Even if Mastodon and other Fediverse platform gains are 1% of the gains of BlueSky or anything else, it’s still cause for celebration and to welcome new friendly faces with open arms.

When the Reddit API-calypse happened, I don’t think anyone expected Lemmy to have more users than Reddit or anywhere even close to a similar number. But Lemmy.ca went from around 40 active users in April 2023 to hundreds, and then to 2k over 3 months, most people being friendly and ready for something different.

Quantity isn’t everything. There is an innumerable amount of things that could be better about Mastodon, Lemmy and other Fediverse software and sure, mass-adoption could help with niche content. However the way the Fediverse is set up, it is resistant to all the sacrifices other platforms had to make in the long run to be more profitable. Musk-boi could “buy” Mastodon, Spez could “buy” Lemmy.world and ml, and Zucker-bot could “buy” Pixelfed tomorrow, but that wouldn’t stop anyone from forking those platforms and leaving the main instances. The distributed nature makes it hard for a monopolist to capture.

Well by all accounts it sounds fine now as its own community. The problems of everything riding on one main instance/set of maintainers would be a problem in the future.

Things have not always gone well on the Fediverse and Lemmy, but we have been able to get through these problems thanks to the safeguards of federation and open source. E.g. Feddit.de broke and the original owner was nowhere to be found, but feddit.org was able to succeed it.

Mastodon is like if Twitter could read reddit, Instagram, and various other social media network posts as Tweets, except every social network is a much tinier version of it.

and get my haircut elsewhere

Was this your hairdresser, bruv?

Interesting choice… Musk has a bone to pick with Microsoft so even if the FTC gets hobbled, this investigation may get to survive the changing of the administration.

I mean old, un-Musked Twitter was what people wanted. Mastodon is similar, and I like it but it’s not Twitter (which personally I couldn’t get into even in its heyday).

That is what we have now, but clearly people are averse to making a choice that they are not technically inclined to know how big or small the consequences of that are. My solution is a spitball one with obvious flaws, but essentially it is that the instance is picked randomly out of a group of very closely, if not identically aligned servers.

You’d have different domain names to get people used to the concept. John Doe would sign up, and become john.doe@apple.server.hostname, Jane Doe would sign up and become jane.doe@banana.server.hostname

Hey… that just gave me a small idea… what if we made a “flock” or “herd” of Mastodon servers? The group of servers would all federate with each other, have the same block and allow lists, moderation policy and teams spread throughout them.

When you make an account you can be assigned a random instance name within the flock. If your instance goes down you could still possibly log in using other servers? Main benefit would be spreading server costs and maintenance effort and de-centralized operating, but still keep a centralized feel to it?

It would take a HUUUUGE leap of logic

US Fifth Circuit of Appeals and Supreme Courts: “Hold My Beer”

For example, if Trump’s Republican Congress gets rid of elections, then this Amendment doesn’t matter.

People want to leave X, but they still want the same old, rather than new stuff to make things better as a whole. They don’t want to have to do this “pick a server” thing, they want to have an algorithm spoonfeed them popular content, and it would be best for them to have to put in zero extra effort. In Masto you have to put in the hashtags to get found, and search for and follow people and hashtags to find stuff you want, and essentially DIY-ing your feed seems to be too much work for people.

I don’t think it’s the worst outcome or the Fediverse needing to be written off because of this. At least for now BridgyFed is a thing, and it’s not like we have to capture every refugee, Mastodon has thriving and tight-knit communities.

You were right. The body text had transcribed as ツイッター incorrectly. It’s been edited out since.

I’m so glad that Killdozer Willie is now public domain.

The feel of Lemmy communities is a little different than Reddit, even if the software features are mostly analogous and there are many Redditisms used.

Your average commentor/poster will stand out more in a small community, there’s less of being able to post and then slink away.

People have gotten used to a lot more comforting features of modern Reddit, Lemmy in both the users and in the software has more of a “Reddit 10-15 years ago” feel to it.

A tablet is more like a clipboard with paper than a binder 📋

If you think of a stone tablet, it’s a flat thing with writing on it, same idea.

I like it, I was a USB-micro B cable guy for almost all my electronics. It was a yearlong transition for me to phase it out in favour of USBC, but it was just with upgrading electronics, not because I wanted to ditch the cable format specifically.

Charging and data transfer aspects weren’t much of my concern, until I learned about USB-PD and video via USB, that was pretty cool. I like the reversible connector, too many times I jammed the cable in the port the wrong way.

You probably know most of it so just some advice: Don’t format the Partition table (MBR to GPT etc.) on the disk whose data you wish to keep.

Shrinking a partition or moving it carries a small risk of data loss and will take significantly longer than creating a new partition (since data needs to be cut and pasted from one area of the disk to another). If your old laptop has an empty slot for another SSD or NVME drive you can plug that in, and still dualboot and having the new drive Linux only.

Also to deal with the occasional Windows cockups, just carry a boot-repair USB, the auto repair has fixed the Windows issue for me 90% of the time (the other times are usually boot order priority or other BIOS setting)

It would be just the same with Jill Stein or Chase Oliver as leader, Wall Street will benefit. There is obviously outsized influence of rich people in government, but big money makes money with money, doesn’t matter what the politics are.

It’s more important that A. The US doesn’t put a leader who has real plans to become dictator and the Project2025 yes-men lined up behind it, and B. The US chooses a leader who better represents the national interests of common people, which will not happen if too many would-be Harris voters choose 3rd party or abstains.

If you have gas motor equipment in your garage (mower, snowplow, leafblower, boat), you should try to winterize it with specific stabilizers, otherwise you will have a hard time starting it in the spring.

Wear layers, layers, layers and a proper winter jacket on top. Winter mittens or gloves, a hat, scarf, neck warmer, balaclava or face covering, ear muffs, snow pants, could all be stuff you need depending on how far north you go and how thick the snow piles up. Almost universally in cold climates you will need proper boots.

Similar to Humidex, there’s a value called wind chill, because the layer of heat you radiate gets blown away making you feel colder. Pay attention to that, and remember that hands and ears left exposed will get frostbite after some time. You can find charts online (Celsius and Fahrenheit).

Watch for black ice on roads and sidewalks, it looks just “wet” but it is very slippery ice. Use road salt or other de-icing compounds on your walkways and driveways so that you and others don’t slide around or fall.

A bunch of driving stuff:

Do NOT go posted speed on roads that aren’t fully cleared. In reduced visibility conditions like blizzards you might have to go half the usual freeway speed or less, with flashers on and follow the car in front. It’s best to avoid driving in snowstorms.

Winter tires may be required in some areas, but they are strongly recommended even if not. Leave a safety kit and brush in the car, because in remote areas it may be an entire day before a tow can even get to you. Have blankets in the car in winter.

Test recovery out of a slide in a safe place so you know what to do in a pinch. You don’t have to go too fast, just somewhere that doesn’t get cleared well with no obstacles to crash into like a rarely cleared parking lot. Two modes are: brake fail going straight (with my old car you needed to be light but steady on the brakes for best effectiveness), and a turn going wider than you expected. The car will not respond to sudden maneuvers like you would expect on a clear surface.