Can anyone recommend a mastodon server for technically-minded folks?
Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
271–280 of 521 posts
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we were to accept that as true as stated, which I don't, that doesn't explain Paypal and Tesla. Even if you think this Michael Griffin guy did everything - why did Elon bet on him? Why didn't anyone else? Tons of people had the money to do it at the same time. None of them did.
Nobody did everything. We all build upon the work of giants, Elon Musk and Michael Griffin included.
Musk talks about his employees and how critical they were/are constantly. This whole notion that "Musk didnt do it all" is such a clown argument because theres no other form of attack from people who simply dont like him and his politics.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#273So, 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…
Hackernews isn't for hackers. If anything, it's geared towards software engineers, most of which aren't anything like "hackers" and can swing fairly convervative on many topics. This place isn't old school slashdot. If anything it's more for people that just want to get rich in tech at all costs.
I'm not new here, and.. well ... It's always been a mix of both, but that mix seems to have shifted in % and tone in the last couple years especially. Maybe reflecting broader culture wars issues.
But there used to be a much broader consensus in the industry among nerds about responses to this kind of thing.
Empathy to fellow software engineers in our tech industry is one thing I would expect re: the twitter layoffs. I worry about apathy about license violations for the license that literally made Linux (and therefore huge swathes of the modern tech infrastructure) possible. Again, not recognizable to me is the dismissive sneer about new possibilities in social networks and tech.
And yeah, perhaps Mastodon is annoying/frustrating to these people precisely because it isn't a monetized money making scheme.
FWIW I am one of those "software engineers" you mention and did my decade in a FAANG. But I only got that title because of the time I spent as a hacker-nerd in my teens.
I'm trying not to paint too much of a straw-man here, but it feels like a trend to me, a worrisome one.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#274So, 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…
Presumably your comment is directed at me, but I think we probably have overlapping wants and disagree on how to get those results.
I think you're wrong about Musk, but that aside - I want us to escape the ad-driven model we're trapped in. I want users to have actual control over their computing. I want hackers back.
I just do not think these federated attempts will get us there, I think that's been proven over the last thirty years, and I don't want us to waste time on half-measures destined to fail.
It's not a disagreement about the goals - it's a disagreement about the focus and the tactics to get the goal we want. I want more than some system that serves a handful of highly technical niche users (arguably poorly) in a mostly centralized fashion. I want a path to actually achieving the goals the cypherpunks of the 90s web originally set out to achieve.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean, federated systems like the web or email won't succeed ?
Correct - email is a failure as a federated system, people are centralized on a handful of providers and you can't even run your own server these days without getting blacklisted. The promise of the decentralized web of the 90s is a failure. The majority of users are centralized on handful of megacorporation apps despite the ad business making this pretty awful. We're trapped in a local maximum because of the underly…
> people are centralized on a handful of providers
Still better than a closed protocol. The fact that Google knows everbody can switch away from Gmail without any real downsides for sure keeps them in check. There are no real network effects for one company to take advantage of, unlike it is the case with closed protocol systems like WhatsApp.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are so many people calling Elon Musk by his first name, like he's their buddy or neighbor? This reminds me when Steve Jobs had passed away, many people were walking the streets with candles and cards in memoriam of "Steve". How come?
Celebrities induce parasocial relationships. None of those come close to the response to the death of Diana.
Thank's for your response.. what an immensely interesting [1] topic.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#277Mastodon 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…
> Incentives mean most users end up centralized on a handful of servers with a worse experience.
I don’t understand this point. I’m on a tiny server, but read the federated feed most of the time. What’s the problem?
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#278If anyone seriously thinks Mastodon is going to become a replacement for Twitter they're deluded. The whole convoluted nature of it will put off average users. Nobody gives a crap that its decentralised yet they insist on shoving it down everyones throat as they jump through hoops trying to work out how to follow someone.
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#279Even if mastodon takes off, it will be like any other protocol on the internet: A centralized free service will appear , like Gmail did, which most people will be there . Twitter will probably convert its service to activityPub then. Slightly better than what we have today, but it wont be immune. Also, does anyone remember the backlashes every time facebook made a major change to their website? Yeah , all those users…
I didn't believe your point about Gmail, expecting many companies to still host their own mail servers or use other services, so I went looking for some data. Found [1], which says that Gmail has 34% market share and Microsoft Exchange 33%. GoDaddy is third with 15% and all others are Still, if Twitter would use ActivityPub I'd consider that a huge improvement. I can send a mail from my @outlook.com to your @gmail.com account, and I can send a text message from my Verizon phone number to your AT&T one; while apps like Twitter, Whatsapp, Messenger are all closed off. If Twitter would adopt an open protocol, IMO that would be a huge improvement, preventing lock-in, allowing users to choose between different UIs, having instances with slightly different features competing.
(Also, regarding your last point, remember when Digg did a major redesign? Change can happen ;-) )
Re: Twitter users jump to Mastodon, but what is it?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades? How many have succeeded on the scale Elon has? "Throwing money at smart engineers" is not a novel idea. Executing it well is extremely hard, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades.
Do you know the NFL betting scam? It's awesome. Here's how it works. You choose 1024 people, and you send all of them a prediction about one upcoming sports game, free of charge. 50% get one prediction, 50% get the other. Next week, you have 512 people who think you can guess pretty good. You pick another game. 256 people get one prediction, 256 get the other. The following week, 256 people think you got two in a row…
I think you clicked the wrong link, it sounds like you wanted to answer some crypto-currency speculation thread.