@hedge @moon Bluesky has got only one central component, the directory. The web interface at bsky.app is only one of multiple web interfaces. The data itself is hosted in several distributed personal data servers and you can setup and host your own as well.

This “Bluesky is offline” message is similar to some “Mastodon is offline”, when only mastodon.social is offline and all other servers are running.

@hedge BTW: There is an update to the terms of service as well that implies that you cannot opt out of providing training data to their AI.

@alyaza @hedge Funny side note: This rule with the disputes is not valid for residents of the EU due to their regulations. There an Irish court is responsible.

@geneva_convenience It’s exactly the same that also happened several years ago between the US and the EU concerning civil planes. Here Boeing and Airbus compete against each other - and the US had the assumption, that the EU subsidized Airbus so that Boeing couldn’t compete. Because of that the US thought about tariffs that would have countered this.

@yogthos @gomp It’s the capitalist textbook example, to conquer a market by undercutting prices and to crush competition in that market that cannot compete - and to later increase prices when there is no more competition. You can see this all over the world, not only with China and EVs, but also for example with Uber and the taxi business or Europe with their food exports to poorer countries outside the EU.

@yogthos @geneva_convenience These tariff rates are calculated on a per manufacturer basis based on the subsidiaries that these manufacturers receive from their country. So it just restores the competition.

@Dirk How should they achieve it? The Fediverse contains of a lot of different systems that offer so much more than Threads could ever do.

@Dirk @MrScottyTay Also I think that one should ask the question, what Meta could do with the data and what it is doing with the data of their users. For their users they use the usage data to present them a feed that the users appreciate. Also they use it to place ads inside of their apps. Also they use the data to serve you ads outside of their system on ad networks that use data from Meta.

All of this is technically not possible for Fediverse users.

@flancian @Dirk Threads has about 200 million monthly users, 33 million daily users. The fediverse has just under 1 million monthly users. Do you really think that 0.5% has any relevance to Meta?

Also: What data do you think Meta will be able to use - and for what? They can’t use this data to serve you ads, simply because they don’t know you. They can’t track you around the web because you don’t have a Meta account.

@schizoidman AliExpress already has got 2TB SD cards for 5 dollars, I guess soon you will be able to buy 4 TB from there for the same price as well 😁

(Never ever buy them from there!)

@yogthos Well, I’ve got the opinion, that infrastructure shouldn’t be operated for profit, so I’ve got no problem with investing a lot of money in advance. My points are meant from a technical standpoint. And when I refer to the costs, then I mean this in a way that I’ve got the opinion that the money should be invested in other stuff as well.

@yogthos I’m not living in the US, neither I’m a fan of most of their politics. So I definitely won’t defend them.

@yogthos Which people said that about high speed rail? The country I’m living in has got high speed rail since the 90s. See also Japan or France (and some other countries).

@yogthos I now had more time to look into the article. The whole article is focused solely on the electromagnet technology. From here it refers to some other technology that uses electromagnet acceleration like Musk’s fever dream “Hyperloop” and sea carrier catapults while in the end making a reference to orbital launch costs.

Thing is: It simply doesn’t make sense. Neither in point-to-point transportation nor in space launch activities this would work out, since you could reach only a single orbital plane or flight direction. To reach more than one point or orbit, you would need to have a lot of these systems, which then would result in really high operational costs.

However, this technology is fine for a highly improved land based transportation method, especially for China, which is the forth biggest country (behind Russia, Canada and the USA).

@yogthos The articles ends in “While SpaceX’s reusable rockets have slashed satellite launch costs to US$3,000/kg, some scientists have estimated that an electromagnetic space launch system could drive those costs down to a mere US$60/kg.”

This is a comparison to a launch into an orbit.

@yogthos I’m a space nerd, so I’m always happy to see advancements in this area. I’m no “the west is the best” guy. I’m also a fan of the Indian space program. They achieve great stuff with an astonishing low budget. And I really hope that they will launch people into space in a not so distant future.

Also I think that it is a real shame, that there is this aggressive competition in space. I would love to see all the nations cooperate in a common space program, like it had already been done, when the ISS had been built.

China is launching a lot of rockets into space. They only should stop their launches from Jiuquan, Xichang or Taiyuan, since from there they have to drop their first stages onto land in areas where people live.

@goatsarah BTW: This sounds like a super sized “Spinlaunch” in my ears - which also has got a lot of technical difficulties.

@yogthos Well, this whole article sounds like a lot of propaganda without any real facts to me.

@yogthos So the system just accelerates to Mach 1.6, then the system had to use its own fuel to speed up to just Mach 7. But Mach 7 is just a fraction of the needed velocity to get into orbit. Mach 7 is around 8,500 km/h. But you need 25,000 km/h to stay in orbit. So you need an additional stage to accelerate to that speed. And that stage would had to be expendable, otherwise you couldn’t carry enough payload.

Still you can only reach a single orbit. To reach another orbital plane, you then would had to use a lot of additional propellant to perform a dogleg maneuver to switch to a different plane.

BTW: This whole idea reminds me of SpinLaunch. Prototypes are already built by the U.S. based company with the same name. They want to accelerate small launchers in a vacuum chamber, so that in the end they can carry up to 300kg in a low earth orbit.

@yogthos I don’t need that video for that. I’m interested in that topic for many years, means that I know enough physics to understand the problems behind that. I’m able to use the appropriate formulas for stuff like acceleration. Also I know how to perform proper research. And with this I don’t mean “Youtube”.