I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and ev…
I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)
From GNU social to Mastodon
101–110 of 155 posts
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think everyone I disagree is a Nazi. It's just… easy to lose patience with the “free speech” line of argument when so many people invoking it are doing so in bad faith.
Also, not everybody you disagree with acts in bad faith. Nazis, communists, anarchists, you name it: most of them believe their views of society will lead to a betterment of it. They don't adhere to their principles just because they want to fuck with others.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#103I really miss something like thematic "groups" or "channels" in Mastodon, i.e., a mechanism for making sure that all the people subscribed get all the messages published in it. That's the #1 feature that allows separate communities to grow, which makes places like Usenet or Reddit or ICQ to become a global conversation where anyone can participate, and where private conversations between restricted communities can ha…
You can do that with hashtags, but it is only going to show up within your instance's federation. Gnusocial has ! Groups which do propagate all posts, but mastodon didn't implement that bit.
Matrix.org has a good model for channels (called rooms), groups of channels [1] (called Communities), and distributed identities. I only hope that Matrix.org will become the common background middleware for all federated services, and all these will tend to implement the same features for interoperability.
[1] https://medium.com/@RiotChat/communities-aka-groups-are-here...
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like it too, but having used it casually for about a week, I'm wondering how you visit different communities without creating multiple accounts? It should be as easy as visiting a different subreddit. (I do know that you can subscribe to individuals in other instances, but haven't done that yet.)
There’s a beta iOS app called Toot that solves this by letting you add timelines for instances you don’t have an account on. If you try interacting with anyone on that timeline, it asks you if you want to use one of your other accounts to handle that interaction. Don’t know if any other clients offer this. Link: https://mastodon.social/@tootapp
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to tagging data with XML, I wont go into the misguided use of it in configuration files as its not really quicker creating checks using XML and XLS as a programmer in the "zone" :) Point is that albeit nice, there is no need for something like this to even be in a browser. But by using AJAX it kind of have to be. In addition to advertisers being able to know due to Javascript that the user is present. And…
What are you even talking about? Modern web apps don't even use XML anymore, barring a few outliers.
Is this wrong? Only worked with HPC and mostly hardware-software layer.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to tagging data with XML, I wont go into the misguided use of it in configuration files as its not really quicker creating checks using XML and XLS as a programmer in the "zone" :) Point is that albeit nice, there is no need for something like this to even be in a browser. But by using AJAX it kind of have to be. In addition to advertisers being able to know due to Javascript that the user is present. And…
I think you have a misunderstanding of what AJAX is. I have no idea what you are getting at with the political rambling about metadata and Trump.
What concerns Trump is merely that this technically allows political manipulation by having a short and cheap route to be able to do just that.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#107For the social part to really work, you need a community to adopt it. Not just an internet community. Good to see alternatives to Twitter however. Generally don't like AJAX, it's JS and XML, and in the latter case Twitter services don't require Stylesheets or XLS as it's called -- without -- XML is bloated and creates metadata for sale. In addition to AJAX allowing Orwellian advertisement influence. Edit: this gets d…
> Edit: this gets downvoted? reasonable technical criticism or dialogue. I'm quite sure the reason is that it's for me impossible to parse your message, even though I know what AJAX, Javascript, XML and Stylesheets are. If there really is a point in your message, you might want to try to reformulate it - perhaps in terms of how you as a user are actually negatively affected? (e.g. does Mastodon deplete your mobile su…
Edit to reply to the the reply below, apparently speed is frowned upon in HN:
> Maybe this analysis helps:
This is hyperbole :)
>> Generally don't like AJAX
> Not quite sure what AJAX has to do with this - I don't think Mastodon differs from Twitter here? In the sense that it has webpages that make requests to servers without reloading the page.
AJAX is said to be an improvement, exactly why? The implications is that it "improves" the platform. The reason why is well, pun intended, objectifying "documents".
>> it's JS and XML
> This is confusing as well. You refer to XML, which is probably due to the first method of sending HTTP requests without a full page request being the XMLHTTPRequest DOM API. I'm not sure if XML was necessarily involved when that was the only method, but I'm quite sure no XML is involved at all in Mastodon. But even if it was, it's not quite sure what the problem of that would be for you as a user.
Let's perhaps agree that hashtags suffice. Value add for opportunities in the backend does nothing for the users. For it's the enforce "internet bubbles".
>> Twitter services don't require Stylesheets or XLS as it's called
> This one is really hard to parse. My intuition would be that you're talking about Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), the method commonly used to define what a webpage looks like. But then you also mention XLS, which I assume does not refer to Microsoft Excel's file format, but I'm not quite sure what it does refer to - maybe you meant XSLT? But both Mastodon and Twitter use CSS (and I can't imagine you being against that), and neither uses XSLT?
XML is in a family of initiatives for preserving text an data across platforms and formats. Stylesheets allow you to EXPLAIN in a parseable way what that tagged data is supposed to look like as presentable information.
>> XML is bloated and creates metadata for sale.
> As far as I know XML only contains the data the developers put in there, and the same would be true for alternatives such as the more commonly used JSON. And again, there's no XML in Mastodon.
It's tagged data and information, as in metadata and widely abused in the "semantic web" that mostly has value to those that sell user data for-profit. Try and follow the thought train from the premises in the technology and the industry of today.
>> In addition to AJAX allowing Orwellian advertisement influence.
> So I guess your point is that somehow there's more advertisement influence at Mastodon than at Twitter? Again, it's entirely unclear how that would be the case.
Because of these technologies, it can be sold to investors as such. It may just be there for being told it is better due to to easier route to as a paid-for service.
> To sum up: it's probably downvoted because there doesn't appear to be reasonable criticism in here, and in fact, there doesn't really seem to be any content that one could even technically criticise.
Really?
> I hope I at least made clear why I was unable to understand your post, or even to criticise it. I might have misunderstood, in which case do enlighten me, but it can at least explain why people downvote you. Hope that helps.
Not in the slightest, but this dialogue is far more useful than having to ask why something is down voted prior to there being an exchange of arguments.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have a misunderstanding of what AJAX is. I have no idea what you are getting at with the political rambling about metadata and Trump.
Perhaps, but I know the implications of javascript. This allows mouse and keyboard events from the browser and is the most insecure language known. What concerns Trump is merely that this technically allows political manipulation by having a short and cheap route to be able to do just that.
Hyperbolic nonsense. Javascript couldn't even aspire to be as insecure as C.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#109For the social part to really work, you need a community to adopt it. Not just an internet community. Good to see alternatives to Twitter however. Generally don't like AJAX, it's JS and XML, and in the latter case Twitter services don't require Stylesheets or XLS as it's called -- without -- XML is bloated and creates metadata for sale. In addition to AJAX allowing Orwellian advertisement influence. Edit: this gets d…
do you know how many queer furries are on mastodon right now holy crap, that is definitely a community Also um I think pretty much the entire fediverse is free of ads right now.
Re: From GNU social to Mastodon
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps, but I know the implications of javascript. This allows mouse and keyboard events from the browser and is the most insecure language known. What concerns Trump is merely that this technically allows political manipulation by having a short and cheap route to be able to do just that.
>and is the most insecure language known. Hyperbolic nonsense. Javascript couldn't even aspire to be as insecure as C.
If that's hyperbole, I'm in stable orbit around earth.
https://deadliestwebattacks.com/2013/01/22/know-your-javascr...
https://www.cnet.com/news/faq-javascript-insecurities/
Wannabe "fiddlers" love JS as everything works.
"They should peruse their Web site for cross-site scripting flaws and fix those."
Every site is now cross-site with FB and Google, even using them as JS service providers. It has shot security that inherently dead.