hardened installations and a system to give a short warning to places in a position to unplug and protect certain equipment, but that doesn't matter much in the short term because everything is on fire, and the air is filled with the toxic petrochemical gases we've been convinced to build everything out of.
Whoever survives the early days would theoretically be in a position to rebuild thanks to organizations like the US military - the knowledge of how is protected and there are plans to restore order. Most basic military hardware would be usable with maintenance (unlike most vehicles which rely on a bunch of microchips that don't appreciate EMPs, and also fire)
Physical media can suffer the same fate, but not usually at the hands of a single entity.
yep. this is why i might still occasionally use reddit after this. r/askmechanics was so incredibly useful
My hope is that things like Chat GPT can now become that source. I can only assume all those historical posts were used as training data.
ChatGPT doesn't understand the things it says. It shouldn't be treated as a source of truth. It can be tripped up by nuance, or by statements which require an understanding of the concept of syntax. For example, if you ask it what is the longest 5-letter word, it will confidently give you an answer.
I wish more people understood this. So many people out there are taking what ChatGPT spits out as gospel when it's actually very susceptible to manipulation and misinformation.
Here is what GPT 4 says:
Me: What is the longest 5-letter word?
ChatGPT:
The concept of the "longest" 5-letter word can be interpreted in two ways:
If "longest" refers to the physical length of the word (how it is pronounced), then it can vary based on different accents and languages. However, in English, five-letter words with a large number of syllables such as "queue" or "eerie" might be considered.
If "longest" refers to the word with the most definitions or uses, it's hard to definitively state which 5-letter word that would be, but "round" and "sound" are examples of five-letter words with a large number of definitions and uses.
It's also important to note that in English, all 5-letter words contain the same number of letters and would, therefore, have the same length if written in the same font and size.
Lol
ChatGPT doesn't know about variable width
Agreed. However, often when trying to fix something you have run out of options and just want new ideas. In my experience, LLMs are very good for that.
I made sure to delete all my Reddit data before deleting my account. Not getting anything from me.