T470 here (the anniversary model). I’ll part with it when someone takes it from my cold, dead body.

One big change that’s noticeable in many countries in the northern hemisphere is the disruption of the (northern) polar jet stream. The previous effects of the jet stream include a relative stability of (cold) weather in winter. Due to climate change, the jet stream becomes increasingly unstable, leading to winters with a back-and-forth between warmer periods and frequent “cold snaps”. It’s the latter that people point to, when they say “See? Climate change isn’t real”. The former is what people refer to when they say “There’s no snow anymore like there used to be”.

I think Lemmy needs a higher-level sign-up procedure that hides the complexity of the fediverse. This could be a webpage with a simple, clutter-free interface that handles picking and registering on an instance from a curated list semi-automatically, for example, by asking you 3-4 questions before giving you a suggested server that fits your responses (which you can change) and a button to register there. The procedure could also handle the occasional additional sign-up requirements that some instances have.

IMHO, 90% of users will never interact with the “federation” aspects of Lemmy after that, and they also don’t need to. I personally don’t feel like Lemmy being federated has much of an impact on my user experience day to day.

An elite 1.5 million.