The common thread I've seen online is this:

• Google's search algorithm sucks. I always append reddit.com to get good forum results
• Reddit's search algorithm sucks.

These two tools are quickly becoming coupled for Google-Fu expert users. The historical forum history that goes back 3-5 years on Reddit is their goldmine. You can't just make a new subreddit overnight when a sub gets paywalled. All of that historical data will be lost and paywalled.

I think a paywall could be an effective money maker for Reddit because they've basically become their own Google - in that each subreddit acts like a unique website with real, human, responses. The only problem is that reddit has a god awful search algorithm that they refuse to improve. So people use Google to essentially search reddit. The "whales" so-to-speak are the only people they need to capture. People like myself (frugal people) aren't in their peripherals. But the people that think "I'll pay each month for NYT" or "it's just a few dollars for the WSJ" are going to use the same logic for Reddit: "it's a small amount of money to have access to high quality forums on X, Y, and Z".

In addition, this might bolster Reddit's content even further. Since paywalled subs will automatically reduce the amount of AI content spammed on them, they will inherently increase the legitimacy of each forum.

Lastly, this will give them a path towards monetization for moderators which doesn't require them skimming off of their own pay checks to achieve it.

Do I like this? No. Is this fair? Also no. People contributed to Reddit under the impression that their data would be available and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. That implicit guarantee is being violated. It's an afront to the hard working individuals that have developed these communities brick by brick.

But does this "solution" make a lot of business sense? Possibly. As long as they survive the changeover in the short term, I think they'll thrive from this choice for the reasons I stated above.

Again, it's going to give them a pathway for:

• Monetization
• Reduce AI spam (a big fear of all forums)
• They could make even more money off the back of this

I'm pretty much over Reddit anyways. Lemmy has been my backup social media for a while now. The Internet is still free - for now. I just hope we can all find better search engines and forums in the future. Google has been degrading. Reddit has been locking things down. We obviously need to pivot to other platforms. Or maybe just go back to the old days where you find niche forums hosted by some dude in his basement. Nothing wrong with that.

People don't like to admit that we are ants. We are valuable and important. Each one of us is unique and deserves a full, good, life. But we are also ants. We are susceptible to group think, mob behavior, and we tend to follow the scent trail most of the time. It's not a bad thing. It's tied to our evolutionary desire to be a part of a community; to fit in and blend in.

But it also means individuals are likely to do what keeps them alive. We are likely all bad in some way or another.

But as long as you aren't, actively, willfully, or gleefully harming people, you're probably ok.

Well I'm guessing they actually did testing on local AI using a 4GB and 8GB RAM laptop and realized it would be an awful user experience. It's just too slow.

I wish they rolled it in as an option though.

I think it makes sense. I like ChatGPT and I appreciate having easy access to it. What I really wish is the option to use local models instead. I realize most people don't have machines that can tokenize quickly enough but for those that do...

Why didn't you like Hashicorps Vault? I want to know for my own edification.

I hope so. I don't want to manage two different address spaces in my head. I prefer if one standard is just the standard.

How do they prove your age? Non-technical savvy people probably just give their kids a phone and don't do much to lock it down.

Display and layout rules aren't difficult at all. Maybe I'm just not experienced enough. I've been a web dev for nearly a decade now and I feel like I've got the hang of it. That being said, I don't work on projects that have to work on everything from a Nokia to an ultra wide monitor. We shoot for a few common sizes and hope it clears between edge cases nicely. What is an example of something that wraps randomly?

Genuinely, though, CSS is fairly clear cut about the rules of positioning and space. Relative positioning is one of the most important concepts to master since it allows things to flow via the HTML structure and not extra CSS. Fixed positioning is as if you had no relative container other than the window itself. Absolute positioning is a little weird, but it's just like fixed positioning except within the nearest parent with relative positioning.

Everything else is incredibly straight forward. Padding adds space within a container. Margins add space outside a container. Color changes text color. Background-color changes the background color of an element.

Top, left, right, and bottom dictate where the element should be positioned after the default rules are applied. So if you have a relative div inside a parent which is half way down the page, top/right/left/bottom would move the element relative to it's position within the parent. If you made the div fixed, it would be moved relative to the window.

Lastly, if you're designing a webpage just think in boxes or rows and columns. HTML can define 75% of the webpage structure. Then with just a bit of CSS you can organize the content into rows/columns. That's pretty much it. Most web pages boil down to simple boxes within boxes. It just requires reading and understanding but most people don't want to do that to use CSS since it feels like it should just "know".

As someone who has built QT, Swing, and JavaFx applications, I way prefer the separation of concerns that is afforded us via HTML JS and CSS.

Would be kind of cool to allow people to choose an install method. As someone who has experienced low bandwidth in rural homes, it would be nice to avoid the waste at the cost of possibly managing chromium versions myself.

That's the point. The storage is a bad metric. While it might indicate poor performance, it's not a direct indication of poor performance. The bloat and optimization comes from the usage of Electron. And people use Electron because it's far easier to make cross-platform deployments for Web and desktop using a framework like Electron. Show me the QT/JavaFX app that mimics Signal and we can compare the cost to develop it. Electron isn't the best choice for memory usage and reducing bloat, but it's the best choice for quick development (in my opinion but also proven out by the market share it has)

Nah it's literally a waste of physical resources. Crypto currency is a waste of fossil fuels. AI has its functions at least.