andresmh

andresmh, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

Small-ish instance admins: how much do you pay per active user per month for hosting?

Our instance (hci.social) pays around $0.30 USD per active user per month. I'm curious how that compares to other similarly sized instances.

We have several thousand registered users and around 800 active per month.

#mastoadmin

andresmh, 10 months ago to fediverse

Do you know librarians who have created Mastodon instances?

A librarian at my institution is interested in advocating for creating one. It might be helpful to read about other librarians' experiences doing this or the existence of some other cases managed by libraries.

#fediverse

andresmh, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to fediverse

What’s an interesting 12-week #Fediverse-related project for computer science undergrads? 🧑🏽‍🏫

I’m teaching a class for Princeton undergrads in the Fall 🍂 and I want to give them an option to work on a project focused on either building a system, or studying something about how people use the Fediverse.

Some ideas:

andresmh, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

Poll to test your internet age

andresmh, 1 year ago to random

Setting “mastodon.social” as the default on the main Mastodon mobile app kicked a can down the road and turned into a keg of gunpowder 🥫➡️🧨

It might have solved a UX problem (instance selection) in the short term. But it introduced an exponentially harder sociotechnical problem: scaling moderation.

Instead, we should:
a) increase the number of smaller and well-moderated instances.
b) turn instance selection UX into a productive type of friction.

andresmh, 9 months ago to random

Low hanging fruit idea for a CSCW "study" paper: a study of Blind, a pseudonymous discussion forum for tech workers.

andresmh, 5 months ago to fediverse

We're organizing a small in-person workshop about federated/decentralized social media at Princeton.

https://dsmw.cs.princeton.edu/

We're interested in bringing folks who develop fediverse tech or admins that manage active Mastodon instances. We have some travel funding.

Ping me if interested, and please boost 🚀 to reach more people.

#fediverse

andresmh, 8 months ago to random

This "CAPTCHA" is intense. It involves 3 of these "games." I am old enough to remember when Games with a Purpose were fun.

andresmh, 3 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to random

If you were to filter out posts related to outrage about tech, Trump, and the Middle East, what would be left from your feed?

andresmh, 8 months ago to random

💼 The Future of (Academic) Conferences Is Unconferences: Exploring a Decentralized Network of Regional Meetups

New writeup with @soya, Kang, Joy, @bellini @lumbroso @metaxa https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3612939

Also, the corresponding directory of regional meetups https://cafe.hci.social

andresmh, 3 months ago to random

We're looking for suggestions for creative subdomains for a Mastodon server at a university.

The main constraint is that the university doesn’t want to let us use a third-level domain like foo.princeton.edu, but they might be okay with foo.bar.princeton.edu.

What would be a good foo.bar subdomain?

Some ideas:
fedi.verse.princeton.edu
activity.pub.princeton.edu

Any other ones?

P.S. Using mastodon in the domain might not be a good long-term idea because the software might change.

andresmh, 5 months ago to random

When I was in industry, we would spend a lot of time on self, peer, and manager evaluations. This would determine promotions and bonuses.

In academia, we spend more time grading students, but grade expectations are so skewed that the impact is so insignificant, i.e., n hours of work to differentiate between an A- and an A.

In my next class, I'm considering offering everyone an A and focusing on giving actual feedback to those who want it.

Has anyone tried more creative eval processes?

andresmh, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to random

Today's second #CHI2023 :chi: contribution from @princeton is this whimsical project:

Dream Garden is a mobile AR app that allows groups of people to create a collaborative virtual garden with flowers and messages at a physical location.

The project was led by a talented undergrad Liz Petrov.

LBW Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3585810

Check her poster/demo at Exhibit Hall Wed, Apr 26 | 10:30 - 11:10

#AugmentedReality

andresmh, 5 months ago to random

Unpopular opinion: cellphone cases, like antivirus software, are unnecessary now.

andresmh, 1 year ago to random

Are we using GPT wrong?

We tried to use GPT to extract content from various websites, to output JSON.

GPT correctly extracts the info for most websites but fails with others. The problem: it's not possible to know which ones are wrong without manually verifying the output.

I thought this would be the perfect job for GPT.

andresmh, 10 months ago to random

2023 Google Scholar h-index rankings are out. Two observations relevant to HCI:

1. CHI continues to be #1, but PACM (which includes CSCW) is now #2. I think that’s good news as we move away from conferences and a single deadline per year.

2. I’m surprised I had never heard of #5 and #6. Have any of you published or heard of them?

andresmh, 10 months ago to random

Me: winter is over! Covid cases are down! We can finally go out the house without having to put on gloves, hat, winter jacket, boots, and n95

Planet: yeah it’s warm now but don’t forget sunscreen, anti tick spray, mosquito net, and an n95 for smoke from forest fires 🔥

andresmh, 8 months ago to random

I heard CHI required uploading the source latex files for submissions under review. Any idea why?

andresmh, 11 months ago to random

Did the US news media pay as much attention to the bad air quality when there were forest fires on the West Coast as they do when it's on the East Coast?

andresmh, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

Informal survey for Mastodon sys admins.

Where do you host your instance?

Please bost to increase visibility 🚀

andresmh, 8 months ago to random

I'm redesigning my professional website. What do you all think of this new design I created using some fancy JS I got from an LLM: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~andresmh/

andresmh, 11 months ago to random

Are LLMs already being trained on data generated by LLMs? If so, are LLMs going to self-destruct in a few years 😅

andresmh, 11 months ago to random

What are these lines in the ocean? Are they currents? They didn’t seem to move.🤔

andresmh, 4 months ago to random

Future AR app: ad blocker app for the physical world.

andresmh, 1 month ago to random

I just enabled sharing to the fediverse on my Threads account.

I might regret saying this but I think this is a net gain for the fediverse, even if Meta is doing this to potentially appease regulators.

I’ll continue to use the Mastodon instances I helped start (hci.social and micro.blogs.pricneton.edu) but it’s nice to follow Threads folks from afar👋

Video one enabling fediverse sharing