Lodra
@Lodra@programming.dev
- Comment on Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal? 3 weeks ago:
Ethically, it should apply. In practice, it doesn’t because the rich make the rules.
- Comment on Forgejo v7.0 is now available 3 weeks ago:
This is an especially tragic case. IMO, Gitea has one of the best names in software.
- Comment on Could We Build a Decentralised Social Platform Rooted in Place? 5 weeks ago:
I’m generally not a big fan of big social media like e.g. Facebook where you might have many thousands of followers, purposefully grow the numbers, etc. I personally think these things are an everyday evil. Yes, it’s a bit melodramatic 🙂but that’s how I feel. Reddit, and now Lemmy are about as far as I like to go with it.
So the isolation of geo-local-only federation is a feature. The feature, actually. I want an entire social media platform that isn’t capable of focusing on single accounts. Where you are near guaranteed to interact with your local community only. Where it would take a dramatic effort for a single actor to influence global opinions. I want a social media platform that isn’t so easy to manipulate. I could go on and on.
- Comment on Could We Build a Decentralised Social Platform Rooted in Place? 5 weeks ago:
After reading your responses, it seems like we’re describing two different methods of building this system.
Your ideas seems to depend on having many instances for various regions, where all instances are federated with each other. So my local instance somewhere in the US would still be federated with for example, an instance in Germany. But the content I receive would be heavily focused on “nearby” content. Interesting
My ideas are based on an important difference. An instance for my town would only federate with instances for the surrounding towns. Maybe one or two more “hops” away. So sharing content between my local instance and one in Germany would be impossible. Content on my local instance would only be accessible to users in nearby instances. Local content enforced by local federation.
- Comment on Could We Build a Decentralised Social Platform Rooted in Place? 5 weeks ago:
I spent several weeks thinking about this exact idea.
Federation is cool. You could set up each instance to only federate with instances for nearby towns and cities. Maybe a “2 district” radius. Users would only see content for their local communities. Local news stays local. Local government could officially participate if they wish. People you talk to are actually neighbors you might see in person. Larger regions like counties, states, provinces, or even countries, could also have dedicated instances and federate similarly. I think this is the big appeal and it sounds awesome!
There are a few problems 🙂
First is a little bit of confusion with posting. Let’s say that I see a post about a cool new restaurant in my town. I share it with a friend who lives a few towns away and that’s outside the “federation radius”. I can’t share the post with that friend very easily. Maybe the tools could be enhanced to make this viable?
Second is a matter of privacy. How do you know that new accounts belong to people associated with the geographic location of each instance? If you don’t validate, the system will certainly be abused. If you do validate, then users need to supply some real info! Home address, ID, etc. that’s a big deal for users and instance admins.
Third. What happens if you move? Do you have to abandon your old account and start over? Again, the system itself can be developed further to solve this. But that’ll take time and money.
Next is the operating costs. You would need to build thousands of instances to build this system up. And each one would have to be tied to a geographic region. You need new features to handle signups this way. You have the simple cost of running these servers. You probably need a lot of staff to manage it all. This is an expensive platform for one party to run. Alternatively…
It doesn’t have to be one party running this entire system. That’s the point of the Fediverse, right? The operational costs go way down if anyone can run their own instance. But how do you enforce the rules of federating with instances for geographically nearby locations? I don’t see a reasonable way to solve this one.
I could probably keep listing issues. But these are the big ones IMO. If you solve these, the system is viable and could be amazing.
- Comment on 96% of US Hospital Websites Share Visitor Data with Google, Meta, Data Brokers, and Other Third Parties, Study Finds 5 weeks ago:
I ditched chrome (chromium + google propriety spyware) some years ago in favor of Brave browser (chromium + Brave stuff). It was a decent user experience but Brave also does some shady stuff, which you can google easily if interested.
Last year, google poisoned chromium with DRM stuff. They rolled back the changes after a few months but the damage was already done. I, and many others, jumped ship to Firefox and other non-chromium based browsers. Firefox isn’t perfect, but it’s an excellent browser. I’m sticking with it for the foreseeable future. And absolutely use uBlock Origin. Between that and proton VPN features, I don’t see ads anymore. It’s fantastic.
- Comment on 96% of US Hospital Websites Share Visitor Data with Google, Meta, Data Brokers, and Other Third Parties, Study Finds 5 weeks ago:
At first, I found this funny. Then I realized how scary, sad, etc. the reality is.
Companies typically prefer users to use a native app for two reasons. First, the software is sometimes easier to build. Second, they are capable of scraping a vastly larger and more valuable set of data from the user.
Browsers can hit many differs sites, many of which are dangerous. Thus, web browsers have to be as secure as possible to protect users from malicious sites. This includes Facebook, TikTok, every medical site you’ve ever logged into, etc.
I know a lot about software. Personally, I view every installed app as a means of attacking my privacy. If you have the choice and your experience isn’t diminished, use a web browser instead of a native app.
- Comment on Composerize - online tool converts docker commands to compose yml 1 month ago:
I recently discovered k3d. It’s a light wrapper around k3s, which is kubernetes on docker. It’s amazingly easy to use! If you have docker installed, you can learn the commands and create a k8s cluster in under 5 minutes.
For anyone like me that likes k8s, k3d is a fantastic alternative to docker compose!
- Comment on WATCH: Chaos erupts at town hall meeting as citizens bang on doors, condemn 'worst mayor in America' 1 month ago:
Thanks for the links. I read the article on my phone using reader mode. Apparently it was hiding some of the embedded links. Which is annoying because I really like reader mode 🙂
I just skimmed through the article about misuse of tax funds. It’s a big improvement on providing detailed information. Some of it sure seems shady without digging. Music videos promoting herself that are funded by taxes? Yikes!
But I’m still a bit annoyed or something that they don’t explain what the Las Vegas trip was for. Honestly, a few thousand dollars for a business trip could be pretty normal IMO. It really depends on the details. Was she gambling, drinking, etc with tax money? Or did she fly in, spend a few nights, and work the whole time?
Anyways, thanks again for giving me a little more context
- Comment on WATCH: Chaos erupts at town hall meeting as citizens bang on doors, condemn 'worst mayor in America' 1 month ago:
Wow. This was the first Fox article I’ve read in several years. It’s fascinating, but in a really abrasive way somehow. It just feels frustrated.
The article has almost no information at all. It shares the perspectives of a few upset residents, which are great to include, but almost no direct statements about what the mayor actually did. Why did the mayor fly to LA? What about that trip makes it theft? I certainly want to question the trip… but the article just doesn’t give that info. Similarly, how did the mayor steal from the cancer fund? It sure sounds bad, but we’re only given that statement from the perspective of one upset resident who has cancer. The perspective sure if valid but I can’t make my own evaluation based on the info given. It just feels like I’m not meant to think about what I’m reading. It’s very strange.
Is this normal for articles written by Fox?
- Comment on Best way to dockerize a static website? 2 months ago:
The simplest way is certainly to use a hosted service like GitHub Pages. These make it so easy to create static websites.
If you’re not flexible on that detail, then I next recommend Go actually. You could write a tiny web server and embed the static files into the app at build time. In the end, you’d have a single binary that acts as a web server and has your content. Super easy to dockize.
Things like authentication will complicate the app over time. If you need extra features like this, then I recommend using common tools like find as suggested by others.
- Comment on What are your favorite tools for monitoring Linux and individual docker containers? 2 months ago:
OpenTelemetry
- Comment on So You Think You Know Git? - FOSDEM 2024 2 months ago:
I started using git meaningfully about 10 years ago. Mercurial maybe 6 years ago but not very much. And I was not a fan. Especially how it tracks things recursively.
So honest question. Why?
- Comment on Introducing Pkl, a programming language for configuration 3 months ago:
Disclaimer: I don’t yet understand why this is valuable.
I looked through the yaml example a bit. It looks pretty rough. This really makes familiar and readable yaml into much longer configuration. It’s much harder to read. First impression is a pass.
- Comment on DreamBerd is the funniest programming language ever. 3 months ago:
The Primeagen has a great reaction to dreamberd. Enjoy!
- Comment on entire system backups onto the server - how? 4 months ago:
If you’re up for it, it’s generally better to not backup everything. Only backup the data that you need. Like a database. Or photos, music, movies, etc. for personal data. For everything else, it’s best to automate the install and maintenance of your server.
Disclaimer: this does take more effort!
- Comment on Are flying cars finally here? 4 months ago:
Looks more like a battle bots machine to me, but built at human scale. Seriously, those low blades are very low and positioned at the perimeter. Forget the risks of flying; This looks extremely dangerous at ground level.
- Comment on It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware. 4 months ago:
Interesting. I’ve heard this many times from people here on Lemmy. I’ve been running Firefox for ~6 months now (previously Brave) and haven’t seen these issues yet. I don’t even have a chromium based browser available on any of my devices.
Regardless, I hear you about not wanting to be personal support for friends and family. That’s annoying
- Comment on It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware. 4 months ago:
Serious question. Is it actually better for the typical user? I don’t mean people commenting here. I’m thinking about the majority that don’t care about privacy, blocking ads, quality technology, etc. for those people, I’m guessing that Firefox is equivalent. Just another browser that works fine. So why switch??
- Comment on What is 'mount -a' doing with partitions not in /etc/fstab 5 months ago:
😯
And that is why code reviews are useful. I just assumed it was a header row and moved on. Shame on me 🤣
Thanks for the help!
- Submitted 5 months ago to linux@programming.dev | 3 comments
- Comment on Ethical cloud provider recommendation 5 months ago:
This really depends on the services you’re interested in. If you want something like aws, then no 🙂
There are plenty of other service providers that do things more ethically. Bitwarden is good, random example in my opinion. The software is e2ee and their service just syncs data between your devices. It’s not really possible for the bitwarden, the company, to read or mishandle your data in a way that matters. Note that this doesn’t apply to the credit card info for paid accounts. Still, this is what I consider “the good guy”.
So what services are you looking for?
- Comment on What time do you have your daily stand up? 7 months ago:
Same for me. My team spans 4 time zones and I’m in the eastern one
- Comment on What about a new explore-feed which merges the Subscribed, Local and All feed based on probabilities customable by the user e.g. 10/40/50 or 0/20/80? 8 months ago:
A few thoughts.
Actually. I don’t think I would want it presented as a probability from a usability perspective. If everything has to add up to 100, then increasing one means lowering all the others and vise versa. Similarly, those numbers will all change when I (un)subscribe to a community. This sounds extra confusing for users. Want to see half as much? Divide by 2. Let the computers do the math and turn it into probabilities.
Agreed that it might be an over engineered solution. But I think it would make a very good experience for users. And if a user doesn’t want to bother with it, they can easily ignore the feature.
While I do think better sorting algorithms are good to explore, I see that as a separate initiative. Yes, weighted subscriptions and better sorting algorithms can address the same problems but they can also be implemented separately. And they can work together to improve the user experience.
My big concern is performance. These are all assumptions but here are my expectations: Giving every user a distinct sort will send memory usage crazy high. Thus, you have to apply the weights dynamically when a client gets data. Can it be done fast enough to not slow down those calls? How much extra cpu will this cost?
- Comment on What about a new explore-feed which merges the Subscribed, Local and All feed based on probabilities customable by the user e.g. 10/40/50 or 0/20/80? 8 months ago:
I’ve been considering a very similar but distinct idea for a while now. I want my subscribed feed to be based on user weightings. Give subscribed community a default weight of 100. Then if I see too much from worldnews, I can scale it down to 50 and see half as much from that community in my feed. The goal being that I can adjust the proportions of different contents types without blocking users or unsubscribing entirely.
- Comment on call the doctor, the CS doctor 8 months ago:
It does take s little practice but not too much. The awkward positions are easy enough after a few weeks.
I chose binary for two reasons. First, it is occasionally useful to count that high on one hand. Second, the education when he’s older. I hope this will give him a note intuitive understanding of different bases. And binary is specifically useful for understanding comported and software development. I dont intend to push him toward a career in software but I think there’s a fair chance he chooses that anyways.
Plus we’ve made it into something fun 🙂
- Comment on call the doctor, the CS doctor 8 months ago:
I’m glad I’m not the only one. My son is a year and half old. I’ve been teaching to count on his hand in binary since day 0. He goes wild and celebrates when we reach 31 🙂
- Comment on Unity to introduce runtime fee based on installs 8 months ago:
Yes, unity costs money to develop and a fee is reasonable. But I think the are a few risks with this model.
How do they track installations? Metrics from steam and other platforms? Convecting to a license server at install time? Or maybe at runtime? I don’t know the answers but they all seem to have implications for users regarding privacy and/or offline gaming.
It’s also a variable fee to game developers. A single user can install the device on multiple devices despite buying the game once. Similarly, a game can be installed repeatedly over time. This is a financial risk to game development companies. I could see them mitigating this risk in several ways. First, they can pass the fee to the end user. So every install costs $0.20. Secondly, they can limit the number of installs per user. Do you want to install more than 5 times ever? Buy the game again! Thirdly, they could simply shut down the fireflies service, making me installations impossible. None of this is good for a gamers.
And what happens to games made by companies that shut down entirely? Today, games remain available through steam, etc. But with this new pricing model, games running unity will continue to cost money over. Who pays the bill after the company is gone? This reminds me of Worlds Adrift, a game that used a licensed library. When the developer company shutdown, they were unable to release their server source code because the third party couldn’t can’t send bills to the open source community. Thus, the servers were destroyed and running the client (still vailable via steam!) just gives the user an error message about license issues or something. Users paid for a game that they are now unable to use.
- Comment on VSCodium - Open Source Binaries of VSCode 8 months ago:
Feel free to share in !vscode@programming.dev!
- Comment on What are your Lemmy predictions? What do you think Lemmy will be like in the future? 8 months ago:
While I agree that we don’t need to “beat” anything or strive for growth, I do think those things will happen naturally if the system is an improvement. And while lemmy’s potential is great, there are challenges that come with federation, like those mentioned above. And those problems should be solved in time. Not to generate growth but to improve the system. Growth may follow