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Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

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Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#261

Post by serverholic »

gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

Crypto is trying to solve this in a different way. Namely projects like lens protocol.

The idea is that the blockchain is a shared, decentralized database and you store simple messages on the blockchain and larger files on something like ipfs. This forms a social graph that a frontend ui can then import and provide a view into (a lens if you will).

It's nice because users just need one account (a wallet) and they have access to the whole social graph if they want, or they can configure their apps to only show certain things. The downside is that it's all public and once you lose your keys you're locked out of your account. Also, you can't really prevent anyone from posting things but you can choose which types of posts you allow on your feed.

It's a different set of tradeoffs that's interesting to explore.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#262

Post by encryptluks2 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #244

So, getting a little meta and just a little frustrated: I am amazed at the continued downward trend of the quality of the commentary on this site in regards to news relating to hacker culture, when topics like this come up. A pointy haired narcissist with a track record of taking credit for other people's work takes over a tech company and fires half of its employees based on a metric of the number of lines of code t…

You have to understand a lot of people own Tesla's and Tesla stock and they feel attacked personally seeing anything succeed that might affect their stock or opinions of Musk. By seeing other people be successful that might take away from Musk's success, they feel like it will affect their potential to get richer.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#263

Post by devmor »

fsdjkflsjfsoij wrote: post #225
georgeg23 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?

There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#264

Post by andy_ppp »

baby wrote: post #248
georgeg23 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit

For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#265

Post by georgeg23 »

mirekrusin wrote: post #253
georgeg23 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

Why there has to be "one mastermind guy"? It seems safe to say that you need to dovetail at least dozens of people to have successful rocket launching, well, startup?

Tom Mueller (recruited by Mike Griffin) also deserves credit. SpaceX hasn't built a reliable rocket engine since Tom left.

But Mike probably was #1 reason for SpaceX success.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#266

Post by trident5000 »

georgeg23 wrote: post #251
trident5000 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its almost like Elon hired him knowing hes smart or something...

....and Griffin gave him ~$2B of taxpayer money. (DARPA and COTS contracts before SpaceX flew a single rocket and CRS for Falcon 9). All discussed in the link above.

Why tax payer money? Where did that part come from.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#267

Post by noslenwerdna »

code_runner wrote: post #132
gonehome wrote: post #102

Mastodon and federated systems like it will not succeed beyond a tiny niche, will not replace twitter, and don't even solve most of the problems they try to solve. They don't fix the upstream issues that lead to centralization. Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience. It's the worst of both worlds. As designed the UX is bad and cannot be fixed because of these iss…

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

Ok, but how is it dishonest? That seems really out of whack with the rest of your post and kind of ranty.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#268

Post by itslennysfault »

petepete wrote: post #89
abzolv wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having too many servers (many thousands) could be a big drawback for onboarding. Choice paralysis, and difficulty / time consumption of picking a suitable server to join.

It definitely is. You just need to look at some Mastodon conversations from non-tech Twitter. People are confused about: * there are so many servers - which do I join? * how will I be able to tell people are who they say they are without the 'blue tick'? * if anyone can verify how do I know who is important/celebrity/official? * what do I do when the instance I want to join isn't open to registrations (and why on ear…

As a VERY technical user. I STILL have these same problems.

I've tried to join Mastodon at least a dozen times in the past few years, and every time I get stuck at step one (which server should I choose). Every server has a vibe of its own and joining one feels like an endorsement of it, and because the server name is part of your handle that endorsement follows you all over the fediverse.

If I feel this confused. I can't imagine what a non-technical user would feel. It's a fatal flaw and I don't know how they overcome it.

That said, I finally joined today at https://c.im

I chose it because it's short and that means I get a short @c.im handle. We'll see how this plays out (most likely with me not even using it tbh)

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#269

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #244

So, getting a little meta and just a little frustrated: I am amazed at the continued downward trend of the quality of the commentary on this site in regards to news relating to hacker culture, when topics like this come up. A pointy haired narcissist with a track record of taking credit for other people's work takes over a tech company and fires half of its employees based on a metric of the number of lines of code t…

I do have a pet theory that between GPT-3, various parsers, bots, 4chan influx we saw tendencies that eventually took slashdot and other forums down. I personally try to keep HN spirit alive, but I will admit it has gotten harder lately.

It would be sad news for me, because I see HN as last bastion of real conversation online.

Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?

#270

Post by serf »

torginus wrote: post #149
code_runner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always surprised when there are still people acting like Elon isn’t just BEGGING to be hated. I’m still of the opinion he is not doing the work and his success is mostly throwing money at eager (and smart) engineers. That’s a smart thing to do, good call on his part, but it’s almost like he doesn’t know that’s how his companies work. Maybe he is just great at running tech companies or something but acting like th…

If that's all he is doing - paying smart people and expecting them to work hard - why isn't literally everyone else doing the same?

> paying smart people and expecting them to work hard - why isn't literally everyone else doing the same?

is that a real question that expects an answer , or one of those 'SV-Wisdom from-on-high' sentences?

Here's an easy practical answer that will fit 95% of the responses : I don't have the money to hire a lot of experts to execute my ideas, nor do I have the familial or business connections in order to facilitate the loans needed.

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