BEEKAYRANDEE

How many times have 23andMe or Ancestry been hacked now?

It reminds me of a story that a web developer who found out that other sites were hosting his game by linking back to his website in an iframe and using it to make money off of ads. He made a check that if any calls are being made to the game from an iframe, replace the game with an image of goatse.

https://www.pcgamer.com/websites-stole-and-monetized-a-free-browser-game-so-the-designer-replaced-it-with-goatse/

It's not that they just found out, but more that they have combed through and prepared all of the information they could legally release.

Genuine question: If the network is decentralized, how are they able to determine the amount of users on the system?

The article mentions opt-in usage reporting, but that would only indicate there's around 115 million users actively reporting that they're using it, right?

Agreed. And in a way, it is also a contributing factor to how polarizing internet-based discussion has become. Rather than show you the most cited websites for answering a political question, it's going to use its profile of "you" to show you something you're more likely to engage with.

Unfathomably annoying, especially when it comes to modding games. The amount of times I've had mods or settings break because of some update that added useless content that I don't want is honestly disgusting. For the most part, I've stopped buying games near their release date because I'd rather buy the game when it's more feature-complete. The DLC scenario has become an issue in that it effectively translates to, "You will not get the game's content in it's entirety upon purchase", which is unthinkable in other scenarios.

Imagine going to a restaurant and paying the price of a meal just to be seated. If you want appetizers like chips and salsa, it costs $9.99 per bowl. Drinks (including water) are $5.99. Both for the appetizers and for the meal, you pay the waiter first, sides are $2.50 extra. After purchase, they'll give you an estimated wait time for your food, which may be delayed for any reason or cancelled altogether, even though you've already paid for it. The food comes out but it's not what you ordered, the meat is undercooked, the portions are significantly smaller than advertised, or it's actually a different dish altogether. You attempt to complain to the waiter, wanting to get the food you promised. The waiter tells you "Thanks for the feedback!" and leaves, never to be seen again. You hear grumblings from others around you that they're having the same problems. What they ordered is not what they got, or something hasn't been made properly. One guy waited all evening before they finally delivered enough food, piece-by-piece, to make up the meal he ordered. Eventually, after enough people have complained, the waiter comes back and gives everyone silverware. Nothing changes about anyone's meals, but you now have silverware (even though you likely already had some before).
You leave the restaurant, annoyed, with less money, and still hungry. You later find a social media post from the restaurant's cook complaining that their customers are self-entitled and are "expecting too much".

TL;DR - Its like fast food, but without the "fast".
... Or the "food"...

I think it moreso has to do with the fact that as soon as Fediverse networking became more popular, Meta immediately comes along and creates another social media platform that uses Fediverse as more of a flashy buzzword.

The point of the Fediverse seems to be "content where you want to see it, how you want to see it, when you want to see it". Promoting a more open ecosystem of specially tailored instances for what an individual user wants as their content.

Meta comes along with Threads, the nearly perfect antithesis of what the Fediverse is. Immediately gobbling up users due to both brand recognition and by seizing a customer base fleeing Reddit trying to figure out what the Fediverse is and not wanting to "miss out" on their communities and content as it migrates here.

Billy Gunn in shambles

I'm still learning the ins and outs of this place and the others, but part of me thought that was the feature of being federated. User accounts could seamlessly transfer from one instance to another.

Looking further into it, it looks like that feature exists for content, but not so much for accounts.

Progress? Either that or their site got overloaded.

Exactly this. MECM even has this sort of feature built-in with Orchestration Groups. You can set group 1 to perform updates and reboot at a certain time, then group 2 will only begin its update/reboot cycle when group 1 has completed or crossed a certain threshold.