palordrolap

I can only speak to the topics I followed on another account, but it provided plenty of reading for those topics. Whether it covered all possible posts and whether it works well for all topics, I couldn’t say.

It does kind of rely on people tagging things properly, which people might not do if they’re on a Mastodon instance specific to that topic. But then, they ought to know that those posts wouldn’t Federate well, and indeed, might not want them to.

Mastodon is microblogging. As others have said, it’s similar to Twitter. Lemmy is a link aggregator with a comments/conversation section per link, like Slashdot, Digg or Reddit.

I think the thing that people forget to do with Mastodon is to follow hashtags. The feature wasn’t there early on but it’s been there for probably a year or more now. Then you block or mute the accounts you don’t want to see that post under those tags.

It’s a useful substitute for following accounts when you have no idea which accounts to follow. You can then curate and actually follow accounts whose content outside those hashtags also catches your eye.

On the link aggregators there are the groups which don’t exist on Mastodon, but that’s what hashtags are for, right? Marking the topic.

The only hard part about it for me is feeling bad about blocking innocent accounts.

Also worth mentioning is that Mbin instances exist, and that software is basically both Lemmy and Mastodon rolled into one site. The posts aren’t fully integrated though. You have to click something to view the microblog side of things and click something to go back.

Indeed. We should be suspicious of this doctor’s diagnostic ability, if that’s not another leap of logic too far.

At first I thought that this would be a great opportunity to pit the water companies who own water meters against the smart-toilet companies who accidentally reduce water usage, eating into water company profits, but then I realised that that battle would inevitably result in them working together to make smart toilets that full flush every 30 minutes unless expressly told not to.

Minecraft Bedrock is written in and compiled from C++ and is completely closed-source.

The original Java version is technically also closed-source, but Java bytecode is relatively easy to decompile to a high level and Mojang (and surprisingly, even Microsoft*) tend to look the other way when people do that.

It seems like this was written for the Java version, but I’m not completely sure whether it’s simply a protocol conversion, in which case, the protocols are already well known, and converting it to work with Bedrock might not be too difficult.

Yes, there are open-source alternatives, but nowhere near as many people play those as play Minecraft, which is probably why that was the target platform and not one of the others.

*For now.

The true nirvana is death.

You could call it, or limit it to death of ego if you want to remain alive, but remaining alive for a Buddhist reduces to a craving, nonetheless. For nirvana.

There are also biological cravings that cannot be ignored no matter how enlightened you become because of the fundamental nature of the creatures we are.

Food must be consumed. Breath taken. Waste excreted. Sleep slept. One might even argue that the search for any meaning is but the evolved desire to survive, only interpreted differently.

The only reason I remain on this deity-forsaken rock is that I believe that ending my own suffering would only amplify the suffering of those who - for their own reasons - care about me.

If I take attachments in the meantime, it’s merely for my own amusement as I await the opportunity for true nirvana. Shedding them would make the wait less bearable.

Bear in mind that this is my path. Yours may differ.

He’d want it back.

But seriously, that’s not practical for a number of reasons, one being I don’t have money. Another kind of major one is the kind of mental health problems that could make me push the stick forward at 1000 ft and hold it until things went dark. Like this comment.

One of the reasons I rarely took myself off to other places in the world for a holiday* is because the thing I need a break from is being me and I don’t even know if that’s possible.

Initial past tense because I can’t afford to go anywhere now. The couple of times I could afford to go away and did so, I didn’t really enjoy myself. Took a lot of photos that I never look at.

Literally the best part of my last holiday was the short runway take-off of the aeroplane on the way there. First time I’d ever flown. Massive acceleration and into the air. Total rush.

Spent a lot of my time looking forward to the flight home as a result, but the runway turned out to be longer and it was a disappointment.

There’s a meaning in that somewhere. Maybe.

* British for “vacation”.

My least favourite technical support calls were with people who didn’t know their own interface and I was having to direct them, blind, to get the information and do the diagnostics I needed.

There were at least a couple of times where I had to ask the customer to describe literally everything they saw on the screen starting at the top left and working their way down.

I sometimes pretend to be one of those people when I get tech support scammers on the phone because I know how tortuous it is.

Back at the turn of the millennium I remember enjoying 1/0 by Tailsteak. I’m glad to see that it’s still available.

I’ᴍ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇ ᴠᴀʟᴜᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴩᴇᴏᴩʟᴇ ᴡʜᴏ ᴀʀᴇɴ’ᴛ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇʜᴏʟᴅᴇʀꜱ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴏꜱᴇ.

It’s far more likely to make them avoid comics in case they see another one like it and then withdraw further into their hobby.

The comic takes place at midday on the winter solstice, so it’s like a beautiful spring day, just as it shouldn’t be.

(I’ll leave it up to someone more motivated to figure out what the shadow length and mountains indicate about what this means for latitude and longitude, but I’m pretty sure it’s not impossible.)

Ctrl-/

… and if you don’t like that horrible subversion of what a vi-user might expect to be the search feature*, there’s also Meta-G, which is slightly more similar to vi’s usage.

You can also nano +L[,C] filename on the command line replacing L and C with respective line and column number, which I believe is a feature borrowed from vi.

*The search feature is Ctrl-W for “where is”. Firefox users use this in the wrong window at their peril (it closes the current window). Find and replace is on Ctrl-\, which is even more of a subversion.

I can use vi, but still prefer nano.

Large corporations tend to put profit over morality and the legal machinery to even try to bring them back into line moves slowly (and expensively) when they do so.

If your Mastodon posts are visible from Threads, Threads may “accidentally” determine that that content was posted by one of their own accounts covered by their own Terms of Service and so choose to do something with it that the Mastodon user did not agree to.

Now consider that Meta, Threads’ parent company has put things in both its Facebook and Instagram Terms of Service that say they can do whatever they like with content posted on their platforms, including feed it to any “AI” as they see fit.

And what about responses to Threads posts from the Fediverse? What rights do Meta have to those? I’m sure you can imagine what Meta thinks, or might allow themselves to think, in that regard.

Presumably you can now understand why some Mastodon instances (and other Fediverse places) don’t want anything to do with Meta or their products and wish to protect their users from that abuse.

You might argue that it will happen anyway, but in their view, any protection is better than none.

And the great thing about the Fediverse is that you’re welcome to find, or even run, an instance that leaves itself open to such “interoperability”.

Could it be that you’re a straight white male who doesn’t mix with people outside that particular bubble much? I’m one of those, and I’m willing to believe others when they say it happens, and how often. Even in those places where the majority vote for the more progressive candidate.

“The only moral use of [thing I disapprove of] is my use of [thing I disapprove of].”

A quote that may have originally been about abortion, but applies to most things that serial disapprovers disapprove of.

See also: “Do as I say, not as I do.” or as it usually is these days: “Do as I say. I am also doing as I say and if think you see me doing otherwise, no you didn’t.”

This thread started with a question in Spanish. When read as Spanish, “La puta” translates as … something not very nice.

When an rm parameter has a /, always think “danger!”.

This should be the foremost thought of any sensible shell user.

This morning I couldn’t find my other thermal sock. Searched for a minute or so, which is a surprisingly long time in the small space around a bed. Eventually realised I’d put both of them on the same foot.

This is the second time I’ve done this.

I know how it happens too. Dimly lit room. Put on first sock. Tired. Get distracted, forget what I’ve done. Put on “first” sock. Since I pretty much always start with the same foot when putting on socks…