Mars2k21

Mars2k21, 1 month ago

You know, I'd feel happy about this but I hear a voice from the back of my head telling me "You know this driver isn't coming out for the next 20 years."

But seriously, I think its cool to see Nvidia actually making strides towards an open source driver (if they are actually serious about it, which I'm still skeptical about for no reason in particular beyond past history).

Mars2k21, 3 months ago

I really don't understand why so many advocate for Linux, FOSS, and an overall open web while actively making Linux and other free software as complicated and "tech-y" as possible.

If Linux isn't growing, what's the point? If it remains stagnant, its getting closer to fading away. We've seen the impact of Linux becoming more mainstream and known to the general public through the Steam Deck, and it has done wonders for the platform. Why do people actively not want it to grow?

Helping it grow doesn't mean being annoying like Edge pop-ups, simply throwing out suggestions to try easy-to-use distros here and there. And let's be honest, the average internet user can use an easy distro like Ubuntu or Mint proficiently after 20-30 minutes of playing around with it. We need to make it seem accessible so that more people will actually be interested in the first place.

Really happy to see a post being made about this.

Mars2k21, 4 months ago

They look fine to me. Same as windmills creating a certain aesthetic in the places they are built.

It's much better than having a giant power plant blocking the view of the landscape.

Mars2k21, 5 months ago

Glad Flipboard is expanding in the Fediverse, I've been following their various news accounts on Mastodon for a while now. It especially helps the fediverse feel more complete as a social media platform.

Sure, these don't really matter for Lemmy and Kbin, but they are a huge deal for microblogging platforms like mastodon or misskey.

Mars2k21, 5 months ago

Unfortunately, this is a problem that can't really be resolved. As long as there is a downvote button, it will always be viewed as a dislike button by some people (and I don't know if removing it is a good alternative for such a large social network). It's a problem that would eventually arrive here from Reddit as the community on the Fediverse grew.

There's really nothing we can do about it.

Mars2k21, 6 months ago

Showers help you come up with ideas? Guess I'll start taking showers from now on, seemed pointless before.

Mars2k21, 6 months ago

welp, another has joined the ranks

welcome

Mars2k21, 6 months ago

Tech geeks and nerds (no offense, I'm one too) tend to be the first people to populate any sort of new online social network. Just the way of the internet.

While I do like Linux and talk about it pretty often on the fediverse, I do realize that 96% of internet users don't care about it and the lingo is...incomprehensible for most people. Even I get kind of sick of talking about Linux on here sometimes lol but unfortunately many of the things I wish I could build a community around simply don't have the fanbase needed on the fediverse to begin a community for the moment. While not impossible, building a community for relatively niche subjects on a small platform like this that is in direct competition with sites like Reddit is very difficult and easier said than done.

My advice is just try to search around and find things as close to your interests that have active people as possible. Looking for broad communities can help out here, for instance, just go to /c/art of whatever instance instead of trying to find a /c/painting. Also, for Mastodon especially, use hashtags if you haven't begun to already. Mastodon was wack until I started using hashtags extensively, they somewhat make up for the lack of a recommendation algorithm.

Its pretty rough around here if your interests aren't related to tech/FOSS/linux, but that should make things a little better. Hopefully there will be more diversity in subjects on the fediverse in the future.

Mars2k21, 8 months ago

Building something this large completely as a volunteer service is commendable, honestly. Most people wouldn't think of taking up something like this.

This place is completely usable for me and bugs have become noticably less frequent. Most features I need are on here. You've done a good job, especially for so much of the work being done by a single person. I can only write a simple script of code, lol. In the future, just consider bringing in some people to help out on Kbin (especially with moderation).

If you need to take a break, delay some updates, or just step back, do so. Your personal matters need to be resolved first, and us random internet strangers can come later. You can stick to the deadline if you'd like, but I think it's more stress you don't need at the moment. It won't kill Kbin if some features took longer to come out.

Mars2k21, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

This is the definition of politics (Merriam-Webster).

You're taking it way out of context. If I tell somebody we should go for a walk its not anything beyond just socializing. Please stop jumping to conclusions.

I'll just leave it there. Not really here to go back and forth.

Mars2k21, 8 months ago

Saying this as somebody just reading the post, I don't know the whole context.

Being somebody who is BIPOC, you're not doing us much of a favor either by having an outrage across multiple corners of the fediverse. Take a breather. Seriously, zoom out and just consider what you are writing right now.

Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope.

...what if I just don't like seeing news that only makes me feel angry or bad on my feed. People have different things they want to participate in and see. Just because you like it to discuss it doesn't mean you should jump to accusations when someone doesn't want to. Its a sensitive topic to begin with. I just come here to see tech, cars, and art.

I started out by attempting to educate them on what politics actually means.

This comes off very pretentious. Just let this one go bro.

Look, I don't know what's going on with this blahaj place's moderation or whatever and its not my business. Just based on what I see here, you may want to take a good proof read at what you are saying and spreading around before you lead yourself somewhere that you regret. If you don't like this blahaj server's rules or anything, just leave. Its just the internet. You might find somewhere better suited for you if you just move your account to another instance. If you want to voice concerns, spreading posts like these across multiple communities isn't the way to do it.

Mars2k21, 9 months ago

Not sure if the list is supposed to only be accounts that moved from another service to the Fediverse completely, but some other notable accounts/organizations on the Fediverse that I can think of off the top of my head:

• The BBC's Mastodon instance, social.bbc
• Ars Technica
• George Takei
• Flipboard (has multiple accounts)
• Wikipedia

Mars2k21, 9 months ago

That's a pretty huge move right there, hopefully this is the first of many migrations of apps to Activity Pub software (besides Threads).

Also...the name NERV kind of threw me off for a second. Tell the anime crowd on Twitter that NERV moved to Mastodon full time and we'll probably get an extra 2 million people in the Fediverse.

Mars2k21, 9 months ago

Its quite literally just people who share the same culture getting together. In this case, its mostly Black Americans on Twitter. People tend to hang around people who share their culture more. During my relatively short time on Twitter for instance, I engaged with people who could be considered part of Black Twitter because I just automatically felt comfortable with people who share my culture on there, and I'm Black and American. Doesn't mean I wasn't interacting with other people who weren't black and segregating myself, I was just able to relate to some of their content more.

Mars2k21, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I actually joined Tildes before the API changes, back in February of this year. Before that, I had been a lurker on the site since 2020, so nearly 3 years.

Tildes is...interesting compared to any other social media. Its completely its own thing and there is a heavy focus on the philosophy of the site and the Tildes docs, which is basically the constitution of the website. Long form discussion is encouraged, posting images isn't even an option, and its very focused on providing for its users a great, streamlined experience. The interface is my favorite of all the Reddit cousins, its simple and it loads extremely fast. The software is great, no bugs at all and the interface is simple and lighting fast and the voting system is really well designed in regards to maintaining activity on threads that can be days or even weeks old. The people there are friendly and I've never even seen a bad interaction on Tildes.

However, this comes because the whole site is heavily moderated and controlled by the admins and mods. Long form discussion just isn't really my thing when it comes to online discussions, so I don't talk there much. I don't really like writing a paragraph or more in response to every question online versus having a long in-person discussion or on a real-time messenger like Discord (I'm doing it now of course, but I don't like doing it for every post). I would if every topic there interested me, but that's just not the case and that won't be the case on any site. My last post was 2 months ago, and I've just been very inactive there since making my account. I like reading on there occasionally, but not contributing much. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the site. Like another poster said, its very tightly controlled. While that prevents many trolls from appearing despite the few moderators that are actually on the site and encourages long form discussion, it also hampers the diversity of the people there. Sometimes I criticize the whole "We don't want people from Reddit or other social media" take when it comes to Kbin/Lemmy's growth, but its much worse on Tildes because the site actively wants a certain type of individual. No image support on purpose already filters out a lot of people who could bring great content to the site, and the lack of an ability for users to create topics affects it more. You can't make a topic on Tildes like you can on Kbin or Lemmy, there are strictly defined ones created for you, and they are quite general. You won't see much OC as you will just links and random conversation topics, and that kind of just makes for a lukewarm experience in my opinion. If you want to talk about a specific niche, you're out of luck. Kbin/Lemmy/the Fediverse and Reddit have that, and its a large part of the appeal for me. The lack of user diversity in interests also just makes the experience a little worse. For example, I like space and anime, and the space and anime communities on there aren't the most active, maybe a post weekly or biweekly. I'm also interested in tech, and you can imagine that community is booming 24/7. Compare the ~space community to /m/space, and you'll see the difference. This issue went away somewhat while the Reddit migration was in full effect, but now its returned as activity on the site has dwindled down a bit.

Tildes cares about the users, no doubt, but it doesn't really give them much power over the site. I wish it were less controlled.

I highly suggest you just take a look at it and lurk for a few days on there. What you see is what you get. Its not ultra politically focused like you said Raddle was (I have 0 experience with any of these sites other than Tildes, Kbin and Lemmy), its has equal activity in most of the communities. However, there are only 20 or 30 to actually choose from, and if you want something niche you'll just have to post in one of the communities and see if someone knows about it. If you don't like it, I wouldn't be expecting it to change much, the site culture isn't dynamic like the Fediverse or Reddit for instance. The conversation there is unparalleled by any other platform though. You can find some truly inspiring and deep conversations on there. Its not for me, but you may like it a lot. Its a flawed approach, but the site fulfills what it intends to do very well. For me, Lemmy and Kbin, while not perfect, are the best alternative to Reddit. Tildes is open source and anybody could make an instance of it, but it hasn't happened yet as far as I know.

Ironically, that's the longest thing I've ever typed on Kbin.

Mars2k21, 9 months ago

Debian >>>>>>

Mars2k21, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I'm pretty sure most of the people who will come here as a result of Reddit are already here. All the new Reddit refugees are probably getting over the hype with Lemmy/Kbin and are finally not pouring so much time into the platforms. And as a result, slowing growth numbers and tapering engagement. Its pretty natural and nothing to be worried about. There's still plenty of engagement here (just look at what happened to Threads a couple weeks after it came out).

Regardless, we should focus on making Lemmy/Kbin a fully fleshed out platform and draw in users the natural way rather than relying on Reddit falling off for new users. At this point in time, the Reddit blackout is pretty much over.

Might as well throw in my rant here, as I'm against this sentiment of not wanting Lemmy/Kbin to grow more and possibly even get mainstream. I get keeping out the undesirables of Reddit and other social media to prevent an Eternal September situation, but I also want more people of different backgrounds and interests rather than the same Reddit critic/tech enthusiast type of crowd. The great thing about federation is that if you want a smaller and more tight knit/topic centered community, there are smaller servers to join (not so much for Lemmy/Kbin at the moment since they are new, but it should get better over time). We can't seriously want Lemmy/Kbin to develop well if we voice desires to keep people out and rebuild echo chambers. Lots of smaller communities and topics have little activity because there's really only one group of people here right now.

Mars2k21, 9 months ago

Its a terrible rebrand that pretty much comes because of Elon's impulses, or in other words, for shits and giggles. Regardless of this hilarious trashing of such a powerful brand, I'll have fun calling tweets "xeets" for a good week.

Mars2k21, 11 months ago

Probably because of the endorsement of Lemmy by subreddits, which has been far greater than the endorsement of Kbin. Lemmy's also just been around far longer than Kbin. Those server issues that Kbin encountered during the whole explosion of users also likely slowed down growth a bit. Even with Lemmy's bot problem I think these have made it grow faster anyway.

Mars2k21, 11 months ago

14:1 upvote to comment ratio on this post as of this comment...um....