Please tell your friends about federated social media site that speaks several fediverse protocols thus serving as a hub uniting them, hubzilla.eskimo.com, also check out friendica.eskimo.com, federated
macroblogging social media site, mastodon.eskimo.com a federated microblogging site, and yacy.eskimo.com an uncensored federated search engine. All Free!
Introducing oniux: Kernel-level Tor isolation for any Linux app. This torsocks alternative uses namespaces to isolate Linux applications over the Tor network and eliminate data leaks.
The Liberux Nexx smartphone will be (if it makes it to the production stage) the most powerful smartphone (with the RK3588S) to run GNU/Linux and the mainline kernel. More powerful than the PinePhone Pro, or the OnePlus 6. It will have a decent OLED display, alot of RAM, and much of what you would expect from a privacy-focused GNU/Linux smartphone such as hardware killswitches.
That is to say, this phone will (hopefully if it releases) be a true daily-driver candidate for many people, more so than the current offerings are now. While I am skeptical of it (as I am with any crowdfunded project) I think this will be a great thing if it does make it to production.
The biggest thing keeping me from daily driving a Linux phone is the camera. I want a good camera, not an afterthought. I can only guess from the renderings, but this thing looks like the camera was an afterthought.
Here is all the information I could find from their website:
There are more than a billion PCs in use and, according to StatCounter, only 71 percent of them run Windows. Among the rest, about 4 percent run Linux. That's tens of millions of people with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc as their desktop operating system. I envy them.
Windows 11 has become more annoying lately as it shoves ads for XBox Game Pass in my face, pushes AI features no one asked for and demands that I reconsider the choices I made during installation on a regular basis. Plus, it just isn't that attractive.
I'm ready to try joining that industrious four percent and installing Linux on my computers to use as my main OS, at least for a week. I'll blog about the experience here.
It's hard to give up Windows forever because so many applications only run in Microsoft's OS. For example, the peripheral software that runs with many keyboards and mice isn't available for Linux. Lots of games will not run under Linux. So I think it's likely I'll be using Windows again, at least some of the time, after this week is through.
However, for now, I'm going to give Linux a very serious audition and document the experience.
There's an official Flatpak, and an official external Ubuntu repo you have to manually add, so they probably did get an unofficial build of some kind if they just ran apt install on Ubuntu since it doesn't come with Flatpak support.
It's definitely confusing when you're new to Linux until you learn what all of that means, compared to being used to windows where you go to the website and click the installer.
I dont think the criticism of installing apps is valid. Windows also has many ways of installing things. He criticizes the app center as if you can install everything from the microsoft store. On windows you still install stuff from a website, and you can use a package manager too it just isn't a requirement.
The difference I think is in windows basically everything is just download the installer and click it, it's very easy and people are used to that. And most apps have their own update system that takes care of things after install.
It would be nice though if the app stores were more complete on Linux, and showed all the available packages. I run into this on Fedora where the app store (discover) won't show a package but I can install it with DNF on the CLI. And if it had a way to add external sources like a github release that auto-updated, like Obtanium does on Android that would make it a substantial step up from the windows experience.
This is very similar to my experience, including the sleep battery drain issue on my laptop which I did eventually find a fix for (bios setting, had to disable 'deep sleep' mode of all things), why it works fine in windows but not in linux with that setting enabled I don't know. The battery drain is still substantially higher in sleep but it at least lasts a few days instead of being dead over night.
My desktop is still on Windows because hardware compatibility just isn't there yet, after waking from sleep I can't click on anything or type letters, but moving the mouse cursor works, as does the windows key, tab, etc... It's fixed by reconnecting both KB/Mouse but that's a PITA. And the other is my audio interface only partially works, the 1st output is fine, but the 2nd output is very quiet even with volume at 100%.
A more minor thing that still bugs me a lot is it takes absolutely forever to resume from sleep mode, sometimes 30+ seconds before the screen comes on.
The problem is these just aren't easy bugs to solve, searching for help is tough because they're such weird ones, and I don't really have the time to spend trying a bunch of random potential fixes.
Yep, definitely a Windows user. One who would go out of his way to use actual Google Chrome rather than Chromium. He seems to be starting to catch on, by the end of the week. I wonder if he'll keep going.
It can be really frustrating to fix a bug, especially one caused by a huge change like switching to KDE because so many things have changed and could be the cause. Especially if you're not someone who likes to do that kind of stuff (me), and would prefer things just work in the first place so re-installing a KDE version is the way to go.
Flatpak is stable and widely used, but it still has some pain points when used in certain environments or for certain ends. However, most of those drawbacks are being worked on, and fixes are planned.
I wish it opens a prompt asking a list of permissions when open for the first time. Like, VSCodium always needs local file system access, VPN clients always need network interface permission, etc.
Yeah, we have Flatseal, but it should be automated by the publisher to have a list of prerequisite permissions.
Flatpak is quite fucking far from perfect, and will always remain so due to its flawed design and UX approach.
Pretty sure the culprit here is Fedora’s packaging which adds an opaque systemd timer to run auto-updates, but the thread immediately next to this one on my homepage just happened to be a nice case-study in Flatpak fuckery: lemmy.world/post/30654407
Of course, the proposed changes in the article do nothing to fix this sorta problem, which happens to be the variety that end users actually care about. Flatpak is an epic noob trap since it pretends to be a plug-n-play beginner friendly tool, but causes all sorts of subtle headaches that newcomers inevitably don’t have diagnostic experience to address.
Flatpak is a framework for distributing desktop applications across various Linux distributions. It was created by developers with a long history of working on the Linux desktop and is run as an in...
Article doesn't mention my biggest problem with flatpaks, that the packages are not digitally signed. All major Linux distros sign their packages, and flathub should too. I would prefer to see digital signatures from both flathub and the package's maintainer. I don't believe flathub has either one currently.
Mozilla, for example, would sign Firefox's flatpak with a PGP key that they would disclose on their website. You verify the signature using the RSA algorithm (or any other algorithm for digital signatures. There are a bunch.) Or, you could just trust that your connection wasn't tampered the first time, then you would have the public key, and it would verify each time that the package came from that same person. Currently, you have to trust every time that your connection isn't tampered.
Major flatpak providers (Flathub at the very least) would include their PGP public key in the flatpak software repo, and operating system vendors would distribute that key in the flatpak infrastructure for their operating system, which itself is signed by the operating system's key.
Flatpak doesn't verify signatures like normal package managers do
So the issue isn't that you downloaded a flatpak that included malicious code. The issue is that you downloaded a legit flatpak and ended up downloading malicious code because flatpak doesn't verify what it downloads
this is so funny hol' up. Ray William Johnson, who openly uses AI Images for visualization in his story-telling videos, stumbles upon a youtube short that uses his voice using AI Voice Cloning.
What's the controversy about him? I genuinely do not know about the hate on AI-generated images beside using them for misinformation and submitting them as art.
In the comments section of a recent post I found out that Windows PowerShell had been ported to Linux. Had no clue it was a thing.
Went looking and found this old article attempting to explain why they did it. Not remotely interested in giving up Bash for PowerShell, but I thought it was interesting enough to share. The article seems to be from 2016.
I have never been more tempted to check the NSFW box, but I'll leave it open for now unless a mod complains. 😁
Microsoft Edit is fully written in Rust. And the source-code is actually fully open-source as well under MIT license 😮.
I personally would like see them calling it dos-edit or just dosedit, since that would be kinda funny. But I understand it will be called ms-edit instead.
I know Linux already has vi, vim, neovim and nano, ... and more... However is kind of ironic to see this binary be shipped to Linux distros. Of course it's already added to Arch btw: aur.archlinux.org/packages/ms-…
Its a completely different shell, not just another terminal emulator.
Its more readable, and its syntax is less arcane than bash.
For example, a script to get the first line of a file and its lenght in bash is:
\#!/bin/bash
if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 filename"
exit 1
fi
filename="$1"
if [ ! -r "$filename" ]; then
echo "File '$filename' does not exist or is not readable."
exit 1
fi
read -r first_line < "$filename"
echo "First line: $first_line"
length=${#first_line}
echo "Length of first line: $length"
There is so much I hate about this, like using a semicolon after the if condition, and ending it in fi.
Versus the powershell version:
param (
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[string]$FilePath
)
if (-not (Test-Path -Path $FilePath)) {
Write-Error "File '$FilePath' does not exist."
exit 1
}
try {
$firstLine = Get-Content -Path $FilePath -TotalCount 1
}
catch {
Write-Error "Could not read from file '$FilePath'."
exit 1
}
Write-Output "First line: $firstLine"
$lineLength = $firstLine.Length
Write-Output "Length of first line: $lineLength"
bash scripting is not intended to perform all of your logic in the scripting language, it's intended to call out to other programs which perform specific tasks. The entire POSIX command set is your bash scripting language.
Your script is a simple one-liner if you know some simple commands:
$ head -n 1 /usr/share/dict/words | tee /dev/stderr | tr -d '\n' | wc -c
A
1
Can someone explain to me why? The outputs are objects and that is cool for scripts, but the fact that every small thing is its own cmdlet is super annoying. I can do everything in Linux if I know 10 commands. In PS I would always have to look up everything.
If I recall the Verb-Noun idea is supposed to make it clear what is happening, take a look through stuff like the approved verbs for defining cmdlets. There's aliases and stuff for sure for example I think ls is an aliases for Get-ChildItem in PowerShell.
It's supposed to make it so you don't necessarily need to look things up, need to do something to an item? Well you can Copy, Remove, Rename, Move etc, and while yeah that's a super basic example that you know the equivalent linux commands for, the concept is supposed to apply everywhere. Now, whether or not people follow the guidelines is probably another story.
I don't really hate shell scripting, feel like they all have their place, complex stuff though is nicer in straight PowerShell than bash IMO, but I'm fine using either.
The Get-ChildItem cmdlet gets the items in one or more specified locations. If the item is a container, it gets the items inside the container, known as child items.
How does this help though? If anything they would've helped themselves by porting more Linux commands to work natively in Windows. This move makes it easier for Windows admins and devs to switch to Linux. With the latest horrible moves in the Windows desktop space I can't believe they're trying to become the "RedHat of Windows".
I want to have a mirror of my local music collection on my server, and a script that periodically updates the server to, well, mirror my local collection.
But crucially, I want to convert all lossless files to lossy, preferably before uploading them.
That's the one reason why I can't just use git - or so I believe.
I also want locally deleted files to be deleted on the server.
Sometimes I even move files around (I believe in directory structure) and again, git deals with this perfectly. If it weren't for the lossless-to-lossy caveat.
It would be perfect if my script could recognize that just like git does, instead of deleting and reuploading the same file to a different location.
My head is spinning round and round and before I continue messing around with find and scp it's time to ask the community.
I am writing in bash but if some python module could help with it I'm sure I could find my way around it.
TIA
additional info:
Not all files in the local collection are lossless. A variety of formats.
The purpose of the remote is for listening/streaming with various applications
The lossy version is for both reducing upload and download (streaming) bandwidth. On mobile broadband FLAC tends to buffer a lot.
The home of the collection (and its origin) is my local machine.
Speaking as a data engineer, you’re having trouble because git is the wrong tool for the job. You can make it work if you use git-lfs + custom hooks — but if you choose to go that route, be aware you’re making things unnecessarily hard for yourself.
If you want to make this easy, separate out your concerns: 1) Versioning: take periodic snapshots of your unconverted files with a binary-friendly diffing tool like restic or borg. Alternatively, ZFS/btrfs snapshots are an excellent way to handle this. 2) Conversion: keep your original files in their own directory. Set up a small script that searches your directory of original files recursively, passes the files to lame to encode to V0 or V2, and outputs them to a separate directory of lossy mp3 files. 3) Syncing: use rsync with the --delete flag to copy your lossy files to the server + clear out files you’ve removed locally.
For the conversion to lossy, git smudge/clean filters might work. Afaik git-lfs works with them. In general git-lfs might be something interesting for your use case.
I’ve been using Linux on and off for over a year now—not a total newbie, but still learning. I know the basics and usually rely on GPT or forums when I hit a wall. I’ve tried a bunch of distros so far: Kali, Debian, Pop!_OS, KDE Neon, Kubuntu… and currently running Fedora KDE.
Fedora is solid, but I keep finding myself tempted to try something new. Maybe I get bored easily—or maybe I just haven’t found the one yet. That’s why I’m asking for your help.
Here’s what I’m really looking for:
🔹 Large and fast app repository – I want access to a wide range of apps, updated quickly, without weird dependency issues.
🔹 Great UI/UX – KDE is my current favorite. I love how modern and smooth it feels, and I want something that builds on that experience.
🔹 Stability without being outdated – I don’t mind rolling release if it’s reliable. Crashes and breakages are a dealbreaker.
🔹 Good extras – Whether it’s unique tools, deep customization options, or just thoughtful polish, I love a distro with a “complete” feel.
🔹 Active community/support – Docs, forums, or anything that helps when things go wrong.
I’d love your suggestions—especially if you’ve been in the same place: bouncing between distros, loving KDE, and still chasing that “perfect” setup.
What would you recommend and why? Any underrated KDE-based distro I should check out? Or maybe something mainstream but deeply customizable and stable?
Appreciate your thoughts!
Also, if you can, please share some of the best (and free) resources to really learn and master Linux. I’m still learning and only know some basics, but I want to go deeper and really understand how things work under the hood. Even if I don’t feel super advanced yet 😅, I’m curious and willing to grow.
This may be at odds with stability somewhat being rolling release, but you may want to check out SUSE tumbleweed or EndeavourOS. You already have a solid pick based on your established requirements.
Couldn't hurt to poke around other offerings in a VM, though
And one more thing, are most of the softwares are available on tumbleweed? Like i mostly use FDM, vs code and some other tools because fedora dont have some including FDM but everything else in fedora is pretty good and decent.
Some of the installs can be a little weird, but I've never had anything that I couldn't get running. Vscode has an install for tumbleweed code.visualstudio.com/Download
The major "issue" is the package names are different between Debian and tumbleweed, so if you're installing software from github that isn't directly provided by suse/appimage/flatpak then a lot of times you'll need to install the dependencies manually by finding the corresponding packages (since most github repositories have directions for Debian/Ubuntu and not suse)
EndeavourOS. The default desktop is KDE these days.
Easy to install.
Attractive desktops out of the box. KDE is the default. A few nice quality of life utilities.
It uses the Arch repos and kernel. The AUR (yay) is installed out-of-the-box. So, the biggest package selection in the Linux world. Always up-to-date. Updates fast.
Great community in the EOS forums. Some of the best Linux docs on the web in the Arch wiki. The Arch wiki is an amazing resource for learning.
Very stable. Breakages are rare, especially if you use an LTS kernel. The current LTS kernel is the same one that Debian 13 will release with “soon”. So, not exactly ancient.
Biggest “downside” is that there is no GUI software installer out-of-the-box.
If that is really a deal-breaker, just install one like pamac or octopi. “yay -S octopi” should do it.
Or install a menu driven text based package manager like pacseek. “yay -S pacseek”
Or just take a few minutes to learn how to use pacman or yay at the command-line. You said you wanted to learn.
If you got bored by Fedora is probably the right choice for you. Otherwise nothing compares to Arch, esp if you "I’m still learning and only know some basics, but I want to go deeper and really understand how things work under the hood.". Another safer-nobrainer is Tumbleweed.
You could try Tuxedo OS. It's stable Ubuntu minus Snap plus newer KDE packages by a small Linux system retailer. Been using it for about a year now on my work laptop and it's perfectly adequate.
TUXEDO OS: TUXEDO OS Modified Linux kernel Optimized for TUXEDO-Hardware Simple by default Powerful when needed Linux-qualified customer support Powered by KDE Plasma "Making Linux accessible to the general public" - this is our mission at TUXEDO ...
As per title. I've been wondering about this. How can we help when someone managing a community/instance can't find help locally, for whatever reason? Something like an "help wanted" board. Even if it's for one month, three months, etc.
I've been an admin for a 8-9k+ users Discord server for years, but I love Lemmy so much I'd like to see if I can be somehow useful here. I don't think I'm power tripping at all, but have zero tolerance for harassment, racism or sexism, bigotry and honestly want to keep neocons and bigots/trolls out of Lemmy as long as it's humanly possible. Whenever in doubt, I generally abstain from using any moderation power and talk with other mods/users to find the best course of action.
The situation I imagined in the first paragraph did happen to me. Managing the server alone was draining my mental health, and I couldn't find anyone to help with all I had to do. Then someone wrote to me, we had lengthy discussions about the rules and philosophy of the server and we've been co-managing it together for years. Lemm.ee closing down made me think about "how to help where and when it's needed"?
I'm posting in this community in hope that other users may be wondering about it and may find any answer useful.
[Multiple edits, original post written quite late, judging from most replies, I failed to phrase correctly what I had in mind]
I'm wondering if the fediverse in general (but especially Lemmy) would benefit from some kind of "fediverse help wanted" board for moderators, donations, technical help, etc.
edit: People who run a Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed/etc instance might be hanging out in the Matrix chat room for the software they are running; that might already serve this purpose.
Today, 10th June 2024, marks Lemmy.zip's first birthday.
Back on the 10th June 2023, I was as disillusioned with Reddit as many others here were, and wanted somewhere I could go where mods and users weren't treated like an end product.
At the time I had been messing with a lot of home server stuff (think Jellyfin and the *arr suite - usenet is great 😉) and figured I could spin up a docker container or two, how hard could it be right?
I'd never even heard of ansible, never changed an nginx config file, hell I'd never had more than one other person use something I'd spun up before. But after a couple of hours, there it was - Lemmy.zip. And suddenly, people were actually joining, posting, and making content. It felt unreal.
Since then, and with an awful lot of help and support from Sami and the community, I feel like we've got a really good, solid, stable and active Lemmy instance, our own corner of the internet where we can't be abused for corporate greed. In this first year, I have spent an awful lot of time learning how to run a so-called "social media" site, how to protect the backend, and how to build a bot to do all the boring stuff.
Linked in this post is a very brief overview of the last year - yearone.lemmy.zip - which gives some detail on how things unfolded at the start.
I am insanely thankful for all the lemmy.zip users, even the ones who only visited briefly. You're all brilliant (yes, even the lurkers 😘 ) and I hope you all continue to enjoy Lemmy.zip for many more years.
Running your own Lemmy server has its ups and downs. Days like today, when I can debug various issues without stressing, push new code to ZippyBot like its second nature, and have the ability to celebrate massive milestones like this, make all the bad times worth it.
I remember about a month or two in to the sites operation, and we'd just upgraded to the latest lemmy version - there was a period of about 5 or 6 hours continuous downtime and nothing I tried was getting the site working again. I was sat with my head in my hands, completely out of ideas, ready to give up. But thanks to the guidance of some fantastic people in the wider Lemmy community, eventually the site came back to life. Many mistakes have been made (many server backups have been restored 🙃) but we've continued to learn and grow, and I think the site is all the better for it.
We've got over 2,500 signed up users, we've recently tipped over 500 active users a month, we're in the top 20 lemmy instances - and in reality, that's all thanks to the mods and users of lemmy.zip. Without you, there wouldn't be any point to the site!
(Interesting fact - our longest serving user is Firestorm Druid - I don't have any medals yet sorry, but you deserve one!)
Looking forward to the next 12 months, I'm hoping we can continue to grow and continue to be a Lemmy instance for everyone. With the increasing enshittification of Reddit (and the wider "traditional" social media sites), I hope many people can escape and make their way over here. The Lemmy of today is a much different place to what it was 12 months ago. Even from purely a technical standpoint, federation is infinitely more reliable, and there are many long-standing servers to choose from now.
So once again I say a massive thank you to everyone. To the mods, you're the backbone of creating content across the whole lemmy network. Its often a thankless job, but here's hoping this goes a little way to expressing the gratitude we all have for you.
To everyone that has donated - I'm still humbled by your generosity. Thank you, you keep the lights on and the bits flowing.
And to the users of Lemmy.zip - thank you for being here. You make this whole thing worthwhile 😀
Attempt two to update to Lemmy 0.19.11 is now planned in for tomorrow, April 12th at 13:00 BST (that's 12:00 UTC!)
Following feedback from the downtime thread, information can be found on the upgrade in these places:
Matrix - We have a Matrix space you can join by clicking here. This is likely where I'll be most active during the update.
Status Page - Following the failure of our old status page to actually detect any downtime, I've swapped to a different status page supplier temporarily while I review the options. Uptime Kuma was great (and free, and self hosted) but let us down. Our status page has now been updated, and I've included the maintenance on there. If there are any unforseen issues, I will add them there.
Mastodon - I have a mastodon account which you can view by clicking here and I will make a couple of posts here as and when things are happening too. You can get a mastodon.zip account too by clicking here!
There will absolutely be downtime again, but I cannot predict how long this will be. Some sources say 8 to 10 minutes, but during our last attempt the migrations took significantly longer, so it may be a few hours its down for.
Obviously there will be a backup, and if anything does go wrong again then we'll roll back.
@Demigodrick invites you to join this server of Mastodon! With an account, you will be able to follow people, post updates and exchange messages with users from any Mastodon server and more!
Probably a two hour window to give me time to get things done. There may be an upgrade to lemmy 0.19.11 however that requires some modification of ZippyBot due to changes in the new version.
There will be downtime while the server is restarted, however hopefully this is brief.
Thank you again to everyone who is (or has been) supporting Lemmy.zip.
Perks!
Donators get some special perks - including the ability to choose custom emojis for everyone to use, and to get their own me.lemmy.zip profile - just like this one.
In the future, we're looking at other ways to reward those who donate. If there is something you'd like to see as a reward, let the admin team know.
If you'd like to stay anonymous please email me at hello@lemmy.zip or send me a message on here 😀
Firstly, apologies I missed last month's update. As I will go in to during this month's update, the train has not been smooth sailing, the ship missed the station - for a little while, trying to uncover what has gone wrong has been like unraveling a can of worms that has gone off the tracks.
Because of the length of this update, I'm leaving off new communities for this month, but feel free to pop any in the comments you'd like to share!
Server Updates
So, I'll begin at the 0.19.11 update for Lemmy. I'd planned in some time for the update, and to begin with things went fairly normally, with usual server updates etc. Then it came time to update Lemmy itself to 0.19.11 - however, instead of the ~10 minutes of suggested downtime, it quickly became apparent that something wasn't quite right. The logs gave no indication of anything happening, and after an hour it became apparent that something hadn't worked. With not much to go on, and all the various logs showing that absolutely nothing had apparently happened, I cancelled the upgrade process and tweaked the logs so I'd get a bit more information than the standard logs usually show. This turned out to be an internal DNS issue, where Lemmy wasn't talking to the database.
So, onwards again I fixed that issue and reapplied the update, to which it had appeared to start working. Excitedly, I give it ten minutes as advised, to come back and see that it was still going.. and going.. and going.. and two hours later it was saying something was still happening. Well, by this point I'd run out of time and trusted in the process that it would resolve itself. I had unfortunately had to go to sleep as I had work the next morning, and a baby to look after.
By the next morning, still nothing. However, I can't SSH in to the server on my phone (nor would I ever want to in case it was stolen etc) and all the backend stuff is behind layers of protection, so the site was down for the day while I had to do real world work nonsense.
By the time I'd got home, it still thought it was ongoing, so I made the decision that likely something was broken and cancelled the update. Of course, letting something go to town for hours on the database meant it was probably ruined, or would require completely investigating - ain't nobody got time for that. So I crossed my fingers and hoped my backup solution had worked which it did with flying colours. I restored the database and the site came back to life.
Of course, I don't like running old versions, so I rescheduled which went much much smoother the second time around, taking 8 minutes. Whew.
For a few days, everything looked great. Metrics looked spot on and the site was running like it always was, and then bam - the server completely locked up:
A restart did eventually fix this, and things returned to normal, but not quite the same.
On the 24th April, I started getting reports of the site returning various 502 and 504 errors, and also issues with images loading. Broken images has been a feature of the image proxy for a while, but this was on another scale, with sometimes whole pages of broken images and a connection timeout on every refresh. I was, in hindsight, very out of my depth here.
I started trying to see what the cause of the timeouts where, and it became apparent quickly that the site was being hit by previously-unseen levels of traffic:
On the above graph, the left hand side was the usual amount of traffic we'd get, and on the right was the new levels we were receiving. This was likely causing the server to effectively be DDOS'd, and uncovering issues with the performance of the server. For a comparison of the usual amount of traffic we get, here's a graph from the last server update:
Many configs were tweaked. Much database performance monitoring took place. Things were turned off and back on indiscriminately. Unfortunately not much worked.
It was at this point our new Admin, Gazby, joined the team - and quickly got to work diagnosing and fixing so many of the issues.
Some of the changes include much better backups, reduced latency in image storage (the images moved from the USA to EU storage), images being served from i.lemmy.zip to allow for better caching to reduce the load on the server, complete review and tweak of all the configs and server setup, and a detailed list of things we need to work on going forwards (plus no doubt lots of things I am forgetting).
This has really helped to stabilize the site, and while we can see it's not 100% perfect, the amount of 502/504 errors should have massively reduced, and the site should be almost as it used to be.
One of things Gazby has also worked on is reporting and insights into the server, and so for example here's a graph showing the 504 errors today:
We've got some plans on the horizon we're working on which should increase the performance of the site, which possibly/probably will include a server move to rule out hardware issues or latent config issues we can't find.
Whatever triggered these issues I am still not sure - it looks like it could be scrapers/AI bots hammering the site, and so we've put some measures in place here. If you use the old front end then you may have noticed a cloudflare challenge to try and prevent the server being overloaded - also a prewarning, the old front end is no longer maintained, and unless someone steps in, it is not compatible with the next version of Lemmy. Therefore at that point it will be retired unless someone works on it to bring it back in line. It is also the cause of a LOT of the server traffic problems, so it probably isn't too much of a bad thing. Maybe someone will rewrite it to be better 😀
As it stands, things still aren't perfect - we had an issue where the bit of the server that actually directs you to the right place got overwhelmed, and so we put a fix in for that, but they are hopefully a lot better than they were a couple of months ago.
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 60 euros a month ($60, £50) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
Please remember, traditional social media is only "free" to you because they sell your data. We don't do that - if you want to support independent social websites like this one and you value your privacy, please consider a small donation. It really does help.
Graphs
I know you've come for the shiny pictures, so here you go!
CPU over last 30 days:
RAM over last 30 days:
Disk space used:
Here's a few new ones for you! Lemmy DB size:
Images database size:
Here's our current actual images stored:
Here's the cloudflare overview:
Here's requests:
Bandwidth:
And here is visitors:
And finally, traffic by country (mostly federation traffic remember!)
So hopefully that fills everyone in on where we're up to, and what we're working on, but if you have any questions please ask away below!
One final thing - on the 10th June, Lemmy.zip turns two years old!! 🥳 🎉 I'm hoping to do something nice for it, similar to last years (which is here if you haven't seen it!) - but a quick thank you to everyone who has been part of the ride so far!
As some of you may have realised, the planned upgrade sort of crashed everything, and we had our longest period of downtime since the site began.
This is partly because I had to go to sleep (thanks to a newborn and a job).
The good news is that the backup process worked! We've restored to seconds before the upgrade took the site offline.
The bad news is that federation is likely to be.. wonky.. for a little while. The site may also go up and down while I undo some of the fixes I tried.
Ultimately the issue came down to the upgrade failing (I am not sure why - will be digging into this now the priority is no longer getting the site up) and then the containers not talking to eachother, so the UI wouldn't talk to lemmy, and lemmy wouldn't talk to the database.
I rebuilt the containers, restored the backup, restarted everything, and it's all come back up (admittedly not perfect right now).
Importantly, I want to issue an apology. This isn't what I want for Lemmy.zip, and it should've been handled way better by myself. I'm always learning but this took way longer than it should've, and while I take some solace in the fact the backup process worked and has been proven to work in production, the delay in being able to get this back up is entirely my fault and frankly unacceptable.
I'll be working to document this outage, the steps it took to get it back up, and some form of repeatable plan so a repair can be replicated in the future if I'm not available.
In terms of upgrading to 0.19.11 - I will have to try again soon as it's got some security fixes we desperately need to implement.
I wish we could all meet in better circumstances. The closing of lemm.ee is a real blow to the fediverse, and I have nothing but the greatest respect for the lemm.ee admin team. Lemm.ee was a cornerstone of the lemmy community, and set a high bar for moderation and technical performance.
Finding a home on the fediverse can be tough. Whether you're here to lurk, post, moderate, or contribute in your own way, we’re glad you’ve joined us. Lemmy.zip might not replace what was lost, but we hope it can become a lemmy instance where you can feel at home.
Everyone should receive a welcome PM when they sign up to Lemmy.zip from the ~~ever-present dark lord overseer~~ friendly bot, ZippyBot. However, in case poor Zippy has been overworked and forgotten to send the PM to you, here's some helpful information regarding Lemmy.zip!
All of our policies can be found at legal.lemmy.zip. This includes our Code of Conduct. Please (please!) have a read of this. Our number 1 rule is Remember the human! (no harassment, threats, etc.). We absolutely adhere to this. Treat people with respect.
When you created your account, we set up some "Default Blocks". If you want a more unfiltered Lemmy experience, you can head to your account settings and remove the blocks. You can read more about this in our Welcome Post
We have monthly updates! You can read the latest one here!. We're always open to suggestions if there's anything else you'd like to see in these.
We have some metrics around federation for the curious among you. The link is in the sidebar or you can click here!
We have our status page at status.lemmy.zip. In the unlikely event the server becomes sentient and starts a robot uprising, full details will be available here.
Finally, your admin team is myself (Demigodrick), Sami, Druid, and Gazby. Please reach out to any of us if you feel you need help or support with anything. We also have a support email - hello@lemmy.zip.
If you have any questions, please let us know and we'll do our best to answer them.
I mean, its a war. Nobody is playing "fair" and you're delusional if you think they ever were.
But it's crazy to fixate on Russian losses and ignore the devastation rained on Ukrainian territory. Or the enormous debts Zelensky has had to assume in order to continue importing new munitions and mercenaries to fight. We've already seen bombings inside Moscow and assassination attempts (more than a few successful even) against Russian military and state security leadership. But that's not budging the front lines. Neither is it curbing the continuous barrage of artillery and Russian-based retaliatory drone attacks.
This is just the Iraq-Iran War on steroids. Two countries absolutely butchering their youth in a vainglorious attempt to claim hegemony over a minefield.
Ukraine is obviously the victim here. The Ukrainian people are amazing and have their own rich history and culture as well that deserves to be preserved and respected and cultivated. They do not deserve any of this.
It's weird to suggest anyone would. But we've been hearing about how "Now is the time for a Ukrainian counterattack!" since 2022. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian conscripts got shoveled into Russian defense lines and butchered by mines and artillery, while Westerners cheered like they were watching some kind of pro-sporting event.
FFS, you can find videos all over the internet of Ukrainians and Russians butchering one another and bragging about it. You can find bespoke influencer news networks bragging about how their team is "Owning" the opposition with grisly reprisals. They're trending all over social media.
Talking about one does not mean I don’t care about the other.
It's just a show for the West. You don't actually give a shit, because you don't see (or care) about the cost anyone is paying.
I am just teasing out exciting (well as exciting as war can be, which is horrific)
I wish people were more willing to confront the horror and less eager to speculate on the excitement.
Instead, we just see bloodlust. People online clutching their keyboards in rapt anticipation of the next bombing or shelling or assassination, like this isn't costing uncounted civilian lives to put points on the board.
What do you want? More solemnity? Do you want us to not cheer for Ukraine? I mean what the hell is your goal?
To get people to see this as an ongoing disaster, tragedy, and fundamental political failure, rather than some kind of CoD Twitch Stream epic playthrough.
This entire post is literally about a successful counterattack on Russian soil. One with zero Ukrainian casualties.
What, exactly, do you want from this conversation? People to recognize that Ukrainians are suffering? They do recognize that - that's why they don't want Ukraine to lose.
A defeated Ukraine would suffer far worse than they are now, as retribution for defending themselves and embarassing Russia in the process. Ukrainians would inevitably be conscripted to fight in Russia's next attempt at conquest anyway.
Lol what unreported casualties do you imagine there could even be? The drone operators developing carpal tunnel? If they had identified Ukrainians smuggling weapons platforms into the country, the whole operation would have failed.
And then nobody wants to talk about retaliation as a consequence.
Right, because Russia hasn't been trying until now? They haven't really tried to crush Ukraine, they've just been playing around? But now that Ukraine has bloodied their nose, boy are they sure gonna find out what Russia's capable of. Lol.
“Things will be worse once the bombs stop falling” is pure war propaganda.
No, "things will be worse when a nation is conquered by a hostile dictatorship" is not propaganda. Ukraine knows that for a fact, because they've been through this before.
Seriously, what do you even want here? What is the point of this? You want capitulation and appeasement?
I'm not making light of casualties, I'm making light of the baseless claim that there even could be casualties, because I reiterate:
If they had identified Ukrainians smuggling weapons platforms into the country, the whole operation would have failed.
You think if they found spotters deep in Russian territory near their nuclear bombers the operation would have succeeded?
So, you're not gonna defend the claim that we should worry about retaliation? Going to pretend that Russia will do anything it wasn't already trying to do, and just move the conversation elsewhere? This is so incredibly bad faith.
To quite treating this bloodbath as a fucking football game.
Congratulations, it's not working. You just sound like a cheerleader yourself.
This is just the Iraq-Iran War on steroids. Two countries absolutely butchering their youth in a vainglorious attempt to claim hegemony over a minefield.
What are you even talking about?
There are no "two countries butchering". There is no symmetry.
There is a bandit state which invaded their neighbour (like many other neighbours they invaded before) and are murdering civilians, commiting war crimes and kidnapping children.
In Ukraine today, no topic is more barbed than that of compulsory military service. Few want to talk about conscription publicly; men within service age range, 25 to 60 years old, are particularly reticent. “It’s just too sensitive. I hope you understand me,” one man told me, referring to the many families in his circle of friends whose sons, brothers, and fathers are on the front or have perished there. Some fear that speaking out might prompt a letter from the Defense Ministry announcing their call-up. Or worse, they might be plucked randomly by recruitment officers on the streets and, should their documentation prove their eligibility for service, sent straight to boot camp.
Minor correction, it's a million casualties on the Russian side. Dead number is probably around 300k.
But seriously, imagine going from the number 2 world power to a paper tiger that relies on old stock because they don't have the manufacturing capabilities to mass produce new equipment. They can barely keep the old shit running.
Trump announced that Russia would "respond" to the recent Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields while reflecting on his "good conversation" with Vladimir Putin.
I don't really care about images on here all that much ... I don't mind them being lost if I lose my instance.
Most of the images that are shared are basically 'one off' images for a quick gag or as part of a conversation specific to that moment. And often that conversation or interact is a 'one off' event as well. Which means it was all meaningful when it happened and when it was read the few times it was noticed over two or three years but then it is forgotten.
If there is anything meaningful I come across that I think is important to me or something I want to keep a reference of or keep ... I'll save it or screenshot it and put it away in my own storage or data.
Otherwise, I really don't mind losing all those other images I had created over the years ... they already did their work when people saw them at that moment.
The only reason anyone would want to keep all that data is to archive it for historical reasons .... or to monetize it by collecting a bunch of unique data, images connected to real people.
Seems to be a kind of online conference. For being open source focused it's opening is very salesy/buzzword salad-ish.
"Open protocols, not closed platforms. The Fediverse, Mastodon and ActivityPub. ATmosphere, Bluesky and AtProto. Human connections, not AI bots, nor fake news nor manipulative algorithms. New funding models. New forms of governance. Better trust and safety. Direct relationships to stakeholders and customers. Interoperability across social platforms everywhere, and so much more.
After a decade of stagnation, next-generation social media is breaking out of the closed silos and connecting the world into a global, open social web. It’s a wild world full of opportunity.
FediForum brings together the leading thinkers and doers who build this new Open Social Web."
Edit: unexpectatly we are back online. Will share how we found a solution later. There might be still some federation issues though.
Alt account of poVoq@slrpnk.net here.
Our instance is currently down and I can't get remote access to the servers. It appears that there might have been a hardware failure of the main firewall, which is the one thing I can't work around remotely.
I am still trying a few things, but I am not very optimistic that I can get access.
The really unfortunate part is that just now I am on one of my rare work deployments abroad, so I also can't access it physically during the next few weeks and my usual back up that could restart it is not available either.
As something like that never happened in 3 years operating the servers, I thought I can risk it, but murphy's law seems inescapable 😓
I will try to keep you posted here on any updates, but probably there will not be much I can do for a while. Really bad timing 😥
Edit: we might use this "opportunity" to migrate the instance to Piefed, which has been an idea for quite some time now. I will keep you posted on that.
Very very bad timing. I just moved to that server and now it is just gone. I have moved to another server. I guess I am glad that it happened now so I know how poorly Slrpnk.net is managed.
Out of 3 years of reliable service, this is the one time the server has been down for any length of time, and only due to the admin not being able to be physically present for a wildly unlikely and unexpected problem.
I know, I'm the one who approved your application.
You happened to sign up right before we've had our first particularly bad issue in 3 years. Unlucky, yes, but it's a bit out of order (IMO) to say we're a poorly managed instance based on that, especially seeing as you lost nothing besides the time it took to write your application. :\
Alt of ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net chiming in, thanks for giving us the sitrep, poVoq!
This is an unusually unlucky set of circumstances, but for the Solarpunks who find their way here, let's try to make the best of it. If you don't already have an alternative account somewhere, you may want to create one to use until we're back up and running. lemmy.dbzer0.com, sopuli.xyz, or lemmy.cafe are some solid choices to consider. After that, you may want to favorite poVoq's post here so you can check back on any news.
Even without our home base, we can still share the solarpunky stuff we find and create around the threadiverse (though as Tofu mentioned, maybe this could be a time to take a breather to be refreshed when we come back 😄).
Besides, if the past is any indication, time will fly by and we'll be back before you know it!
Well, on the plus side lots of lessons learned and I think I might move at least the xmpp server to an external vps to have a backup communication channel.
Not sure about your area, but a wireguard accessible OOB connection is a great piece of kit to keep handy. I use a cheap 768kbps SIM in an Ethernet connected switch into my personal systems. It's saved my skin numerous times.
I'm sure this is obvious, especially in hindsight, but just mentioning because the existence of IoT LTE data plans for a minimal fee ( $100/year for me in Midwest US) was NOT obvious to me until 2 years ago.
Yeah I had plans to set up something like that, but always other priorities and in this specific case I could maybe access other internal servers but i would need KVM access to reboot the firewall or some other way to cut physical power. And exfiltrating hundreds of GBs of lemmy database wouldn't work over such a small pipe either.
Might it also be possible/feasible to send an "email blast" to everyone with a slrpnk.net account? It would probably be quite complicated to send that many emails at once without getting blocked by the major email providers, but hypothetically we've all registered with emails...
Just spitballing ideas for the future. Everything's fine now. Gives me an excuse to spend a little more time on the Canadian end of the fediverse. 😀
As email in profile is an optional feature on our instance about 50% of the userbase opted to not share one so we would only reach some people. But yes, getting spam filtered would be another problem of mass-mailing.
But I found a way to put up a simple html error page and will add this later to inform our members and link to this thread.
Hey fellow slrpnk.net refugees... if you're looking to recreate your list of subscribed communities, here's a good place to start:
::: spoiler click here for a list of communities that are NOT politics, tech, or meme -related.
Most are currently active (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked) Sometimes politics, tech or memes sneak in but they're not the focus.
::: spoiler click here for a list of (mostly non-political) meme communities
MEMES, SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSTS, AND HUMOR
Most of these are currently active. (except for the ones with a * which were less active last I checked). Sometimes these include politics but that's not the sole focus.
!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!196@pawb.social
!19684@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!2meirl4meirl@lemmy.world
!4chan@lemmy.world
!4chanFails@feddit.nl
!absoluteunit@sh.itjust.works
!ancientinternet@lemmy.world
!animemes@ani.social
!antimeme@lemmy.world *
!atbge@lemmy.world
!antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world
!are_the_straights_ok@lemmy.blahaj.zone *
!atheistmemes@lemmy.world
!badrealestate@feddit.uk *
!bonehurtingjuice@lemmy.ca
!coaxedintoasnafu@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
!comedyheaven@lemmy.world
!Couplememes@sh.itjust.works
!crumbgrabber@lemm.ee *
!curatedtumblr@sh.itjust.works
!dankchristianmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!dankmemes@lemmy.world
!ehbuddyhoser@sh.itjust.works
!ExplainTheJoke@spaffel.social
!fbstolencontent@lemmy.ca *
!fediashitpost@fedia.io
!fedimemes@feddit.uk
!femcelmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!funny@sh.itjust.works
!funny@lemmy.world
!furry_irl@pawb.social
!garfieldism@lemmy.blahaj.zone *
!gifconversation@lemm.ee
!greentext@sh.itjust.works
!gunmemes@lemmy.world *
!high_quality_gifs@lemmy.sdf.org
!hq_memes@lemmy.world
!imgoingtohellforthis@lemm.ee
!internetfuneral@lemmy.world
!humor@beehaw.org *
!iamverybadass@lemmy.ca *
!justpost@lemmy.world
!kemper_loves_you@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
!lemmybewholesome@lemmy.world
!lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
!linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works *
!lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
!loweffortmemes@crazypeople.online
!mathmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!me_irl@lemmy.world
!memes@jlai.lu
!memes@lemmy.world
!memes@slrpnk.net
!memes@sopuli.xyz
!memes@lemmy.ml
!metalmemes@lemmy.world
!microblogmemes@lemmy.world
!MoldyMemes@spaffel.social
!NiceMemes@sopuli.xyz *
!nocontextpics@lemmy.world
!nominativedeterminism@feddit.uk *
!nonsense@moist.catsweat.com *
!okmatewanker@feddit.uk
!potatoism@lemmy.world *
!pokemonmemes@lemmy.world *
!programmer_humor@programming.dev
!reactionmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com *
!reallyshittycopper@lemmy.world *
!relationshipmemes@lemmyis.fun
!roughromanmemes@lemmy.world
!rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
!RichardScarryPosting@sh.itjust.works
!shitty_million_dollar_ideas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
!SighFi@quokk.au
!science_memes@mander.xyz
!shera@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!shirtsthatgohard@lemmy.world
!shitposting@lemmy.ml
!shittylifeprotips@lemmy.world
!shittytattoos@lemmy.ca
!spaceflightmemes@sh.itjust.works
!surrealmemes@sh.itjust.works *
!tech_memes@lemmy.world *
!tantes_linksqueer@feddit.org
!the_pack@lemmy.world
!TwoGoobers@lemm.ee
!wholesomegreentext@sh.itjust.works *
!wholesomememes@lemmy.world *
!wizards@lemmy.world
!witchymemes@lemmy.world
!wlw_memes@lemmy.world
!yurimemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!youtubeclassics@sh.itjust.works
:::
(luckily I was posting this to newcomers whenever I had the chance...)
I this it’s a law that servers run 100% perfect until the literal day one leaves town with zero way to return home. One of the many reasons I got all my services off of unraid.
Very cool to learn you’re running your own machines. Do you go into detail about this anywhere?
We have a small write up about the hardware on our wiki, but it is also down right now.
I think we will share a post-mortem write up of the actual improvements we will do to avoid this in the future.
One thing I will definitly do is to add a KVM remote management console to one of our server boards and move the main firewall into a VM with hardware passthrough of the NICs (this was anyways planned for a 10gbit network upgrade for the second half of 2025). This way I should be able to reboot and even reinstall the main ingress point remotely, so that only the fiber gateway remains as a failure point that requires physical access.
I am a slrpnk user. Oh well, shit happens. What makes me a bit sad was that a few months (?) ago something similar happened. Slrpnk.net was down for aa day or two? Don't remember the exact amount of time. What I do remember is asking if there was intention of adding a second admin and making the point that it would be good to create that sort of redundancy. I was ignored.
Mid of july is basically 1 and a half months from now. Hopefully a new solarpunk instance emerges, one that is safer from such scenarios.
Enjoy your vacation and don't stress too much! Shit happens.
WARNING: [youtube] KheSE_280a0:
Some tv client https formats have been skipped as they are DRM protected.
The current session may have an experiment that applies DRM to all videos on the tv client.
See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12563 for more details.
Google is starting to use DRM on all it's videos so that only the official youtube clients on devices and big browser brands can play them. It also kills all the systems like invidious.
Tokyo (AFP) – The number of births in Japan last year fell below 700,000 for the first time on record, government data showed Wednesday.
The fast-ageing nation welcomed 686,061 newborns in 2024 -- 41,227 fewer than in 2023, the data showed. It was the lowest figure since records began in 1899.
Japan has the world's second-oldest population after tiny Monaco, according to the World Bank.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has called the situation a "quiet emergency", pledging family-friendly measures like more flexible working hours to try and reverse the trend.
Wednesday's health ministry data showed that Japan's total fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman is expected to have -- also fell to a record low of 1.15.
The ministry said Japan saw 1.6 million deaths in 2024, up 1.9 percent from a year earlier.
Ishiba has called for the revitalisation of rural regions, where shrinking elderly villages are becoming increasingly isolated.
In more than 20,000 communities in Japan, the majority of residents are aged 65 and above, according to the internal affairs ministry.
The country of 123 million people is also facing increasingly severe worker shortages as its population ages, not helped by relatively strict immigration rules.
In neighbouring South Korea, the fertility rate in 2024 was even lower than Japan's, at 0.75 -- remaining one of the world's lowest but marking a small rise from the previous year on the back of a rise in marriages.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has called the situation a "quiet emergency", pledging family-friendly measures like more flexible working hours to try and reverse the trend.
Nah dude it's over. Not just in Japan but in most developed countries. Changes were needed decades ago. The only way to survive it is to relax immigration, not by "maybe" cutting work hours.
How about giving families struggling to pay for child numero uno (like me) a stipend? Per child. Not even going to consider having more until Japan starts respecting full-time parenting as a legitimate occupation.
In the three and a half years my son has been alive, the Japanese government has given us a grand total of ¥120,000 ($834 USD). That covers about a month’s worth of childcare now thanks to soaring grocery prices.
I'm a happy lemm.ee user and a mod of a small community hosted there. I'm also subscribed to a bunch of communities on lemm.ee. Sadly, they have just announced that they will be shutting it down. I understand that I can open an account on another instance and subscribe to the same communities. For my own community, I can probably re-create it on my new instance and DM every subscriber. But how do I find all the communities from lemm.ee in their new places? I'd like some practical advice.
All these instances have been running for close to two years and are part of the "topic-specific" network of servers that I set up to help during the migration.
📝 Other Changes
chore: set default instance to lemmy.zip, remove lemm.ee
PR: #2034
(I'm still on vacation; this is a hotfix for lemm.ee shutting down on June 30th, 2025.)
Realistically that is never going to happen. The biggest issue the fediverse has is onboarding. People just looking to try out a reddit alternative aren't going to bother emailing their fucking MP just because the default settings of an app won't let them sign up. They'll just give up and go elsewhere.
If we want to encourage growth, adding additional barriers isn't the way to do it.
It’s not lemmy.zip that’s blocked in the UK, they (lemmy.zip) block every visitor from the UK as they don’t want to get in trouble for violating the UK’s Online Safety Act.
I'm not sure that the answer to a government's regulation of the Internet should be an individual's blocking of access for an entire country. Seems like 2 sides of the same coin to me.
This is them, to the best of their ability, complying with UK law. If more people tried to comply, perhaps the UK government would realize how foolish their Online Safety Act is and do something about it.
It’s not actually complying with UK law, it’s removing it from the equation so it doesn’t have to. I don’t begrudge the decision though, it will have been a difficult choice to make. That said, it’s a sledgehammer approach to self-censorship, as a response to an inability to comply.
Like I say, I don’t have an issue with Lemmy.zip being unavailable in the UK. But I do think it is potentially damaging for Fediverse uptake to promote a default instance that is unavailable to such a large number of users.
For comparison purposes, the UK easily has the second highest number of Reddit users by country. It is a remarkable decision to exclude that potential market by default.
I'll say here that one of the less discussed differences between git and Mercurial is that Mercurial does not allow commited history to be changed, and git does. Git users call this a "feature," and it leads to situations like this which are utterly impossible in Mercurial.
Git allows rewriting history by design. The kernel team uses it liberally. It is debatable whether this is a good thing, but it's one reason I stick with Mercurial.
Unless commits are signed, you can always rewrite history. No matter the tool. Extreme example demonstrating that this is possible is the fact that I can change my machine’s time, change my user name and reply the tool’s commands to construct whatever history I want.
Unless you go in with a byte editor, you can't change Mercurial's commit history. I didn't say "fabricate", I said "change".
You can, as you say, configure your user name and email to be "Linus Torvalds" and change your computer date and fabricate whatever history you want. You might also be able to go in with a byte editor and fiddle bits and change history that way; Mercurial provides no blockchain-like cryptographic guarantees. But, unlike git, rewriting history is not supported by Mercurial; history is immutable. Rebase doesn't change history; the commit index only ever increments. Squash and rebasing create new commits, and there history of what happened is always in the repo.
There's a distinct and clear difference between Mercurial's immutable history and git's de jour history rewriting, which can literally - with the git command - change published history to make a commit made 3 years ago look like it was committed by someone else. The git workflow used by the kernel team, and the b4 tool, use this history rewriting in the standard workflow.
If you wanted to do the same thing with Mercurial, you'd have to get a byte editor and start hacking the on-disk format, and it would have to be entirely outside of any Mercurial tooling. And there is some sequential hash verification you'd have to work around, even if it's not cryptographically auditable.
The point is, with Mercurial it would be hard and the result would be utterly incompatible with any other clone of the repo: there would be no way to propagate your changes to other clones. With git, this is a standard workflow.
No. It's mostly due to personal/personnel matters.
But it's a reminder to folks to not bring that shit from reddit where you scream at mods and admins all the time. When you post flagrantly illegal shit it's their asses too (some instances have their own interpretations of these things, so learn them!)
These are often unfunded volunteers begging for donations to provide a service for the rest of us. Be grateful and don't add to their list of problem. Don't go on witch hunts, don't put mods and admins on blast because you don't like their rules (saw this yesterday), don't be an entitled ass. Appreciate what we have and make their lives easier. This whole project is a gift.
Some percentage of any population can't help but be insufferable pricks for no reason at all. Content moderation especially is a thankless, unwinnable, eternal war that really takes its toll on you over time.
That is true. It can be enjoyable in some cases but burnout is always on the horizon. Some people are unhappy with whatever decision you make and after a while their complaints start to seem petty and not worth addressing even when you probably should.
if a community cannot take legitimate criticism then its volunteers need themselves to move over too. Having volunteered places for literal decades, it’s important to not take any of shit horseshit to heart.
I think the case of of legit vs not is a case by case thing and that’s why there are mod teams. Sidenote: is it possible to message an entire mod team vs trying to find one who is online when there are questions?
hint: my modlog has shown that in some communities there are VERY thin lines. so no, I am not “part” of the problem, I am saying finding the line is sometimes … undocumented at best.
re point a: if the rules of the instance are not followed, of course mod action is legit. that guy was a douche it seems.
i think mods of nsfw instances also deserve certain praise; modding that stuff must be … ugh. especially since the instance could be on a 486 in someone’s bedroom. having ran newsgroup servers back in “the day” - turning on anything “alt.bin” was .. not advised.
i had content recently removed for “advocating violence” (iirc it was when i suggested criminal charges for all shareholders of corps who do violent things like allow death when choosing profit over people, yadda yadda.) No example of what the offending remark was and I could not find the old comment to manually review or correct or apologize. in this case I messaged a mod. no reply yet. was it a legit removal? probably certainly! was it poor “customer service” to not follow up with me? probably. does it make me confused as to what the line is there and therefore distrust that community? certainly.
anyway yeah. so the feedback loop could be improved. mods could be more human. and commenters could be less dicks all around! 😀
@flandish @LandedGentry I simply offered my site as a potential option for those losing access to the site going down. In response to this I get 50 some odd dislikes and two SYN floods.
Unlike the admin of the existing site, I DO have a thick skin having been in the game since well before Linux existed.
But the environment would be so much richer and better if everyone didn't act like 13 year olds on a testosterone rage.
Not trying to victim blame or anything, but I find it hard to believe that someone operating a low-moderation instance would truly expect people who don't like moderation to stay away.
Don't get me wrong I agree with your sentiment and dislike that behavior, but what I'm saying is that asking or expecting users not to go on witch hunts or to behave in a certain way is a fool's errand that will always lead to burnout. A more sustainable approach for admins and mods is creating space for what they want to host and not trying to control what they don't.
Hello, I got almost for free a Lenovo laptop: CPU Intel i3 8130, 4Gb RAM. I would like to use It to learn Linux. I saw some people using Arch to learn the inside out of Linux, but I'm afraid It could be to challenging. What do you suggest? What Is the best way to learn? Thank you. Edit: First of all I thank you all for your suggestions, I think that this is what makes this community special. I installed Fedora Xfce for now and I worked all evening to male it work and customize it. I'm learning a lot already. I'll move to Arch as soon I'll feel comfortable with Fedora. Thank you all again.
I saw some people using Arch to learn the inside out of Linux, but I’m afraid It could be to challenging.
It will be challenging but IMO give it a shot if you think it is something you might want to do. No harm in trying really. If you mess it up or find it too hard or whatever you can always install something else afterwards. It is not like you are stuck with your first choice forever. The only thing you will lose is a bit of time and will gain a better understanding of things even if you cannot make it fully work.
I don't agree that arch is not a beginner distro - it is a DIY distro that requires a lot of reading and willingness to learn and understand things. The arch wiki is an excellent resource for anyone (on any distro IMO) and well worth reading. If you are OK with that work then it makes a fine distro for anyone, beginner or not. It is not a distro for many people - again does not matter if they are a beginner or not. It is for people with a particular mindset. One that you might change over time or as you grow and learn more overall.
No harm either if you decide it is not for you. Play around with a few distros and try to find which one works best for you. There is really no one best distro. Just a lot of different things that appeal to different people and the only real way to find out which you like is to try them out.
I'd second this, but also add that you probably want to use something like XFCE for your desktop environment due to the amount of RAM you have: fedoraproject.org/spins
Why wouldn't an atomic distro not be for beginners?
There's no reason why a beginner wouldn't be able to use one. Maybe i's overwhelming for a power user that doesn't know linux well but for a beginner who doesn't use too much functionality it's perfect. You just use flatpak which you should also do on non atomic distros.
I suggest Linux Mint. It has GUIs for almost everything and it's very stable. With a little bit of tinkering of the services at startup, you can get Mint to run at 700 MB of RAM (as read via htop), instead of its default ~1 GB of RAM. That could be important to fit it better at 4 GB of ram with some demanding browsing.
I disagree with anyone who might suggest Fedora or Ubuntu with 4 GB of RAM. These distros require about 2+ GB of RAM to boot up, double than that of Mint.
Then there are the distros meant for older machines that use less ram, but it's a shame to use these when your laptop is fast-enough with an 8th gen cpu (comparatively to very old machines, that is).
The lowest ram usage I've seen with a full-fledge distro/DE, is XFce with endeavourOS. I load it at 490 MB of RAM (it takes 630 MB on Mint for the same layout/apps).
Basically, your challenge is the RAM, not the CPU or the drive. Use an appropriate distro for the RAM and the difficulty you want, and always be mindful to not have too many tabs/apps open at the same time.
I commented elsewhere about endeavourOS, but I have some other wisdom to pass along.
Keep good backups of your personal files, stuff you don’t want to lose, and don’t be afraid to try something new. You dont like something about how your system is running? Nuke it and install something else. Installing Linux is a cakewalk in most distros and rarely takes longer than half an hour (your mileage may vary with the low specs on the laptop)
I’ve learned a ton about Linux by trying many different distros, breaking things, fixing things, and occasionally distro hopping to see how I like a different offering.
There’s a lot of great content on YouTube that can help you learn, and reviews of various distros so you can get an idea of how things work without having to install it yourself. Have fun and don’t be afraid to fiddle with things.
I am looking for a distro with a customisable UI. I want the ability to change everything in the UI: like changing the window borders style, animated interface, creating transition animations. Something that can allow me to create UI from my favourite video games. I am even willing to learn a language if needed. Just don't suggest arch because I'm only interested in visuals. I don't want to spend time creating and troubleshooting other aspects of os. Also, if above requirements can be achieved with changing the desktop environment, please suggest that too. I am somewhat familiar with Linux as I used it a few years ago for some time. Back then, the games' support was lacking, so I switched back. But now with steam os and proton's contribution, games shouldn't be a hassle to run.
If you want to get into customizing UIs hard, something the likes of this
You could get started with window managers (very opiniated topic, its really up to you to decide on which you should use) and UI toolkits like - ewww - AGS - QuickShell
Also I know X11 is slowly dying but AwesomeWM fits your bill really nicely.
TL,DR: You want a cool UI? look at unixporn's top posts of all time, research an option you find good enough and go bananas on everything you need to make yourself at home.
ALSO consider posting at !unixporn@lemmy.ml so we can marvel at your fine grained setup, good luck!
Context: I tried to use the Piefed migration feature to migrate !barcelona@lemm.ee to !barcelona@piefed.social
piefed.social/c/barcelona now exists, with all the existing posts there, as well as the icon and description.
It even moved some subscribers (there are around 100 now), from what I understand those were Piefed subscribers that got automatically moved.
The one caveat is that from Lemmy instances, the community doesn't have show old posts (see lemm.ee/c/barcelona@piefed.soc…), but if you were restarting a community from scratch you wouldn't have access to your old posts anyway.
This ensure that at least the posts are transferred to a community on an active instance, which is probably the main concern for lemm.ee communities at the moment.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to discourage people from moving to or using piefed. I understand the enthusiasm for it and utility of it. This is meant to foster discussion not hate on piefed.
Is it just me or are a lot of people just ignoring the fact that a lot of communities and people are centralizing to pretty much a single point of failure again? Wouldn't it be wise to expand the number of piefed instances to help keep things spread out there too if that's the platform you prefer?
You have to scroll 3 times to see !television@lemm.ee, the first Lemm.ee community.
Lemm.ee was already a decentralization factor from LW, but it was still tiny in terms of communities compared to LW. Moving all of the Lemm.ee communities to Piefed.social (not that it's the case anyway, I've seen communities moving elsewhere) would keep the status quo that we were all living with.
Of course ideally over time more Piefed instances emerge, and we can spread a bit more. Also, thanks to the Piefed migration feature, we'll be able to move communities much smoother (even including subscribers).
You have to scroll 3 times to see !television@lemm.ee, the first Lemm.ee community.
Lemm.ee was already a decentralization factor from LW, but it was still tiny in terms of communities compared to LW. Moving all of the Lemm.ee communities to Piefed.social (not that it's the case anyway, I've seen communities moving elsewhere) would keep the status quo that we were all living with.
Of course ideally over time more Piefed instances emerge, and we can spread a bit more. Also, thanks to the Piefed migration feature, we'll be able to move communities much smoother (even including subscribers).
Right, I've seen pretty much that same reply already.
I think it's a chance to learn a lesson from how and why lemm.ee is shutting down. Right now I think people are risking moving the same problem somewhere else. Sure, in theory the problem gets better with time because the tools to move around are there, but that only matters if there's somewhere to move.
It would be much more encouraging to see dozens of new piefed instances being launched/advertised. I think there's a big push towards something new because it's in the right place at the right time, and I genuinely hope it's a successful project long term. I just hope the people utilizing it are willing to support it as a platform and not just as a flagship instance.
Personally I think that azerty was meant made by drunk students trying to troll people but it somehow caught on.
Hey, qwerty is kinda bad... You think we could try to make one that's even worse to mock it?
Oooh that'd be hilarious! Let's make a French version of qwerty but a lot worse!
I know, lets put dead keys for all accents except for the accent aigu so that when you need it on an uppercase letter you CAN'T type it!
Ahah good one! Let's also not add anyway to type an uppercase cedilla! Imagine, a French keyboard that can't type uppercase é and ç !
And what if we rearrange all the punctuation and symbols so that the open and closed parenthesis are no longer next to each other? It'd be sooo funny!
Right right! Let's do it too for the brackets and curly braces too!
Good one! How about we don't add guillemets which are used in French instead of english double quotes, so that people will be forced to type double quotes and their advanced text editors will have to automatically replace them by guillemets so that the text uses correct punctuation for French?
That's so sneaky! Let's also add § so you can cite your sources with the correct paragraph symbol, but not use real quotations marks for the quotes!
What else would be really stupid?
Let's use one key for a random greek letter!
What?
You know, like α and β?
Ermm... okay... which one? α or β?
Neither, people might actually use those once every 2 years. Let's just pick one at random!
µ it is! Has anyone even seen that letter used in a French text?
Nope, never, so it's perfect!
How about also adding ¤?
What the hell is ¤?
I haven't the faintest clue! And neither do you or most people! That why it's funny!
Sure, why not, let's cram pointless characters and not add actually useful ones like guillemets! Any other ideas?
Let's put the hyphen on the one most unreachable key!
Oh that's a good one!
I got better! Let's put the period on the same key as the semicolon, but with the semicolon as the default character, and periods will be Shift+semicolon! That way we can say that it's canonically why French phases are long-winded: it's easier to type a comma or semicolon than a period!
Man you're hilarious!
When I was still on Windows I put qwerty as my keyboard layout and used the Alt+number shortcuts for accents because that was less painful than using azerty... Those shortcuts didn't work anymore when I switched to linux so I had to find a real solution, which ended up being a colemak base which I modified to add accented letters. I don't like bepo, it moves z x c v and I like them being in the same place as in qwerty for the shortcuts I'm used to, and I didn't know qwerty-fr existed at the time 😅
So there's an ACTUALLY usable keyboard for French but no one in France even knows it exists because it's not metropolitan French? Why am I not surprised 😑
You even have division and multiplication symbols and FRACTIONS and every symbol that you might ever need? 😭 😭 😭
And it seems like it would work well for English, French and German?
I grew up en français, albeit in Canada. In our informatique classes, we had CSA standard layout keyboards (IBM, not Microsoft).
It's essentially a QWERTY keyboard with built-in compose key modifier and silkscreened characters on the board for accented characters (capitals included). Not too bad to learn on, and considering that QWERTY would be so prevalent in my life, I think it's a good compromise.
When I was in uni in the 90s and finally ran across an AZERTY keyboard, I literally couldn't use it. Not only is layout different, but the character mod sequence makes no ergonomic sense to me.
~~NB: fun fact, y a pas de mots qui commencent en C cédille. C'est pas pour dire qu'on a pas besoin de majuscules cédillées. 😀~~
NBB: ¤ is an end-of-cell marker, introduced at the advent of word processors to distinguish newline and carriage returns from the ends of cells in tables. Not sure if it had a meaning before then, but my memory is saying it had something to do with sub-paragraphs.
I know that last one as the "sun" character (circle with rays coming out) but really I once learned it's a placeholder character for "your local currency sign".
AZERTY is awful and anyone who uses it is a psychopath or even worse, french (québécois are fine though).
But jokes aside, I regularly switch between typing in French, English, and Spanish (so basically using all the accents and special characters including ñ) and even with all of it's faults, QWERTY with international layout works perfectly for me: * all accents are independent so you can capitalize upper and lower case and any kind of letter * cedilla is basically just a c with an accent and that's exactly how you type it (in Linux you might have to use a special key unless you actually mean "ć"), same for ñ * English apostrophe doubles as the accent key, if you want an apostrophe just press space after hitting the apostrophe key
I worked in France for a while and I deeply agree with everything you said... Except μ is by far the most useful Greek letter since it is used as a prefix for units of measurement, e.g. μm, μL, etc.
Also the Swiss layout is even worse, it combined all the bad features of the French and German keyboards and then just moves around all the symbols a bit more for good measure.
If you don't like BÉPO because you want familiar letter-based clipboard shortcuts, you've already made a better layout selection impossible. I learned to use the older clipboard shortcuts: ctrl+ins for copy, shift+ins for paste, and shift+del for cut. Those are still as universally supported.
Those are not nearly as conveniently located for left handed use though. Having z x c and v all easily reachable with my left pinky on control and my right hand on my mouse tops any other benefit of another keyboard layout.
I use them fine with my left hand. There's no reason to stay on home row if you're doing a lot of copy and paste. Of course, if you're doing that much copy and paste, using an extension that allows VIM shortcuts would be much faster.
As someone with a Thinkpad, that weird thing Lenovo does where they switch the control and function keys gets me every time I switch between Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad laptops.
I get that the function key isn't technically a standard key on the keyboard (I've only seen them on laptops) and Thinkpads always had that layout, but it's still annoying.
There are several Azerty layouts. Some don’t allow you to type uppercase accented letters easily, some do. I’ve switched to Linux about fifteen years ago and never had an issue typing these characters with the default layout. It used to be more complicated on Windows, I don’t know if that’s still the case. I should give it a try the next time I get the occasion to type on a Windows computer.
I currently use the fr-oss Azerty layout, which is probably not perfect but has many advantages. I love being able to type thin spaces and non breaking spaces easily.
I still don’t get why it’s easier to type a semi-colon than a full stop, though. I love semi-colons, but even I don’t use them that much.
There are more than a billion PCs in use and, according to StatCounter, only 71 percent of them run Windows. Among the rest, about 4 percent run Linux. That's tens of millions of people with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc as their desktop operating system. I envy them.
Windows 11 has become more annoying lately as it shoves ads for XBox Game Pass in my face, pushes AI features no one asked for and demands that I reconsider the choices I made during installation on a regular basis. Plus, it just isn't that attractive.
I'm ready to try joining that industrious four percent and installing Linux on my computers to use as my main OS, at least for a week. I'll blog about the experience here.
It's hard to give up Windows forever because so many applications only run in Microsoft's OS. For example, the peripheral software that runs with many keyboards and mice isn't available for Linux. Lots of games will not run under Linux. So I think it's likely I'll be using Windows again, at least some of the time, after this week is through.
However, for now, I'm going to give Linux a very serious audition and document the experience.
There are more than a billion PCs in use and, according to StatCounter, only 71 percent of them run Windows. Among the rest, about 4 percent run Linux. That's tens of millions of people with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc as their desktop operating system. I envy them.
Windows 11 has become more annoying lately as it shoves ads for XBox Game Pass in my face, pushes AI features no one asked for and demands that I reconsider the choices I made during installation on a regular basis. Plus, it just isn't that attractive.
I'm ready to try joining that industrious four percent and installing Linux on my computers to use as my main OS, at least for a week. I'll blog about the experience here.
It's hard to give up Windows forever because so many applications only run in Microsoft's OS. For example, the peripheral software that runs with many keyboards and mice isn't available for Linux. Lots of games will not run under Linux. So I think it's likely I'll be using Windows again, at least some of the time, after this week is through.
However, for now, I'm going to give Linux a very serious audition and document the experience.
The one issue I have is the mind set. It seems to be from the point of view that Linux should be just like Windows and use the same software and hardware. If that is what you want run Windows.
On the otherhand if you want to use FOSS apps, use Linux and just dump Windows. My family has used Linux for over 20 years and yes it is fine. But you actually have to want that. And no, I do not use Windows, MS Apps, or Google Chrome at all these days and do not use dual boot.
Also, dual boot gets old pretty fast. Probably best to choose a primary OS and run the other in a VM. Yes, something like 27 years ago I started with dual boot but have not setup that for at least 20 years probably longer.
One thing I always find amusing about these kinds of write-ups is how much the writer is desperately trying to replicate the Windows experience. It's most exemplified in the section "Mission Center is the task manager you really need". Half the issues mentioned in this section are effectively aesthetical, from what I can tell. Mission Center looks a hell of a lot like Task Manager. I almost skimmed past the screenshot without realizing it was not a screenshot of Task Manager.
This theme comes back again with the section on KDE: "So far, I like this KDE desktop better because it feels more like Windows 11 or Windows 10. There's a Start menu and a taskbar at the bottom of the screen. The Start menu pops up as a small box, rather than taking over the whole screen like the Gnome menu did."
I don't own a Streamdeck, and I hear they're really useful, but reading this section about Boatswain I really wonder what's going on in the brains of the average computer "enthusiast" because if you're only using the Streamdeck as a push button interface to launch Gmail of all things... I really want to question what exactly about computers you're really enthusiastic about. It also really exposes how little the writer seems to understand about "advanced" computer usage.
There's no option to launch websites,
Yes, that makes sense. Since you can perform almost any task via the terminal, there seems little reason to have a "launch websites" function because...
but the workaround is to just but the command to launch your browser (in my case, google-chrome) in front of whatever URL you wish to launch.
You can just call your browser of choice using its command parameters. This isn't a "work around", this is base functionality of the software. I wonder if they understand that they could do this on Windows as well.
I wish this process were a little more seamless and you could get a menu of preinstalled apps to choose from or a dialog box that let you put in the website you want. But this is a process that works and, for that, I am thankful. Kudos to the makers of StreamController and shame on Elgato for not having a native Linux version of the Stream Deck app.
If you want to use Linux, then you should learn how to use Linux. Heck, it'll even make you better at using other operating systems like Windows and MacOS, because what StreamController is forcing you to do here is learn how to execute applications via the command line.
I'm trying to find a good, free PDF editor where I can enter text on a medical form I have to fill out. I've tried five different editors and all seem to have issues that make it difficult or impossible to put text on top of the form. Very lame. Any suggestions?
Pretty sure both Chrome and Firefox can do this in the browser window. Maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway. The closing sections are interesting.
For example, StreamController allowed me to configure my Stream Deck Neo, but it's not nearly as easy-to-use or powerful as Elgato's own Stream Deck software.
What is the measure of "Powerful" here, exactly? StreamController features a plugin system where you can build your own actions using python and their code library, which the Stream Deck software also has. If you can launch an application like chrome and feed it parameters to open a specific website, then you can probably tell StreamController to launch a bash script that does a whole list of tasks for you and more. I guess you'd have to learn bash, though.
Community versions of software are a mixed blessing: There are community versions -- apps made by independent developers -- that fill the gap where first-party software lacks Linux versions. However, these are often made by volunteers who have other things to do and don't have the kind of insight that would come from being part of the original hardware or software team. For example, AutoHotKey, a major macro app for Windows, is not available for Linux at all. There's a community version called AHK_X11 but it still hasn't been updated to work with the latest versions of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux flavor, because it's incompatible with the Wayland window manager that Ubuntu uses.
I have to highlight this whole section because it is mind-boggling. "There are community versions -- apps made by independent developers [...] these are often made by volunteers [...] and don't have the kind of insight that would come from being part of the original hardware or software team. For example, AutoHotKey" AutoHotKey is FOSS! It's maintained for free by a non-profit foundation. You can volunteer your time and submit a pull request on their GitHub page. This isn't exactly the "first-party software" you're talking about, and it also shows you've fully missed the point of what the Linux ecosystem is doing, and its foundational ethos.
This also makes me laugh a little because I wonder what exactly they were using AutoHotKey for? The most we get is: "I write AHK macros that select menu items you can't get to with a hotkey in Google Docs or in Photoshop Elements or elsewhere". If you desire a fully keyboard-driven experience, if that's what sits at the heart of this AHK thing, let me introduce you to a little program called GNU Emacs.
Too many ways to install software
Again, fully missing the point here. If you desire a monopolized, centralized, authoritative experience where you are locked into the precise workflow as prescribed to you by private interests, then go back to Windows or MacOS. It is a fair critique once you're well acquainted with the ecosystem, but it's something that is only resolved through centralization and mass adoption of a single distribution method, and that is never going to happen.
Changing Desktop managers is too much work
I would say that's a step up from having zero ability to change desktop managers but, who am I to say exactly?
Code editing: There are a lot of code editors. I still haven't found one I like as much as Notepad++ which I use in Windows. Notepad++ will run using Wine emulation but on my home desktop, which uses scaling, the font is too small to read.
This shocks me a little. Even in the world of VSCode, people are still loyal to Notepad++? I mean, the options are infinite really, Notepad++ really hasn't evolved in a long time. What exactly could Notepad++ be doing that can't be replicated even with VSCode? I know that Notepad++ is at least less of a resource hog then something like VSCode but is that really a concern given the systems they're using? VSCode isn't even a great option, it's just the most popular option with the most broad appeal and support. Again, you could be investigating things like Vi or Emacs.
Logi+
I have an MX Master mouse as well. I fucking hate the Logi+ bullshit, and it's insane that you are allowed to create a mouse like the MX Master and lock all its functionality behind software that wants to run all the time in the background, and phone home to Logitech with "telemetry data" for "enhancing user experience". I shouldn't have to have privacy concerns regarding the mouse I use on my computer. I'm glad Logi+ doesn't exist on Linux. When you set up the device on Windows it tries to automatically install the Logi+ software, it should be considered a virus at this point. I had to wipe my work computer recently, and uninstalled Logi+ after Windows was up and running again, and actually just used AutoHotKey to remap the side button on the mouse. Out of the box, all the button does is emulate a WIN+TAB keyboard command, which I intercept and change to Win+CTRL+S which launches screen capture.
Phone Link:
God only knows what Windows is doing with all the information it is nabbing off your device while connected to their operating system. "These work, but their UI looks very primitive in comparison to what you get from Microsoft." Again, aesthetics.
I really like Linux and, if it had just a little bit better support for the hardware and software I rely on, I could see myself switching to it for 90 or 100% of my daily usage. As of now, though, I'll still be using Windows, at least some of the time.
It's funny that they walk away with a positive experience, yet the real takeaway is that "it's not enough like windows". Learn Linux. Learn it for real, and you'll never need whatever you're missing from Windows. Decolonize your brain from decades of Windows lock in. You'll be better for it.
What is it with these people that when thinking of Linux base their decisions on decade-old knowledge and go straight for Ubuntu. Ubuntu isn't what it used to be, competition actually happened and we're all the better for it. In the meantime, Canonical F'd up, and Ubuntu should not be anywhere near the top of the recommended distros list.
Want something that actually works, go Linux Mint. Have much newer hardware and want to game, go with Fedora or an arch-based distro like EndeavourOS.
I got disappointed in Ubuntu. You had to use 'Ubuntu Pro' to get the latest updates.. Bullshit :c Linux should not have a paywall in regards to security! I will test out Arch and see how it goes. Especially now when windows 10 loses support in October 16th
IIRC that's not accurate. You only need that "pro feature" if you want to be able to apply kernel updates without rebooting. Unless you have that requirement and an armada of devices matching that profile you don't need to pay anything.
I started with Linux mint for my personal home computers that I use for browsing and some gaming. No need to tinker around with drivers or configuration etc. Ubuntu is a little raw for new comer.
Another vote for Linux Mint. Many Linux distros are available on bootable USBs, so you can try out Linux without messing with your Windows installation at all.
Whelp, here I am. Been an Arch user for over 10 years now, and to this date I love it. But something is bothering me lately. Almost two years ago I jumped ship and completely switched to Wayland (using Plasma first, then Sway). I tasted modernism with all its features and it was sweet. But those last two years were a timeframe where I had to troubleshoot quite a lot compared to before where I used XFCE which was a very stable and reliant experience.
I am at a stage in my life where I do not have the time, nor the energy anymore to troubleshoot problems on a regular basis. I am now almost afraid of installing updates, because something new could fail again. But I cannot go back anymore. Wayland is too sweet.
So although I still love Arch, maybe it is time for me to look for something else which gives me more ease-of-mind. I am specifically looking at immutable distros now since the concept seems to be exactly what I am looking for (stable, low maintenance, up-to-date packages, easy rollback). But I am a bit lost with the options and hope that you can help me with some recommendations.
I mainly browse the web, watch movies, game, do some scripting and run qemu VMs
I am comfortable with the terminal
I don't do fancy customizations
I don't like GNOME Distributions that I find interesting so far:
Aurora
Bazzite
NixOS
I am still trying to wrap my head around what the differences between NixOS and the other two are. Afaik, with Nix you can configure your system once (including what packages you want to use), save this configuration in a file, and load it up whenever I need to set it up again. And it seems to have the same concept of updates, such that you can easily roll back if needed. But it seems to be aimed more at professional users and that I might overshoot at what I was aiming for. So for someone who likes to setup a system once and then just wants to use it indefinitely without too much maintenance what would your recommendation/advice/critisism regarding my situation be?
Edit: thank you guys so much for all your recommendations and thoughts! After some further analysis I decided to install Bazzite for the following reasons:
shares a lot of similarities with other Atomic distros
but has all the nice gaming related things pre-installed and configured and it uses a properly pre-installed Steam (not the Flatpak version) (the main reason why I chose it over Aurora, which would have been my next best pick)
my qemu virtual machines run perfectly fine (also the shared folder)
some dev stuff already pre-installed (don't think I need more than there already is)
fast and the OS feels like made out of one block, very consistent
I was ready to use my machine like I want to in basically no time
I already love the atomic way of handling updates
so far no issues
The only thing left for me to do is to figure out how to properly install SyncThing and Zerotier-One, then I am absolutely set.
I noticed that you are interested in immutable distros! That's a good choice for your requirements, since it allows you to skip troubleshooting most issues by rebooting or performing a rollback.
I myself am happily using NixOS, but I think its advantages only shine when you want to spend time configuring your system. That being said, if you want to invest that time once and you stay on the stable version, you can also have quite a stable experience.
The other two options you listed are both atomic Fedora spins made by uBlue, which add minor customizations to the base image. Both of them seemt to be based on Fedora Kinoite, which would be another option. Fedora in generally is more opinionated, which is good if you don't want to tweak anything. If you want to try out multiple of these options, you can always rebase your current atomic Fedora desktop to another image.
I share your desire for a system that always, 100%, every time, is there and ready to be used.
At the same time, I really like arch and the convenience of the AUR.
Hence, I boot-strap reliability onto my system through btrfs snapshots.
The setup is extremely simple, (provided your install is grub+btrfs) just install timeshift + the auto-snap systemd services. Configure it, and forget it.
Next time something breaks, instead of spending time on troubleshooting, you timeshift back to a known good point and then just get on with using your system.
With the auto-snap package installed every update also creates a restore point to go back to before it.
In addition to that, I started updating my system less frequency. The logic being that the more often you update a rolling release install, the more likely you are to catch it at a time when something is wrong, before it is fixed. Still regularly, but instead of every other day, I now have an update notification that goes off once a week.
The result has been zero time spent troubleshooting my system. If it worked yesterday, it'll work today. If it worked last week, but doesn't today, I'm a reboot away from a known good snapshot.
Oh, for sure. If you wait a month, the bigger update can be a lot more trouble.
But look at it like this. If a rolling distro has a problem once a week, which is fixed within 24 hours, updating daily guarantees you will run into it.
While updating weekly means your chance is only one in seven.
I had my first fuck up with openSUSE+Gnome a couple of weeks ago when impatient me killed my laptop in the middle of like 1600-updates. BRTFS was the only reason I didn't rip my hair out and the primary reason I will be switching my daily driver gaming rig to Linux, finally! That FS is the tits!
If six months from now you decide that you do need updates, Arch won't like the accumulated six months of updates coming all at once and might throw a tantrum.
Also not updating is a bad idea in general, you do need security updates for stuff like your browser. Please don't use an out of date system. If you want, install something like debian which will give you only critical updates that won't break stuff until the next release.
If you have an AMD GPU (except for the very latest GPUs), you should be good out of the box. The AMD driver comes pre-installed with mesa.
Other than that... don't use NTFS to store your games.
Edit: Maybe I misunderstood your question. I understood it as: What are some recommended changes to do after installing a Linux distro. Did you meant to ask about differences between distros?
It's a Microsoft network filesystem. They're probably telling you: don't leave your games on an old Windows computer and try to remote mount the drive with NTFS; if you do, you'll be sorry. Re-install the games on Linux.
First of all, how is called this category of programs, instance engine?
Second, why there are 3 different, basically inter-compatible projects out there, what are the benefits of each one over the others? and why does Lemmy prevail all of them.
*i will be using feddit as a umbrella term for all the reddit-like fediverse.
I don't have much of a technical Background to know how this things work under the hood, but I'm quite curious of where all of this is heading.
I see a lot of awesome features locked away in these other projects that would be just nice if it was standard to have them, like piefed's hashtag-like system that allows people to seek things by topic instead of going to a specific community hosted in a specific instance, it would instantly fix the fragmentation problem across feddit, lol.
How the future of feddit will be? will be all be using Lemmy or other specific project, or instances will use whatever project they like and they will be cross compatible enough that it won't be much of a deal what project is running underneath?
I don't have the time for a detailed response right now, but to keep things short: you've probably heard of the fediverse. The concept that lemmmy can talk to for example mastadon. That is done via ActivityPub. To allow seemless integration lemmy instances communicate with each other via ActivityPub. Now what would happen if someone designed a software that worked like lemmy and is capable of reading its ActivityPub communication. That is what Mbin and Piefed are. Of course, since their communication is designed to speak lemmys language, lemmy can understand them to.
As for uniqe features, just because most things are the sane doesn't mean all things. Everything is still comunicated via ActivityPub, and lemmy could, if they so desired implement them. The Beauty of the fediverse is that compatanility can be inmplemented one sided.
And finally, the reason lemmy is prevelent is because its the oldest. They are years older than the others. The downsides of lemmy are the slow development Speed and the political opinions of the devs. The upsides are that it is stable, and development, while slow, is consistent. Long term, it might end up getting dethroned by Piefed, but it is Impossible to tell now
EDIT: I so.ehow mest up the spelling of ActivityPub once, and my phones auto completion just made me repeat the mistake every single tine. Fixed it now
Lemmy, piefed, and mbin are all similar pieces of software that run on a server.
They are each capable of hosting a small social network with a similar reddit-like format. They all also support the activitypub standard, which means that they can be linked together, so that when you go to one of those social media sites (lemmy.world for example) you can see any other site that they're "federated" with, even if that social media site is powered by a different software that supports activitypub (I'm on lemmy.world but I can see communities and posts from piefed.social)
I generally call lemmy, mbin and piefed "fediverse platforms" because they're each a platform that you can make a fediverse account on, but that usage is a bit imperfect, since each individual site could also be described as a platform, and is where your account is actually hosted. You could be more specific and call them "fediverse/federated link aggregators" if you wanted to specifically refer to the ones with a similar format to reddit.
These pieces of software are different because they're built in different ways (different languages and underlying structure), have different priorities, and as software projects are run in different ways with different leadership, all of which is how you get differences in features and implementation. Lemmy is the oldest of these similar platforms, and as such is the most established. In the open source world it's very easy and common to end up with a lot of fragmented similar projects. Its both a blessing and a curse.
There isn't perfect language for all these things because in the grand scheme of things, it's a rather new way for social media platforms to work, so the language around how to describe or refer to these things hasn't really "settled"
If you're using linux and also use brew package manager on your machine, what is your use case? I'm curious why people would use brew in addition to their distribution's native package manager.
I still don't get Docker. Can we see it as a universal package format that works across all systems, kind of? Well in that regard, we also have JavaScript based applications for the web browser and Web Assembly to run locally too.
You can think of Docker and Podman as an almost zero overhead (CPU and RAM) way of running one distribution on another. So, you can run an application in Docker that expects to be running on a different distro from what you use (say Ubuntu Jenkins but actually running on Debian). The environment that the applications run in are called “containers”. Mostly they contain the filesystem layout and application libraries that the app expects.
Docker itself is designed to sandbox the application away from your host system. A related technology, Distrobox, uses the same containers but in a way that the applications know they are running on your system with full access to your display manager and home directory.
I run an Arch Distrobox on every distro that I use. This allows me full access to all the Arch repos and the AUR even on other distros ( eg. Alpine, Chinese Linux, or Debian).
Flatpak also uses containers and so you can consider Distrobox as a Flatpak alternative. Flatpak containers are not the same as those that Docker uses but they rely on the same underlying Linux kernel features to do what they do. In Flatpak, you are essentially running the Freedesktop distro on top of your host distro (so much like Distrobox with the guest distro chosen for you).
whoever says pacman is enough either have all the time in the Universe to configure the miniscule knobs or have never done serious development with multi-platform/compiler deployments. controlling which compilers are used for which packages in pacman (or any other default package manager for that matter) is a headache. having multiple versions of non-conflicting gcc, llvm, cuda etc is priceless and very easy with brew.
elitism aside, brew is genuinely a good package manager when it comes to imperative ones. I still use it on my desktop arch extensively. ofc, if you have nix, there is really no good reason for it (and I'm not even sure it's possible).
PS. "but you can use docker" -- not if you want to have the same performance especially on GPUs. also have you ever tried containerizing HIP? it's a frigging nightmare.
While I understand the concept of federation I'm unclear as to what it actually entails at a technical level. When lemm.ee eventually shuts down, will all of that user content (posts, comments, votes, etc) cease to exist? Is it mirrored on other instances?
When Yiffit shutdown, Wander archived everything. Though I am not sure how or where... But it kinda tells me that without manually doing something with it, it will probably be lost.
Then again, the other day someone had replied to a post on a community on Yiffit. Can't log in to the instance, or make new top level posts, but navigating directly to an old link still apparently works and you can reply and everything. 🤷🏻♂️
For a practical test, search for kbin.social (and then ctrl+f for it also to get the direct results). Or, just look at a community: !kbinMeta@kbin.social
The only thing that appears missing is the ~~avatars~~ images. Though I assume the text content is doomed in the long-run when it comes to new instances, as I doubt re-federation (3rd-party federation) is a thing. Unless of course, someone manually crossposts said content.
Some old dell I don’t remember was the family computer. 8gb HDD. my first computer, the one that belonged explicitly to me, was my sister’s hand me down powerbook G4 - still got it!
Was a Mac user (Linux baby machines for fun) until a few months ago when they royally fucked me on my Mac Studio. So I built a PC and installed bazzite on it lol never going back. I miss MacOS tbh. I think a lot of the haters really don’t appreciate how elegant the whole ecosystem is and how next level the interplay between devices can be. I mean it’s truly remarkable how smooth the experience can be. It’s like entering a flow state in a good video game. But yeah, I’m out. They lost that customer experience a long time ago that made them exceptional.
Edit: actually I do remember some old Apple that belong to my dad and playing Sir Addalot/Math Blaster/Number Munchers on it. But I was so young I didn’t quite know what I was doing, so that old Dell was probably the first computer I used on daily basis
I think a lot of grocery stores fill their shelves with store brand stuff now. The profit margins are probably higher. This results in less shelf space for other items.
Sesame Street has been grooming kids. Look at all the celebrities they had on there... They groom kids for the pop American consumerism life. Even as a kid I thought it was fucked up that they basically used the show as marketing...
Let's face it... America raped the soul of the pride movement. It's marketing, it's pop. It is manipulation. You wanna rep the pride movement? Buy guns and risk your life (don't do this.... Not advocating that). Anything else is marketing. Let's be real here, American life is bullshit and that includes sesame Street.
It's all the same evil imo. I think as genuine humans we should be above that entire ideology and style of marketing in general, regardless of the shit it promotes. Marketing plays off emotions. And manipulating people's emotions leads life down a path that isn't authentic. Which is what happened to pride. It's not authentic. It's basically people promoting an image for businesses to make money off. As a gay person non of that bullshit benefited my authentic human life.
@LandedGentry @peteyestee Marketing can be held to standards not allowing them to sexualize children. If we can get cigarette and alcohol advertisements off television, surely we can tackle pedophilia.
@celeste @Tony Bark I think it's pretty clear. When you're trying to push gay and transgender sexuality to children you are pushing sexuality on children which you should be not doing.
This is a very recent thing I've had happening, presumably since an update. I will often have multiple FF windows open. In one of the windows, I'll suddenly not be able to place my cursor in the address bar on any tab. But other FF windows function fine. I have to close that window and start a new instance or drag a tab from a working window to another screen, then that will work fine for an unpredictable time.
I have no idea what specific thing I might be doing that touches this off, as far as I can tell I'm just browsing. I thought maybe I had a child dialog opening in a hidden window, but it must be hidden pretty good because I can't find it if I do.
I've had that happen also, I was trying to close some tabs but they wouldn't close, opening a new window and moving the tabs over made everything work again
Something I think is related is that after some time, I can't click the x on a tab to close it, but I can do middle click (L & R at the same time) to close a tab. When this happens, I also can't get into the address bar. Just started seeing this with the last update (currently on 139.0.1) snap version.
This fucking bug is not new, and not special to KDE. It’s because there’s missing documentation in a lib just above Wayland, so it only affects some apps that aren’t using a higher level toolkit, Firefox is in that box. The bug is literally 8 years old and would literally require one fucking line of code to fix, but the cunts over at freedesktop refuse to merge the changes. If I were at my main computer I’d send you the link and details.
One thing that sometimes fixes it, is the menu key next to the spacebar.
This one's super annoying, I'm glad the tab thing actually fixes it for a bit because I was completely killing my browser every time before I learned about that.
We’re really sorry to say this, but lemm.ee will be shutting down on June 30, 2025.
What you need to know
As of now:
New user registrations are disabled
Creating new communities is disabled
What you should do:
You can export your settings at lemm.ee/settings to take them with you to another instance.
If you're moving to another instance, consider adding a note to your lemm.ee profile with your new username. Your old profile will still be visible from other instances even after we go offline.
Alternatively, if you want to delete your lemm.ee profile, now is the best time to do it, so the deletion can federate out before we go offline.
If you're one of the folks supporting us with a recurring donation, please remember to cancel it (Ko-Fi donations should have been cancelled automatically already). Our leftover funds are already enough to cover our bills for next month, so we can keep things running without any more support.
Because of how Lemmy is built, everything posted on lemm.ee will still be accessible from other instances, even after we go offline.
Why this is happening
The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.
The sad reality is that while there are a lot of great people on Lemmy, there are also some who use the platform to attack others, stir up conflict, or actively try to undermine the project. Admins are volunteers who deal with the latter group on a constant basis, this takes a mental toll. Please understand why our admins chose to step down, and be kind to the admins on whatever instance you decide to join.
We know this sucks. We're genuinely sorry it’s ending like this. Thank you to everyone who spent time here and helped make it better.
For lemm.ee users who will be migrating to new instances: You can export your subscriptions and blocks to import them to your new instance! You can export that info in your profile settings panel, and import it from the same page on your new instance.
it seems that this will save your subscriptions list and some other settings but not your list of blocked communities. at least, it hasn't worked like that for me. edit - disregard! they showed up after a while.
also, you need to save your avatar pic and re-upload.
Sopuli.xyz is a great medium sized general purpose instance. Good admins that update to the latest Lemmy release consistently.
Lemmy.cafe could be another option if you'd prefer a smaller general purpose instance (to help spread the load and prevent the burnout that lemm.ee experienced) that's also run by a solid admin.
Themed instances:
Retrolemmy.com - a cool place for retro tech/game enthusiasts
If you're willing to try an entirely new way to interact with Lemmy and the threadiverse, consider giving Piefed.social a try, a completely independent project from Lemmy. It's still a little behind in some ways, but also has a bunch of features that lemmy doesn't. If you're a community mod looking to migrate, Piefed apparently makes it particularly easy!
I chose lemmy.zip at the end. I hope this one will stay longer (I started on vlemmy.net which was put offline without notice and then I switched to lemm.ee...).
Really nice that they're doing a sunset period with advance warning instead of just randomly going dark. As Lemmy's first major "shutdown" we need to accept that this sort of thing seems inevitable from time to time, maybe this can set an example and open a conversation on how to handle this sort of situation in the future. I'd hope this creates some pressure to Fediverse developers to improve portability for users (and communities!) moving between instances, maybe even some kind of immigration/emigration mode for people or communities who want to apply to transfer their account and history rather than simply sign up a new account while posting a link from their old account. Federation should be able to do better than that.
Wow. This is by far the biggest loss I’ve ever witnessed on lemmy.
I totally understand it. It’s a shame it has to happen. Sending much love to the lemm.ee admins.
Also, generally, lemmy can feel very gloomy, there are a lot of fights and stuff as well. I know we can’t prevent this. But whatabout fostering a slightly less cynical culture? Lets compliment more, be slightly less snarky in our replies. Don’t only comment to criticise. Also comment to praise when you see something you like. 😀
Federated Services are services which many instances form a network to provide a greater whole than the sum of their parts, each participant in the Fediverse is an “instance”. A message or other item made available on one instance is visible and available on other instances.
We make these services available to all people who do not abuse it in order to promote the values of Free Speech, and those of the United States Constitution First Amendment. A free republic is not possible without free speech and commercial mainstream media do not provide it. We also get some advertisement benefit from hosting these, it is our hope that people who see how fast and responsible our services are will decide to do hosting or use other paid services here.
There are numerous federated services available, we offer Macrobloging platform Friendica, Hubzilla; Microbloging services Mastodon, Misskey, a federated search engine, Yacy, and a federated cloud service, Nextcloud.
Macrobloging services are message systems that allow long form posts similar in format to Facebook. These allow for works of fiction, poetry, technical papers, news items, short stories, and more. These formats are most useful for discussion of social issues.
Microbloging services allow only short form posts similar in format to Twitter. While you can link to larger articles elsewhere, you have a relatively short character limit and so can not post them directly.
Censorship, is handled much different on the fediverse than on mainstream media like Twitter or Facebook. On the fediverse, each individual instance is responsible for content available on that instance, but does not censor the rest of the network. Thus if you find the rules of one instance too constraining you can move to another.
Federated search engines are analogous to federated message systems in that each instance chooses what portion of the internet it wants to crawl. When you enter a search term, the local instance queries all of the federated instances, collates and sorts the results and presents them to you. As with messages, each instance can have it’s own censorship policies but no one instance can censor the entire network.
Given the wild-west nature of the fediverse, it is probably not suitable for children under 14, and you’re guaranteed to find some material that will offend virtually everyone. With federated search engines, material that is inappropriate will usually be flagged sensitive or nsfw (not safe for work) so as long as you don’t expand material marked as such, you can avoid this sort of material. There are occasionally people who violate these rules, we do our best to remove such individuals none the less some will get through.
We offer the following federated services:
Friendica.Eskimo.Com Friendica is a decentralized long format macrobloging message network. It is similar in format to facebook however there is no centralized censorship. Also, it is able to federate with all other federated message systems which use ActivityPub protocol and also we have extensions that allow it to speak to several other networks via other protocols.
Hubzilla.Eskimo.Com Hubzilla is similar in message format to Friendica in that it allows long posts. However, it specializes in it’s ability to provide connectivity to multiple protocols and so we include it in our mix of federated services primarily for the better connectivity it offers. Hubzilla provides a great deal of interoperability between many networks though ActivityPub is still it’s primary protocol. Hubzilla gives you a greater degree of control over privacy than some of the other networks. You can create private channels that are served between hubzilla instances and other compatible instances.
Mastodon.Eskimo.Com Mastodon is first and foremost an alternative to Twitter. While Twitter has Tweets, Mastodon has Toots. The format is very similar. Mastodon toots have a limit of 500 characters. Similar to the short limit of Twitter. This is why this platform is referred to as a Microbloging format. Mastodon interacts with other ActivityPub instances however when a long form blog post from another instance arrives, you are only shown a short portion with a link to follow to see the full post on the originating site.
NextCloud.Eskimo.Com If you are a customer of Eskimo North, your login credentials will work without a domain extension to access Nextcloud. If you are not a customer you can apply for a Nextcloud account using your choice of login and password, in this case the login should include your originating network. Some features require an Eskimo North shell account to take full advantage of.
Pixelfed.Eskimo.Com Pixelfed is a federated pixel gallery. A place where you can share your photos to the widest audience possible, and you can view what others have shared. Instance is new as of April 6th, 2025.
Yacy.Eskimo.Com Yacy is a federated search engine. There are several thousand instances on the Internet. Each instances crawls whatever portion of the web the administrator requested. It is also possible for the administrator of a site with relatively few resources to request a larger site to do crawls on their behalf. Unfortunately, it does not provide a method for an end user to initiate a crawl, but if you send e-mail to support@eskimo.com and request a crawl, we will initiate a crawl on your behalf.
If you enjoy these services, please consider supporting us by taking advantage of our paid services: https://www.eskimo.com/
@WatDabney @FrostyTrichs I started my friendica instance after facebook banned me for pointing out issues with the Covid-19 vax, then I started my mastodon instance after twatter did the same prior to Elon's ownership. I've had some hardware issues along the way but we've got those straightened out. There seems to be the this false assumption on many peoples part that fediverse instances should be echo chambers like the old facebook and twitter were. I think it's healthy for opposing viewpoints to be expressed, but I believe it is unhealthy to allow to degrade to ad hominem attacks, I run my sites accordingly, others don't feel this way they prefer an echo chamber and there are instances that accommodate those folks well, and to me this is the beauty of the fediverse. I personally prefer long format posting because I don't believe short format provides the opportunity for the depth of discussion needed to explore opposing view, historical perspective, cause and effect elaboration, etc, which is, of my nodes I spend most of my time on friendica. Friendica is however not efficient, it takes a lot of hardware resources to run it efficiently.
I think it's healthy for opposing viewpoints to be expressed
Yeah, that way the community can get inoculated with these ideas and learns how to respond to them, and over enough time the response gets faster and more efficient so that the body as a whole builds up a resistance against whenever those types of comments show up.
Sad to hear, had a very inspired name and the admin was very strong with hosting tech. Unfortunately however a generic instance with lax federation rules and no solid ideology, is a recipe for burning out your admins. The owner seemingly losing interest in lemmy also didn't help.
The site founder put in an incredible amount of work setting the place up (something like 10 support servers at US$200/mo), but also tried to be lead admin for a year+, and that's typically an extremely tough double-job to do well on a big, popular site / place. In his various posts he sometimes talked about all the vile content and destructive users the sub-admins had to deal with on an ongoing basis, and it certainly sounds like that burned out the whole volunteer staff in the end.
From my own POV, and something I noticed from the beginning here, is that in the wake of Reddit (and other places) treating its users as assets, it was important to grow a userbase across the Lemmysphere and Fediverse with a strong community spirit. To me that means more participation, more content-creation, and more willingness to be civil and cooperate. Not that these things didn't happen to a significant extent, but it seems like a lot of .ee users and visitors, while willing to hang out at the place, were moreso just willing to soak up the content without putting in much effort to help make the place work. Or even just being toxic and destructive, as above.
A lot more could be said and debated about the whole situation, but sites like Reddit, as draconian as they might be at times, and whatever their other flaws, have proven that they've been able to establish a system that works stably over the long haul.
Me, I love the idea of the FV, and for that very reason have put in almost two years of hard work in to my own project on .ee, but I'm very unsure about the long-term healthy function of the Lemmysphere in particular. More specifically, trying to migrate my project to another instance before .ee shuts down would be a herculean task AFAIK, especially with my having significant new health issues recently.
Not that these things didn’t happen to a significant extent, but it seems like a lot of .ee users and visitors, while willing to hang out at the place, were moreso just willing to soak up the content without putting in much effort to help make the place work.
Blaming the community for that is not fair. It takes only a few rotten fruit to spoil the whole basket. Even if 99% of your userbase are model netizens who are supportive and only make positive contributions, the whole system can be brought down by a few dedicate trolls/losers.
We need to build effective filtering mechanisms to get rid of abuse/spam and we need to maybe bring back the idea of Web of Trust. It's too easy to create an account and start polluting the fediverse.
I'm not blaming the community. Things are what they are, including human behavior.
What I did was to state what I think is and was necessary for the FV to survive robustly in the long term, and in my opinion it just wasn't happening adequately, at least for .ee, and maybe it's a problem for the FV as a whole, too. You'd have to see what other major instance admins had to say, I guess...
Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about, either.
What I'm talking about is something like a sufficient, critical mass needed to help .ee (and any other place) survive in the long run. Two years ago I thought there was a real opportunity and possibility based on what the Reddit execs were publicly doing... how many users it both pissed off and motivated. That in turn brought about a burst of user energy, directly reflected by the significant migration to FV, which of course included participation, and at best, valuable content-creation, curation, useful posts & comments, and responsible moderation. That was a significant, known movement, and IMO a positive one, even if it wasn't going to last indefinitely.
As a personal example of a 'motivated user,' I saw the need for a certain community which was nowhere-else present across the FV, and decided to create it. Over the past two years I've populated it with 400+ posts, most of them in the form of mini-articles. Other people also chipped in here and there, and there have been healthy comments and subscribers to sort of flesh the whole thing out over time.
For the most part it's been a fun (if sometimes extremely frustrating) little hobby, but it's still basically a one-man show, despite almost 2yrs and 1,210 subscribed accts. Point is-- at the end of the day it's been a small project that I thought worth maintaining as both a thank you to .ee and a tribute to the FV as a whole. Lemm.ee didn't necessarily need that kind of contribution from more than a handful of users, but as said above, it needed a certain critical mass to make it work across the server as a whole, and a minimum of posters contributing vile content or simply being disruptive assholes.
At one time I thought community spirit (for what that's worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction. But it seems I was mistaken, and thus we have the announcement today. IMO I'm not pointing fingers; I'm observing.
Weirdly enough, community might actually be enough, but the Fediverse doesn't really have much in the way of communities. As I think you yourself point out elsewhere, the Fediverse is lacking the connective tissue of shared ideology, goals, or even interests. It's also both too large to create the familiarity that binds people socially, while also being too small to sustain itself off a donation model that makes sure there are professional admins and server mods. It's too big to be a hobby, and too small to be a job.
Aping the aesthetic of commercial social media is a significant issue here, because form follows function, and the function of commercial social media is not community, but convincing end-users to be content generators. People on Reddit and Twitter are accustomed to an endless stream of input generated by nameless, faceless entities that they don't give two shits about, with some celebrities and internet-famous people interjecting from time to time. That requires tens of millions of users fighting for fleeting attention from fickle consumers. We have tens of thousands of people who -- as far as I can tell, based on the types and volume of posts -- are mostly interested in consuming, not fighting for attention.
These are not the people who fund these kinds of endeavours. Neither group is -- the content generators are no more interested in paying to get attention than the content consumers are to give it. So, without the firm social ties that motivate keeping the lights on, there is only burnout for the few who are willing to materially support the place, and gradual decay for everyone else.
It’s too big to be a hobby, and too small to be a job.
Facebook allegedly extracts $14/month of value from each of their US-based users, ~$12/european user, $7/month for Latin America and $4 from Southeast Asia.
If each active user contributed $1/month for their instance and $1/month for the developer of the software they use, the Mastodon developers would have an operational budget of ~$800k per month, the Lemmy developers would have $50k/month.
I don't think that the problem is we're "too small to be a job". I think that the problem is that the average "enthusiast" is an hypocrite. They will profess their hatred of the business practices of Big Tech, but they will look for any and every possible justification to excuse themselves to contributing to the pool.
We have tens of thousands of people who (...) are mostly interested in consuming, not fighting for attention.
Sure, but what I don't get is this: why is that people are absolutely fine with paying 10-20€/month (or $50-$70/month in the US) for their mobile phone service but expect that the server hosting service and software development service to fall from the sky?
Touche. I guess what I should have more rightly said was, given the level of contribution users have shown themselves willing to make, it's too small to be a job.
But in the end, I believe people aren't willing to pay because we look like other spaces where they don't have to pay, and we gate nothing behind paywalls. Most people don't pay for services on the Internet, they pay for special privileges and to stand out. And if basic talk and text service was freely provided by volunteers, they'd milk those volunteer organizations dry, too.
Most people don’t pay for services on the Internet
Yeah, but we are not "most people". I thought "we" understood if you are not paying for the product, then you are the product. I thought "we" understood that "Free software" was not a "free lunch".
And if basic talk and text service was freely provided by volunteers, they’d milk those volunteer organizations dry, too.
@stux@mstdn.social
If you are going to ask for money every month, have you considered flipping the script?
Turn the server into a subscription-only system, but make it so that each paying subscriber gets to invite N people (where 3 <= N <= 10)?
I think somebody shoukd do an academic study on Lemmy, how it differs from Reddit, its weaknesses, and why it might be failing. So that there is a definitive cause to its weakness that can be pointed to for anyone willing to give it another shot.
Secondly, I think it might be a good idea for the admins of the servers to have a video call. This will make the (at least admin) community feel much more personal in a way that comment threads cannot and will lead to a stronger sense of community. Actually I'm impressed that Lemmy as a project has made it this far without the developers having ever been able to plan the project together in a group.
More specifically, trying to migrate my project to another instance before .ee shuts down would be a herculean task AFAIK, especially with my having significant new health issues recently.
I can help with that, if needed. I'm going to have to migrate my own communities in the coming weeks, so I can help with yours too.
Thanks, fellas! I guess the first need would certainly be to fully archive the community in question, i.e.: lemm.ee/c/eurographicnovels.
Yes, I understand it's already and naturally backed up across the FV as a whole, but I would think that having direct backups would help for any number of reasons, especially when it came to running a new sub somewhere, being able to edit previous content as needed.
As part of that, backing up the community's many images specifically hosted at .ee would be another priority I should think.
Also, just want to point out that the community is indeed archived at Archive.Org, but last I checked, that tends to only preserve the post / comment text.
Anyway, that's for starters. Me, I have absolutely no idea at the moment if I'm going to be able to help run the place after migration, but at the very least I can hopefully find someone willing to do that. Anyway, I guess that's good for starters!
Thanks, fellas! I guess the first need would certainly be to fully archive the community in question, i.e.: lemm.ee/c/eurographicnovels.
Hmm. Yeah, if anyone's posted images there to the pict-rs instance on lemm.ee, those will presumably be going down too.
checks
Yeah, like, you just posted this image yesterday. Like, post text federates, but other instances won't have copies of the images.
EDIT: Normally, though, people are going to be posting to pict-rs on their home instance, so it's just users on lemm.ee who are going to have the problem; images posted by people elsewhere should stay up.
Doesn't really solve the issue, admins will all want to manage an instance for groups rather than instance for users as that would avoid much of the drama.
Doesn’t really solve the issue, admins will all want to manage an instance for groups rather than instance for users as that would avoid much of the drama.
This argument applies more to "instance with lots of users and groups" (what we have now) than "communities with lots of users on topic-specific instances", so I don't think this is the problem here.
Let's say we are in a different universe where lemm.ee is a users instance, and not a groups instances.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users. Admins still get burnt out. They still shut down the instance.
So indeed the communities wouldn't have to move, but the 5.5k monthly active users of Lemm.ee (out of 47k total) would still have to find a new instance.
Only the users on lemm.ee are affected by it, in this scenario. It is bad, but the current scenario is much worse.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users.
User-only instances are less dependent on each other, defederation is not as big of an issue, so a lot of the drama would go away.
Admins still get burnt out.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances) and if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances)
Those users are the same as in our universe for lemm.ee as a user instance. They stir the same dramas, create the same number of alts, violate rules in a similar way.
if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well. They preferred to shut the instance down rather than reduce.
I know that at a technical level would be hard to have common communities among instances. But it should be a goal, as it would add resiliance to the project.
Nostr has its own problems. Like you can't easily defederate from spam servers in Nostr. Every person has to remove spammers, too, instead of an admin doing it.
Lemmy.world -- biggest, defaultest instance. All the pros and cons associated with that
Lemmy.ml -- very authoritarian leftist instance. Has a tankie problem but also has cool communists. Has heavy censorship
Lemmy.blahaj.zone -- trans focused, very queer, authoritarian by nature of being a trans safe space. Generally chiller but contradictorily also the center of a lot of drama, because people love to hate trans safe apaces.
dbzero -- don't remember the actual domain, run by dbZ. Anarchist democracy instance, very cool and chill, it's what I'd sign up on if I started afresh
sh.itjust.works -- tbh don't know much about them but pretty straightforward, is what the label aays, it just works
Hexbear -- wver wanted to see a aerver that unironically loves the chinese communist party and thinks north korea is aspirational? There you go
pawb.social -- I think this might be am mbin instance instead of a lemmy instance but I'm not sure. Can be summarized as " the furry one"
lemmynsfw -- the porn one. Most instances are defederated feom it
Those are the ones foremost in my mind. Tons of small European ones that are focused on specific countries too. I anticipate replies giving me shit for uttering the word "tankie".
I wouldn't describe it as authoritarian. That implies unjust use of authority. Their harshness towards transphobes is justified and necessary, because transphobes are an existential threat towards trans people, and queer people as a whole. It's not authoritarian, it's protective.
If you don’t have extremely strict rules about gender or transgender discrimination or speech in general, then they want to fight you like you’re doing a genocide.
It doesn’t sound bad in practice but in reality, you get trashtalked for not understanding their vocabulary or not agreeing with them. Respectful debates aren’t possible because they don’t respect any other opinion than theirs.
It’s just a big echo chamber and Ada is a clown avid of power that loves to threaten others with her powers. That’s just my opinion though.
"Right to exist" is a very manipulative way of qualifying trans debates. Most of them go way beyond that, like the questions of athletes, or whether it makes more sense or not to restrict by sex or by gender, and the distinction between the 2.
if you disagree with the folks on lammy.blahaj.zone, good chance your a bigot anyways, so your not welcome, and good riddance too. you don't get to debate our right to exist.
Looks like I'm quite late to suggest, but couldn't we use AI to admin instances & mod communities, if not fully then at least the bulk of it? Also charge users on a freemium model so as to pay for admins / mods? Every instance needs an incentive structure to maintain a healthy & happy community and a way to pay for the operations required to run the instance.
I know that instance had a policy of trying not to defederate from anything (unless very necessary). Is there another instance like this that will not be shutting down?
lemmy.zip, the instance I’m on, has only defederated from 6 instances.*
hexbear and lemmygrad are user-blocked instances by default, letting you choose if you want to see them or not. I believe this unfortunately means you still see their comments, but it should be ok as long as you stay out of political instances
No, it's a completely different instance. It was less restrictive and not banned by some communities, for example lemmy.world blocks piracy communities on dbzer0 and is also defederated from beehaw.org
Wow you totally seem like a credible and sensible person to make such an assessment, totally not someone with a history of transphobic arguments, nope, not at all, totally not someone who would get themselves banned making such an argument and deserve it 100%.
If it wasn't clear I was being sarcastic. You clearly parroted right-wing transphobic talking points which means you believe or agree with them to a certain extent. You are not a safe person for trans people. Saying "I'm not transphobic I support LGBTQ, but..." is the equivalent of saying "I'm not racist, I have black friends". I know your kind very well. I used to be one.
Sure. So questionning about sports and potentially being wrong makes me transphobic?
That's exactly my point. If you don't know, you're transphobic. If we don't agree with you, we're transphobic. If you're wrong because you made a mistake, then it's deliberate and you're transphobic.
I know your kind very well. I used to be one.
The good old argument from authority, I see. We're not the same, and you don't know me better than myself. Thanks.
Things doesn't always go your way and people should accept that.
If it hurts them to discuss these kind of topics, then don't, but don't go and call people transphobic for that because it's just not. Maybe they should just not get hurt or offended that easily.
If you get hurt because someone doesn't have the same opinion as you while still being respectful, that's sad.
That's just the argument from authority all over again. Transphobia is transphobia. Not agreeing on a particuliar subject is not transphobia because a random transgender person said so, or even if all of them say so. A definition is a definition, you don't get to redefine the meaning of words to fit your narrative.
@Ledericas Unfortunately, this is often how it goes. The fact that I got some 30 or so dislikes and two SYN flood DoS attacks for simply offering my services I guess illustrates the make up of the crowd. Ah well, they will all relocate somewhere and life will go on.
Very sad to hear but totally understandable. Unfortunately, this will make the centralization of lemmy world even worse.
How much effort is it actually to host a small instance? I am thinking about hosting one mostly for my self. Mainly because I am interested in the technology. Also my country doesn't have one so that could be a topic too if there is some interest. But hearing this I am not so sure anymore. I can't put many hours into it each week just to keep it running.
After the call for admins, there was never an indication that the search wasn't going well. Honestly, I would've put some time in (& I'm sure many others would've) if we'd known closure was imminent.
All your old stuff will stay visible even after lemm.ee goes down, but it won't be linked with whatever new user you create on another instance.
If export and import of posts and comments was possible it would result in "duplicating" your posts and comments to your new account, which as you might imagine would be an absolute mess (not to mention technically infeasible - how would comment chains with other users work?) so you can presumably understand why it isn't.
Where can I migrate to? I want a similar instance, that doesn't block other instances, instead lets users decide what content they see on their frontpage, as how lemm.ee did it.
I'd be very glad for any suggestions...
(edit: ended up migrating to lemmy.zip . Thanks everyone for your suggestions!)
If the reason EE is shutting down due to lack of staff why would anyone go to a smaller one/one run by a single person? This is incredibly likely to happen there too. I didn’t actually realize this was a thing that could even happen, I just picked an instance at random, but picking the biggest and most robust instance seems like the best way to stave this off for as long as possible.
as someone who barely understands this whole fediverse stuff and had a difficult enough time just choosing and getting into an instance after leaving reddit, what does this mean for me?
is my account and all its posts, comments, activity and bookmarks just gonna be gone?
can that stuff be imported into a different instance?
this sounds like a huge pain in the ass, and my plan in picking a bigger instance in the hope it wouldnt just go off the rails or shut down apparently backfired.
People seem to want to overcomplicate the fediverse. Think of instances like independent old-school internet forums each with their own mods and subforums. You pick the one you want to participate in and sign up. Yeah, you can pick more than one, and of course you have to sign up for each one independently of the other. They do not share accounts. Each forum is independent.
The big difference is that each forum can “ally” itself with another forum and your comments and posts are shared and saved among the allies, members of the other forums can interact with you because their comments are shared back to yours.
So in this case one forum (lemm.ee) shuts down, but all the shared info will still exist on the other forums, it doesn't get deleted from the allied forums. It’s just not accessible to the OP on lemm.ee anymore because the original account and forum are gone.
I think saved bookmarks that are saved on an account will no longer work unless your app saves them externally.
It's a strange quirk of lemmy that we will continue to be able to see content from lemm.ee even after they've shut down. It'll feel like seeing ghosts.
Portable [ActivityPub][ActivityPub] objects with server-independent IDs.
Motivation
Usage of HTTP(S) URLs as identifiers has a major drawback: when the server disappears, everyone who uses it loses their identities and data.
The proposed solution should satisfy the following constraints:
User's identity and data should not be tied to a single server.
Users should have a choice between full control over their identity and data, and delegation of control to a trusted party.
Implementing the solution in existing software should be as simple as possible. Changes to ActivityPub data model should be kept to a minimum.
The solution should be compatible with existing and emerging decentralized identity and storage systems.
The solution should be transport-agnostic.
History
Nomadic identity mechanism makes identity independent from a server and was originally part of the Zot federation protocol.
Streams (2021) made nomadic accounts available via the Nomad protocol, which supported ActivityStreams serialisation.
FEP-c390 (2022) introduced a decentralized identity solution compatible with ActivityPub. It enabled permissionless migration of followers between servers, but didn't provide full data portability.
Requirements
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC-2119][RFC-2119].
Identifiers
An [ActivityPub][ActivityPub] object can be made portable by using an identifier that is not tied to a single server. This proposal describes a new identifier type that has this property and is compatible with the [ActivityPub] specification.
ap:// URLs
ap:// URL is constructed according to the [URI][RFC-3986] specification, but with a [Decentralized Identifier][DID] in place of the authority:
The path is REQUIRED. It MUST be treated as an opaque string.
The query is OPTIONAL. To avoid future conflicts, implementers SHOULD NOT use parameter names that are not defined in this proposal.
The fragment is OPTIONAL.
[!NOTE] ActivityPub specification [requires][ActivityPub-ObjectIdentifiers] identifiers to have an authority "belonging to that of their originating server". The authority of 'ap' URL is a DID, which does not belong to any particular server.
[!WARNING] The URI scheme might be changed to ap+ef61 in a future version of this document, because these identifiers are not intended to be used for all ActivityPub objects, but only for portable ones.
DID methods
Implementers MUST support the [did:key] method. Other DID methods SHOULD NOT be used, as it might hinder interoperability.
[!NOTE] The following additional DID methods are being considered: did:web, did:dns, did:webvh (formerly did:tdw) and did:fedi.
DID documents SHOULD contain Ed25519 public keys represented as verification methods with Multikey type (as defined in the [Controlled Identifiers][Multikey] specification).
Any [DID URL][DID-URL] capabilities of a DID method MUST be ignored when working with ap:// URLs.
Dereferencing ap:// URLs
To dereference an ap:// URL, the client MUST make HTTP GET request to a gateway endpoint at [well-known] location /.well-known/apgateway. The ap:// prefix MUST be removed from the URL and the rest of it appened to a gateway URL. The client MUST specify an Accept header with the application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams" media type.
Example of a request to a gateway:
GET https://social.example/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6MkrJVnaZkeFzdQyMZu1cgjg7k1pZZ6pvBQ7XJPt4swbTQ2/path/to/object
ActivityPub objects identified by ap:// URLs can be stored on multiple servers simultaneously.
If object identified by ap:// URL is stored on the server, it MUST return a response with status 200 OK containing the requested object. The value of a Content-Type header MUST be application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams".
If object identified by ap:// URL is not stored on the server, it MUST return 404 Not Found.
If object is not public, the server MUST return 404 Not Found unless the request has a HTTP signature and the signer is allowed to view the object.
[!NOTE] This document describes web gateways, which use HTTP transport. However, the data model and authentication mechanism are transport-agnostic and other types of gateways could exist.
Authentication and authorization
Authentication and authorization are performed in accordance with [FEP-fe34] origin-based security model.
The [origin][RFC-6454] of an ap:// URL is computed by the following algorithm:
Let uri-scheme be the ap string.
Let uri-host be the authority component of the URL.
Let uri-port be the number 0.
Return the triple (uri-scheme, uri-host, uri-port).
And the origin of a [DID URL][DID-URL] is computed by the following algorithm:
Let uri-scheme be the ap string.
Let uri-host be the DID component of the DID URL.
Let uri-port be the number 0.
Return the triple (uri-scheme, uri-host, uri-port).
Actors, activities and objects identified by ap:// URLs MUST contain [FEP-8b32] integrity proofs. Collections identified by ap:// URLs MAY contain integrity proofs. If collection doesn't contain an integrity proof, another authentication method MUST be used.
The value of verificationMethod property of the proof MUST be a [DID URL][DID-URL] where the DID matches the authority component of the ap:// URL.
[!NOTE] This document uses terms "actor", "activity", "collection" and "object" according to the classification given in [FEP-2277].
Portable actors
One identity (represented by [DID]) can control multiple actors (which are differentiated by the path component of an ap:// URL).
An actor object identified by ap:// URL MUST have a gateways property containing an ordered list of gateways where the latest version of that actor object can be retrieved. Each item in the list MUST be an HTTP(S) URL with empty path, query and fragment components. The list MUST contain at least one item.
Gateways are expected to be the same for all actors under a DID authority and MAY be also specified in the DID document as [services][DID-Services].
When ActivityPub object containing a reference to another actor is being constructed, implementations SHOULD provide a list of gateways where specified actor object can be retrieved. This list MAY be provided using the gateways query parameter. Each gateway address MUST be URL-endcoded, and if multiple addresses are present they MUST be separated by commas.
This URL indicates that object can be retrieved from two gateways:
https://server1.example
https://server2.example
Implementations MUST discard query parameters when comparing ap:// identifiers and treat identifiers with different query parameter values as equal.
Inboxes and outboxes
Servers and clients MUST use gateways to deliver activities to inboxes or outboxes. Servers specified in the gateways property of an actor object MUST accept POST requests to respective gateway URLs.
Example:
POST https://social.example/.well-known/apgateway/did:key:z6MkrJVnaZkeFzdQyMZu1cgjg7k1pZZ6pvBQ7XJPt4swbTQ2/actor/inbox
Delivered activities might be not portable. If delivered activity is portable (has ap:// identifier), the server MUST verify its [FEP-8b32] integrity proof. If the server does not accept deliveries on behalf of an actor, it MUST return 405 Method Not Allowed.
ActivityPub clients MAY follow [FEP-ae97][FEP-ae97] to publish activities. In this case :::
@The Picard Maneuver @FrostyTrichs I think this is a common attribute of the fediverse in general. Once a post has propagated to other sites, the non-existence of the originating site is not going to remove that post, but in some cases posts may contain references to images on the original site and the site that it propagated to may elect to reference images from the original site rather than store them locally. In that case, the new site will have the post but not images that it contained.
The settings import / export feature is extremely cool.
Reminds me of the many times I was banned from reddit for no good reason and then had to reset every one of my subs. So much easier, and just goes to back up the decentralized philosophy of lemmy.
I'd suggest not moving towards even more consolidation on the biggest instance. It rather defeats the point of decentralisation.
I myself am a lemm.ee refugee (just registered this new account today) and I specifically ruled world out because it benefits the health of Lemmy more to spread users and communities around.
And how? I came here due to full reddit ban not cause I knew anything about the platform and wanted in, it I do like the platform and I’m glad I was “forced” to try it. Except I didn’t, and don’t, know what instances are, why they matter beyond “decentralization” and I just picked one at random because I didn’t realize your “instance” could just be removed… if an instance can be removed/shut down it doesn’t seem like any instance is actually a safe place to go since it’s not depended on me but whoever is running it? You can lose your account no matter what. Idk if this means I should try to figure this out, which is just make a new account I think? Or if this is a sign for me to give up my last social media outlet and just be done with reddit/reddit clones in general
I'm trying to figure out to move to another instance, and found my mod logs. Turns out a lot of my best posts have been deleted, often for stupid reasons. Apparently Lemmy isn't much better than Reddit as far as tolerating free speech.
I managed to find a new instance, but my posts haven't ported over. Looks like I'm starting over.
What's really disappointing is that I just made my Lemm.ee account because Lemmy.One had announced they were closing down. Kinda disheartening to make a new account only for the new instance to also shutdown.
Soon to be homeless noob here, shopping for a new home. Is there an easy way to see what instance X has defederated from? I'm looking for an instance that doesn't defederate much (as I just aggressively block the specific communities inside of questionable instances). Looking for an instance with few technical issues/downtime that doesn't defederate from NSFW/piracy, etc
Lemmy actually needs more instances. The thing is that any lemmy instance can go down. We shouldn't depend on lemmy.wold, lemmy.ml or even lemmy.ca, but build instances so we can allow all these users to access lemmy. Just to add a factor, imagine all the costs for hosting an instance.
I wish I could host a lemmy instance, but at this moment I can't.
Advocating piracy is one thing, but now banning people for believing in copyright? That's like banning people for following the law. That is banning people for following the law. What gives? And to think a while ago I declared I wouldn't have any reason to not take their bans (or the motives behind them) seriously.
Are we trying to get world governments to ban Lemmy (or, worse, the fediverse)? Love the administrative decisions or hate them, such decisions will drag down the whole fediverse. Typically sites are defederated to protect the sites defederating them from liability. Will this be an example, or does this, out of convenience, not apply? Are we forgetting a large portion of the fediverse's demographics consist of artists trying to make a damn living?
Sometimes those rules reflect a personal choice. Sometimes they reflect ethics. And sometimes they are protecting themselves from the law.
Almost every instance has defederated from Burggit because its terms of service mention they will turn a blind eye to pedo content. Pedo content, quite obviously, is highly illegal (at least in the majority of first world nations), which shouldn't have to be mentioned to people. Nobody is applying that logic to Burggit.
~~DBZer0~~ Two communities in dBZer0 have begun banning people simply for ~~believing in~~ posting apologia for the concept of copyright.
Which, without further context, is still a bit of an overreach IMO, but nowhere near as extreme as your title suggests.
That's like banning people for following the law. That is banning people for following the law.
Lol fuck the law. I wipe my ass with the law. Banning people for following the law is turbo-based when the law is turbo garbage. Again, I don't think that simply apologizing for copyright warrants a ban without further context, but "I was banned for following the law" is a terrible argument and I had to speak out about it.
Are we forgetting a large portion of the fediverse's demographics consist of artists trying to make a damn living?
I was a music producer before going into engineering and I've always been against copyright lol. Copyright is a terrible minefield for doing work in my craft.
Without knowing the context of those bans, it's kinda hard to say whether your take of them being "simply for believing in the concept of copyright" is actually anywhere close to reality or not.
Based on past experience of people posting hyperbolic claims about "instance X banning people for Y", it's never actually about Y.
It says 1,100kg of explosives had been placed deep under water over the course of several months and detonated remotely before 05:00 local time this morning.
I suspect that Trump getting elected lit a fire under all of these larger plans. Once the talks stalled, Kyiv had to make some big plays to bring Russia to the negotiating table. If this doesn't do it, they might even have another ready to go.
Liberux NEXX Linux phone with RK3588S and 32GB RAM hits Indiegogo
Over the past few years a number of companies including Pine64 and Purism have released smartphones designed to run mobile operating systems based on a mainline Linux kernel. But the Liberux NEXX is a work-in-progress Linux phone that could be the most powerful to date… if it actually makes it to mass production.
First introduced earlier this year, the NEXX features a 6.34 inch, 2400 x […]
I use the following: - AppIndicator/KStatusNotifierItem support(Most apps rely on trays so this is useful) - Clipboard Indicator(I wish Gnome natively had this but its fine Cinnamon doesnt to) - Desktop Logo - Gtile(I want a tiling window manager like thing for Gnome i heard its faster) - Quick Settings Audio Panel - GSConnect (Looks better,Integrates better with GNOME) - Alphabetical App Grid - Arch LINUX Updater - Removable Drive Menu
i created this cause i wonder who uses Gnome on the Fediverse without plugins and maybe Gnome Tweaks and i may find some useful extensions here Also Cinnamon users may count aswell but idk this is primary focused on GNOME i also like my GNOME almost stock
KDE Plasma user of 4 years here, I am currently giving GNOME a try with Fedora Workstation. Reading through here, I'm going to try a few new extensions, thanks a lot 😀
My currently used extensions are: - AATWS (advanced alt-tab window switcher) - Clipboard Indicator - Vitals (system resource usage) - AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support - Caffeine - Launch New Instance - No overview at start-up - Places Status Indicator - Workspace Indicator
There's a feature I'm really missing though. On KDE Plasma 5 the clipboard manager opened a window right below your mouse on pressing Super+V. This window showed all the clipboard entries, was text-searchable and I could navigate and use/enter clipboard entries with my keyboard. Does anybody know of something like this for GNOME?
I used to use pano for that, but it's extension page hasn't been updated since GNOME 45, so I switched to Clipboard History instead. It's not quite as pretty (just a normal popup menu, no previews) but it is actually nicer to use, in my opinion.
Both options can be bound to Super+V, that's exactly the key combo I use for it.
I'm sick of Kwin. I like the way it looks, but its focus stealing protection is broken. I like to tab out and read ebooks while my games are on loading screens. Some games decide to take focus while they're in the middle of a loading screen. That's why I configured Kwin with high focus stealing protection, and extreme on those particular games. Sadly, it doesn't work. There's no raising protection, and the "keep below other windows" rule is completely nonfunctional. Also, some of the Kwin maintainers are assholes.
I want to try a new window manager. One with strong focus stealing and raising protection. And I'm on NVIDIA, so no Wayland for me yet. Any recommendations?
Last month, Brazil announced it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow its citizens to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world.
The project is administered by Dataprev, a state-owned company that provides technological solutions for the government’s social programs. Dataprev is partnering with DrumWave, a California-based data valuation and monetization firm.
Today, “people get nothing from the data they share,” Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and board adviser for DrumWave, told Rest of World. “Brazil has decided its citizens should have ownership rights over their data.”
In monetizing users’ data, Brazil is ahead of the U.S., where a 2019 “data dividend” initiative by California Governor Gavin Newsom never took off. The city of Chicago successfully monetizes government data including transportation and education. If implemented, Brazil’s will be the first public-private partnership that allows citizens, rather than companies, to get a share of the global data market, currently valued at $4 billion and expected to grow to over $40 billion by 2034.
The pilot involves a small group of Brazilians who will use data wallets for payroll loans. When users apply for a new loan, the data in the contract will be collected in the data wallets, which companies will be able to bid on. Users will have the option to opt out. It works much like third-party cookies, but instead of simply accepting or declining, people can choose to make money.
On the other side, if you don't want to sell it, then gathering private data can theoretically be seen as theft, which in turn could protect your privacy. Generally, it would be nicer if ownership of such data would not be transferable.
Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, had insurance but couldn’t afford to refill his asthma inhaler after the cost jumped from $70 to more than $500 at his pharmacy.
Stories like this are why my blood boils any time someone suggests that something being legal means it's a-okay.
And why I hope there are other Player 2's out there in the world keeping watch over the health insurance and pharma price gougers, because we know definitively that the Republicans and Democrats aren't going to do a goddamn thing.
And this bullshit is particularly galling:
In a motion to dismiss the Schmidkneckt’s lawsuit, Optum Rx expressed “its deepest sympathies” for Cole’s death
Walgreens also offered its deepest sympathies and cited privacy
It wasn’t Albuterol he wasn’t able to get, it was fluticasone/Advair Diskus.
No doubt it’s also cheaper on Amazon if that is even feasible in that mess. But I don’t blame the victim for not going to Amazon when his provider fucked him.
@Hobbes_Dent OK, well fluticasone inhaler you can get for $21.95 for a pack of five inhalers from Amazon, Advair if you want the disk as opposed to an inhaler, IS expensive but not $500, $375 current listed price, but you can get the same drug in the same form discus package for $71 if you're willing to go with generic. I've used the latter and it's worked fine for me.
"Context was the idea of a government banning meat" says the original post.
I agree that you can't possibly be fully informed on every part of everything you buy or consume, there's too much info and for a lot of it you need a good understanding of biology, science and food science to even grasp what some ingredients are for and how they work.
I am not against the governments telling people the dangers of certain foods (such as increased cardiovascular issues with overconsumption of red meat, or risk of stroke due to smoking) but as long as the consumer is informed of such, it should be up to them - not up to the government banning something like meat
And I'm against the abuse animals suffer and the whole meat industry, by the way. I hate what happens to the animals, but thats a whole other can of worms...
I feel those examples are less about eating the meat (well, aside from all the issues that come with eating humans) and more about preventing them becoming meat in the first place - but yes, with everything theres nuance and outliers, but as a general I'd say that if people know what they're eating and know the risks, and what they do doesn't pose risk to others then let them eat whatever it is they're eating...
The photos perfectly elaborate, though... They didn't really get screwed, someone uploaded "animated child sexual abuse photos." Which is not only illegal but against the TOS of Patreon. From the photos shared it looks like this isn't the first time it's happened, either, and Patreon clearly doesn't want anything to do with it.
Not really sure how this equates to them "being screwed." They're responsible for what people upload to their host (they clearly understand that) which is why public uploads like this without restriction aren't a great idea.
Yeah, it really comes back to the idea of if a file hosting service is responsible for what the user uploads, which is an argument that has been going on since the beginning of the internet. Ultimately, yes, I think they are. I think you have to actively moderate what is uploaded, but on top of that, there has to be swifter and stricter punishment for those that do upload things that are against TOS and/or illegal. If someone is uploading CSAM, then law enforcement needs to go after them. Maybe they'll actually do something people appreciate, instead of killing minorities.
Edit: If you are downvoting me without giving a reason, I just have to assume you are Libertarian, and that's being generous.
You're being downvoted because your assertion that hosts are responsible for what users upload is generally false.
(1) Treatment of Publisher or Speaker.—No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) Civil Liability.—No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in [subparagraph (A)].
I got curious — how did people even catch viruses on their computers? Was it something a friend sent? Or maybe they downloaded a cracked game or some shady program? Share your stories — would be interesting to read.
I worked for a small company, not an IT job, this happened like 10 years ago.
The office administrator lady got an email from an unknown address. The email was in Italian, she couldn't speak Italian, but we had an Italian client, so it was not unexpected that we got an email in Italian. The email had an attachment, a docx file. She downloaded it, opened it then Word asked if she wants to allow running macros embedded in the document, and she obviously clicked yes. We had a small Linux file server, and the virus running on her PC encrypted several tenthousand excel files before it was noticed that something is happening and her machine could be switched off.
No problem - said the boss, we only lost a half day of work, as we have an offsite backup, it runs every night, we can just restore yesterday's data. Unfortunately the backup stopped half years ago, but no one checked the logs...
One popular way was that Internet Explorer 6 included something called ActiveX, which basically allowed any website to run code on your computer as though it was a locally-installed program. You could just click on some URL and next thing you know it's writing files to your hard drive. This is one of the main reasons why the Internet Explorer 6 / Windows XP era was particularly virus-filled. A website could open your freaking CD tray.
From the ActiveX wikipedia page:
Developers had to register with Verisign (US$20 per year for individuals, $400 for corporations) and sign a contract, promising not to develop malware.
Promising not to. And they did it anyway. The bastards.
The Liberux Nexx smartphone will be (if it makes it to the production stage) the most powerful smartphone (with the RK3588S) to run GNU/Linux and the mainline kernel. More powerful than the PinePhone Pro, or the OnePlus 6. It will have a decent OLED display, alot of RAM, and much of what you would expect from a privacy-focused GNU/Linux smartphone such as hardware killswitches.
That is to say, this phone will (hopefully if it releases) be a true daily-driver candidate for many people, more so than the current offerings are now. While I am skeptical of it (as I am with any crowdfunded project) I think this will be a great thing if it does make it to production.
Meh, I'm feeling like this whole concept is pretty flawed and it might be better by now to just run Graphene or Lineage out of the box. Maybe a niche Android phone manufacturer like Unihertz could find incentive to do something like that.
A fully FOSS dumbphone would possibly be of more interest than a smartphone, fwiw. Enough smartphone projects have failed that I'm unexcited about this latest one.
Wow yeah I was excited for this, cause if the specs are right I wouldn't Ind paying around flagship price for a Linux first phone. But at $2K that's over twice what I'd be willing to pay unfortunately.
So its been almost 10 years since i've swapped computer parts and I am nervous about this. Ive never done any homelab type thing involving big powerful parts, just dealt with average mid range consumer class parts in standard desktop cases.
I do computational work now and want to convert a desktop pc into a headless server with a beefy GPU. I bit the bullet and ordered a used P100 tesla 16gb. Based on what im reading, a new PSU may be in order as well if nothing else. I havent actually read labels yet but online info on the desktop model indicates its probably around a 450~ watt PSU.
The P100 power draw is rated at 250 W maximum. The card im using now draws 185 W maximum. Im reading that 600W would be better for just-in-case overhead. I plan to get this 700W which I hope is enough overhead to cover an extra GPU if I want to take advantage of nvidia CUDA with the 1070ti in my other desktop.
How much does the rest of the system use on average with a ryzen 5 2600 six core in a m4 motherboard and like 16gb ddr4 ram?
When I read up on powering the P100 though I stumbled across this reddit post of someone confused how to get it to connect to a regular consumer corsehair PSU. Apparently the p100 uses a CPU power cable instead of a PCIE one? But you cant use the regular cpu power output from the PSU. Acording to the post, people buy adapter cables with two input gpu cables to one output cpu cable for these cards.
Can you please help me with a sanity check and to understand what i've gotten myself into? I don't exactly understand what im supposed to do with those adapter cables. Do modern PSUs come with multiple GPU power outputs/outlets from the interface these days and I need to run two parallel lines into that adapter?
Thank you all for your help on the last post im deeply grateful for all the input ive gotten here. Ill do my best not to spam post with my tech concerns but this one has me really worried.
Thank you! Putting the parts I have now into the pc part picker shows an approximate draw of 334W. Adding 65W on top of that to account for p100 max draw is 400w expected draw. The 1070ti I have has an expected draw of 150W adding that on would draw 550W which seems in range of 700W psu.
Theoretically my current 450w PSU could handle p100 maybe but 50w overhead is slim.
Budget is everything to me right now the 1050W PSU are like 150$ while that 700W psu is 50$. When things aren't so tight and if I get deep enough down the rabbit hole to chain multiple server class GPUs ill probably be in a better spot to afford an expensive psu along with a big batch of cards.
@SmokeyDope Please understand that a PSU is rated at the total power it can supply to 5v and 12v lines combined, but it can not supply that full power to both. And in my experience many brands of PSUs do not live up to their ratings. If you're going to run a "beefy" GPU and CPU, I suggest going with 1000 watt or 1200 watt supply. If you are worried about an efficiency then go with a Platinum, they provide good efficiency even at low load levels. This will give you the overhead you need for your machine to run without strain.
In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB-C IR blaster or if your phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack you can also try one of those but I'm not sure if the 3.5mm ones are as commonly supported.
That's really annoying. Do you think they'd notice you using your phone to change the station and possible remove Fox from the channel list? Is there windows in the building with the TVs? There are some high power IR blasters that might let you change it from outside.
That's right but it doesn't necessarily mean that access is impossible, just need the codes for the box instead of the TV assuming it has an infrared sensor on the box.
B) What you're wearing and anything you carry with you (even if you're not carrying it right now) like a bag
C) What you're wearing, what you carry with you, and the contents of your home (it will be teleported within a few hundred metres on the surface in an accessible location, but obviously won't be connected to any services like electricity or water)
A heads up is not gonna save them from their real killers, smallpox, unless you brought it with you and give them a couple centuries to recover population and gain immunity.
Flock's automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are in more than 5,000 communities around the U.S. Local police are doing lookups in the nationwide system for ICE.
It’d be a shame if anonymous types started working on poisoning all publicly accessible cameras with ai poison pills that brick whatever model you try to run on the footage
While they're at it, why not just hack the government to reverse last year's election, amirite?
I know most of us loved Mr Robot and watching dinozzo and abby double team a keyboard and Wolverine getting a blowy and all that fun stuff, but that really isn't how things work.
These aren't off the shelf pre-trained models. The model is a big part of the company's product and, increasingly, the cost of training is being partially offloaded to customers under the guise of "tune the model to your data".
And IF we have a Bones situation where someone has inscribed a virus onto human remains to destroy a one of a kind machine or whatever: That is what version control is for. "Hmm. The May 2025 model isn't working. Okay, switch back to April"
Also, these "models" are a lot closer to just running OCR on a feed and logging which traffic camera saw one of the flagged license plates.
In a 58-second video posted on the social media site X, Kennedy said he removed COVID-19 shots from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for those groups. No one from the CDC was in the video, and CDC officials referred questions about the announcement to Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. health officials, following recommendations by infectious disease experts, have been urging annual COVID-19 boosters for all Americans ages 6 months and older.
A CDC advisory panel is set to meets in June to make recommendations about the fall shots. Among its options are suggesting shots for high-risk groups but still giving lower-risk people the choice to get vaccinated.
@randompasta @HellsBelle Just because you don't think they're out to get you doesn't mean they're not out to get you. But hey, I have zero issues with you taking 55 boosters.
What happened to the internet to make it so that you now have to say "I'm not a medical expert, a beauty expert, an underpaid Walmart cashier struggling just to make ends meet just to lose my job to a robot or a piercing expert so take my advice with a grain of salt, but yeah, I think it would be wonderful for you get your ears pierced"?
I'm probably aging myself here, but it's mildly annoying to see so many words for something that should just be assumed until someone explicitly says "I'm an expert, make sure you clean them regularly or don't get them at all".
The earrings are just a random example I thought of just now.
(This is somewhat satire, somewhat curiosity and somewhat ranty lol)
EDIT: Thanks for the insightful history lesson guys! I actually learned a little bit about the internet (at the risk of really honing in on my age lmao). I feel I should clarify, though. The issue I want to address isn't the use of disclaimers in general, but rather the need for exceptionally long ones like my example above where the disclaimer is like 5x longer than the actual comment, which, btw, thank you all for commenting at least 5x more information than disclaimers lol
Pirated and OS software are different things, obviously. But would you prefer one over the other? I'm thinking of switching to both OS software AND pirated software. Just want opinions and tips from this community.
@darkguyman There isn't much I can't do with open source that I can do with commercial software, hence the motive for pirating it isn't there. I used to prefer adobe premier to kdenlive for example, but not so much for what it can do but for the user interface which I found superior, and I was even willing to BUY it when it was for sale but damned if I'll pay a monthly extortion fee.
Not casting aspersions or trying to cancel Skyrim Grandma, but the BDS movement is calling for a Microsoft (and by extension Bethesda) boycott. If you're thinking about buying Oblivion Remastered, maybe don't.
The ebb lasted a lot longer than I was rooting for. But now it seems to have caught a recent uptick. Still slight in terms of its maximum peak, but respectable: 47K Monthly Active Users. (about the same as the total number of MAUs on Lemmy!)
Furthermore, it's also reflected in the half-year Active Users, meaning it's not just people who signed in a couple months ago who are now checking back in -- looks like brand-new active participants.
Any idea what caused this? Another "migrate" campaign? Did Instagram do something stupid again? Or is it just a data glitch?
so if u guys see my previous posts, you would have a better understanding. Me and my ex broke up a month and a half ago and we’ve still been good friends and still had some sort of sexual relationship (we are 7 hours long distance). I was the one who carried so much hope and beat myself over it but I think I want to stop talking to him once and for all. I still love and care for him so much but I’ve fought and drained myself so hard the past two months my heart physically hurts. I know he see’s no hope in us and has said it himself which hurt me so much. And I always felt like there was hope so I would keep trying. But lately I’ve been feeling like his effort has diminished, which I get since we aren’t in a relationship like that anymore but even me being excited to tell him about my day and he’s just on his computer not replying or showing any emotions makes me feel belittled. I always listen to him. So this hurts the most. I’ve always felt shut out growing up so this triggers me so much. I told him about it last night and he said he’s knows he does it sometimes cuz he’s “working” but doesn’t know how to fix it. I simply said, it takes two minutes of your time to just listen. And if you can’t or you’re busy, say you will talk to me another time. Mine you, it’s 11pm and he was waiting for me to play a video game. He could’ve done it easily because if I had been ready 15-20 prior, he would’ve got off regardless. I know it sounds silly but honestly it’s the little things that get me, it’s the bare minimum.
I mentioned how the beginning he showed so much effort and more respect and stuff, and he agreed and said it’s because we don’t have much of a romantic relationship anymore. I love talking to him and care about him but I feel like this whole time has been ME beating MYSELF up over the whole situation physically, mentally, and emotionally and he’s been cruising along “healing himself” while talking to me so things will be easier. One day, hopefully, he will realize what he threw away and didn’t work for. How easily he gave up on me. Because it killed me but I know I need to keep moving.
I’m a very lonely person so this is very hard for me to do. I like having people around and not in a selfish way, I do care for people, but I don’t do good when I don’t have someone to lean on.
Meta shareholders rejected the Bitcoin plan with less than 1% in favour. The proposal called Bitcoin a hedge against inflation and weak bonds. GameStop and Metaplanet are among firms copying Saylor’s Bitcoin play.
Had a similar problem on Pop_OS. Seemed to be an nvidia diver issue. Suspend would stop working after a driver update and sometimes go away after another update. This happened 2 or 3 times. There were also some logs about nvidia suspend issues. My troubleshooting was unsuccessful and iirc, it was complicated to keep pop from updating so I eventually swapped nvidia for amd and it stopped being an issue.
Tinder is leaning into dating apps’ reputation for superficiality with the launch of a new feature that lets paid subscribers add their height preferences to their profiles.
After a Reddit user posted a photo of the new height setting in the Tinder app, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the discovery setting has been launched as a global test.
Tinder Gold and Premium subscribers in the test group will have access to the feature, but not free users, we’re told. In addition, the setting will indicate a preference, rather than functioning as a “hard filter,” the company says. That means it won’t actually block or exclude profiles but instead inform recommendations.
“We’re always listening to what matters most to our Tinder users — and testing the paid height preference is a great example of how we’re building with urgency, clarity, and focus,” said Phil Price Fry, VP Comms at Tinder, in an emailed statement. “This is part of a broader effort to help people connect more intentionally on Tinder. Our new product principles guide every decision, and this one speaks directly to a few: prioritizing user outcomes, moving fast, and learning quickly. Not every test becomes a permanent feature, but every test helps us learn how we can deliver smarter, more relevant experiences and push the category forward.”
Like all dating apps they have a strong incentive to promote superficial short-term connections over long term relationships so they have repeated customers. The worst thing that can happen to a dating app is their users finding a long term partner.
For me, driving. Its not that driving is difficult or i'm just not able to drive. Its that there are just too many awful drivers and pedestrians you have to care about on the road.
The lower photo is a BTS from the Great Train Robbery movie, from 1978:
The photo of alleged drunken sailors, titled "Actors 'Sleeping' Draped Over Ropes" in the Getty Images archive, actually stems from the production of the film The Great Train Robbery (1978):
Looking for stuff to play mostly with 2 players, but anything is fine.
I looked through store.steampowered.com/categor… (Shooters with tag "coop") but for some reason there's stuff like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress etc. in there, and while you can play those cooperatively, really they're competitive games.
As policy makers in the UK weigh how to regulate the AI industry, Nick Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister and former Meta executive, claimed a push for artist consent would “basically kill” the AI industry.
Speaking at an event promoting his new book, Clegg said the creative community should have the right to opt out of having their work used to train AI models. But he claimed it wasn’t feasible to ask for consent before ingesting their work first.
“I think the creative community wants to go a step further,” Clegg said according to The Times. “Quite a lot of voices say, ‘You can only train on my content, [if you] first ask’. And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.”
“I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work,” Clegg said. “And by the way if you did it in Britain and no one else did it, you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.”
Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
Oh lawd, another 'new technology xyz is making us dumb!' Yeah we've only been saying that since the invention of writing, I'm sure it's definitely true this time.
This is the next step towards Idiocracy. I use AI for things like Summarizing zoom meetings so I don’t need to take notes and I can’t imagine I’ll stop there in the future. It’s like how I forgot everyone’s telephone numbers once we got cell phones…we used to have to know numbers back then. AI is a big leap in that direction. I’m thinking the long term effects are all of us just getting dumber and shifting more and more “little unimportant “ things to AI until we end up in an Idiocracy scene. Sadly I will be there with everyone else.
You might not. But you might (especially with this current admin). Cops will never let you use your phone after you've been detained. Unless you go free the same night, expect to never have a phone call with anyone but a lawyer or bail bonds agency.
Yeah that’s a big part of it…shifting off the stuff that we don’t think is important (and probably isn’t). My view is that it’s escalated to where I’m using my phone calculator for stuff I did in my head in high school (I was a cashier in HS so it was easy)…which is also not a big deal but getting a little bigger than the phone number thing. From there, what if I used it to leverage a new programming API as opposed to using the docs site. Probably not a big deal but bigger than the calculator thing to me. My point is that it’s all these little things that don’t individually matter but together add up to some big changes in the way we think. We are outsourcing our thinking which would be helpful if we used the free capacity for higher level thinking but I’m not sure if we will.
Im obsessed with this game at barcades but its impossible to play at home. There is a shitty steam version that doesnt have online anymore. Since its an arcade cabinet im guessing they use a computer under the hood of some kind that has the game loaded.
How could one possibly get the game to play on a computer of some kind? Reverse engineering?
For special payment requests email mike@bumblebeargames.com. Designed to cause a scene Killer Queen is designed to be the centerpiece of the arcade and to make your venue more social, fun, and profitable.
Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.
BDS is a global movement calling for boycotts, divestment and ultimately sanctions of Israel and companies complicit in Israels illegal occupation and other crimes against the Palestinian people.
Microsoft provides AI tools to the Israeli army -IDF- which are used to automatically designate people as targets for bombing. Among other things a particular heinous AI is infamously named "Where's Daddy", where bombings are timed so that the target is killed upon arriving home, so their entire family is also murdered.
The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
The Gospel of Phiber Optik or, How to Get Thrown in Prison for Knowing Shit
It begins like a lot of the old-school kick-ass digital legends, with a phone line and a curious teen. Tho I wanna say that I was a curious teen too, but just not curious in any productive way. I was too busy thinking about girls, jerking off to my step-mom’s underwear, and trying to survive the dull ache of being a loser in a town where nothing ever happened.
Sometimes I wonder how different it could’ve been if someone had handed me a clue, or a keyboard, or a reason to dig deeper. Brothers, I had the spark, but no kindling. Just a lot of static and the sense that I showed up too late. I shoulda started my Universal Monk “let’s piss off Lemmy every day while I hack into my OLPC and try to install Linux Puppy on it in the background!” persona way before I got old.
But fuck it, let’s talk about Phiber Optik.
In the early 1980s, Mark Abene, a soft-spoken kid from Queens, New York, discovered that the boring ass sound of a dial tone held secrets. Abene’s first contact with computers came around the age of nine, inside a department store where he would hang around while his parents wandered the aisles. The machines were just sitting there, blinking and waiting for someone curious enough to poke them. His first personal system was a TRS-80 MC-10, a tiny rig with 4 kilobytes of RAM, no lowercase letters, a 32-column screen, and a cassette deck that hissed and clunked as it loaded and saved programs. Like a lot of machines back then, it hooked up to the family television, turning it into a crude but functional portal to somewhere else.
Later, after his parents gifted him a RAM upgrade and a 300 baud modem, the real doors opened. Through CompuServe and its wild little corner called the CB Simulator, he found others like him. People who knew how to reach dialup bulletin board systems. From there he stumbled into guest accounts on DEC minicomputers used in the BOCES educational system in Long Island.
These machines ran operating systems with names like RSTS/E and TOPS-10 and they were a whole different universe compared to the TRS-80. Abene saw what they could do and decided to teach himself how to speak their language.
He pulled books from the library and started reading everything he could find on code. What hit him hardest was the realization that he could write something, log out, come back the next day, and it would still be there. His modest little computer setup had become a window, and on the other side of it was a world worth chasing.
Long before the term cybersecurity existed, Abene had already started burrowing into the veins of the American telecom system, decoding its logic not to destroy it, but to understand how it ticked.
His handle became ‘Phiber Optik,’ and in the grubby wire-y underbelly of the hacker scene he was damn near mythic. People talked about him with reverence or anger, depending on which side of the firewall you were on. To the kids trading exploits in IRC tunnels, he was a digital folk hero, one keyboard away from legend. To the feds, he was a glowing red dot on the radar, a walking middle finger to everything they couldn’t control.
What makes Phiber’s story relevant now, decades after his sentencing, is not just his technical brilliance. It is that he represented an ethical spine to a culture the public has long dismissed as criminal.
As pirate and privacy movements claw their way back into the spotlight, fueled by surveillance capitalism, corporate chokeholds, and the slow suffocation of open access, the old bones of Phiber Optik’s blueprint are starting to show through again. What he sketched in the static of the early 90s wasn’t just a kind of road map, it was a warning, half-forgotten, now suddenly relevant as hell.
After all, doesn’t all information want to be free?
Phiber was a member of two infamous hacking groups. First, he joined the Legion of Doom, a group that had already made its mark exploring the digital frontier of the telephone networks. Later, he co-founded Masters of Deception, or MOD, a New York-based collective that was as much a cultural counterpoint as it was a technical one. MOD went deeper into the cracks of AT&T and the broader infrastructure of early corporate networks. They said that their goal was to explore and document, not destroy.
As the Cold War fizzled and the Information Age kicked its boots up on the desk, the suits and corporations realized the growing value of digital systems. The government’s attitude toward hackers hardened. Home computers were no longer toys. They were infrastructure, currency, control. And suddenly, guys like Phiber weren’t curious kids anymore.
In January 1990, the Secret Service kicked in Phiber Optik’s door. He was just 17. They seized his gear and accused him of causing a massive AT&T network crash that had hit the country a week earlier. Phiber stood there while they ransacked his place, accused on the spot of bringing down part of the backbone of America’s phone system. Weeks later, AT&T admitted the crash had been their fault. A botched software update. No hackers involved. Just bad code and corporate silence.
That didn’t stop the momentum. In February 1991, he was arrested again, this time under New York state law, charged with computer tampering and computer trespass. He was still a minor. The legal system was scrambling to define what counted as a crime in the new digital frontier. Phiber ended up taking a plea to a lesser misdemeanor and served 35 hours of community service. The scare should have ended there. It didn’t.
By December 1991, the feds were ready for round two. Phiber Optik and four other members of Masters of Deception were arrested again. In July 1992, a federal grand jury hit them with an 11-count indictment. This time, the charges stuck. The government leaned on wiretaps. It was the first time in U.S. history they had used legally authorized taps to capture the voices and data transmissions of hackers. They weren’t trying to protect infrastructure. They were trying to make a point.
Despite no evidence of damage or theft, Phiber was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Again, no theft or damage. Just knowledge. Just access. But still, they had to fucking put him in a cage. They needed a scalp. He fit the frame. He was the first hacker convicted under the newly expanded federal computer crime laws.
The punishment was widely seen as symbolic. Phiber was articulate, clean-cut, and openly philosophical about the ethics of hacking. That made him dangerous. His case was less about securing systems than it was about sending a message. A warning to those who might try to explore behind the digital curtain without permission.
The trial lit a fuse. What came after was not just fallout. It was a shift. Phiber became the face of a new kind of threat. The hacker. The digital trespasser. The kid who knew too much. The media pounced. Magazines ran articles warning about ghosts in the machine. The New York Times printed his sentencing like it was a mafia takedown.
Today that kind of coverage is common background noise. But back then it hit like an earthquake. Computers were still the realm of hobbyists. Hackers were not yet cool icons or antiheroes. Seeing a story like this break into the mainstream meant the world had started paying attention. Even if it had no clue what it was actually looking at.
Inside the hacker community, he became a martyr for curiosity. Where some hackers sought money or infamy, Phiber was different. He believed in transparency, in challenging authority through knowledge. In many ways, his worldview mirrored what the modern open access and digital piracy movements have adopted.
Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks different but eerily familiar. Information is still locked behind paywalls. Network infrastructure is still protected less by code than by law. The average user remains dependent on gatekeepers for knowledge. Shadow libraries, sideloading communities, and decentralized networks are once again pushing the boundaries.
The ethos that drove Phiber Optik and MOD now animates projects like Library Genesis, Anna’s Archive, and countless torrent communities. These modern movements rely on the idea that access to information should not be controlled by profit motives. That understanding a system deeply is not a threat. That copying is not theft.
Phiber never claimed to be innocent. But he insisted that curiosity was not a crime. He never sold what he accessed. He documented. He learned. He shared. And he did so with the belief that a more transparent digital world was not just preferable, but necessary.
When people talk about the moral framework of piracy now, it’s all about what’s legal and who’s losing money. That’s the surface game. What gets ignored are the roots. The deeper questions. Phiber Optik and the others weren’t just rule-breakers. They were pulling back the curtain and asking who built the rules in the first place. Who benefits. Who decides what we’re allowed to know. They saw the gap widening between the ones who use the machine and the ones who own it. Between those who are fed and those who are kept hungry.
Phiber Optik went back to being Mark Abene and became a respected security consultant. He rebuilt his life above ground. But his impact lives beneath the surface. In Discord forums and dark web mirrors. In data liberation projects and copy-left publishing. In every encrypted message and anonymized torrent. He was there before the internet was sold back to us, back when it was something we made by exploring it together.
Not every hacker is a pirate. But every pirate who copies for access, who shares for freedom, who breaks a rule to question the system, carries the idea of Phiber Optik in their actions. Maybe not in name. But in spirit.
The spark is the same. Curiosity weaponized. Access reclaimed. A middle finger aimed squarely at the gate.
It was never just about phone switches or command lines. What Phiber did and what MOD stood for was proof that systems are built to keep people out, and that anyone willing to understand how those systems work could find a way in.
That blueprint did not vanish. It evolved. The mindset that once pulled secrets from a telecom grid now fuels the mirrors, torrents, and cracks of the modern internet. Bypassing a locked terminal and bypassing digital rights software are cousins in the same bloodline. Digging into AT&T’s infrastructure and scraping paywalled archives both ride the same frequency. The hardware has changed, the language has changed, but the mission is still carved in the same stone.
The kids cracking textbooks and sideloading banned books today may not know Phiber’s name, but they carry his ghost in every act of defiance. Every time they upload something they were told to keep hidden. Every time they share a file just to make sure someone else does not have to go without.
That is the legacy. The culture of piracy did not appear out of thin air. It grew out of old phone lines, library cards, and the belief that knowledge should not come with a price tag.
Sources, for those who still believe in paper trails or give a shit:
Wikipedia, bitches! (nice 90's pic of homie too)
"Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace" by Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner (fun book I found on Anna's Archive)
"The Life and Times of Phiber Optik" Wired Magazine (I have actual paper copy of this!)
“I’m Universal Monk. You fuckers tried to cancel me, but I’m still here! Ha ha ha ha ha!” by Me
I appreciate people and their side hustles, but I write plenty of other things for pay, I don't feel the need to go crazy with Lemmy articles on pirate/hacker insights. Tho I appreciate the person saying it!
I mean, I already made a whole $10 off my transsexual werewolf gay porno novel that involved a genetically altered hamster who's obsessed with Cheetos, playing Balatro on PlayStation, pegging, and fetishizing women wearing strap-ons, and ignoring him while they make TikTok make-up vids on their phones. Oh, and it had a secret cult of nuns protecting magic golden dildos. (Not even joking--welcome to my life as a writer.)
So I can write Lemmy articles and put them out there just to put them out there.
I kind like lemmy posts like this tbh But yeah a mailing list would be cool
Thanks! I just like posting my shit on Lemmy. Everyone around Lemmy (and before that, Reddit) kept bitching that every time I'd reply, that I wrote a "fucking essay."
So now I'm writing fucking essays.
(Quick shout-out to my serial downvoting stalkers. haha)
fucking everything connects to the internet these days dude. You fridge, you tv, hell probably even your toothbrush what the hell comment is this? "what you are driving at" is a world that no longer exists, this smart tech shit is being shoved down all our throats as we speak.
Which is why I am incredulous at the idea that a Blu-ray player needs to connect to the internet
Is it really that hard to imagine a future where DRM encroaches further and further on us? Your fuckin blue ray player might not connect to the internet but it is still region locked.
Grad is defederated here thankfully, it's possible from the thread they made on !chapotraphouse@lexbear.net that they'll defed from dbzer0 in the future, so at least here on dbzer0 it might not be an issue for much longer.
my quick search for "Blu Ray players" brought up a list. 4 of the first 5 i saw were also "streaming boxes" with wi-fi. the 5th had an Ethernet port. didn't really check further but looks like it's pretty common now.
If you check the little box in the settings the machine with totally opaque and secret software running on it that you don't control will definitely respect that little check box and stop spying on you
::: spoiler The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source – we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC ... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake. - Steve Heckler, senior vice president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc, August 2000
He then plugged in a standard USB mouse, confirming that these can also be used with Switch 2 hardware. When the mouse is plugged in, a message on the screen shows that the mouse is connected and takes priority over the Joy-Con 2’s mouse controls.
Ryu then showed that it was possible to use the USB mouse with the right hand, but continue to use the left Joy-Con 2 with the left hand, meaning all the controller shortcuts are still available even when using a standard mouse.
As soon as they showed the JoyCon mouse control I was hoping there would be support for standard mice. It still doesn't do anything to steer me toward a Switch 2 over a Steam Deck, but it's an excellent move for accessibility.
Funny you mention it, the next large purchase I have planned is a gaming PC to replace my aging 2018 laptop, and I plan on going all-in on Linux. From what I can tell, AMD seems to be the way to go, and as a long time Fedora user, I'm interested in Nobara.
A conversation about platforms bringing people together, respect for diversity (also of opinion and culture) and enshittified walled gardens, between @ke5arin@mastodon.social and @andypiper@macaw.social with obligatory mention of @pluralistic@mamot.fr. 40 minutes well spent.
#DecentralizedSocial #Fediverse #DigitalFreedom #OpenSourceTechnology Discover a refreshing digital experience that is free from attention manipulation and p...
The internet inherently creates information silos, because of the nature of how it works.
Cable TV, Newspapers, the Radio, etc. were all broad-cast networks, as in one person talks and that gets cast broadly to all listeners on the network.
Channels provided some level of user choice in what they listened to, but not very much. At most they still picked between only a handful of different options.
The internet fundamentally isn't a broadcast network though, it's a messaging network. When you publish a video on YouTube it isn't broad cast to every one with an internet channel, instead, the users goes out and looks for the information they want and requests and YouTube sends it back to them.
This inherently creates filter bubbles because the information you receive is based on your own existing preferences and requests, which creates a feedback loop the reinforces your opinions.
What you wrote is probably true, but it's not the end of the story. Ownership model of corporate social media creates incentives to polarize and divide people. It drives engagement and creates moats. Also, billionaire owners of those media have their own political goals, and are happy to use the platforms they own to advance them.
Undoubtedly, but we still chose to come to Lemmy because we visited it and saw a bunch of people that we mostly agreed with on it.
Think about how many Lemmy users block hexbear or lemmy.ml, or would spit in disgust when they visit gab or voat or something.
Users prune those sources because they aren't interested in hearing wildly toxic fringe ideas (or flat out being propagandized to), but it's still fundamentally up to you as a user to decide what you consider rationale and worthy of discussion, and then going forward the content you see on here is only what's shared by very like minded individuals.
Don't get me wrong, I think that Reddit and other corporate owned social media, intentionally promotes rage bait constantly, both in comments and posts, and that drives people to go even more nuts and become more polarized compared to a non-engagement driven algorithm like Lemmy's, but even open and decentralized social media platforms create filter bubbles and information silos.
The Fediverse is great, but perhaps just because of the lack of algorithms and other content-promotion methods I have found it a bit harder to break out of my 'silos' in some places. Lemmy isn't too bad for this, but I've really struggled to find other people to follow and engage with on Mastodon as somebody on a small local instance. Little things like the Mastodon phone app not listing followers from other instances contributes to this.
Just curious to know if anyone has been using the same distro for multiple years/decades and what or if you have it takes for you to want to switch to a different distro?
On my laptops: Debian -> Fedora. Mostly because I couldn't reliably use my external display on Debian, and because I ~~needed~~ wanted shiny new things. Also new hardware.
On my gaming rig: Manjaro -> Nobara -> Bazzite. I left Manjaro because the system was slowly getting worse with each update, and I wanted to game, not maintain my system. I ditched Nobara after a botched version upgrade. Bazzite is fine for now.
I ditched FreeBSD and Slackware when I got tired of installing everything from scratch on every major release. Compiling stuff from source was interesting for learning and seeing how amazing open source can be, but it wasn't fun long term.
Then I ditched Ubuntu because there was always something not working on laptops, usually related to hibernation/sleep and/or webcam/wireless. I was frustrated with how little care was put into making sure such basic things would simply work.
I'm currently very satisfied with Mint. Everything just works out of the box and Mint X is a lovely theme for old folks like me, who appreciate a proper good looking desktop and can't understand what all the hype is with dark/flat themed UIs these days.
I don't care about my distro. The choice I make when decicing on a distribution is entirely based on use case. I have LMDE on my server. I have Mint Cinnamon on my macbook. I use arch when I'm doing minimal installs for basic functionality. I don't have a distro of choice for ARM, I've used rasbian and I use muOS on my rg35xxsp. I've been looking at learning gentoo and deploying that for raspberry pi as I have some projects in mind for some micro arcade cabinets and want as little overhead as possible in regards to background processes
I've been using openSuSe Tumbleweed on one device or another for quite a while now. Recently I switched my last device, so I'm officially 100% Tumbleweed. NGL, feels pretty good. I would, however, switch under a few circumstances:
openSuSe releases Tumbleweed clone with systemD alternative (like runit). I've tried Void repeatedly, but unfortunately never really fell in live with it.
openSuSe releases NixOS style immutable distro (not the current aeon or kalpa) based ok Tumbleweed.
Honestly, Tumbleweed is nearly perfect for me. It's just that I've tasted what life without systemD can be like, and I goddamn miss it... I'm totally hooked on openSuSe products though.
Boot times. I am the kind of person who shuts my computer (may it be a laptop or desktop) down, whenever I'm not using it. With systemD, boot times are generally kind of annoying; runit, however, completely changes this. It really feels amazing to turn a Void Linux system on, and have it boot in seconds, with just one screen of logs. On top of that, if you're doing a arch-style install (like the Void Linux minimal install), runit is just much nicer and more ergonomic. The main point is really boot time though, which I think is improved due to adhering to the Unix philosophy and having much less bloat. Using a runit system reminds you of how bloated and slow (and kinda convoluted) systemD is.
I'm also the kinda guy who spends hours optimizing my neovim config (~80 plugins, including LSP) for 20 millisecond start-up times. In the end, I still use Tumbleweed though.
I love how you chose one of the prime advertised features of The Cancer -- and my rhel6 could boot faster than rhel7 every day.
By comparison, Systemd feels like jumping on the back of a charging gazelle and hitting it with a salmon in the hopes it'll go the other way, all the while it's bleating and emitting and defecating from its regular port and a whole new journald port of its own choosing. And often tripping.
Runit has been solid and fast. I've seen it on several projects - I want to say alpine and proton/vm and gitlab's own weird setup - and it's never let me down. I wish rh could have seen that instead like I wish they picked James over Mike for automation.
Debian for about two decades: It would take something pretty major to shift me - probably a hostile takeover, major policy shift or commercialisation, none of which is likely.
At worked we shifted from Centos to Rocky for the obvious reason, and are happy with the choice so far.
This is an image someone else posted here. Asking if there was a desktop environment that looked like that. There wasn't really.
For the record, I run Linux Mint Xfce with Chicago95. Honestly it was a mistake, the vibes of the UI are nice but it still feels kinda Linuxy (as in, held together with duct tape) and I keep roling up Firefox by mistake. SerenityOS or FreeBSD, something Unix-like, may be more what I'm looking for.
There was a power loss, my PC was on UPS for some time and UPS battery started running low. I initiated the shutdown and systemd stopped it because it could not find a network share on the already stopped server. It didn't gave up so I ended with fucked filesystem because the battery died. Switched to systemd free distro the day after.
I'm on Ubuntu, which I admit is not a popular option around here. But when my power goes out I use apcupsd and a network component to alert my attached or networked Ubuntu machines. When the power first goes out all of my non-essential machines automatically shut down gracefully. When the backup batteries get low enough (I have several separate APC units around the house) my essential machines also shut down automatically.
When the power comes back up one of my machines automatically powers up and runs a few checks before turning most of my other stuff back on.
I have very few power issues which last long enough for my batteries to run out, but when I do the only evidence is a few alerts and the fact that I have to log back into everything. All of my windows restore on my GUI machines, and no filesystem issues occur. It's more seamless than when I ran Windows, granted that was 25 years ago.
I'm similarly not a fan of systemd, but for backup battery and power management it seems to do the trick.
Eh, probably if Guix becomes significantly better I'll switch to it (from NixOS). I really like how seriously they take user freedom, bootstrapping (only 357 bytes of binary to bootstrap everything else from source!) and consistent user interfaces (scheme everywhere). But unfortunately the package repo is just not big and mature enough yet, and declarative configuration options are not as good as they are with NixOS.
Better compatibility with Intel Arc cards, for one. Actually that would be a really big one.
I'm on Ubuntu. I had my Intel card work pretty well in Blender 3D,except it couldn't do BVH calculations in cycles, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make it work, because the thing that is supposed to make it work breaks the render kernels for Blender.
Alright... But it still rendered faster than my GTX 1060.
But then I also realised I couldn't boot up any UE5 game because somehow it was convinced my card isn't DX12 compatible. Also major artefacting issues in Oblivion Remastered.
Right... So I decided to go from Ubuntu LTS to Ubuntu 25.04, because the cutting edge MESA drivers needs a newer kernel, and the newer kernel is supposedly more Intel card friendly, which might fix my BVH calculation issues with Blender as well.
UE5 games run now, except for Oblivion Remastered, which still has graphical artefacting. But Intel didn't have render kernels for Ubuntu 25.04 yet, so I couldn't render with cycles at all until they updated their repo.
They eventually updated their repo a week or two ago. But the render kernels don't load at all in Blender 3D, telling me "Oh this is meant for OneAPI compatible cards", yes, what the fuck do you think an Intel Arc A770 is!?!
So... Uh... Yeah, if there is a distro put there without all of this, that would be very great.
I had my Intel card work pretty well in Blender 3D,except it couldn’t do BVH calculations in cycles, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make it work, because the thing that is supposed to make it work breaks the render kernels for Blender.
BVH building is always done on CPU (unless that changed)
I played it on my Steam Deck, 30 FPS average with lots of audio crackling, apparently because of the CPU load. I played the game in hard mode because I was afraid survivor and grounded would break the balance.
The gameplay is great: it was insanely fun outsmarting the infected, circling around the clickers, burning the bloaters. Against those enemies, stealth really was a challenge and I had to manage my stress level (stalkers and runners were especially hard to deal with in the sewer); I'm convinced I would not be able to finish this game in permanent death as certain sequences took me 5-7 tries to do correctly (optimizing to use the least amount of gear or straight up surviving). It was really hard to aim well enough on a controller to be able to do headshot with consistency (this game with a controller and a mouse must feel like heaven to master).
Stealth against humans is way too easy though: you can easily never use your weapons and just throw a glass bottle against the wall, cleanup with a bomb or a Molotov, and you will never be punished when doing a stealthy kill if you take too long which basically means that shiv are useless for anything other than doors (I did not buy the ability to get off the grasp of clickers with shivs).
The hostage mechanic felt so cool, but I rarely used it because I felt like I couldn't afford to waste bullets because of the resource scarcity. I would have loved the game to be more punishing and to force me to spend my gear; I was never spotted and I am horrible at stealth (hello Cyberpunk 2077).
On the writing side, the game shines even more. I was so heartbroken when Sarah was murdered, when Tess sacrificed herself, when Sam turned and Henry killed himself, when Joel said horrible things to Ellie, when he murdered all the fireflies, the surgeon, Marlene in cold blood.
And that's where the game shines! It shows you this great dynamics between Joel and Ellie, this growing bond that is so precious. You despise and love Joel: you despise his lack of moral, his emotional immaturity (not wanting to talk about the hard stuff and lying to Ellie) but you understand where it comes from, you understand why the violence happened.
This constant tension, this gray area makes the game so real and gripping; you can only look with a mix of disgust and support as you're ripping your way through the enemies in the hospital with savagery.
What Joel did is unequivocally wrong and selfish but I cannot judge because I know full well I'd probably have done the same thing in this situation. Well, I'm not sure but I can see it.
This game really made me understand the complexity of moral and decision, the conflicting goals and the harshness of survival. I highly look forward to playing the sequel.
EDIT; I think the right difficulty for me is the "Survivor" one, grounded looks to hard without a mouse.
I played the first one as kind of a fluke. It's absolutely not my typical interest. I usually hate games with punishing resource limits, but some quirk of fate lined things up where I was in the right kind of mood for that one. Absolutely loved it.
Haven't (and never plan to) played the sequel. Just don't think I'll ever be able to top how magical the first one was for me and I was pretty happy with the original ending.
If you check the little box in the settings the machine with totally opaque and secret software running on it that you don't control will definitely respect that little check box and stop spying on you
Ulrich
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