It’s not. Its just another Lemmy mobile UI, that’s what they all are. I’ll be honest, I was not prepared for how cultish the syncers (Syncs? Syncheads?) are. Next level famboying.
Personally, I disliked Sync for Reddit and did not use it. And, personally some of those quirks still bother me with Sync for Lemmy.
But…Jerboa, Connect, Liftoff, etc. currently also don’t work as well or are as customizable as I’d like. Liftoff is definitely the closest, though, and I still switch back to it after each update to see how it is progressing.
For now though, Sync ticks more of my hot button boxes despite its flaws than any other app I’ve tried (so far).
Better is mostly subjective, so take this with a grain of salt.
But it isn’t better, not yet. And it may never be.
But, let’s loop you in, Odd one (it’s a book reference, not an insult)
So, Sync started as a reddit app. As you know, reddit fucked third party apps, and made a series of insulting statements to users and mods, generating an exodus that led some people to lemmy.
On reddit, when it was fresh news, many of those app devs that had a reddit presence were asked if they would migrate their app to something else, with the most common request being lemmy (the only option that had an API worth mentioning at the time).
Out of those, Sync was one of the top five android apps. For some, it was reddit, they’d chosen sync and used nothing else.
Thus, you had weeks of build-up after Mr Dawson announced he was going to migrate. Serious hype.
So, the app drops. People check it out. Those unfamiliar with the app from reddit are surprised to find it has ads. Those familiar with it were aware that ad monetization was part of how Mr Dawson made a living. The rest was through various ad free versions, and “ultra”. Ultra was a service that added features to the app on reddit. Here, it doesn’t really add as much because some of what it does isn’t server based, so a subscription fee for those specific features isn’t as attractive. A one time fee has been added to remove ads, and the price point is a matter of upset as well.
Secondary to that, the app is closed source. Again, anyone familiar with the app from reddit would know this. It was known when very fervent requests to migrate were made.
As you may be aware, lemmy runs high to open source advocates, privacy advocates, and general mistrust of anything that doesn’t at least give a polite nod to those principles.
And that’s where the drama starts.
With all of that in mind, you have segments of the lemmy population that are hyped to have an early version of a familiar and well executed app. Those folks are surprised at the sheer venom that has been directed to the app and its developer. A segment of those are very vocal in their defense of the app. Some cross the line into being jerks. There’s another segment that dislikes the app on those principles, another that just don’t like it as an app (or prefer others), and there’s the small but noisy and rude segment that hates the app.
That’s where the drama centers. It is magnified by the fact that the more energetic the opinion is, the more likely people are to voice it, and the inverse.
Most lemmings don’t care much at all, but they’re not emotionally driven, and/or would rather just avoid drama.
My bias: I think it’s rather rude to throw nastiness at a developer that was practically (and in a few cases literally) begged to port his app for lemmy. One can object to decisions made in a civil manner. Sync was not my app of choice, but I found it to be a solid back-up, and Mr Dawson to be a fairly good example of how a developer should communicate.
Now, my opinion on sync for lemmy, as it currently exists. This is pure opinion, and should not be taken as anything else. While I despise ads, it’s a case of “hate the game, not the player”. I understand why app developers use ads, and I can’t say I blame them. The price Mr Dawson has set for a one time ad removal is fair. Regardless of what level of income can be expected from ads, that income is continuous as long as the app is used. The fee represents a reasonable amount for an app that is likely to remain useful just as it is for years.
Now, it is not up to feature parity with core lemmy tools. There are plenty of apps further along in that regard. It is, however, a very well crafted UI and has a long history of being actively maintained as well as moved forward over time. That last assumes the developer doesn’t throw up his hands as a “no win” situation and walk away. I doubt that will be the case, Mr Dawson is a pro. Wouldn’t blame him if he did though, some of the comments directed at him would have been nasty on reddit; here, they’re so far beyond acceptable it’s disgusting. Lemmy is supposed to be better than reddit in that regard.
I don’t do tl;drs because it ain’t that fucking hard to read, but to kinda close things out, it can be summed up as a massive amount of confusion about exactly what the app was, is, and should be.
This is a good summary; as a reddit exile myself who exclusively used Sync, I think it’s worth emphasising that Dawson has done an amazing job of making the transition from reddit to lemmy pretty seamless from an app design point of view. I can set my views and filters up identically as they were in the Reddit version of the app, and the lemmy experience becomes essentially identical to reddit.
There’s definitely a conflict between “paid closed source app” and “FOSS fediverse”, and there’s arguments to be made about whether user revenue should be directed to server expenses to maintain communities or front end app development to attract more users, which I think will be interesting to see play out. But at the end of the day Sync makes lemmy “useable” in a way that replicates the reddit experience, which is what a lot of migrants were after - other apps (while arguably more feature rich in terms of the fediverse) just didn’t quite hit the dopamine-feed the way Sync does.
I get the idea that the FOSS outrage is not 100% honest. Not to say that they don’t hold a strong pro-FOSS stance, but I think it’s fueled by something else.
I think a lot of people are just plain annoyed with the way the Sync fans suddenly took over discussion all over Lemmy, and the FOSS position was an easy one to “legitimize” their opposition to this new crowd.
It’s pretty normal to have people push back when there’s such a vocal crowd about something. What’s frustrating is how it’s so polarizing that if anyone wants to express a dissenting opinion and have good faith discussion, they’re usually lumped in with the massive circlejerk on one side or the other.
Totally anecdotal but I’d originally quit Reddit back in December and was an avid Sync user. Heard about Lemmy during the reddit drama and could just never get into it. After ljdawson dropped Sync, started to get into Lemmy!
Jerboa is pretty bad in many, many ways; at one point it almost killed Lemmy for me. Sync is at least polished and robust. I’ve not seen ads yet but I wouldn’t be opposed to paying something for a decent client - I used to pay for Narwhal too.
There was a novel material called LK-99 that was purported to be a superconductor at standard temperature/pressure, but it turns out not to be. If it were true, it would’ve been a revolutionary breakthrough.
100 billion kWh of electricity are wasted on transmission losses each year in the US alone. That’s equivalent to 3 of our largest nuclear reactors running 24/7. Superconductivity enables lossless electricity transmission at high voltages and currents.
From what I’ve heard (feel free to add to it or to correct me):
Our technology uses normal conductors. Computers, gaming consoles, smartphones etc are all limited in their performance by the power of the conductors. Super conductors existed already, however they require (near to) freezing temperature. That obviously makes it impossible to use those superconductors in normal daily technology.
If however we could have superconductors who can work at normal temperature and don’t require extreme cold, we could have superconductors that massively increase the efficiency of our technology (more efficient smartphone battery life, better electric cars etc)
I think at least some of it is due to his acceptance of Meta’s Threads (should they ever get around to federating). He see’s it as an opportunity, a lot of others see it as letting the wolf through the door.
Note: I’m not arguing either side, I’m just saying that I think that’s what the issue is.
I read a toot about it last night when I was very tired. Apparently there is some sort of (anti-)privacy protocol in universeodon’s source code that is getting implemented to Masto main source soon.
I wasn’t able to find the relevant post, but I do remember that it can only be disabled by toggling ‘Discoverable’ under account options. Evidently Eugen said something along the lines of “it’s what people expect from social media” but the point of Mastodon was to be a divergence from traditional social media, no?
I think I was able to found the GitHub PR related to this. I think it is a feature so people can search for toots if they turn on “Discoverable”. It is now locked before it “devolves into another search feature debate.”
Sounds like the newspaper was investigating the police chief and the chief in turn violated their rights and caused the 98 yr old co-owner to die in the process:
The one wrinkle in this story so far is that they ALSO raided a city council member (https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article278220882.html). That council member also received the documents the newspaper were sent and she notified someone in the city executive. That was also a baseless warrant. And the county attorney who drafted the warrant and sent it to the incompetent judge is the brother of drunk Karen's restaurant landlord. There's more to be said about what is going on, but there's a whole lot of absolute incompetence in addition to malice.
So I’m just slightly confused. They were investigating the police chief while simultaneously also dealing with the drunk Karen restauranteur? Seems like the police were issued a warrant to raid the homes per the restauranteur investigation? Does anyone understand the connection with the police chief or am I just being dense?
I was being dense haha. I wasn’t thinking police would actually be that opportunistic, but of COURSE they are. Especially small town Kansas. Gestapo shit.
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