A software developer and Linux nerd, living in Germany. I’m usually a chill dude but my online persona doesn’t always reflect my true personality. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I usually try to be nice and give good advice, though.

I’m into Free Software, selfhosting, microcontrollers and electronics, freedom, privacy and the usual stuff. And a few select other random things, too.

  • 7 Posts
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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2024

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  • Agreed. Name things. And split up code into chunks with a sane lenth and have these methods do about one thing. And know the program language well enough so you don’t need to do it in an unnecessarily complicated way. You can get rid of most of the inline comments that way. Not sure if this translates to docstrings though, if you’re generating some reference or something. Yeah, and please tell me the “why” I can read Python code, so I can pretty much already see “what” it’s doing.





  • First of all: what’s “Kitten”?

    And my own take is, it’s constantly evolving. And there are a lot if different use-cases out there. We might not have one specific, hypothetical solution. But similar things might exist. And it’s always also a question of supply and demand.

    I’m always fine with niche solutions. Since I’m not even sure if my interests align with what’s popular with the masses.

    But I think this is likely more a societal issue than a technical one. People want convenience, consume content passively. They want to be inside of filter bubbles and golden cages, with the occasional tickle of disagreeing on emotional things in the comments and siding with other users. What they don’t value is freedom, or privacy, or doing something productive that requires more than 30s of attention. So naturally, we get platforms that cater for that.

    I also think the Fesiverse is a very nice attempt at laying a groundworks for more a more ethical and sustainable communications platform. But it’s far from perfect. And it struggles with a few of the same dynamics that are inevitable with social media.

    I think the internet as is, is a solid choice. It’s been made to connect people (and their computers). And it’s initially been used for that. People put their stuff online because they had something to say, it required effort, so it was more quality content where the effort was justified somehow. Oftentimes it wasn’t with commercial interest, but for fun. And you could tell if something mattered to someone.

    Subsequently, the internet got commercialized, the general public was onboarded. And now we have something that’s just about attention, manipulation, advertising and making money.

    But the technical infrastructure is still basically the same. And we kind of still have net neutrality in a lot of places. Hosting got cheaper, the software and tools are abundant these days…

    But yeah, demand is low, media literacy is low. People have become lazy and careless. And I don’t think there is a good way to change this with regular people, at least not in a grassroots way. I’d be easier to impose that from the top down, with regulation and education. But that’s where large and powerful companies are, and their motivation is in diametrical opposition to that. Plus we’re combatting human psychology here and the way our society works. It’s just a hard problem, so it comes to no surprise to me that we can’t solve it, all we can do is take small steps in the right direction.

    And I just don’t understand some things. Like the Cloudflare thing. I’ve never used Cloudflare. My servers are completely fine without it. And I don’t even get a lot of load by the crawlers, and neither am I paying for the traffic or electricity used by that. All I ever have to do is pay attention to security, since I get a lot of brute-forcing attempts, spam etc. But that’s always been bombarding my servers. And there are lots of better ways to deal with it than tunnelling everything via one large and unappealing company…



  • Thanks for the nice conversation, btw. I’ve learned a few things. Yeah, and some things you said just reinforce what I’ve already read elsewhere. And I also think it’s a shame that the entire field is more often that not connected with bad working conditions, and it’s hard to change due to the very nature of it. Plus it’s an extra shame that organized crime has ties. And they won’t let go, no matter what. From what I’ve read it’s even worse in other parts of the world. And that’s kind of always the case with the internet, since it spans across the globe.

    But sure, I wholeheartedly agree. It’s an entirely different story whether you rip off some faceless large (and rich) company. Or do the very same thing to an amateur, or your neighbour. I think that’s not controversial. I also know lots of people who are less concerned with pirating like Hollywood movies or AAA games, but they won’t do the same to an indie game developer or something like that. But it requires some amount of thinking and awareness…

    And circling back to the topic at hand… Does anyone know the admin of that instance, or operator of the bot? Maybe they’re just oblivious to the fact, yet willing to learn? We could request the amateur communities to be removed from the bot. If someone compiles a list. Or just ask them whether they’re willing to do it, before investing the effort. I’m not sure if I’m the right person for that, since I have close to no knowledge about the details. And I’m still not convinced of the importance of that specific instance, since all the posts there have zero engagement and upvotes, and it seems to me like people already voted with their feet.

    Edit: Nevermind, I’ve asked to remove them: https://lemmit.online/post/5153024


  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.detoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldStalwart mail server
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    16 hours ago

    I’ve tested it (on NixOS). But just for two weeks. I’d say it’s pretty impressive. Certainly works. It was just missing some important (to me) feature (forwarding mail to external mailboxes). But they’ve added it since, so I would like to try again. It doesn’t seem to have all the bells and whistles (and I didn’t have a look at the program code) but the basic features of a mailserver seem to be solid. I can’t really comment on the sustainability of the project, quality of the documentation… I mean if your setup includes niche edge-cases, custom tweaking and hooking into other software, maybe stick with the popular choice. But if you just want a regular, more or less simple mailserver, I’d say go for it.


  • To be honest, it’s already there. We have the small web, people keep blogging, writing into forums. We have Gemini if you want an entirely different protocol… You have to stay away from commercial websites and social media. But other than that, I don’t think we have to wait for anything to happen. It’s there. But with that said, people might need to re-learn how to use the internet. Since usage really has changed. You can’t expect to find it on social media while doomscrolling. The “back to the basics” is: You put in some effort to find nice blogs of interesting people. Install an RSS reader. Find a forum or a place like this one where you fit, and that’s filled with humans. That’s some effort. But that’s how people did it back in the days.


  • I’m not sure whether it’s futile. I mean societal change happens. And it’s a big step forwards that we have these platforms where independant creators get 80% revenue of a monthly subscription. A few years ago, stuff was just pirated, even on the big regular sites. Plus there wasn’t a good way to do it directly. You had to get into the porn industry and get paid for some DVD production. And as far as I understand, the porn industry is super problematic. So I’d say we’re making progress. But educating people… Idk, it’s always hard. Maybe futile, yeah. This isn’t my fight. I’ve tried lecturing people on other topics and I found it’s almost impossible to change the world. At least on a bigger scale. And if you’re involved yourself, progress always feels painfully slow. I don’t know what to make of this. I still refuse to resign with some topics.



  • Agreed. I mean I don’t think the general public is even concerned with that. For 99% of people, NSFW is visiting a porn streaming site, and they get whatever they’re interested in. And for free. That’s the expectation.

    I think the BBC did a good documentary on NSFW creators a few years back. I can’t remember the name. But what they depicted wasn’t success stories. It was one gay couple who were very successful, with a very nice fanbase… But all the other people they showed didn’t get rich or anything especially after the 20% cut and taxes. Plus there’s expectations from the audience and lots of competition. Seemed like really hard work, sometimes with severe downsides (sometimes not so much). And some of them struggled and the text card at the end said they quit after filming of the documentary. I might misremember the details. But at least that depiction of OnlyFans seemed more honest to me. And they were all putting in a good amount of time and it weighed down on their lifes, friendships and often relationships.

    I’ve also seen a bit of what happens on Reddit. But all I’ve seen is using that platform to advertise for a paid account on a different platform. Seems to me it’s often one or two pictures and an onlyfans link somewhere. So I’d say it’s more advertising material than proper content on Reddit. At least if it’s the creators themselves. Other people just steal arbitrary content and repost that somewhere. The majority doesn’t seem to care for copyright too much. At least that’s what I’ve seen on the more popular subs. But as I said, I’ve just had a glimpse at it, I might be wrong. But if it’s true, it’s a systemic problem. And it starts on platforms like Reddit itself. (And another thing I learned is that Twitter got used for NSFW as well, like for videos, animations and by people who create adult games on Patreon.) But I bet you don’t need to worry about explaining whether it’s alright to steal advertising material, if the whole situation is like it is.


  • Sure. What I’m trying to convey is, I don’t think it’s a given fact that per capita energy consumption will be reduced. Take TVs for example. They’ve become way cheaper and more efficient since the 90s… But the dynamics are: People will now buy way larger TVs. And they’re affordable to more people. So, I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I’d be surprised if our TVs use less electricity now. Despite them having become more efficient.

    But ultimately I don’t really care about the numbers or energy usage. It’d be nice not to wreck the climate and the planet. That’s what I’m concerned with. So as long as we have the energy to spare, and it doesn’t pollute the environment and harm the environment and us… I’m fine with AI using energy. But yeah, being efficient is a good thing. We shouldn’t waste things if we can avoid that.