density
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density

@density@kbin.social
density,
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I love the way of describing Free Software. Paraphrasing and I don't recall the source: "Not free as in speech or free as in beer. Free as in puppies." You can get a puppy for free but then you have to take care of it all the time, and it incurs costs like vet visits. Free Software can be the same way.

density,
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Not sure what ASF is (something Software Foundation?) but sounds like they are a solution and not a problem

density,
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I recall reading about a university ?compsci? lab where the professor who leads it assigns her students to examine priority dependency chains. They trace everything back and report on who is maintaining various upstream packages, and identify situations where it is like just one person or otherwise really vulnerable. Then they have some sort of institutional resources to offer that person support and add extra hands to the workflow. So it is more proactive than what you are describing in that they are going out and looking for things that could be problems, not just awaiting a disastrous exploit and patching it up after the fact.

But it's just some small group somewhere. On the main I think we agree on the deficit of support for FLOSS components and applications that functionally run the whole world. It's so crazy but invisible. I am not a developer, just a fan of developers and their work. Most people I know IRL are not developers. Everyone thinks the software on their phone works because Apple and Google pay engineers to build everything. They don't know about all the FLOSS components to the phone, the services it uses, the network etc, and how so many bits and pieces are maintained in part or in whole by volunteers on their free time.

Remember when the boat got stuck in the panama canal and everyone was suddenly interested in supply chains? I forsee/fear the event that prompts the whole world to learn about dependency chains.

density,
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I think youtube-dl had a situation like that, now yt-dlp. (except I don't know if the original dev's status is confirmed?)

also exa, now forked to eza. My impression is for this case, the original dev is OK.

But honestly I have encountered lots of software packages which have been dropped and picked up in this way. Man pages can contain history like this, occasionally going back to the 80s or even 70s for the basics. The main problem is that the original software package is so well known and sometimes it's hard to find out about the newer iterations so they have a difficult time picking up steam. I used to have a bookmarklet that would show forks on github sorted by activity; occasionally this allowed finding the more recently-developed project. But more likely you have to wait to stumble on it in a forum.

density,
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omg i stand corrected

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction

also it only lasted 1 week?? i felt like it was 9 months long

TODO: read the wikipedia beyond the introduction

density,
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yes axactly

density,
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a lot of folks are going to make some drivel up about how they’re preserving history or whatever as they don’t even adhere to basic archive standards and their entire collection is coincidentally only stuff they like lol

history will never forget joe rogan, the family guy, nirvana, playboy magazine, zelda, 4chan etc thanks to these heroic amateur archivists... lol not exactly representative of the plurality of human creativity

around the edges of the amateurs and within institutions they support like archive.org there is more room to value the diversity of human creation. I hope there would be more infusion of democracy and valuing of materials not of interest to white men.

Nextcloud vs Syncthing for PKM notes?

I’d like to sync my markdown notes between devices (laptop and phone), which service is better: Nextcloud or Syncthing? Any other important idea I should know?, like latency times, or maximum number of synced devices, what if I edit the same note from both places without internet and then both get connected to a network… For...

density,
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most ide’s are extremely fun to use as text editors

my kind of fun

kindred spirits

density,
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does it support plain markdown?

IME joplin has its own format

density,
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best description I have ever read of syncthing. they should put this in their readme or about page. describes the pros & cons in an honest way. I've had all the problems you describe and will probably have them again in the future, be confounded, be frustrated.

I get (mostly) worry-free backups

except this; it's sync not back up. ;) but it is very backup-like and in some situations does the job as well or better than backups

I <3 syncthing nevertheless

density,
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borg is fab; i don't think there is a mobile component tho?

restic iirc is complicated and more advanced

don't forget rsync which is sync but is the basis of various back up tools

density,
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fuck man, this silver bullet looks pretty cool. project is about 1.5 years old? i guess it's been longer than that since i investigated these kinds of tools

https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet

While you can use SilverBullet as a simple note taking application that stores notes in plain markdown files on disk, it becomes truly powerful in the hands of more technical power users. By leveraging metadata annotations, its Objects infrastructure, Live Queries and Live Templates, SilverBullet becomes a powerful end-user programming tool, enabling you to quickly develop various types of ad-hoc knowledge applications.

I have errands to run this weekend and I cannot spend the whole time immersed in this.

density,
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Hope @hariette is doing OK and has support she needs. And will return when ready.

Lesson today is: Always FLOSS to avoid cavaties.

density,
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feudalism + capitalism

worst of both worlds

Wanted to share the libredirect Firefox plugin, for abandoning Youtube. (libredirect.github.io)

This is a plugin I found recently and really enjoy. It gives you the opportunity to redirect several webpages to alternatives. For example Youtube to FreeTube or Piped. If I search for youtube in Firefox, FreeTube automatically opens and shows me my feed. I like it, I use it, I can recommend it.

density,
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on android you can enable "share"/"open in external app" and send the link to piped or newpipe or whatever your preferred app is; that's how I do it

density,
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RIP Einar Egilsson

density,
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I agree it it very annoying. I feel it goes against the whole libre and neutrality aspect of why firefox is important. I want the full linux-type experience on every device. :D

As the other comment says, it is possible to get addons in mobile FF . Tbh I have never done it. But I probably will someday.

density,
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It is pretty good. It is not doing everything reddit was doing for me. But it took me years to find all the right communities on reddit. No reason to expect a drop in replacement. Overall I was pretty skeptical of threadiverse working out really at all. It could have just been a fad. On that count I am pleasantly surprised.

I have gotten much less stringent on boycotting reddit on search results. At first I was resolved to never go to reddit anymore. Now I prefer other sites if available but I am not going to punish myself by willfully avoiding useful content. I try to get in and get out asap. I am rarely using site:reddit.com/r/subreddit anymore. But once in a while I do.

density, (edited )
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Answer 1:

with an old forum like running phpbb, it doesn't matter to the user what the site is running. if it works, it works.

with the fediverse, because it is interacting with other instances in a way forums never even conceived of, it is really important to the end user what software is running. the software is center stage.

Answer 2:

The blossoming of the threadiverse in the past 6 months has prompted/necessitated the creation of a lot of "general purpose" domains.

Your examples are bookclub.phpbulletin.com and metalheads.vbulletin.net. But most lemmy instances are not themed around literature or music or anything else. More apt example would have been phpbbtalk.io or chatvbulletin.xyz. Such sites did start back in the day. But in the absence of federation they were not likely to cohere. So you don't remember them, if you ever found them in the first place.

Find in page clears itself after a few moments

When I Find-in-page for a term using ctrl+f or "find as you type" with "Highlight all" turned on, all results will appear highlighted. But then much of the time several seconds (variable) later it goes away, as though I had hit esc. If I hit ctrl+g for "find again" it starts again at the top. So current place in page is lost....

density,
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Still working on making on-topic responses I see. :) you'll get there eventually. just give it a few more moments.

density,
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It seems to me that when these devs say "community" they are talking about their own group. Not the userbase of threadiverse/kbin as a whole. Which, tbh, is what virtually anyone speaking on behalf of "the community" in any context, usually means. Unless there has been a literal vote in a highly engaged population. As we have no mechanism for this sort of process, nobody can be claiming to speak for "the community" in a legitimate way.

Hopefully they will eventually (if not already---this is an old thread) develop enough confidence to speak on their own behalf and own their opinions instead of attributing them to a sort of everyone. I think what they mean to say is along the lines of "This fork is the way we like it." Which like would be fine afaik.

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