41–50 of 219 posts
> (...) the fediverse, the network of mastodon servers, (...) This sentence at the very start already makes no sense. The above snippet makes as much sense as calling Web a network of nginx and Apache servers since nginx and Apache combined serve the majority of all web traffic. There are services like Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, Pixelfed, Write.as, PeerTube, and other Activity-Pub-speaking software which are NOT Ma…
> (...) the fediverse, the network of mastodon servers, (...) This sentence at the very start already makes no sense. The above snippet makes as much sense as calling Web a network of nginx and Apache servers since nginx and Apache combined serve the majority of all web traffic. There are services like Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, Pixelfed, Write.as, PeerTube, and other Activity-Pub-speaking software which are NOT Ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand the network-wide ban? That makes Mastodon inherently centralised. Who is the person who has the final say which server may be part of the fediverse? Why does a network-ban even need to exist? There is no algorithm that presents your feed with posts from other servers. You only see who you follow. It's like saying some person has the final say which RSS feeds all RSS feed readers should ban from the…
Also very new to this still, but from what I got so far, #fediblock is first and foremost just a hashtag. It's "well known" and there is a convention behind it, but it doesn't have any specific technical effects - i.e., you can't just remote control another server's blocklist by tooting #fediblock. If your server's admin(?) makes a fediblock toot, that's more an statement that your own server has blocked someone and…
Lower tier trackers will often adapt the cabal's decisions for various reasons. You end up with a situation where one staff member making a decision can end your membership on a dozen sites.
In the torrent world, it's pretty open. I expect the same to be the case on the fediverse, even if it's not publicly communicated. I'm sure server admins do communicate with each other in non-public forms.
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“GNU/Linux” is simply a subset of “Linux” tbh Therefore “Linux” is always correct where “GNU/Linux” is, but not vice-versa. In contrast: Mastodon and Pleroma, PeerTube, etc. are simply elements of the same set.
> “GNU/Linux” is simply a subset of “Linux” Can you elaborate on this? I really don't understand why you say this. In a GNU/Linux distro Linux provides the kernel, and GNU the userland tools. How can GNU/Linux be a subset of Linux? Your next sentence makes it clear you don't mean superset, so I'm lost at understanding what you mean.
I've seen more and more advertisements for Mastadon on HN, probably because of the whole Twitter debacle. Does anyone use the service? I mean, enough people so that the average person would know what it is? From my experience with Mastadon it took me a while to even learn how the service was used, and all I remember was thinking "wow that's too complicated to use or get Joe Average User to sign up for". Without ease…
Signing up and using it is no more complicated than Twitter once you choose an instance. The Gradient (which I am part of) set up a new Mastodon instance (sigmoid.social) last week for the AI community which now has 3.5k active users - it took off rather quickly. My hope is that Mastodon becomes like a cross between Discord and Twitter; specific communities such as AI people set up an instance for themselves via a si…
It's nice that they allow off-migration and don't lock your community in.
Does Mastodon need to spend more time per post on moderation than a service like Twitter? As I understand it, people generally report bad posts to the moderator of the instance they came from and expect them to take them down. And if the instance is unresponsive to takedown requests, it gets added to a blacklist that is shared widely across instances (via #fediblock etc). So the end result is you generally have one p…
That's why I think if you don't self host the first server choice ("choose whatever you want it doens't matter") is extremely downplayed. Instances can block each other and if you end up on a "wrong one" (the peer pressure to avoid guilt by association is really really strong if you look around) then you have to move around, your name changes etc.
I really need to remind you folks that you are transferring your trust to these local server administrators. They might mishandle your data. They might be even less prepared to deal with moderation than big social media. They might end up having to close their services due to lack of time or money. It’s all fun but please keep this in mind. Perhaps host your own instance?
Mastodon at least is not trying to shove politics and celebrities down my throat.
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That's a gross oversimplification of the premodern economic system. You could only grow food crops next to navigable rivers, they doubled in price for every 20 miles they were transported overland. This meant that the majority of land could only be used for subsistence farming because nothing else could keep the people working the land from starving. Cash crops like frankincense were the only ones that could be grown…
Well 20 miles from a navigable river looks a lot like most of populated Europe and China... But I absolutely take the point - anything that can fit in an online comment is a gross simplification- especially for "farming since invention of agriculture". Also the 20 mile is not a hard limit - it's easy to envisage some kind of system where I grow my cash crops near transport like river or coast, and sell them on a trad…
The Danube and the Rhine were the two major rivers that could be navigated by Romans and they were the borders of the empire for that reason: they were the only way to supply border garrisons efficiently. They also had the Nile which isn't _in_ Egypt, but _is_ Egypt.
China by comparison is three major rivers which change course frequently and violently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFsQoY32n5g
Famously, Facebook's iOS app is over 100 MB[0] and for Android, their engineers hacked the Dalvik VM because they had so many class definitions they were overflowing a 5MB buffer just for the definitions - and then, staggeringly, they bragged about this obscenity.[1]
I can only imagine their backend systems are a similar nightmare, that leads to nonsense like FB building its own data centers to run their photos-and-ads crud app.
[0] https://www.cio.com/article/230043/why-is-facebooks-ios-app-...
[1] https://engineering.fb.com/2013/03/04/android/under-the-hood...