GitHub is a great platform, which has championed open-source for decades, now. I don’t think anybody has anything to blame them for (except people not liking the idea that AI is trained on their code, like sibling mentioned), it’s more about fears it may go bad. Because basically, it’s where most of the code of the world is hosted, it’s a single point of failure. People also have questioned the pertinence of having all open-source code hosted on a proprietary platform. And the acquisition by Microsoft also had a chilling effect on those of us who remember Internet Explorer 6’s Microsoft more than VSCode’s Microsoft.

For those reasons, it is desirable for those who love the idea of decentralization to look up for alternatives. But even there, it’s perfectly fine to stay on GitHub, “decentralizing” doesn’t require everybody to leave. :) Plus, even when using an other forge, it’s still good to keep publishing mirrors on GitHub for visibility and discoverability, currently.

Thanks for the link!

Interesting. I’ve been using ARM cores for low energy for so long that I haven’t bother to look if things were changing. :) How does it perform on the heat dissipation front? Because if it requires a fan, this should be included in the energy consumed.

I assume it’s a x86 CPU, being an intel processor? How does it manage to be as energy efficient as an ARM CPU? Or maybe it’s only when it’s idle?

Oh wow, thanks for that video, that was brilliant. :D

Indeed, if you had a teacher who made your class read Being and Nothingness without explaining phenomenology first, it feels like punishment or something. :) Not that Husserl and Heidegger are easier to read, but at least they don’t presuppose other readings to be understood. That being said, I kind of get it, existentialism can be seen as its own thing, especially in Sartre’s non-philosophy work (he wrote several novels and theater scripts). But not through Being and Nothingness. 😂

Oh, ok, your article sounded so close I thought it was inspired by it. :) It’s a very european thing, mostly developed in Germany and France. I have by blood with it, though. I’ve always been more interested in analytical philosophy so I didn’t like it. Which shouldn’t have been a problem, there are many schools of philosophy, right? Except I studied at a university where the philosophy department was specialized in it. Every day I was wondering what I was doing there. :) I actually consider it wasted my university years, so I’m probably not the good person to talk to you about it. 😅 (but your own articles stopped short of talking non-sense like phenomenology does in my opinion, so it was good to read, it’s like taking only the good parts of phenomenology ;) ). The main authors, if you want to know more, are Heidegger, Husserl and Sartre. A note of warning though that it’s very hard to read (well, at least if you have an analytical mind, I suspect it depends on people personality).

The same goes for your RPGs - they’re more than welcome if you feel they’re ready for public consumption

Oh, no, thanks. Actually, not being ready for public consumption is their whole point. :) I used to write (as an amateur) when I was younger, only to be confronted to a wall of indifference at each publication. So I was going back to it, doing my best, putting unreasonable amount of hours to make it likable, and still this indifference - in part because, I realized later, my folks just didn’t like reading anyway. But it turned out that trying to please people was a terrible experience. Nobody was having fun, including me. When I started playing my RPGs solo, the reason why I enjoyed it so much was because I put this simple rule : nobody will ever read it. From there, I don’t have to ask myself questions like “is it too long?”, “is it too short?”, “is it properly explained?”, “does the pace progress fast enough?”, etc. I’m just exploring and enjoying it. :) My oldest campaign (I play three different games) has a word count that would cover at least three novels, and it would be terribly boring to read, because of the slow moving pace, the returns to previous places that break the pace, the long sequences when there is just no narrative arc, the pages and pages of shopping narration, etc. And I don’t care, because it’s not meant to be read. :) I’m not writing, I’m exploring my imagination, spending just as much time I want where I want, with no regard to what makes an efficient story - or even just legible text, for the matter. It’s basically a videogame powered by imagination. :) The day I even consider it may be read, all of that collapses.

You’re welcome, if I did my part to fight online harassment, this is a good day. :) You should consider legal action, though, if you have laws against that in your country (I assume it’s most countries, nowadays?). The instance of this or those guys can be subpoenaed to provide their IP address, which then can be used to uncover their identity.

Thanks for the invitation, btw. The whole concept sounds fun. :) I enjoyed the article about imagination engine, it’s on the edge of phenomenology, but still keeping things rational (I have a history with phenomenology 😅). I have my own way of exploring my imagination (written solo RPGs, it’s basically how I spent my evenings), but I’ll have fun reading your content. :) Enjoy!

Oh, my bad, I have yet to get used to the fact that we’re having the same discussions over different apps. :)

If you can install custom stylesheets (some options are documented here), I’ve tested this rule to work for removing downvotes:

.vote__down { display: none !important; }

It will work only for you, though, not for other people on your forum (unless you’re an instance owner and can change the website stylesheets file).

An other rule to remove upvotes if you want to:

.vote__up { display: none !important; }

Hey Arotrios, sorry for what you have to go through. I imagine you already know that, but I think it’s worth reminding you : you can hide upvotes/downvotes in Lemmy’s preferences by unticking the “show scores” option. That way, stalking and serial downvoting is just wasting the abuser time and finger’s articulations. :) Honestly, rating everything people say is a toxic feature anyway, it’s both addictive and generating anxiety. I’m glad Lemmy allows to disable it, I’m way more at peace since I’ve done it.

It’s totally not crazy thinking. :) I think the main problem is that while Mastodon and Lemmy implement the server to server part of ActivityPub, they don’t implement the client to server part of the standard, and instead build their own REST API and client. This is why, while you can subscribe to actors from an other application, it looks bad : it’s supposed to be consumed in their own client, or something that tries to emulate it (that, and the fact that they each implement their own extensions to ActivityPub, it doesn’t help).

In a perfect world, ActivityPub based applications would implement the client to server part or the standard too, so that we have a multitude of third party clients that can consume data from any ActivityPub based application without looking broken. I certainly hope we go in this direction in the future, because interoperability looks half-baked, as it is right now, and the fediverse would be just more awesome with such upgrade.

Who in a decentralised system can or should take responsibility?

The customers. :) Ear me out:

The main reason why there is so much problems with deliveries (way more with UPS, DHL and the likes than Uber Eats deliverers, in my own experience) is because we’re not their customers, in their heads. They’re paid by the merchants (UPS/DHL/etc are paid by your shop keeper), or they’re paid by the platform (rider is paid Uber Eats/Deliveroo/etc), but the end customer is just part of the constraints, for them, especially since the customer doesn’t even choose who will deliver their package (you don’t like UPS? Too bad!). Give the customer that choice, and make them pay directly for the delivery to the deliverer, and I guarantee all those problems will go away. This is why I said we need a decentralized reputation system : so that the customer can see the reputation of local delivery service before selecting them.

When the problem is with the shop, well, this is already sort of dealt with. We already have reviews systems and we already select our shops, so it does happen that shops behave poorly, but not for long. Although, users have to be educated about verifying reviews, and developers have to implement countermeasures and stay on top of the review cheating game.

And to avoid problems with the platform, we have the interoperability of standards like ActivityPub : there is one global network (like the fediverse, or the web), and multiple programs are implemented to use it. They have a incentive to work well because there is competition, something that centralized platforms eliminate altogether.

Indeed, there needs to be third parties who control quality - just like there are moderators here, if you think about it. We already sort of have those moderators : local shop keepers. I’d be satisfied with a service that allows me to leverage all those local shops without having to leave my place (as I mentioned in an other comment on this page : “Uber Eats/Deliveroo for everything”).

Totally agree, what we really need is a “Uber Eats/Deliveroo for everything”, leveraging local businesses. And if we can get a decentralized reputation system, then such platform can be decentralized as well.

as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed

I understand your point, but by that logic, we should use Reddit rather than Lemmy, as most users are there. It’s not only about ease of use, it’s about being sure users won’t be abused. Discord is still in its acquisition phase, but you can be sure enshitification will come next.

Thanks for raising the issue.

Most probably, people who made that decision are not aware of the implications and made that choice in good faith, so it’s worth giving reasons why you want them to avoid proprietary software, rather than just frowning at them.

To the admins of lemmy.world and anyone who feels confuse about why this is an issue : it is about freedom. You all know how Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc are turning ugly, and you can’t do anything about it. With FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), when it turns ugly, you can do something about it. You (or any technical person who agrees with you) can take the code and go your own way with it (we call that “forking”). No decision of the authors can be forced upon you. Similarly, if you think something is not working right, you can fix it yourself, and send the changes to the maintainers of the code, who usually are happy to get some help. So it’s also about freedom of fixing your own problems, instead of waiting and praying the authors do something about it.

And this is the whole spirit of the Fediverse : taking matters in our own hands instead of being betrayed once more by a company which decides that their bottom line requires to be user hostile. One day, this will happen to Discord to, it always ends up there. That’s why people using Lemmy who are aware of those problems are not happy with seeing lemmy.world use Discord.

Thanks to the admins of lemmy.world for all the work they provide to the Fediverse.

I do have to say for the purpose of tinkering I love these bigger projects because you learn so much on the way. Now having read your answer I am even more exited to try it out :D

That’s awesome to hear! Welcome, and have fun! :)

I haven’t heard of most of your abbreviations/term till now

Oh, my apologies. Here is a definition list :

• SMTP : Simple Mail Transfer Protocol : the base of any mail system, it’s the server you contact to send emails, which relays your mail to an other SMTP server (where your contact is hosted), which stores the mail for user to retrieve
• IMAP : Internet Message Access Protocol : one of the protocols that can be used to retrieve emails from your mailserver (the other one being POP3)
• SPF : Sender Policy Framework, a configuration on your domain name specifying which machines are allowed to send mails in its name
• DKIM : DomainKeys Identified Mail : a signing process (signing each mail) to validate the “From” email address is indeed authorized from the domain it pretends to
• DMARC : a warning system to let you know when someone pretended to be you (also giving instructions about what to do with emails when SPF and/or DKIM are missing or wrong)

I guess slapping it on my local raspberry pi wouldn’t be enough no?

Oh no, that would be way not enough. :) Managing a mailserver is a sysadmin task by itself. While you don’t need to do much once it works (which often is a perk of sysadmin work, compensating for the fact that when it does not work, they may have to wake in the middle of the night to fix it), it’s notoriously difficult to get right : you have the configuration of the mailserver to get right first, so that you can send emails, but nobody else can and you don’t become a spam relay without knowing it. Then you have a lot of configuration to do to be able to retrieve your emails from your server, which uses other protocols that you must learn about. Then you have “optional” things that you must setup (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), which you won’t be able to send mails to gmail or outlook if you don’t set them up properly. And when you will have got all of that right, you will have enough experience to be hired as a sysadmin. :)

I can’t provide a good resource for learning it, I learned it 15 years ago when it was way more simple (before SPF and DKIM), and picked every addition as they appeared, but any course on how to manage a mail system will do. There is no difference in doing it for your self-hosted server and for a company (except maybe that for a company, they’ll make you handle users in a database, which you can forego for your own needs). I would recommend to learn how to use postfix first, then any imap server (courier-imap is a top runner), and when you’re comfortable with that, you can learn about SPF, then DKIM, then DMARC. But be aware before going through it that this is basically learning a new skill (sysadmin). You can find docker images that setup everything automatically for you, but I would recommend against that, because at some point, things will break and you will have no idea how to fix them. And if you try to fix them while not knowing well what you’re doing, that’s a good way to end up being a spam relay. Plus, those docker images are difficult to customize, which quite defeats the point of managing your own mail system to begin with.

Well I didn’t want google to read my mails

Sadly, it only works if no one in the recipients of the mail is on gmail (or if everyone use pgp, which I would tend to think is even more rare).

I host my own mailserver as well, and I would add as benefits:

• creating as many email address as you want easily, possibly regexp based address (awesome to give every site a different address and know where the spam comes from, without using the well known schema username+something@host). That also makes routing/filtering mails way more easy, you just have to match the recipient address.
• delivering mails to software, to put email at the center of interapps messaging (basically, that means that postfix pass a matching email to the executable of your choice on your system instead of storing it in your mailbox)
• advanced rules for handling emails. When I want to block a spammer that managed to get my real email, I use regexps to match their mails and reject it with a “REJECT 5.1.1 Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table” error, imitating the error for unknown users, which often triggers a mail system to remove your address from their database
• easily configure apps to send me email. When I write an application that will send emails to me and only me, I configure it to use my smtp on port 25 without authentication instead of the usual smtps configuration they expect. It connects to it and asks to send a mail to me, which is accepted since I’m a local user. It makes everything way easier (try to do that with gmail and get your IP banned)
• easy backups. Both of the mail system (I backup the whole sdcard of the pi) and of the emails. Never lose an email again.

Oh, I see. Totally makes sense. :)

I guess it depends on the country, but here in France, yes, most landline ISPs provide static IPs (maybe all? there are a couple I haven’t try ; mobile IPs are always dynamic, though). It was not always the case, but I haven’t had a dynamic IP since the 2000’. I feel you, dealing with pointing a domain to a dynamic IP is a PITA.

Ahah, yeah, I protected myself against accidentally banning my own IPs. First, my server is a Pi at home, so I can just plug a keyboard and a screen to it in case of problem. But more importantly, as I do that blacklisting through fail2ban, I just whitelisted my IPs and those of my relatives (it’s the ignore_ip variable in /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf)., so we never get banned even if we trigger fail2ban rules (hopefully, grandma won’t try to bruteforce my ssh!). It allowed me to do an other cool stuff : I made a script ran through cron that parses logs for 404 and checks if they were generated by one of the IPs in that list, mailing me if it’s the case. That way, I’m made aware of legit 404 that I should fix in my applications.

Oh, ok, you whitelist IPs in your firewall. That certainly works, if a bit brutal. :) (then again, I blacklist everyone who is triggering a 404 on my webserver, maybe I’m not the one to speak about brutality :P ) You don’t even need a VPN, then, unless you travel frequently (or your ISP provides dynamic IP, I guess).