@asklemmy How could users Monitise themselves on the Fediverse?
As people possibly move across to the Fediverse to find alternatives, we have to question how people are going to make a living on this amazing platform.
Can it be fully run by donations or is there a better way for people to be paid across the Fediverse?
Only seeing this a week or so after it was posted but feel the need to reply. One of the major motivations for myself and a significant portion of others who joined the Fediverse is the decay caused by commercialization of the WorldWide Web. I’d further argue that this decay is a mirror of the non-digital world and the impact of the hyper-comoditization championed by neoliberalism.
Humans don’t exist purely to serve commerce and transactional financial systems. Those systems are invented by and intended to serve humans. We need, for our health, spaces and activities that are not transactional and financial in nature. The Fediverse, as it currently exists is such a place.
Artists and other creatives are a vital part of humanity. Unfortunately, we’ve been sick in a neoliberal hellscape that demands a commercial reason for anything to justify its existence. If one wants to entertain people on the Fediverse, there are a number of possible models that could help one to make a living, while still not falling into the hyper-commercialization that has infected the Web. Most of the ones that come to mind could work well elsewhere too. Here’s some examples that come to mind:
Form a non-profit related to the desired artistic medium. Through donations and grants, one can both make a living with their art and help others that are interested in the medium.
Form an artists’ cooperative, whether for a single medium or multiple media. If the coop becomes known for talented artists who make good work, they can then act like a union, supporting eachother in contract negotiations and other collective bargaining to ensure that members are fairly compensated for their efforts and are able to make a living.
Markets. I know several working artists that make the vast majority of their income in-person at local markets (farmers’ markets, swap-meets, etc). For performing artists, it may be possible to get bookings with the market organizers. For those that make pieces of still or recorded art, it can be sold directly.
With any of these, places like the Fediverse become a place to engage with people who know the artist and show their work to those not familiar. I strongly suspect that the Content Creator/Influencer as a “job” will not have long-term stability as it is being subsidized heavily by the platforms themselves, who are making money selling ads and enduser data, both of which are seeing more pushback from both users and governments as they are leveraged by bad actors and unscrupulous businesses chasing infinite growth.
I’d disagree with your assessment that wanting more practical effects (if that is your thesis) is “anti-tech”. Generally, from what I see, it’s pro-quality and pro-craftsmanship. In very few cases is cinematic CGI used because it looks as good or better than practical effects. It is used primarily to avoid paying the skilled artisans that learned the craft of stage and prop design or because a practical effect version of the desired thing is not, well, practical (think scenes in outerspace or hordes of orcs). With more digital VFX teams finally unioning-up, hopefully the cost difference (from materials, iterative flexibility, lack of soundstage rental, and vastly underpaying and overworking VFX crews) diminishes some.
In my opinion, productions that make good use of practical and CGI effects have the best chance of making a good piece of film.
Look at, say, modern(ish) superhero movies like the heavily-astroturfed Batman vs Superman. There are some good stills from that, if one likes Batman or Superman posing heroically. However, when things are in motion, especially fast motion, like fight scenes, there’s so much digital motion blur and other intentional or unintentional digital VFX artifacts that it breaks immersion and makes the live-action film very cartoony and hard to visually follow. CGI is incapable, currently, of approaching the realism of a real prop or effect. It’s getting closer every year but it’s not there.
Then, look at The Whale, Brendan Frasier’s critically-acclaimed comeback (CW: broken family and mental health issue). The Whale was done entirely with practical effects. It is a good film with compelling storytelling both through the characters and the visuals. But, a one-set film based in modern times doesn’t really have to worry so much about things like heat-vision or unassisted flight.
Finally, look at the sci-fi series The Expanse. One might be surprised by the sheer amount of practical effects there are in that series (I certainly was). The ship interiors are mostly sets instead of green screen and especially impressive is that the zero-G scenes were nearly all done with practical effects (actors in wire harnesses, at weird angles, holding their bodies straight against gravity, while acting like it is completely effortless - impressive core strength on the lot of them!). Then, you have PDCs, railguns, and starscapes, not to mention augmenting the practical effects, making excellent use of digital VFX. The series wouldn’t have been as good or had the same feeling had it all been done with digital VFX and green screen. The best actors in the world are going to give a different performance on a set that they build familiarity with vs a green screen - just for our brains work.
It’s hard to say what the balance point is but I suspect it has a lot to do with the things that actors will interact with or be around. The more physical stuff there is for them on the set, the better the chance there is that they will be able to give a compelling performance. That’s just that much less mental load while acting, allowing them to dedicate more to portraying their characters’ emotions and personalities within the scene.
At work, I have to run a command in an AWS instance. In that particular instance only exists the root user. The command should not be executed with root privileges (it executes mpirun, which is not recommended to run as sudo or the machine might break), so I was wondering if there is a way to block or disable the sudo privileges while the command is running. As mentioned, the only user existing there is root, so I suppose "sudo -u" is not an option.
You’re not wrong for trying to find another solution. Unfortunately, I think, in this case, your up against fundamental Linux permissions. One possibility would be running the work in a container with reduced capabilities but, it really is going to depend on what behaviors you’re trying to avoid.
Overall, it’s likely a better idea to re-install because noone should be running stuff directly as root in the majority of production scenarios.