West Asia - Communist - international politics - anti-imperialism - software development - Math, science, chemistry, history, sociology, and a lot more.

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Cake day: Dec 27, 2021

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On a related note, is there any page or document showing what’s actively being worked on and what features to look forward to? I am expecting the answer is no, since I know this is all voluntary work. But if it exists, would love to check it out and see what you’re up to :)


I played on my ps1 / ps2 a lot for a while

Watched tv

Would call friends on phone and talk with them

I mean yes, we also hung out sometimes, but I wouldn’t say it’s more often than I hangout with friends nowadays. Technology was still part of my life, just in another form.


I’m not pro UN, but it seems they have argued that this was posted as satire.


Is guix much different from Nix? I remember that it uses scheme instead of nix language, that it is more free-software purist, and also has less packages than nix. Are there any benefits?


Any interesting approaches to package management (Linux or not)? besides Portage and Nix.
Gentoo's Portage and NixOS' Nix are both interesting takes on package management. Both are powerful and open up a ton of flexbility to the user, but still do a lot of work for you. Are there any other similarly interesting approaches to the package management problem?
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I am not a fan of micro-blogging style social media. I find sites like reddit and lemmy a lot more useful for me.

I think the answer to your question is maybe both? Lemmy is attractive both because of its reddit-like features and its fediverse features. But maybe more reddit than fediverse


What’s link aggregatorness? I hear that term often to refer to Reddit and lemmy but I don’t understand what it means exactly. Obviously content on these sites is a lot more than “aggregating links” if I understand what aggregation means here.


On that part, I do agree with you. I do not like mastodon just because I’m not a huge fan of the micro-blogging-focused user experience, but I do agree that there’s value in a platform not imitating Twitter but having some of the UX. Likewise, I think that there is value in another platform that would attract Twitter users. I think it could just be a separate mastodon instance that is modified to fit said user base.


I respectfully disagree with some of your points. The benefit of a Twitter clone that is federated (or more precisely, a Twitter clone that supports activityPub) is that the users of said Twitter clone can see content from and interact with users who aren’t on said clone, but another platform that supports activityPub. And conversely, I can see content from said Twitter clone without necessarily having to be on it, as long as I use some activityPub platform that fits my taste.

This provides a lot more choices. I can choose a platform with the best user experience for my taste, without any regard to privacy and moderation. That would be completely fine. Conversely, another person may choose to search for an instance based on their specific moderation, topics, privacy, or other preferences. Another person may even self host their own instance. All of those can interact with each other, and that is what makes it nice.






It looks like development on it has stopped for more than a year? Or am I missing something?

https://www.hexbear.net/post/159221



Should separate instances of Lemmy be topic-based? What else, if not?
I suppose this may make sense in the case of something like Mastodon. But something as versatile and customizable as lemmy, which allows for the existence of separate topic-based communities, makes topic-based instances of lemmy not necessary. Instead of making a new instance for a certain topic, it is usually a much better approach to just create a new community on my current lemmy instance. At least from my perspective as a user. I find the only exception to this is censorship and moderation. If I, for any reason am unhappy with an instance's moderation and censorship, then that is the only potential reason I can see to change and make my own. What does everyone else think of this?
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Many front end devs do this. Front end devs aren’t necessarily designers! Moreover, it’s always better to start out with a bare UI, nail the functionality first before the design.


I don’t have a mastodon account, and making a mastodon account or instance for this purpose is not the experience I would like. But I understand this is the path of least resistance at the moment, but I wish there was some sort of service that can publish my blog to the fediverse like WriteFreely and Plume do.


How does it compare to vim?


Wish it was possible to use existing Hugo / Eleventy blog and somehow add federation to it. It feels like using a whole separate one makes it less worthwhile (and less customizable)


On the number of users shrinking, I’ll say that I quit using lemmy for several months, mostly due to losing hope on it. But after Reddit banned third party apps, I decided to come back.


Imo lemmy seems to have more features than Reddit also, like editing post titles, having text alongside an image post, using third party apps (which will stop soon with Reddit) etc. Reddit is very slow to add updates that make sense, but lemmy moves fast and is a great piece of software.


Nano is only better in having a lower learning curve, and still being sufficient for most people just wanting to get the job done.

Vim is way more capable and feature rich (especially after you extend with plugins), much more satisfying to use once you get the hang of it, and can be much faster


Free software is failing and getting co-opted because they thought getting a bunch of enthusiasts to boycott proprietary software was enough to win. As long as the means of production is owned by the ruling class, their interests will be favored. Our boycotts will cause little but inconveniences for ourselves.


Imo since Lemmy follows activity pub federation, it is best that this is done by some other program, and that it gets perfected there rather than be a secondary feature on Lemmy that doesn’t have all attention l


Motives do matter, but when the perpetrator literally said they would do it, then saying “I don’t see what their motive is” does not really refute that they did it.

The video is not out of date. Did he give some expiration date that I happened to miss? Did he take it back? I don’t see you citing any evidence of that.

It’s really weird to see people bending backwards to defend this.


I’m sorry but your analysis is very nonsensical. You’re analyzing motives. But the sabotage already happened. It is not a matter of speculation whether someone will gain from it or not. If you make an argument that they have nothing to gain, well I don’t know what to tell you. It happened, and they delivered on their promises exactly. I provide a link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSPfXLPUJHM


They literally said they would do this lmao


Your logic doesn’t follow. The pipeline was in construction up until recently. Germany suspended it due to the war in Ukraine, but it was previously intending to use it, and it had stake in it. Moreover, Nord stream 1 was also in service before the war, and it was part of the sabotage.


Does this meme say it was? Or are you implying that because it wasn’t in operation yet that it has no benefit to Germany?


https://lemmy.ml/post/473553

Admittedly, when I went looking, I didn’t find many. I noticed this problem months ago and only spoke now. Looks like it improved a lot.



SimpleX Chat is **the first messaging platform that has no user identifiers**, not even random numbers. The messages are e2e encrypted, and the servers and network observers cannot see users' contacts or groups. You can use the servers pre-configured in the apps or [host your own](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq#deploy-smp-server-on-linux). ## What's new in v4: * local database encryption with passphrase. * improved stability of chat groups, file transfers and message delivery. * you can now use your own WebRTC ICE servers for audio-video calls. * German language in the interface. * TypeScript SDK for SimpleX Chat integrations. See full [release announcement](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/blog/20220928-simplex-chat-v4-encrypted-database.md) for more details. Download the apps via the links in the GitHub repo: [https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat#readme](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat#readme). Also, they are hosting **the event on Discord on October 6**, at 6pm UK / 10am PT - the same day when they kick off independent implementation audit - you can join via [this link](https://discord.gg/xmY76gCz?event=1024632780023402506) to: * learn how SimpleX Chat is different and why it provides better meta-data privacy than alternatives, * hear about future platform development plans, * ask any questions, * criticize what we do, * suggest improvements. Once you install the app you can choose "Connect to developers" to ask any questions, suggest new features and to join the group of users. ## About SimpleX Platform Some links to answer the most common questions: [How can SimpleX deliver messages without user identifiers](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/blog/20220511-simplex-chat-v2-images-files.md#the-first-messaging-platform-without-user-identifiers). [What are the risks to have identifiers assigned to the users](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/blog/20220711-simplex-chat-v3-released-ios-notifications-audio-video-calls-database-export-import-protocol-improvements.md#why-having-users-identifiers-is-bad-for-the-users). [Technical details and limitations](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/README.md#privacy-technical-details-and-limitations). [How SimpleX is different from Session, Matrix, Signal, etc.](https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/README.md#frequently-asked-questions).
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It isn’t serious. This is the c/memes


Please reread my post, as I’m not against politics. I am very pro politics in memes.



Meta: the problem with this community is not political memes, but rather political content that isn’t even memes
I hope that mods of this community limit these types of posts that aren't memes. I've seen some posts that are merely political images and not memes. Imo political memes are good and so belong among non-political memes.
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In my opinion, the biggest problem in the west is not in fighting. That was a problem for us too. The biggest problem in the west is that the state is so powerful and efficient, it has mastered the art of population subjugation and propaganda. Obviously, this is many times truer in the US first, other settler countries second, and the rest of the West third.

In the US, this is so true that it has become part of its culture. Anti-labor unions, focusing on yourself and viewing your collegaues as competitors, not sharing your salary, etc. All this is culture that sept through from propaganda.


In French, 80 is called Quarte Vingt, which transliterates to “four twenties”. 90 is called “Quatre Vingt Dix”, which transliterates to “four twenties ten”. And finally, 99 would be “Quatre Vingt Dix Neuf”, which transliterates to “four twenties ten nine”.




Not exactly the same as Nitter, but the closest is the Frost Android app.


Consider Aegis and AndOTP also. I personally use Aegis.


Sorry, this isn’t an answer to your question, but please invite me when you make the instance. Would love an Arabic speaking lemmy, and I’ll help promote it as well.



I don’t think Allah cares about man to man attraction, Orwell.




A couple of things:

  • just because they have anti capitalist views doesn’t mean they won’t sell. I agree, it’s way less likely, but it’s not like no socialist has sold off before.
  • this is speaking about the current state of the Fediverse, as a niche space. Many of its users are highly political. This wouldn’t be the case if the Fediverse became more mainstream.

I think mail suffers from the same issues as Fediverse (maybe mail was a bit worse).


Can the Fediverse fall to ruling class / corporate control?
Escaping ruling class and corporate domination is one of the reasons some people choose to migrate to the Fediverse. Even some of the other reasons, like ads, engagement obsession, political censorship, content sorting algorithms, can all be traced back to corporate control. While corporations don't have much control of the Fediverse today, could they in the future? One might think that Fediverse is designed to make this impossible. In my opinion, it is only designed to somewhat resist this, but it is still vulnerable to ruling class takeover. The ruling class doesn't need that now, as they already control all major social networks, and Fediverse remains a niche. But shall that change, they might be out to try to control it. Can they succeed? I'll admit and say I am very far from an expert, so I hope someone will correct me if I make any mistakes due to misunderstanding the Fediverse. Instead of centralizing a social network in a single instance controlled by a single entity, the Fediverse can be federated into multiple instances. However, to host an instance, requires some investment, and although it can be small for some services, it is a barrier that many people choose not to cross. Hence, as we have already seen, instances are controlled by either organizations or groups who pooled funds for their instance, or individuals who incurred the initial investment themselves. Not bad, so far. However, this does present an issue. If the Fediverse were to grow more instances, people who have money are more capable of starting new instances. It also favors people who don't live in countries where salaries and cost of living are lower, which would make renting VPS even more expensive to them. This gap is closed as the software gets better and more lightweight, but as it stands, this is how it works. The other problem is that many Fediverse networks are already sort of centralized, in the sense that there is one (sometimes a handful) of instances that are biggest. This means If someone were to take over just those, they may already have enough control. This is less of a problem for platforms that matured more and have more instances. If someone like Elon Musk were to go after the biggest instances and either offer money to buy them (which is very likely to work) or somehow pursue censoring the instances that don't, although that is not as easy as buying a single company (ignoring the cost difference), it is still quite easy. We haven't seen it because they haven't sought it yet, but I fear that the Fediverse is not as resistant to this as it should.
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I accidentally deleted /sys, and it apparently messes up UEFI efivars. Thankfully, reinstalling the bootloader fixed it.
Posting this here about a problem I had because of a stupid mistake I made, and now it turned to be a mostly easy fix. I didn't find many resources online on it, so it may help people in tbe future. I mounted /proc, /sys, /run and /dev in a directory that I was making into a chroot environment. Eventually, I wanted to delete the directory, but forgot to unmount those directories. I deleted with `sudo rm -rf`. Yes it's dumb, I know. From what I learned, most of what I deleted would be restored with a reboot, except one part: efivars, which is located in /sys. This messed up my bootloader, and it was no longer booting into Linux, but instead windows (which is also on my system). I did not find a lot of resources on this online. I fixed it by booting into my computer with a USB with linux Mint on it. I use `refind` as my bootloader, which is awesome and simple. All I had to do was run the `refind-install` while chrooted into my system. It handles fixing whatever is wrong. After rebooting, I no longer had any issues.
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A lot of crypto users are cringe, but it has a lot of great uses. Bypassing sanctions, state surveillance and persecution, donating to socialist groups and projects (donating to Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of scihub).


Content that is interesting to users yet hard to find elsewhere. Link it on Reddit and other places.

“you can find more info from this lemmy post”

When people see this often enough, they’ll try it out.



Are there any tools to make a static blog discoverable on the Fediverse?
I have a static blog. Think something like a site generated with a static site generator (like Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy, etc) I've been thinking about making a separate backend for the blog with ActivityPub functionality to boost its discoverability. Is there any tool that can assist me with this? I wanted to make sure before I embark on building something from scratch. P. S. I am aware of WriteFreely, but I would prefer if the blog site remains a static site and decoupled from the ActivityPub stuff.
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Opinion: There is nothing inherently wrong or immoral about (content) algorithms. What is wrong is using them for maximizing corporate profits, and lack of user choice / freedom.
I am willing to hear differing opinions on this. I sometimes see people on Fediverse speak as if there is something inherently wrong about the idea of content sorting and filtering algorithms. There is a massive amount of content today and limited time. Content algorithms *could* provide the benefit of helping us sort content based on what we want. The most he urgent news, the most informative articles, the closest friends, etc. This might have some similarities with how Facebook and others do it, but it is not the same. Big social media algorithms have one goal: maximizing their profit. One metric for that is maximizing screen on-time and scrolling. Personally, I've been developing an algorithm to help me sift through the content I get on my RSS reader, as there's a lot of content I'm uninterested in. This algorithm would *save me time*, whereas those of Twitter and Facebook maximize my wasted time. In my opinion, algorithms should be: - opt-in: off my default, and the user is given a clear choice to change it - transparent: the algorithm should be transparent about its goals and inner workings Only with this, can algorithms be good. What are your thoughts?
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