mcc

mcc , 4 months ago to random

Been getting this sense lately that the fediverse may be thinning out a bit, and in parallel getting a sense people I know are finally jumping to "bluesky" in numbers.

Trying to figure out exactly at what point I decide I'm willing to create a feed over there. My position has been "I'll post there when I don't have to use their servers to do it", but I continue to suspect this will literally never happen because their protocol is designed to look like federation without being ever federatable

mcc OP , 4 months ago

Based on my (admittedly based on reading summaries of the whitepapers and not the whitepapers) understanding of the proposed bsky protocol, I think if I want to post in a way bsky users can see without using the services of BlueSky LLC the best I'll ever be able to do is post a write-only feed on my website which BlueSky LLC then crawls. But I wonder if I'll be able to opt into this kind of parasitic federation without agreeing to a TOS that gives BlueSky LLC rights to train an LLM on me

mcc OP , 4 months ago

Imagine an alternate network shape for ATProto where instead of BlueSky's "Big Aggregator" relay, users associate their identifies with specific "home" relays, and relays only fetch posts from relays their "home" users follow "home" users on. This could enable non-algorithmic moderation by treating relay membership as "trust" and severing relays who don't internally moderate. Hey wait, we just reinvented ActivityPub without domain names!

You know what I want? ActivityPub without domain names :(

mcc OP , 4 months ago

@vampiress To be clear when I say "I am thinking about using bluesky" what I mean is "I am thinking about mirroring my Mastodon fees on bluesky"

mcc OP , 4 months ago

I regret that this mini-thread did not give me an opportunity to engage in my running joke of intentionally misinterpreting the abbreviation "bsky" to mean "Bullshit, Kentucky"

mcc OP , 4 months ago

Whelp looks like Bluesky finally crossed the line of "okay, when they do this, I'll set up a Bluesky account" https://bsky.social/about/blog/02-22-2024-open-social-web

So… maybe I'll do it now. IDK

I'm still pretty confused what a "PDS" is. Like exactly what the scope of its responsibilities are. Bluesky's page for the PDS server https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds explains poorly either what the software does or even what dependencies it has.

I guess I gotta go read a 18-month-old architecture document & hope it still describes reality.

mcc OP , 4 months ago

A question I keep asking myself with both Mastodon/ActivityPub and BlueSky is "What is the minimum viable server you need to participate in this?"

Do you have to have a database server? Does it have to be a big beast like mysql/postgres or for a one-user "instance" can it just be a sqlite file?

Do you have to have server "software" running, or can you get by by serving static files off a (say) https server?

Do the answers to the above change if you don't care about receiving "replies"?

futurebird , 4 months ago to random

Get u a man who will help gently capture your escaped pet ants. 😏😍🥰 So Hot!

mcc , 4 months ago

@futurebird lol wow, imo you are very, very lucky!

mcc , 4 months ago to random

new() -> Self { Self }

mcc OP , 4 months ago

Just wrote some Rust code containing the string <'> and maaan, Rust, if you'd just thought a little harder you coulda come up with an excuse to have a programming language with a <''> operator

vampiress , 4 months ago to random

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

mcc , 4 months ago

@vampiress Have you seen Miguel de Icaza's Swift for Godot thing?

futurebird , 4 months ago to random

They chewed a hole in the tube connecting their log to the outworld so I took the opportunity to have my husband take a photo of me holding the colony. Fixing the tube now and getting everyone back inside.

mcc , 4 months ago

@futurebird Imagine reaching the successful completion of a space program only to see your work undone by the personal intervention of gods

futurebird , 4 months ago to random

There is this notion in futurism and scifi speculation conversations that "technologically advanced" species are less vulnerable to extinction.

I'm skeptical. Technology solves many problems but causes new ones.

The primary factors that protect against extinction are:

1. Sheer numbers
2. Dispersion
3. Diversity

Technology can aid in improving these factors, spreading people over more continents, or worlds, increasing population.

But there are other ways to meet these goals.

mcc , 4 months ago

@futurebird Paolo Bacigalupi (wrote "the Wind Up Girl") has this interesting idea of like (I forget his exact wording, and this is paraphrasing a paraphrase of a talk) a "hump" that technological civilizations have to get over. He frames things in terms of extractive resources, things that are non-renewable, and asks the question of whether your civilization can use the time of prosperity granted by these to invent a method of living without them. And if you don't in time, you simply crash.

mcc , 1 year ago to random

For the last year I've been semi-daily posting "What I'm Listening To Today" links in this thread:

https://mastodon.social/@mcc/108199886340178151

The thread is now so long it is increasingly breaking Mastodon, so I am making a new thread, starting here.

To recap, here's the entirety of the year-one thread in the most impractical possible format: A YouTube playlist containing 246 songs and running for just over 47 hours:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIjft6ja7DP_GwDs3XuTbiFmHYTwJWa7

mcc OP , 4 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Ambient Noisebox DIY with Pickup & Piezodisc", Endo Monk

4 minutes of spooky atmosphere from a prepared wooden box the musician handmade by sticking pieces of metal wire directly into a guitar pickup. With a few layers of enormous echo, these simple sounds become coherent, meaningful, dramatic.

This link skips the first 42 seconds of the video, in which the musician explains his setup in German. If you speak German, feel free to rewind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUl2_71xglA&t=42s

mcc OP , 4 months ago

What I listened to today: "If I Had a Heart", Fever Ray (cover by Ebanisteria C.M. Ferrari)

Are you, or have you ever been, goth? How goth? Because unless your answer is "I handbuilt a 14th-century string instrument that looks like a guillotine, then covered Fever Ray on it while dressed in black sitting on a couch decorated in dying leaves" you are/were not as goth as this lady. The dread-soaked original is dragged out even slower and lower, a sleep paralysis dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUth0YplJR4

vampiress , 4 months ago to random

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

mcc , 4 months ago

@vampiress [Cut to: THE ROOF. Slow zoom on two raccoon's chittering to each other while they bang on an unplugged PS/2 controller]

mcc , 5 months ago to random

Loads YouTube recommendations page Okay I find it difficult to explain how excited I am right at this moment

mcc OP , 4 months ago

sickos.jpg yes… ha ha ha, yes!!!