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Comment by cherioo | Hacker News Reader

There is a “show more” button

""" I have been informed that everyone at NSF who was overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation (PAWR)[1] project is gone. This program has been providing testbed environments to help drive forward wireless networking, including mobile/cellular networks at locations in Harlem NY, Salt Lake City Utah, Ames Iowa, and Cary North Carolina. One of the explicit goals of the program is to keep the US competitive when it comes to both wireless technology development and training the workforce needed for leading-edge wireless networks.

I do hope that the program will continue with new leadership - some PAWR contracts are still active, and some platforms, including ours[2] have funding outside of PAWR. But the loss of institutional knowledge will seriously hurt these programs, and is definitely not "efficient"

[1] https://advancedwireless.org/ [2] https://www.powderwireless.net/

"""

What a strange UI/UX.

This is because a bunch of us use the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.) as a general purpose social media network and really don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is, but want to read the other things folks have to say. So a bit of etiquette has built up over the years to stash those things under a CW (think of it like a subject line) so you can read it when and if you have the spoons to do so, and can happily ignore it and wait for something else from that person, say, cat pictures, without having to unfollow them.

In a more elegant world, Mastodon/Fediverse would have the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow `@mh+cats@example.com` without following @mh+uspol@example.com`, but we're not in that elegant world. Mastodon (nor Pleroma, nor Pixelfed, nor any of the other Fediverse software) doesn't offer anything like that, short of multiple accounts, which comes with other big problems.

Have the spoons to do so...?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory

Ok, that's actually very cool. And I deeply share this sentiment:

> don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is

> In a more elegant world [..] the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow [..]

One can dream. I used to regard the idea of filter bubbles as a negative thing, but I'd be perfectly content with being able to craft my own right about now.

Yeah. As with many things, having a bubble is not wrong _if_ you are aware of it and _if_ you control it and you chose it.

As Technology Connections recently said, it's worrying that people have had hostile bubbles built around them and not noticed.

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