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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Yeah, that’s completely untrue… The reason we can’t just create a new youtube is the same reason there aren’t more ISPs. The infrastructure cost is too high.

    You can’t just build a site that allows video uploads and playback, throw it on a Pi and release it to the world. You need scalability, and that costs money.

    Maybe the end solution is a distributed system, but that’s not something you can easily sell to the average Joe that doesn’t give a shit about the “how” or “why” with Youtube, and simply wants to watch videos.

    I’m not saying that Google isn’t the scum of the earth, but there is currently no feasible way to recreate what they’ve made/bought without an absolutely stupid amount of money.


  • I don’t know if it’s changed since my last attempt at it, but there were two separate reasons for not being able to pick up at specific areas. I was limited to my state for pick-ups, but could drop off anywhere. I also live about 20 minutes from a major city in a neighboring state… so you can see how that breaks the system instantly. It was probably a related to a local law, but that’s just how shit worked.

    The other reason was due to an airport agreement that I’m sure has since been undone. An airport about an hour north of me only allowed regular taxis. Lyft and Uber were not allowed to operate within about a 15 minute radius of their location. This, of course only affected pick-ups, so dropping someone off there resulted in about 30 minutes (15 getting out of the congested drop off area and 15 actually driving) of unpaid time. And that’s assuming that you can find a ride the instant that you breach the barrier. Which you won’t…


  • Generally the driver gets the majority of the ride cost, but their earnings vary a lot by region/time. If you’re just asking if it’s a good job, then the answer is a resounding no. I did it for a few months a couple years ago, and I have a friend who has done it as his full time job for the past 6 years or so. No change that Uber/Lyft makes is ever designed around benefiting the driver. You can safely assume that any new policy is going to make you earn less than you were before.

    At the end of the day, you are not fairly compensated for vehicle wear and tear, fuel consumption is not factored properly for all rides, certain arbitrary locations pay more or less and require unpaid relocating to actually land rides, etc. The best is when you take a 2 hour trip only to find out after drop off that you aren’t allowed to pick up new rides in that area and that you need to spend nearly the same amount of time getting back to an area you’re qualified to drive in. I think that one at least has been mostly resolved since I drove years ago, but you get the idea…







  • While the idea sounds great in the short-term, sites like this need a huge community to actually become useful. It’s cool as a little nod back to the old style of internet communities, but without a large following it’s too easy for stuff like this to just fade away. Losing a single server like lemmy.world wouldn’t shut down the entire system now, but imagine what would happen to the average user if their endpoint for news/media just disappeared and they were forced to make a new account and find all of their old communities again.

    It’s still neat, and I intend to give it as fair of a shot as I can, but we’re ultimately going to “need” an influx of non-contributing-cat-picture-lurkers to push a few of the top servers up to the levels of involvement needed to support a persistent community.