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sj_zero

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Debunking the Top 10 Myths About Mastodon (wedistribute.org)

Hey there! Figured I’d share here since my main instance, Lemmy.ml, seems to be really broken right now. I published an article today focusing on some of the myths and misconceptions Mastodon users have spread over the last few years, with some critical analysis and debunking....

sj_zero ,

Pretty decent list. It covered a lot of the myths I think about.

One myth you mention that I see a lot is the idea that people you don't like won't be on the fediverse. On the face of it it's an absurd idea -- So anyone can start an instance and run it however they want but somehow it's going to be more locked down than big tech sites that spend millions of dollars on moderation?

The myth that "it's all called mastodon" that you mention I feel is less like the gnu/linux distinction, and more like your mom calling every video game system a "nintendo". I'm running 6 different services that use some form of federation, and none of them are Mastodon (nothing against the program, it's just that I've always been running with system performance at a premium so something heavy and scalable like that wasn't on my radar)

sj_zero ,

I think for most people talking about algorithms, the problem isn't an algorithm, it's "The Algorithm".

The distinction is that everything on a computer screen is displayed using an algorithm, but The Algorithm is instead this sinister thing that arbitrarily displays things for the benefit of the company rather than the benefit of the user.

An Algorithm might show posts by upvotes or by comments or by some combination of the two, or by time, or by some combination of the three. The Algorithm will show stormfront posts to black people because it drives engagement. On Youtube for example, a thumbs down is just as acceptable for the purposes of The Algorithm as a thumbs up.

sj_zero ,

I really hope that they've added some algorithms for mirroring. I still want an algorithm to mirror based on user subscriptions, since those are the videos most likely to be watched on one instance and so the most useful ones to mirror...

sj_zero ,

WordPress is an option, so is writefreely, but so is just using a normal activitypub compatible platform and just increase your maximum character limit.

One thing with wordpress, make sure that you test it. I had one plug-in installed, and it claimed to be federating okay, but then I subscribed to my own feed and there was just nothing.

sj_zero ,

Gemini seems to be lighter version of HTTP and HTML for creating lightweight pages to view. I've seen some examples in the past.

sj_zero ,

It's the only thing you're allowed to talk about on some instances. Really need to choose carefully.

Otoh the fediverse is what you make of it. I checked the top posts on my feed and I didn't see a single post about Linux.

sj_zero ,

To be fair, pretty much every government breaks its own rules, particularly when privacy is involved.

We have the largest and most invasive world governments in the history of the world thanks to the overwhelming technology that allows such a thing. And even governments that pretend to follow the rules just get their buddies in another country to do their dirty work for them. "I can't spy on you, but England can!"

sj_zero ,

Originally copyright was like 15 years and if the thing was really good for you then you could Apply for a second 15 year term.

30 years is a long time to get a monopoly over something. As a human being, 30 years is a significant part of your entire lifetime. From birth to 30 years you have your entire childhood, many people go to and finish college, get married, have kids, achieve a degree of professional success. Another 30 years from that moment, many people are at the end of their lives. They're retiring, some who smoked or did other things are dying of old people diseases.

I believe strongly enough that 15 years is a reasonable copyright term that my book, the graysonian ethic, which I published in 2021, has a note on the legal page releasing it to the public domain 15 years from the first date of publishing, and in jurisdictions where you can't do that, it's licensed under the creative Commons zero license

If I want to own the rights to another book, I can write another book. If I can't make back the money that I spent writing and publishing it in 15 years, then that's a me problem, not a society problem the police can help enforce.

The famous song Happy Birthday left copyright only a couple years ago, and not because it timed out. The song which was written in the era of my great grandparents only lost protection from the largest state in history because after a hundred years no one could keep track of who owned it anymore.

sj_zero ,

Honestly, the less special treatment any one corporation gets, or the less special treatment corporations as a whole get, that's a win for everyone else in society.

Most people on both sides of the aisle if you stepped away from the specific political situation would agree that companies should not be allowed to form their own municipal governments, either.

sj_zero ,

Oblivions shivering Isle expansion was really good. Quick and dense.

Questions about blade server SSDs [ANSWERED] (kbin.run)

I recently bought a used blade server on the cheap (thank you LabGopher) to upgrade my home set-up and got one in pretty good shape. This is my first foray into blade servers and as I'm in the process of setting it up I'm running into some questions where I'm in a bit over my head trying to figure out....

sj_zero ,

Typically nobody is going to use raid 0 and give you access to all the drives. I suspect your system is set up for raid-5 so 3 drives are data one is parity.

When the system boots there'll be a prompt to press something like ctrl-D to enter disk setup then you can delete the raid array and set up each disk as individual drives.

sj_zero ,

Cost of hosting an instance is highly variable based on the way it's hosted, the size of the instance, and what sort of instance it is (since there's many different kinds such as mastodon, peertube, Lemmy, etc)

Self hosting from home can cost just the price of hardware and power. Once you outsource hosting as many large instances do the price starts to rise. It's the large instances that start asking for donations as well, since it does cost more and more.

The fediverse vs. Big tech is the tortoise and the hare. It keeps slowly growing and as big tech takes a nap under a tree and pisses more people off by making more bad decisions. There's nothing fundamentally impossible about the concept -- email is federated and most boomers are just fine with email.

sj_zero ,

The top three causes of death are heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary disease. Heart disease can be painful but can also result in a relatively painless death by heart attack. Stroke can cause pain, but death by stroke can be quick and painless. Pulmonary disease is more likely than not really brutal if it's fatal, with people suffering from it suffering from a feeling that they're drowning constantly.

Twitch-like service for the fediverse?

I’m thinking of spinning up some streaming for a couple of games in the near future, (I always do massive 400+ hour factories in Satisfactory) and was wondering if there’s a place or software to stream on that’s not Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta? I’m not looking for revenue or massive followers, this would just be...

sj_zero ,

Peertube has streaming with xmpp based live chat. One really need thing with peertube is it will do peer to peer live streaming, so if you have a really popular stream all the people watching your stream will end up serving it to other people who are watching your stream.

sj_zero ,

I feel like phaser emitters on nacelle pylons is a general nono.

Typically you see them on thicker areas and further from the warp nacelles.

I imagine having a bunch of phased energy next to the source of your warp field could be tricky.

It would also be particularly bad if your phasers had some sort of catastrophic failure and it blew off one of your warp nacelles, or if the enemy ship was targeting phasers and blew a hole through your pylon in the process.

Unless I'm misreading the image and someone is trying to shoot the pylon.

sj_zero ,

I didn't even know it was there. Honestly, having a phaser emitter right next to a hinged point only raises way more questions for me!

sj_zero ,

Interesting thing is that everything shrunk after the Galaxy Class.

I'm thinking it's because the galaxy class was a relic of Star Fleet's golden age. Most of their enemies were either allies or quiet, they started to think this little war thing was beneath them and turned their flagship into a luxury cruise liner.

I wonder what post-Wolf 359 Picard would say if he met Season 1 Picard. Hell, I wonder what post dominion war Picard would say to both of them?

sj_zero ,

I appreciate the link. I've seen the phrase "The end of History" before, but after reading about it, I can't help but think the phrase has a quaint "Manifest destiny" vibe to it, people making some really powerful proclamations they'll regret later.

sj_zero ,

? "Hello World"

sj_zero ,

One thing that most reddit alumni won't care about, but one of the nicest things about doing it decentralized is censorship resistance.

Bandcamp at some point decided that the political views of the artists on their platform are a reason to get rid of some artists.

You might not see a problem since you agree with bandcamp's politics, but companies change their politics on a dime when it becomes useful to do so.

One problem with open source commercial sites is you're typically going to need business partners to handle credit card transactions.

sj_zero ,

They took down tim pools music, and recently I went to buy some mp3s of a guy who opposes covid mandates and he was banned too.

Again, lots of folks might disagree with both those people, but when it comes to shit like this you are always next.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-bandcamp-removes-timcast-five-times-august-from-platform

sj_zero ,

Does saying a false thing about COVID mean that everything you've ever said can now be banned everywhere forever?

Since not every one of the guys songs were about COVID, but they were all taken down.

Does this apply to disinformation like "If you get the vaccine you won't get COVID"? How about "If you get the vaccine you won't spread COVID to others"?

sj_zero ,

At the end of the day, what you're talking about is exactly right.

It feels like a win if people you don't like get silenced, but it's a two sided sword that rarely ends up back in the scabbard without tasting friendly blood -- as you've shown.

sj_zero ,

One important thing with SSDs is that many even today aren't great with power loss detection.

Kingston makes a very reasonably priced data center class SSD with lots of RW cycles and specific power loss protection. I haven't tested them yet, but it's a good sign they at least mention it in their specs. I previously used intel data center class SSDs, but they're harder to get ahold of these days.

sj_zero ,

Man, people think they want laws to regulate the internet but seem to forget who owns the lobbyists.

The fediverse will be at risk as soon as they start legislating.

sj_zero ,

Man, people think they want laws to regulate the internet but seem to forget who owns the lobbyists.

The fediverse will be at risk as soon as they start legislating.

sj_zero ,

Excuse me, I think you meant "correct's you're code"

sj_zero ,

fr fr no cap

sj_zero ,

BIIIIG problem: The last 5%.

Did ChatGPT just hallucinate it? Does it exist but it isn't used like ChatGPT says? Does it exist but it doesn't do what ChatGPT thinks it does?

I use ChatGPT sometimes to help out with stuff at home (I've tried it for work stuff but the stuff I work on is niche enough that it purely hallucinates), and I've ended up running in circles for hours because the answer I got ended up in this uncanny valley: Correct enough that it isn't immediately obviously wrong, but incorrect enough that it won't work, it can't work, and you're going to really have to put a lot of work in to figure that out.

sj_zero ,

There's a 5 hour interview with John Carmack on YouTube where he talks about transitioning from really caring deeply about algorithms and the like to deeply caring about how to make a sustainable and maintainable codebase you can have an entire team work on.

Often, a solution that is completely correct if all you're doing is solving that problem is completely incorrect in the greater context of the codebase you're working within, like if you wanted to add a dog to the Mona Lisa, you can't just draw a detailed line art dog or a cartoon dog and expect it to work -- you'd need to find someone who can paint a dog similar to the art style of the piece and properly get it to mesh with the painting.

sj_zero ,

I remember reading that book. His first book was called "I am not Spock" and was talking about all the stuff that's Leonard Nimoy alone, but this one was about how he'd internalized a voice from his character who would have the Vulcan point of view.

One of the most interesting parts of the book was where Spock pointed out there's no need to fear death because it's non-existence, and you won't be there to care. Considering I read this when I was still in grade school, it was a pretty big revelation.

Nestle, Volvo among 130 companies urging COP28 agreement to ditch fossil fuels (www.reuters.com)

Nestle, Volvo among 130 companies urging COP28 agreement to ditch fossil fuels::Companies including Nestle , Unilever , Mahindra Group and Volvo Cars are urging political leaders to agree a timeline at the upcoming U.N. climate summit to phase out fossil fuels.

sj_zero ,

Don't worry about it budday!

The chocolate industry hasn't found a viable alternative to African slavery 160 years after the emancipation proclamation, but they've got this fossil fuels thing licked!

sj_zero ,

You can get surface mount cable raceways that connect to the wall with adhesive. Works well and also looks great.

https://www.amazon.com/Raceway-Management-Channel-Paintable-Concealer/dp/B07GPFDL1K/

Another option is called "sticky backs", they're not as nice looking, but they're commonly used by electricians in cabinets to secure wires:

https://www.amazon.com/Adhesive-Mounts-Holders-Multi-Purpose-Sticky/dp/B08XLR46Y7

One thing is if you're really concerned about the walls, maybe put a strip of masking tape on the wall before the sticky backs or cable raceway. That way you don't need to worry about the adhesive on them taking the paint off afterwards.

sj_zero ,

My ISP had the same problem, ultimately I was able to convince them to let me use my own router. In doing that, I was able to at first use a standard off the shelf router and later a pfsense firewall to handle NAT that exposed my servers to the outside world.

Before I was able to do that, I was pretty convinced I wasn't going to be able to self host. There are other options, such as special VPNs for self-hosting, but that's not really the point, is it?

Wander , (edited ) to selfhosted
@Wander@packmates.org avatar

The future of selfhosted services is going to be... Android?

Wait, what?

Think about it. At some point everyone has had an old phone lying around. They are designed to be constantly connected, constantly on... and even have a battery and potentially still a SIM card to survive power outages.

We just need to make it easy to create APK packaged servers that can avoid battery-optimization kills and automatically configure an outbound tunnel like ngrok, zerotrust, etc...

The goal: hosting services like , , !? should be as easy as installing an APK and leaving an old phone connected to a spare charger / outlet.

It would be tempting to have an optimized ROM, but if self-hosting is meant to become more commonplace, installing an APK should be all that's needed. can do SSH, VPN and other tunnels without the need for root, so there should be no problem in using tunnels to publicly expose a phone/server in a secure manner.

In regards to the suitability of home-grade broadband, I believe that it should not be a huge problem at least in Europe where home connections are most often unmetered: "At the end of June 2021, 70.2% of EU homes were passed by either FTTP or cable DOCSIS
3.1 networks, i.e. those technologies currently capable of supporting gigabit speeds."

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/broadband-coverage-europe-2021

PS. syncthing actually already has an APK and is easy to use. Although I had to sort out some battery optimization stuff, it's a good example of what should become much more commonplace.

cc: @selfhosted

sj_zero ,

Looking at the present, I'm not aware of android devices not booting 10 years after they were released. In fact, my 2013 MotoX is still a perfectly usable phone for many purposes. I had to use it for a few weeks a couple years ago because my phone broke.

sj_zero ,

Oh, it's just a thermopile put out in the sun.

I can see why it never caught on then. You'd be relying on the difference in temperature between the hot side of a thing painted black put in the sun and the cool side in the shade. The amount of energy you'd get from such a setup would be infinitecimal. I'd expect you'd need to do an absurd amount of work and use an absurd amount of material just to power a single house.

The amount of energy it would take to build a "solar cell" thermopile that'd generate 1.5v with a quite high internal resistance would probably be in the megawatt-hours, likely from coal and oil.

sj_zero ,

It was early when I read the article, I got the impression that the 9W was for the furnace version of the thermopile electric generator.

sj_zero ,

The AT protocol and activitypub are completely different protocols. Bluesky the "distributed" Twitter replacement uses AT, but nobody else does.

The benefit of activitypub is that it is completely decentralized. You don't need to ask anyone's permission to start up an activitypub project or server other than maybe a domain registrar.

The benefit of AT is you can maintain a single unified identity across different servers, since there's basically one source of login credentialing.

At least that's as far as I understand it, I could be wrong.

sj_zero ,

I do believe that you're right and that is the case.

sj_zero ,

I ended up giving up on kbin after almost a week of trying to simply get it to run and federate. Ended up running Lemmy (though I'm presently using lotide as my main threadiverse experience) and after days of not being able to federate with kbin.

Hoping kbin federates with lotide soon.

Really like the project in a lot of ways, but when I tried it, it just wasn't ready yet.

sj_zero ,

It's been around for quite a while, longer than kbin definitely.

I like it because it's super light on both the front end and the back end.

good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?

Hello , dear lemmy users , I am starting to really like self-host because they are really fast and mostly i use open source stuff (like lemmy /photon etc) which were sometimes slow but after self hosting it now on the pc i am on using , i really like it...

sj_zero ,

I like fanless PCs. Some have gpio headers for home automation purposes.

For just self-hosting, I'd probably like using refurbished laptops. Seems nuts, but low power, included input and screen, built in UPS, and sometimes you can get them for like 100 bucks. You can just use a USB or wifi device for home automation purposes if need be.

Leaving the fediverse

Man, I was all on board with this idea. Federated instances made so much sense to me. But it’s tankies all the way down, and it’s just not worth my time anymore. Hell, if the largest instance bans you seconds after you call out a tankie mod, where can you escape? Great idea, terrible execution. Everyone wants lemmy to grow,...

sj_zero ,

Tbf, most of the fediverse isn't lemmy.

sj_zero ,

The only way to know for sure is to test. I found I could subscribe to peertube channels using lemmy, but that wasn't intended and just a happy side effect of the common activitypub protocol.

I recall seeing new videos and being able to comment but not be able to create new posts that would federate since that wouldn't make a lot of sense.

sj_zero ,

SAP is also popular, and nobody is actually known on planet Earth to have anything positive to say about it.

I figure their marketing department hires some really good call girls. Only explanation I can fathom.

sj_zero ,

It is a little dangerous to do in case you experience a crash or a power failure, but you can get a lot more bang for the buck from your server hardware if you have a decent amount of memory by tuning your different system components to keep more data in memory and write to disk less often. This can be done with sysctl.conf and dirty writes, or with php or MySQL using more working memory and not writing to disk as often.

It was particularly required when I was still using a spinning drive, since random io was a show stopper. Even using a decent sata SSD it can be beneficial however, letting the system choose to write at more opportune moments instead of doing it in the middle of read ops.

sj_zero ,

I'm hoping lotide federates with kbin soon.

sj_zero ,

Most companies don't want you to drink cyanide, but it isn't good for you. Most companies don't want you getting hurt on the job. Most companies don't want you drinking or doing drugs while using heavy equipment. All these things arent good for you.

I'm not saying to unionize or not, but the logic is fallacious.

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