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halm

@halm@leminal.space

Downvotes rewarded with hugs.

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halm ,
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Oh, the single, shared built-in search function in mastodon, pixelfed, misskey, lemmy, friendica, peertube, diaspora, castopod, writefreely, &c?

Please, the fediverse is more than [platform you're currently using].

halm ,
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It's only a duopoly?! I'm genuinely curious who you see as the top two and what other bloated browsers don't make your list.

halm ,
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Right, so engines not browsers/brands. That makes sense 🙂 I guess Edge, Trident or WebKit don't really figure into that scale?

halm ,
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LOL, fair point!

Chrome but crypto and homophobic CEO

😬 I'm just going to guess Brave?

halm ,
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Duh, you're right. I refuse to use it so I'm not exactly up to date...

halm ,
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BECOME BITCOIN
BECOME LIGHTNING

LOL, not in a million years. Dumping this like the cryptocurrency infected garbage it is.

halm ,
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I mean, that quote is truer for any regular currency than it is for shitcoin. The only unique thing about cryptocurrency (and especially POW ones) is that it's flushing the environment down the drain even quicker than bog standard hypercapitalism. And still you can't use your fucking monopoly money to buy a bottled water.

halm ,
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"Sovereignty", that big white whale of the dysfunctional far right?

halm ,
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True. Tipi, Umbrel and CasaOS are savvy enough to do this. But do you really want to teach more cryptobros to slip their message under the threshold? I'm fine that they show their true goals front and centre, it's like a note saying "hit me" taped to their backs.

halm ,
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It's been a buzzword among the ultra-libertarian, anti-government, tinfoil hat wearing set for decades.

halm ,
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The title literally says "Sovereign computing". Are you okay? I do recommend reading from the top down, for more information please re-read.

halm ,
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Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. I think there is a certain overlap in the language used around general privacy principles and the more... out there, political anti-society movements.

Sometimes it's innocent and random but when I see somebody putting cryptocurrency up front in their project and using "sovereign computing" as a tagline, my internal crackpot detector goes nuts. I'm fairly sure that deep down these people would want to see the world burn to stay warm toward the end.

halm ,
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You say that with such certainty, as if proof of stake schemes won't simply be a greenwashing alibi for accelerating validation of currencies using them, to the point of the same carbon footprint as POW.

You're simply wrong to say that POS is without environmental impact, even Ethereum's carbon reductions were only that (and not nearly as high as they claimed).

halm ,
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There's another reason I don't share "It's FOSS" links anywhere: this should have been a github issue but it's turned into a clickbaity headline. Every othe article coming out of "It's FOSS" is either low effort, sensationalist, or both.

halm ,
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Funny how Bountysource deteriorated at the exact time cryptocurrency got involved.

halm ,
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I use the LibRedirect browser add-on to use Invidious on desktop and NewPipe on Android. Never use youtube.com, problem solved.

halm ,
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It just cited the wrong Neal Stephenson book, so not way off.

halm ,
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What can possibly go wrong?

halm ,
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Well, fuck. It was fun while it lasted.

halm ,
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It's definitely true that Twitter consistently failed to raise the expected profit for stockholders, which is probably why they appreciated the wild overshot that Musk offered. I sort of appreciated that the company could stay so uncommercial for as long as it did, running only on hype.

Did Nazis use to "run rampant" on there before? Maybe not straight up, clear cut Nazis but there were some people who really dogwhistled in that direction going way back.

halm ,
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I used to have an old laptop stuck in a corner just running Transmission. I called that Seed because that was its sole purpose. Its replacement is fully automated *arr and media server, making it both seed and vault, so I had to call it Spitsbergen (reference)

halm ,
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I've been eyeing it for a while, it looks quite mature for an alpha project, and it's really charmingly presented.

halm ,
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Friends? More like feudal lords picking and choosing which projects they can benefit from supporting.

halm ,
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Non-paywalled archive.is link

Are there any innovative platforms in the Fediverse?

I've explored a few platforms within the Fediverse, but most of them seem to be inspired by and mimic existing mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook. While this familiarity can be comforting, I can't help but wonder if there are any truly innovative and original platforms out there that offer a...

halm , (edited )
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Sounds like a bit of a Swiss army knife for the fediverse. This kind of thing may take off with developers but I'm uncertain what regular selfhosters need it for.

halm ,
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Given that you'll want to save details for your launch, I understand why you can't give too much away but... could you give a hint at how your project aims to innovate?

Is it completely outside the known social media paradigms (microblogging, communities, review sites, etc), does it spin or combine them in novel ways, or "just" add original features to one or more of the existing models?

halm , (edited )
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I think the open data projects have a fair potential for innovation. They need some kind of backbone for permanence which would need widespread federation, but they're a conceptually interesting addition to the Fediverse.

Edit: spelling ("to", not "YO!")

halm ,
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If you want to scale way down, Sabre develops the very lightweight Baïkal. I've been using it for a couple of years, and it's worked without a hitch. Just sits there and does its thing.

halm ,
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Completely agree about Nextcloud. The project rose to fame on selfhosters beta testing it, then buddied up to enterprise users and ditched the initial user base.

halm , (edited )
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Ooh, good one! I'll try to stick to the very basics that I've installed, different strokes for different use cases and all.

  • MicroG — a non-Google framework to circumvent annoying GSF dependencies.
  • DAVx5 — will sync calendars and contacts from your own cal/cardDAV instance.
  • ICSx5 — helps add external ICS calendars into your calendar.
  • Syncthing — keeps documents, pictures, etc synced between devices.
  • KISS launcher — search based launcher. No bloat, no muss, no fuss. Everything else seems to try too hard after KISS.
  • Fossify apps. There's a whole suite but I only use
    • Fossify calendar,
    • Fossify contacts,
    • Fossify SMS messenger.
  • Fennec — a Firefox that passes F-droid privacy muster.
  • K-9 mail — um, is this top grade email app named after the robot dog in Doctor Who? Affirmative.
  • Open camera — so much better than a basic Android camera app.
  • Authenticator Pro — 2-factor authetication (dunno why it's called "Pro", it's not like there's a paid tier)
  • Obtainium — another app manager, for the fringe cases where an app isn't on F-droid but you trust its source enough to download it from there.

Edited to add:

  • NewPipe! — third party YouTube player that puts a stick in Google's tracking and profiling.

Additional repositories

F-droid is great and all but its best feature really is that you can add other app repositories alongside the flagship one. IMO you absolutely need to add the following repos for the best selection (ie., adapted to my list above 😉)

Suggestions for more repos?

halm ,
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That would be in your phone main settings I guess, and specific to your device? In no Android stock or custom ROM I've used have I seen a "photos button (bottom right)".

halm ,
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Oh, good catch! They have their own repository that can easily be added to the F-droid app. I think repos deserve special mention, editing my op.

halm ,
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Hmmm, so DivestOS supports bootloader relocking, huh? I'll have to give that a look.

halm ,
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It's a ...social workspace? It feels a bit icky though, like being teenage peer pressured to go to a mall. Just a little too consumery.

halm ,
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Fair point and while I don't want to sidetrack from it — how much is the Fediverse's energy usage compared to those of AI services or cryptocurrency farms?

I'm all for scaling down our resource consumption and finding environmentally friendly alternatives, but it has to be across the board. It's no use that a small segment minimise their expenditure if the biggest culprits continue and expand their exploitative behaviour.

halm ,
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That's my intuition too. Would like to see sources to back it up though.

halm ,
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👍 That confirms my own assumptions, thanks for the link and estimated comparison!

halm ,
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No, I agree. It's not about waiting out the bigger players. It's making sure that everybody does their part!

The fediverse has its footprint for sure and it's great that we pull together to minimise that. I just want to put it in perspective at the same time and point out that federated services aren't the only, or even biggest offenders here.

Many of the hotshot technologies — cryptocurrencies a few years back, this season it's "AI" — get launched without a thought of their environmental impacts, at a time where basically every MWh counts. I want to help with my fedi usage, but I also want that to be reflected in idiots' bitcoin mining or GPT generated "content".

There has to be proportional balance.

halm ,
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I think you should've stuck with the bottom tier.

halm ,
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Yeah, there are piracy websites that comply with DMCA notices but, like Youtube in the olden days, it's basically whack-a-mole on the copyright holders' part because they have to give individual notices for each pirated copy. So like you say, you can probably find other copies anyway.

halm ,
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It is federated, but no, it isn't connected to Solid pods. Pods are just the term for flocks of whales 🙂

halm ,
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Yeah, KISS is amazing, versatile and simple with a small footprint. It honestly should be the default throughout Android.

halm ,
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Yeah, because using the KISS launcher is like going into the CLI and building stuff from source /s

It does the absolute basic of what a launcher should do and then some, doesn't track you and gets out of your way. Those principles wouldn't kill Android, but maybe Google's ad revenue would smart a bit.

halm ,
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Yeah, that's a George Carlin quote, and I'm well aware of it. It's no excuse for dumbing down interfaces like a launcher, or filling it with superfluous features (that coincidentally feed into a corporate clickhole).

Rather than the grim idea that everybody gets an interface the lowest common denominator will grasp, I maintain that everybody deserves a functional, no-bullshit launcher like KISS. It absolutely isn't what you make it out to be.

halm ,
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OTOH, may not fit all your criteria:

halm ,
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Use Gluetun. Love Gluetun. Gluetun is the answer.

Alright, alright Hypno-toad, you got me! 😅

Jokes aside, this is probably the most convincing writeup I've seen in favour of Gluetun. Thanks, will give it a go!

halm ,
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Apparently Mac users.

halm ,
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Sure, but again. That is only legally binding in US jurisdiction?

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