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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • The issue is really that Kakao is not just a comic app.

    They are basically the Meta/Facebook of South Korea, one of the most valuable companies in the whole country, and they are in quite literally every facet of South Korean life.

    They do instant messaging (KakaoTalk), payments (KakaoPay), banking (KakaoBank), public transportation (Kakao T), games (Kakao Games) and probably way more I’m forgetting. If you’re in south Korea you cannot live without Kakao almost.

    Webtoons are not a significant portion of their income, but they have so much disposable income and such a drive to go after pirates that they don’t care.

    Their actual audience in South Korea is very anti piracy too and support these moves. It’s a very similar case in Japan, but not even the richest Japanese manga publishers are as filthy rich like Kakao, they mostly spend their resources fighting piracy within their borders and leave it at that.

    Also the monetization model you’re describing is unfortunately the most profitable currently. They employ it because it works. Webtoons are also by far, and I mean by faaaar, the most consumed comic format. Majority of the public is now reading comics on their phones and Webtoons thrive there. So there’s a very big financial incentive to go after mobile apps because of it.


  • Unfortunately that’s also the primary reason Kotatsu was targeted and shutdown

    Bundling the sources with the app has become very risky because one specific multi-billion dollar Korean company (Kakao) has openly made it their mission to hunt down these apps’ creators and nobody can stop them. They literally brag on Twitter about it and everything.

    So the best way to avoid litigation and ensure longevity at the moment is to completely separate the app/reader from the actual sources of content.

    But it’s not that inconvenient. Once you add the repository url you can see all the available extensions in-app and download the ones you want. They are also updated automatically so it’s not that involved after the initial setup.

    All Mihon forks also have an update checker so you’ll pretty easily keep the main app updated as well.




  • If you want to enable the setting, it’s under

    Settings > Profile > Advanced Settings > Mark this account as a cat

    (wording/location may vary if you’re using a misskey fork but it should be under the profile settings somewhere)

    This will give your icon cat ears in public timelines and any text you write will be converted to catspeak. Works better in Japanese, which is the language it was designed for, but in English words like “now” get converted to “meow” for example.


  • Best way I can describe misskey as a user of it is that it’s like mastodon but if they implemented every feature request possible. I mean it literally has a toggle to convert your text into cat speak for no other reason other than the dev felt like it. It even has its own markdown language to give your text crazy effects because who wouldn’t want an emoji amplified 4 times that spins and changes color?

    It uses activitypub as well so it’s entirely interoperable with mastodon instances (although some functions like quote posts or the custom markdown language aren’t formatted as nicely when viewed from a mastodon instance)



  • As someone who owns a digital audio player I can give some reasons:

    • Since most phones don’t come with headphone jacks anymore, it’s nice to have a device you can just plug your wired headphones into. It also means headphone jack inclusion is no longer a factor when choosing a smartphone.
    • Better audio quality depending on the DAC inside the device.
    • Expandable storage. Most DAPs let you insert one, some even two micro sd cards. No need to stream anything, plus you have space for lossless files.
    • No need to worry about data/wifi, your music is always there ready to listen offline.
    • Some DAPs are really small (Shanling M0 for example), making them more portable than a phone for a lot of use cases.
    • More headphone compatibility. A lot of higher end DAPs support more than a 3.5 mm jack. The Fiio m11 plus for example has a 4.4 and 2.5 balanced output jacks in addition to the standard 3.5 mm.
    • Higher power amps to power hungry headphones. A smartphone can’t power say a pair of Sennheiser HD 600s, a DAP can because it comes with a preamp (not all though, depends on the specs).
    • Dedicated physical buttons. A touchscreen will never compare to controlling playback with physical buttons.

    Though I will say, even as someone who owns one, unless you’re really into carrying your music library with you it’s generally not worth it. But they are nifty little gadgets and new ones come out every year to innovate the space.

    It’s similar to an e-reader as others pointed out. Sure, you can read on a phone/tablet as well but it’s nice to have a device that’s purpose built for one thing and does it really well. The same applies to a digital audio player. Yeah you can (and most people are fine with) play music on your smartphone, but a dedicated device does add some nice QoL to the experience.





  • It is for most scenarios in my life. And in many peoples’ lives I will wager.

    For the people that are abroad I’d have to pay to call/text them each time, and I can’t even send them pictures/videos in a convenient way (no, convincing everyone to use signal just to talk to me is not happening)

    And when my family/friends share photos/videos of important events in their lives that I care about I’d just have to accept I’ll be the only one missing out and be that awkward guy at family gatherings that’s all out of the loop.

    And when my family is organizing events I would be the only one left out and have to convince someone to text/call me because I don’t want to be in the chat, being an inconvenience to everyone and also losing much of my input.

    And I’m not even gonna mention how most workplaces and business expect you to be on WhatsApp.

    And what would I get in return for being off WhatsApp? Nothing, that’s what. I’d just be seen as the weirdo that never wants to interact with anyone online.

    Do I like meta? No. But avoiding everything they touch is not worth being a nuisance to everyone else around me. I’ve just learned to suck it up like most people do. It’s not ideal but it’s absolutely unrealistic to expect most people to get off whatsapp/messenger when everyone has been on it for like a decade now. It’s unfortunate but it is what it is.




  • Nothing about the US system is particularly geared to prevent double voting.

    I get that you don’t have a federal register (something you should really fix tbh) but requiring manual registration when you could, oh idk, simply register people when they are born and then later automatically provide them a unique ID they can vote with? (I’m not even talking a government ID for the purposes of identifying yourself to law enforcement and stuff, I’m talking even just a voter ID for the sake of voting only)

    Then have part of the number in that ID identify the state you’re from if you want to prevent crossing borders to double vote (kinda like how credit card numbers have that info on them).

    It’s what they do here anyway, I’ve had an ID since I was like 4, and it’s with that document that I and everyone else votes.

    Though I know the US is probably too anti-democratic for this and none of the parties in power want to change jack.


  • Why is it not okay to call it what it is? If you openly allow nazis into your site, you have a nazi site. I’m sorry but there’s just no way around it.

    Either you nip that garbage in the bud or your site is overrun by far right nut jobs, which is what happened with odysee.

    Of course nobody wants to use the site. Why would they?

    It’s the nazi bar problem. You allow one nazi to enter your bar, then that nazi brings his nazi friends, and before you notice it you have a nazi bar and no one wants to visit.

    Odysee doesn’t “appear” to have more right wing content, it objectively does. The majority of people who migrate to it are wackos who got banned in other places for their extremist views.