• 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Ah. maybe hand it over to the next person? I suppose people still need to switch painlessly? But I get it. We used to host lots of stuff in my university years. A forum, chat, classifieds, filesharing… A big photo album for all our pictures and events… As far as I know all of that has gone. Either due to lack of interest or nobody was able and willing to pick it up.



  • Alright. I think I’m fine with that. I’ll read the documentation and see if I can find some time over the weekend to set it up. I’ll report my success in case I remember. It’s going to take me some time to notice missing information, though. And I’m not sure how caching of images works. We’ll see. I hope I don’t get banned, but I don’t really care that much. Thanks for the insights.




  • Thanks. Why do you say appservice is old? Because of the used technology? Or because their last commit is from 9 months ago?

    I don’t really need double puppeting. I’m just interested in funnelling out data from discord and it’s just me and my account. I should clarify that in my post…

    Thanks for the suggestions. I’m gonna take a closer look at the features of both and probably choose mautrix, since I already run their WhatsApp bridge. Maybe someone else chimes in and can contribute their experience with the out-of-your-element bridge.



  • Thanks. Yeah I know most of the story/history of Matrix. I’m just now making the decisions for the years to come. And Dendrite has been the announced successor to Synapse for quite some time now… I’m not sure what to make of this. If it’s going to happen soon, I’d like to switch now. And not move again and relocate my friends more times than necessary.

    Judging by the graphs on my Netdata, Synapse plus the database are currently eating more resources than I’d like for just chat. Afaik the other projects were meant to address that. But I’ve never used anything else. And I’ve always refrained from joining large rooms because people told me that’d put considerable load on the server. If there’s a better solution I’m open to try even if it’s not the default choice… It just needs to work for my use-case. I don’t necessarily need feature-completeness.

    Yeah, with the multiple domains: I meant I have 1 VPS and like 3 domain names for different projects. I have a single email-server, one webserver and they just handle all three domains. Even Prosody (XMPP) has “VirtualHost” directives and I only need to run it once to provide service on all the different domains. With Matrix this doesn’t seem to be the case… I’d need to launch 3 different instances of Synapse simultaneously on that one server and do some trickery with the reverse http proxy. That’d be more expensive and take more time and effort. I don’t really care about how the identities are handled internally, I can provide them in a format that is supported. And the users are seperate anyways. It’s just: I’d like to avoid running the same software three times in parallel.


  • Out of curiosity: Do you have to deal with that much spam? If so: Is there a specific reason?

    Because I only get some bot join one of the public rooms and start spamming every few months or so. And we deal with that pretty quickly. My own account has been perfectly safe for years… So my experience is different. Might be my usage-pattern vs yours?!






  • I think that’s a good take on things.

    Ultimately it still holds true. Information does want to be free. You just can’t mix that with misinformation, have everything on the same level and a general audience completely oblivious to the fact and uneducated.

    Things have changed. Back in those times it was a small elite on the internet. People who could afford computers and an internet connection and make some use out of it. You needed some amount of intelligence because you had to put some effort in to get online, learn about the tools because that wasn’t easy or provided to you. So you’d generally be at least somewhat intelligent if you ended up on the internet. And that’s beneficial when it comes to receiving unfiltered information. Combined with the fact that there were comparatively more academics and students, because that was the origin of the internet.

    And it wasn’t that common to push your agenda there or advertise for your skewed political views in the way people do it nowadays. Due to the nature of the internet and the amount of people there, it wasn’t worth the effort. You’d be better off focusing somewhere else where you could influence more people. So the dynamics were just different due to history and circumstances.

    Things have changed. Nowadays everyone is online all the time. It’s the place to influence people and make money. And that’s the other part of the problem. The actual people, connecting them and providing information to them (or to each other) isn’t what’s most of the internet is about, anymore. Motivations are gathering data about people and selling them, making people become addicted to your platform so they spend more time there and you can make more money. Everyone is competing for attention. And bad, emotional stories are what works best. Giving people the “simple truths” they seek instead of an intellectual and nuanced view. Factuality just gets in the way of all of that.

    I sometimes like to compare that to the Age of Reason / Enlightenment. Back then it was monarchs, bad dynamics and missing education. Now it’s big tech companies, bad dynamics and insufficient education. People need to get emancipated, educated and leave the current “immature state of ignorance” (to quote Kant.)

    Information and education are key. And the internet, algorithms and AI are just tools. They can be used for progress, or to enslave us. At least the internet has the potential (and was build) to connect people and provide a level playing field to everyone. But it can be used for a variety of different things. And choosing the right things isn’t something that can be solved by technology alone.



  • Free Software, proprietary, open-weight models, source-available, FLOSS, copyleft, permissive license.

    I think “open source” should mean what the OSI wants it to say, since they coined that term. But not all people agree and since they use it for different things and marketing, it’s lost some of its intended meaning. I don’t want to confuse people. And I also don’t like to use terms that can be (mis)used by the source-available people or people who add the commons clause, so I always try to include “free” as in freedom or “libre”.



  • Entirely depends on the software you install on it?!

    I mean the OS and UI don’t give you “smartness”. And I’m not completely sure about the definition. I for example think it’s smart not letting big tech companies steal all your data. So I might choose a different OS and different Apps than somebody else.

    Concerning AI: I think ChatGPT runs on all of them. And I think all the assistants also run more or less in the cloud and don’t depend on the exact phone model. However, there are AI things that run on the phone itself. Camera picture enhancement and speech recognition for example.

    Manufacturers often advertise with new AI features and unlock them on their newest flagship models. So the answer to your question regarding AI in preinstalled apps is probably: The current most expensive flagship models of Google/Samsung/Apple. One will have a slightly better camera AI, one a better photo editor and one a better AI assistant.


  • Kids should use their own creativity, practice reading, creating something. Play outside, get dirty. Do sports, maybe learn a musical instrument. And do their homework themselves.

    I’d say many things are alright in the proper dose. I mean ChatGPT is part of the world they’re growing in to…

    And 16 isn’t a kid anymore. They can handle some responsibility. I don’t see a one-size-fits every 16 yo solution. I think you should allow them and decide individually.

    I’d say at 16, give them some responsibility and let them practice handling it. But that means supervised. You can’t just give them anything and hop they’ll cope on their own. And AI has some non-obvious consequences / traps you can run into. Not even most of the adults can handle or understand it properly. So your focus should be teaching them the how and why, in my opinion. Alike you’d teach your kid how to use the circular saw at some point that age. As a parent you should lokk at them and see if they’re ready for it and how much supervision is appropriate.


  • I applaud your optimism. And you’re right. The design of the fediverse encourages these properties. But there are also other dynamics at play.

    I wouldn’t describe Lemmy as an intellectual place. It’s more a cross-sectional take on society. It’s a diverse place of common folks, a few nerds, people posting the news, sharing memes or asking questions…

    It depends a bit on the specific community. Some have nice people and active conversation, some don’t. Especially niche topics are a mixed bag. We’re just 50.000 active users so that means for some smaller hobbies you can’t really get a conversation going. But you included some broad topics. I’m sure some of them work well here.

    !technology@beehaw.org regularly has good posts. Debate and politics work very well all across the platform… I’m not really an expert on the communities here, I hope other people can give good recommendations. Art, literature and ecology also have healthy communities. Sometimes entire instaces dedicated to it.

    I think if you’re willing to share this place with a diverse group of people, you can get happy here.