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Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

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Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#21

Post by josefresco »

lapcat wrote: post #20
josefresco wrote: post #15

Just wanted to share a tool (Chrome extension), that has made following people on Mastodon much easier. Mastodon View Profile: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-profile-r... Basically you click to view someone's profile, then click this extension's button in your toolbar and it will take you to YOUR instance, where you can follow that person with just one click (no copy+paste+search)

From looking at the source on Github, it appears that this extension attempts to work with simple string rearrangement AFAICT. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't generalize, as I discovered myself while attempting to build a similar extension. It will work in many cases, but it will also fail in other cases. It's not universal. The only reliable method is to use the search field on your instance, or to directly que…

Good feedback. I've used the button now around 60 times. The times when it "failed" were typically related to a temporary outage of the instance, or rate limiting. For example I used this thread to follow about a dozen new people, and eventually was blocked by "rate limiting".

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#22

Post by lapcat »

josefresco wrote: post #21
lapcat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From looking at the source on Github, it appears that this extension attempts to work with simple string rearrangement AFAICT. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't generalize, as I discovered myself while attempting to build a similar extension. It will work in many cases, but it will also fail in other cases. It's not universal. The only reliable method is to use the search field on your instance, or to directly que…

Good feedback. I've used the button now around 60 times. The times when it "failed" were typically related to a temporary outage of the instance, or rate limiting. For example I used this thread to follow about a dozen new people, and eventually was blocked by "rate limiting".

The issue I'm talking about isn't about rate limiting, it's about user name and server name mapping.

Take one example below: https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon

This does not map to https://myserver/@simon@fedi.simonwillison.net but rather https://myserver/@simon@simonwillison.net

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#24

Post by mcv »

Until recently, I most of my stream was politics, and I was missing the gamer crowd I used to hang with on Google+. Turns out they're all on dice.camp, and now that I found them, my stream is happy again.

So I'm mostly following a lot of RPG designers, but a few non-RPG-related names are: Cory Doctorow (super interesting of course), Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry (sometimes receives a lot of pointless responses, which makes it frustrating to engage) and George Takei (always receives a lot of pointless comments; I'd like to be able to hide other people's comments from his posts, because it's all noise).

Of course not everybody I'm following is on Mastodon. I'm not even on Mastodon. The Fediverse is a lot bigger than that.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#25

Post by barathr »

@futurebird@sauropods.win -- science, math, entomology

@librarianshipwreck@mastodon.social -- pithy critiques, cats

@nomdeb@mstdn.social -- history and other random things

@OkieSpaceQueen@scicomm.xyz -- science communications, conspiracy deconstruction

@tprophet@defcon.social -- writer at 2600

@kjhealy@mastodon.social -- pithy sociologist

@notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com -- urban planning

@enron@tilde.zone -- hacks and snark

@HelenBranswell@scicomm.xyz -- infectious disease reporting

@Jessicascott09@infosec.exchange -- misc infosec

@harshad@sharma.io -- farming in india

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#26

Post by weinzierl »

In no particular order within the respective sections.

No BS, down to earth infosec folks

Filippo Valsorda - https://abyssdomain.expert/@filippo

Marcus Hutchins - https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech

Tavis Ormandy - https://social.sdf.org/@taviso

Royce Williams - https://mastodon.social/@tychotithonus

The Grugq - https://infosec.exchange/@thegrugq

Alex Bloor - https://bloor.tw/@bloor

Andrew Tierney - https://infosec.exchange/@cybergibbons

The usual Rust crowd

Mara Bos - https://hachyderm.io/@Mara

Aaron Turon - https://hachyderm.io/@aturon

Luca Palmieri - https://hachyderm.io/@algo_luca

Tim McNamara - https://mastodon.nz/@timClicks

Raph Levien - https://mastodon.online/@raph

Game Dev

Ólafur Waage - https://mastodon.social/@olafurw

Godot Engine - https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@godotengine

Celebrities (Stephen was one of the first people I followed on Twitter, so it is a tradition. The others are canaries.)

Stephen Fry - https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry

Kathy Griffin - https://mstdn.social/@kathygriffin

Greta Thunberg - https://mastodon.nu/@gretathunberg

Honorable mention

Dan Luu - https://mastodon.social/@danluu

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#28

Post by weinzierl »

josefresco wrote: post #15

Just wanted to share a tool (Chrome extension), that has made following people on Mastodon much easier. Mastodon View Profile: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-profile-r... Basically you click to view someone's profile, then click this extension's button in your toolbar and it will take you to YOUR instance, where you can follow that person with just one click (no copy+paste+search)

Not a Chrome user, but thanks for creating this. I generally find Mastodon's UX better than its reputation, but following from the web is terrible.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#29

Post by beej71 »

I know this is asking about people, but following hashtags are where it's at. And it's a great way to find people, besides.

Here's mine, for example, a giveaway cross section of my interests...

#linux #unix #weather #bendoregon #orwx #railroad #history #caving #caves #seti #train #motorcycle #bicycle #openstreetmap #osm #amtrak #railfan #nasa #usgs #hacking #computerscience #math #programmerhumor (some real groaners) #astrophotography #astronomy #rustlang #space #science #programming

And then mute people whose stuff you don't want to see.

As for people, I follow my friends and:

@openstreetmap@en.osm.town

@royalastrosoc@astrodon.social

@stephenfry@mastodonapp.uk

@georgetakei@universeodon.com

@archlinux@fedi.lynnesbian.space

@nasa@mstdn.social (I think this is unofficial)

@sdf@sdf.org

Re: Ask HN: What interesting people are you following on Mastodon?

#30

Post by mg »

lapcat wrote: post #20
josefresco wrote: post #15

Just wanted to share a tool (Chrome extension), that has made following people on Mastodon much easier. Mastodon View Profile: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-profile-r... Basically you click to view someone's profile, then click this extension's button in your toolbar and it will take you to YOUR instance, where you can follow that person with just one click (no copy+paste+search)

From looking at the source on Github, it appears that this extension attempts to work with simple string rearrangement AFAICT. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't generalize, as I discovered myself while attempting to build a similar extension. It will work in many cases, but it will also fail in other cases. It's not universal. The only reliable method is to use the search field on your instance, or to directly que…

This simple code works for me:

    let your_instance="masto.ai";

    document.location=(
        "https://"
        + your_instance
        + "/authorize_interaction?uri="
        + encodeURIComponent(document.location)
    )
Before you turn it into a bookmarklet, set your_instance to the Mastodon instance you use.

You can use my bookmarklet editor to turn it into a bookmarklet:

https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor

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