Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I could see a “choose for me” button, kind of like installing an OS where you can go with the automatic stuff or set it up yourself. I think you’d need several instances to get with join-lemmy.org to volunteer to be one of the ones that would sign people up for.

    Folks who want to sign up for a specific instance in order to create or maybe moderate a community there almost certainly won’t go to join-lemmy.org for that, they’ll just go to that instance.

    There may need to be a "Hey could we cool it with the fukpolitik’ agreement to be on that random sign-up list; I’m not sure I’d drop random folks into ex-Hexbear or whatever.



  • I’ve gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed’s onboarding process, where they have a website that says “This page will help find the perfect server for you” and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it’s marginally better. “You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn’t matter which you choose” 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn’t matter why make the choice?

    Here’s a question I have, because I’m honestly not sure: Let’s say most of the communities I’m personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people’s operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?




  • CDs can, by a very narrow margin, reproduce sounds beyond which the human ear can detect. There’s a theorem that states you can perfectly reproduce a waveform by sampling if the bitrate is double the maximum frequency or something like that, and CDs use a bitrate such that it can produce just above the human hearing range. You can’t record an ultrasonic dog whistle on a CD, it won’t work.

    It’s functionally impossible to improve on “red book” CD Digital Audio quality because it can perfectly replicate any waveform that has been band-passed filtered to 20,000 Hz or thereabouts. Maybe you can talk about dynamic range or multi-channel (CDs are exactly stereo. No mono, no 5.1 surround…Stereo.) It’s why there really hasn’t been a new disc format; no one needs one. It was as good as the human ear can do in the early 80’s and still is.


  • <Tantacrul>

    Okay, are you ready for the pain?

    First, we go to pixelfed.org, and click on “Servers.” We are treated to a page that says “Find the perfect community server. Signing up on an existing server is the easiest way to get started, let us help you find the ideal server to join!” This alludes to creating your own pixelfed server, which the vast majority of users are not going to want to do. We’re talking about a public who has been accustomed to downloading an app, opening an account on the app, and having access to all the content in that app. The idea of hosting their own server at this point shouldn’t really be an idea we’re bringing up here.

    We tehn get filters for “sign-up process”, because you have to apply for and be approved to some servers, filter by country, and filter by language. I mean, okay. Then we get Server Catagories: All (87) Art (1) General (8) Regional (13) Adult (4) and Uncategorized, (61). I suppose this is more honest than defaulting everyone to “General” but it’s also lazier than a dead house cat. When the vast majority of them are categorized as “Uncategorized” it gives me the feeling that the people running this shitmound don’t care about it, so I absolutely shouldn’t.

    Then we get a section called Network Health, which has data that is not pertinent to choosing a server, including total photos shared, total users, active servers, and average users per server. Neat stats I guess, not relevant to choosing a server to sign up on.

    The choices of server are a grid of choices that look like this:

    The name/URL of the instance is at the top, with an $8 checkmark next to it which is a different glyph from the check marks in the left column talking about all the evil stuff they don’t do, so I think we’re just used to seeing check marks after names on social media, so we put them there. I can’t find one that doesn’t have that check mark so it’s completely meaningless.

    Then we get a cover photo, which 9 times out of 10 is a variant on the Pixelfed logo so here’s yet another opportunity to distinguish severs squandered.

    Just below that is the name/URL of the server again in a different color, just in case you didn’t read it the first time. This is just 100% wasted space.

    Below this is the first 80 characters of a description that was almost certainly written to go somewhere else and has been echoed here. Several of them read “Pixelfed is an image sharing platform, an ethical alternative to centr…” Which must be some kind of default text. Many also use an identical cover image to Pixelfed.social, the instance run by the creators, so I’m assuming this is also a placeholder default. The dead cat is at it again. Those that don’t use the default boilerplate often have a description that starts with their instance name, for example “Pixelfed.art is a community driven platfrorm designed to showcase and c…” So including the cover image, pixelfed.art’s entry contains the string “pixelfed.art” a total of four times, and nearly no other information is conveyed.

    Below this is a button that either says “Create Account” in white on bright lilac, or “Apply to Join” in subdued purple on dark purple, which makes the option look greyed out. People will already be unlikely to click there, and the change in shade further discourages people from trying to sign up. I suppose telling you this here in the main directory will prevent “Oh dammit you have to apply to join” but there’s just something wrong with making it look greyed out or unselectable.

    There’s another button that says “More Details,” which leads to another very sparse page which shows a large version of the useless and uninformative cover image, information you probably don’t care about like the server location and establishment date, and a link that frustratingly says “More Details.” We just clicked on that, why do you want me to click it again? When you click it, you don’t get more details about the server, it scrolls down to a list of general features of the Pixelfed platform. Marketing cockshit that people’s eyes just glance off of because this is where marketing departments put all the lies.

    Oh, did I mention when you click on the uppermost of the many copies of the server name, the top one in white, it takes you to the same place that the More Details button does?

    This page promises to help you find the perfect server, and then offers virtually no information that would help a newcomer choose gram.social over pixey.org.

    </Tantacrul>

    I would suggest removing a lot of the redundant details such as the More Details button and the second copy of the instance’s name below the cover image. That would free up room for a couple more lines of description for each here on the index page.

    Eliminate the Uncategorized category, maybe add a few more like “Arts, Crafts and Photography” “Lifestyles and Activities” “Fashion and beauty” “Casual, Food and Pets”. “I want to upload pictures of my cat, which category do I choose?” “I want to promote my paintings. Which category?” “I want to show off my travel pictures.”

    Add a text search bar so that people could search by keyword.

    As this is a list that instance admins have to apply to be on, I would suggest some requirements and/or heavy suggestions for that process:

    • Do not allow default boilerplate cover images or descriptions. Make them post something. You’re an image hosting platform, you should be able to find an image the defines your community. !woodworking@lemmy.ca runs contests with their members to pick theirs, I won it once. Do that.

    • Strongly suggest against using a variant of the Pixelfed logo unless that variant describes what your instance is about. Like if you have a sports-oriented instance, the Pixelfed speech bubble P logo appearing inside a sports ball is more acceptable than a P with “pixelfed.sports” next to it. Better yet, an action shot of a sportsball player making an exciting sportsball play with maybe a logo in the corner.

    • Require admins to choose a category, to eliminate “Uncategorized.”

    • For descriptions, provide a style guide that warns against things like mentioning the name of the instance again in the description, and steer away from all the bleeding heart hyphenated marketing wank.

    BAD: Example.lol is a community-driven, open-source, cage-free, low-gluten, carbon-offset, high-estrogen, no-pressure, fuel-injected, tax-free, non-mandatory place to share photos.

    GOOD: Share photos of your arts and crafts projects with our avid community of painters, woodworkers, blacksmiths, seamstresses and more!

    The aim here is to present INFORMATION that can help someone new understand why they should - or should not - sign up for your instance. We’re almost perfectly failing to achieve that.






  • I see two possible ways for it to succeed:

    • Federate by default, defederate if you have to. This is how Lemmy mostly seems to work; I proposed a policy for defederation for sh.itjust.works that has been used, we will federate with you unless you start spamming or hosting illegal porn or spewing hate speech or that kind of shit, then we’ll defederate. That has to happen at the instance level; if example.lol is generally fine but there’s one account there that’s a nuisance that’s what the block button is for, but lolita.rape gets defederated (and reported to the FBI).

    • Apply and join model. Have a coalition of instances that agree to mutually uphold certain moderation practices (no hate speech, no kid fucking, goat or human, no human trafficking, etc) and then they federate with each other, eventually forming a large and wholesome community.

    Nobody federates and it’s a bunch of independent nothings won’t work. Youtubers will use it as a backup service, a couple of the real paranoid Linux types will host their videos there that someone might even watch, and half the instances will be places you go when you’ve been kicked off of Youtube.




  • Video hosting being expensive is why it’s difficult for an individual to make an account on most if any instances, which is also a problem.

    There are two “that kind of behaviors” here; the button to make content searchable across peertube is off by default for some reason and some admins aren’t clicking it. That could be for myriad reasons. TILvids trying to build a walled garden in an open platform is just outright wrongheadedness.

    I like the idea of themed instances that revolve around certain broad topics, kind of the way television channels used to do. Some of us are old enough to remember when there was science fiction on the Sci-Fi channel, music videos on MTV, documentaries on the Discovery Channel and so on. TILvids is trying to be the Discovery channel, except anyone who signs up for cable TV primarily for the Discovery channel doesn’t get to see other channels, and anyone who signed up mostly for something else doesn’t get to see the Discovery channel. The owner has talked about a “hub and spoke” model they want to build with TILvids as the hub, which is an incompatible vision with the success of PeerTube as a whole.

    I’ll also mention that I’ve never seen the “upload” gauge on Peertube do anything. The idea is it works like bittorrent, those who are watching a video will seed it to others to help share the load. I’ve yet to see that actually happen, and I wonder if it’s because no one else in the world was watching that video at that moment.

    I don’t know much about Loops; it may be too early to ask. I haven’t really looked at it yet, in no small part because you have to sign up for it, you can’t really window shop. I think Loops is going to face the same problem that Minetest (or whatever they changed its name to) does; it’s a good piece of software that does the things you like, and it’s not attached to the corporate fuckheads who burned your future down. Want to try it out? “Absolutely, 100% no I don’t because it’s not the program my friends have.” The fact that the Tiktok ban in America turned out to be fake is probably what’s going to fail to launch Loops.


    1. yes the throat fuck it does, and

    2. On Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed etc. you join one instance and you get access to the others. See this very comment section, I’m on sh.itjust.works, you’re on lemmy.ml, we’re both commenting on a post on lemmy.world. “Everything’s political so defederate because their ideology isn’t pure enough” notwithstanding, you open an account on one instance and the content on all instances is discoverable.

    On PeerTube, for some weird reason, that functionality is something the instance owner has to enable. It’s off by default. So, in practice, PeerTube is capable of, but isn’t, federated. Which means you have 90 different little YouTubes, each of which is hosting a total of 90 videos, and you can’t watch all 8100 videos from one place, be it one website if you’re old and lame enough to have a PC or from one account on one app.

    In fact, I think the behavior of TILvids has already killed PeerTube as a platform. I think it’s already dead, because some jackass with delusions of grandeur wants to build a walled garden out of an open ecosystem. You want to run an edutainment instance? Great! I’ve been saying since I joined Lemmy that general purpose instances are largely a mistake. On PeerTube I’ve seen more instances attempt to segregate by content type (there’s an arts, crafts and makers instance, for example. I could see making a gaming instance, etc.) TILvids raises a valid concern; alternative video hosting sites inevitably become hives of the scum and villainy that got themselves kicked off of YouTube. Here on Lemmy we have those instances that everybody defederates, effectively isolating that shit. TILvids’ approach to this is quarantine everything that isn’t them, which I see as strangling both themselves and PeerTube by two mechanisms:

    • It’s going to stifle general adoption of the platform by viewers. People go to Youtube to look at one kind of video, say, archery competitions, then they notice in the side panel a thumbnail of a leatherworking tutorial, and they go “Ooh I always wanted to see that.” Pretty soon you’ll open up Youtube to watch 4 minutes of cats yawning, a Desert Bus speedrun, a stand-up comedy routine and then three different recipe tutorials for making bagels. No one says “I want to find a website that hosts edutainment video content.” They turn up looking for celebrity nipple slips or people falling off skateboards, they’ll stay for the edutainment.

    • It’s going to kill any mechanism for new creators. A big benefit to Youtube is any idiot can make a video and upload it to the internet. That’s where we got Hank Green and CGP Grey. There needs to be a space that permits that on or adjacent to your platform. Currently their recruitment strategy for creators seems to be “Get established on Youtube, then maybe we’ll let you upload your content here too for some reason.” It’s not going to take off as a self-sustaining platform that way; there needs to be a place for people to upload their early bad crap and build experience.

    Everyone on PeerTube is trying very hard to make their chosen platform unadoptable.


  • Gonna channel TierZoo for a minute here:

    If you’re going to play High School, there are two ways to create the Jock build:

    • You can go with the Prep class and then subclass in Meathead. You’re going to letter in baseball, soccer, golf and track and field, your girlfriend is a cheerleader, you’re probably going to be prom king and you’re going to the college your dad did and probably join the same frat your dad was in.

    • Start out as trailer trash nobody and go for the “peak in high school” subquest, you’re gonna be on the football team and the wrestling team, you’ll date one of the three straight girls in the marching band’s color guard. You’re probably someone’s school bully. You’re not even going to apply to college. Ten years from now you’ll be other than honorably discharged from the marine corps and you’ll work as a bouncer at a dive bar in Jacksonville.

    It’s kinda rare to see a direct distaff counterpart to either one of these. In the former’s case, you get a cheerleader. She might run track or something in the spring but these girls usually throw themselves into shit like student government, yearbook club, whatever student committee organizes the dances, she’s gonna major in poli-sci and marry a lawyer for his money or she’s gonna get an MBA so she can be a self-proclaimed “boss bitch.”

    In the latter’s case, she probably doesn’t go for athletics or even extracurriculars at all, she’s a fixture at house parties with alcohol, she has basically no plan for life, through her 20’s she’ll waitress at various chain sit-down restaurants and/or cashier at Food Lion until she gets knocked up.

    There is a somewhat rarer class of severe tryhard, she’s convinced she’s going to be an astronaut so she takes herself 100% seriously, isn’t accepted to the Air Force Academy so she enrolls in ROTC at ERAU, is in every sport the college offers to girls, does basically no socializing, ends up an officer in the Air Force but does not become a pilot, resigns as a Captain and opens a shelter for abandoned parrots. Athletics are just a byproduct of overachieving with nothing to show for it.