The core features of Twitter aren't rocket science, and Meta already knows how to scale. Computer science students often build tiny scale Twitter clones as a portfolio project. Another shitty take from Musk
My dude, I think you're not super familiar with these technologies.
The most basic form of a content delivery network is a set of globally distributed servers that replicate content from a source of truth and a network to direct traffic to the closest server with a valid replica. So the cost here is servers.
With Lemmy, this problem is solved by eliminating the need for individuals to own many servers and a lack of need for trust between servers. The effort and cost is distributed among individual humans, making it manageable.
Now, if you're familiar with blockchain, you probably perked up when you heard "lack of need for trust." That's what the blockchain was built for! Perfect fit, right? Ehh, not so much.
There's two problems: acting as a proxy for content requires trust, and some single service needs to direct clients to the right local server. If I can arbitrarily join some network of serving content, I can always tell other servers in the network that I'm serving what they ask... and then serve ads. There's no (reasonable and fast) way for the network to verify that I'm serving the correct content to every client. There's no way to avoid the need for trust. Additionally, DNS, which directs you from mysite.com to 120.1.2.1, isn't intelligent. It can't direct clients to a geographically (or route-efficient, fucking ISPs) local IP. The best it can do is pick a random one from the pool. So when you go to lemmy.world, DNS can't pick the correct server for you. So some set of servers needs to do the logic to select which local server to actually get content from. Those servers need to be central for the whole content delivery network.
This company you linked is just another company using "blockchain" to get investment money. If you read through their page to get a cursory understanding of how things work, an easy question comes up: what is the purpose of media tokens? Sure, maybe you can buy CDN time with it, but when you pay that token to someone providing compute... what do they do with that token? It's worthless, just like crypto currency. Fucking scams. All that said, blockchain is a super, super interesting technology. There's just very, very few suitable applications of it.
I've worked in IT for about 12 years now. Everything from infrastructure monitoring to data analysis to data engineering to DevOps to backend engineering to product management. I've worked with systems serving tens of users and tens of millions of users. Happy to answer any questions. I love this shit.
If someone could figure out a trustless, decentralized way to implement a CDN, I'd eat that up in a second, but with my current understanding of the internet and available technologies, I don't see a way it can work. At least, not with making every web page take >3s to load, which would absolutely kill websites.
I mean, it's all about the client. As long as the client makes it seamless, it'll just feel like another sub/community, regardless of the instance it's on. They don't really need to care about or understand federation. Just sign up. Consume content. Ggez
I was invited to Valve's Game Developers Conference after party. I met Felicia Day and swing danced with her. She's super fucking cool. During that same GDC, I started interviewing at Riot Games and ended up getting hired by them.
There's other fun stuff I've proactively done, but I think that's the big one that happened to me
Their arguments assume businesses operate in good faith. We fundamentally know that it's not true, from overseas child labor by fast fashion to coal mining to IT security. This economist of theirs can fuck off
What are these answers...
Wrong place to ask, but whatever.
It depends on what you want to build. If you're not sure, start with Python. It's likely easiest to pick up and get running. There's a book called "Automate the Boring Stuff." I think there's an online version. (Edit: link - https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)
If you don't want to set up Python (or any language, really) on your computer, there's a tool called a REPL that you can find online. So you can just search "Python online REPL," and you'll get a functional online environment to code. Now, you won't be able to do stuff interacting with your local computer this way, like reading files, but it's good for learning the basics of the language.
In terms of software for writing code in on your local computer, Visual Studio Code (NOT to be confused with Visual Studio) is a free, lightweight code editor. It supports every language via plugins.
If you do go the Python route, make sure to learn about virtual environments before you do 'pip' or 'conda' anything. Also, unless you're doing data science things, stick to pip. (Maybe some personal bias there, but I hate anaconda.) If you're starting from nothing, it'll be awhile until you get there anyway, so don't worry too much about it.
Most importantly, find a community that welcomes new learners. Learning to code is absolutely fucking brutal, so having supportive people available makes a world of difference. Bonus points if you can find an offline meetup in your local area.
Confidence and/or giving no fucks goes a long way. Combine that with unabashed honesty, and you're good. Just gotta make sure not to be a dick about things.
This ends up rubbing assholes the wrong way, but good people will be drawn to you. If you're in a toxic environment, you'll end up kind of ejecting yourself, but you can build a good environs around yourself
In pointing out one's deficiencies, you should help them fill in those gaps. Otherwise, you're just being an asshole.
Explain what communism is. Comprehensive education in communism is not part of many places' standard curriculum
Yes, curse the world because you feel powerless rather than try to do something about it.
The current system sucks, but the average human is pretty chill. Most people just want to feel safe, eat good food, and enjoy time with friends and family.
Some people are in shit situations and are easily manipulated into becoming hateful creatures, and some people in power understand this and abuse it. Systems that create these situations are the issue, and we have continuously improved systems throughout our existence. We usually change systems when they hit a threshold of hurting enough people, which is not the best strategy, but it's how we're wired. But it takes enough people getting pissed off and doing something about it rather than bitching and giving up.
So quit bitching and do something. Volunteer for a group that combats climate change. Find a job at a sustainable company. Advocate to friends and family why they should care and what they should do. At the very least, you can be at some peace with yourself for doing your best
Chances are that you're being sarcastic, but in the event you're not or if others want to learn...
Interesting tech. Almost zero practically useful applications.
Blockchains are effectively reproducible, verifiable ledger systems. But if the ledger grows infinitely, your storage and compute costs also grow infinitely. I've heard this has been solved, but I haven't seen an implementation yet. (If anyone knows of one, please share!)
Another issue is the proofing system. Bitcoin uses proof of work, which means you need to do more computational work to produce new blocks on the chain. If the computational work grows, that means you need more and more powerful computers. This means increased cost which means centralization as participants with less money to pay for compute get pushed out. Alternatively, there's proof of stake, where having some amount of a token or some similar value/stake allows you to write new blocks. This does reduce the computation cost but still causes those with lots of tokens/stake to get even more tokens/stake, which in turn allows them to spend more for new blocks... which creates a loop towards centralization.
So basically, the technology that preaches decentralization naturally centralizes in practical use over time.
What is this firstpost.com? Why is this filed under sports? I only see this on Bloomberg, US News, and this site. I'm skeptical of accuracy
That was a really, really good article. My observations from living here for 7 years match, and I learned some stuff. It's good to hear that these initiatives are happening. I try to teach coding in English as a non-profit, but I don't know enough Korean to reach these other folks. I should do more
I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There's a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I've had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it's a huge impact on those people
So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it's career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way
Fucking lol. $22m fine reduced to ~$111,000 due to "near-defunct status." Crypto is such a scam
You just know the original sender is on board with it. They probably think this is the stupidest shit and realize they have a bullshit job. I bet they hope an auditor or some superior will someday find the document and have something to say about the waste... but probably not
This guy works.
(Edit: I know the Fediverse isn't only American, but these American companies are the ones fucking things up, so that's where my focus is)
I know this was probably meant to be an innocuous comment, but I think this is dangerous thinking.
We're in the current situation due to inaction and forces acting against us. The US populace stopped worrying about trust-busting. We assume that the current system is inevitable. We let our government not serve our needs. We don't selectively place our purchasing and attention to promote good behavior of companies.
If we recognize that we can do something and we decide to work together, we can make things better. We can reject Meta. We can agree to not federate with them and pressure others to make a morale choice rather than a convenient choice. We can do this in other aspects of life, too.
We just need to make sure that we don't let them divide us. We see this among the American population, dividing us based on issues that affect a tiny population and ignoring the things that could help us all, including those tiny populations. We let fighting over the optimal solution for problems get in the way of doing anything, even if imperfect, to at least improve things.
Let's do better. Let's unite. Let's make it clear what results we want. Let's make incremental progress (and giant leaps, if possible) towards making things better. We can't just accept not having nice things. Let's demand nice things, together.
I don't get all the hate and vitriol for StackOverflow. Sure, some people are assholes. Welcome to humanity. At least the system provides for voting to suppress the shit takes and general assholery.
SO combined with Google is usually enough to help me find an answer that either gives the context I need to make a solution or a straight up solution. If people are posting and expecting a super detailed, correct answer in a matter of hours, I think their expectations need adjustment.
I've posted very few questions and had decent responses for the majority of them. Is my experience uncommon?
But yeah, layoffs suck, and I hope they find a way to be profitable. Hell, if they do a Patreon-esque model where people can just throw money at them because they appreciate the service, I'd subscribe. (If a similar thing exists that I don't know about, please link)
That whole culture is cancer. A lot of Koreans here think country music is typical American music, and i have to explain to them how that whole culture is super, super fucked and how they need to turn off that fucking music
I'm not so familiar with quantum computers. Can you describe how they accomplish different tasks?
My understanding was that the key difference was bits versus qubits, basically translating to individual operations calculating more data. So a bit is x^2, but a qubit is x^8 if i remember correctly. Under the hood, it's all still math, but with a different base number system. Everything would have to be rebuilt at the lowest layer, but abstractions over bitwise operations should remain the same, I thought. Maybe my base understanding of quantum computers is wrong? I'm curious
I'm not 100% sure this is correct because I haven't looked at the protocol or implementations in detail yet, but I can offer some educated guesses.
"Pending" implies that you're waiting for some remote service, likely the other instance, to confirm that the subscription went through.
I can think of a few reasons why an instance may never send confirmation or why the message may not update:
Maybe I'll dive into things tonight and get more info. Or i might forget. We'll see 😅
Maybe I'm part of the problem, and if so, please educate me, but I'm not understanding why blocking is ineffective...?
And block lists seem like an effective method to me.
The security improvements described seem reasonable, so it would be nice to get those merged.
I understand that curation and block lists require effort, but that's the nature of an open platform. If you don't want an open platform, that's cool, too. Just create an instance that's defederated by default and whitelist, then create a sectioned-off Fediverse of instances that align with your moderation principles.
I feel like I've gotta be missing something here. These solutions seem painfully obvious, but that usually means I'm missing some key caveat. Can someone fill me in?
That's because PowerShell blurs the line between programming language and scripting language. By accessing the entire .NET library, of course it's going to have more features than a basic scripting language that relies on open source utilities installed on the system.
The reasons people hate it are because they hate Microsoft, it breaks from traditional shells too far, and it's a pain in the ass to type (verbose). To use PowerShell effectively, you almost need to write full software programs. At that point, just use C#.
As for you preferring it to Python.... I think you don't know Python. I'm trying to come up with every way possible to make PowerShell sound better than Python, and I got nothing. Maybe you don't like whitespace? I cannot understand your point of view here. Help me out
We do, actually! You should read up on immunotherapy. It's not for everyone, but it works in many cases.
The metaphor holds up, too. With sufficient time and effort, you can make things work.
Edit: wait, you might be right. As I understand, net neutrality is for the last mile ISPs, not the L1/L2 providers. So uh... what I explained below isn't relevant. Eh, I'll leave it in case people wanna learn stuff.
It was a bad explanation, assuming you had knowledge of network infrastructure things, but it does make sense. I'll explain things if you're interested.
Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all content providers equally. Your phone is not a content provider (most likely. You could run a web server on your phone, but... no). YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, and your weird uncle's WordPress site are content providers. Without net neutrality, ISPs can say, "Hey YouTube, people request a ton of traffic from you on our network. Pay up or we'll slow down people's connections to you." The "neutrality" part means that ISPs must be neutral towards content providers, not discriminating against them for being high demand by consumers.
For the L1 and L2 part, that's the networking infrastructure. The connection to your home is just tiny cables. I don't recall how many layers there are, but it's just "last mile" infrastructure. The network infrastructure between regions of the country or across the ocean are giant, giant cables managed by internet service providers you've never heard of. They're the kind of providers that connect AT&T to Comcast. These are considered L1 or L2 providers. The data centers of giant companies, like Google for YouTube's case, often pay these L1 or L2 providers to plug directly into their data centers. Why? Those providers are using the biggest, fastest cables to ferry bits and bytes across the planet. You might be pulling gigs from YouTube, but YouTube is putting out... shit, I don't even know. Is there a terabyte connection? Maybe even petabyte? That sounds crazy. I dunno, I failed Google's interview question where they asked me to estimate how much storage does Google Drive use globally. Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what L1 and L2 providers are.
I'm not a network infrastructure guy, though. If someone who actually knows what they're talking about has corrections, I'd love to learn where I'm wrong
Oh man, I remember Trillian, too. That was great. Must have been a nightmare to build, though
Can anyone inform me regarding the purpose of preventing China from producing these more advanced chips? Is it protectionism? Is it anti-China policy? Is there some kind of particular military application?
I was going to post something like this. Thank you for your service
I have zero idea what your angle is, but for the benefit of others...
Nazi-ism is a chosen belief system with a core belief in depriving other groups of basic human rights. The depriving other people of basic human rights is the key part.
Hate speech is directed towards people with attributes that they cannot change or religion. Religion gets added in there because changing religion is not a simple thing, and in major religions doesn't hurt people. (Don't start citing religious terrorists - that is fundamentalism within a religion and not a commonly shared belief among all followers.
So hating on nazis is cool.
Ahh, I recall using Pidgin, too. I think i ended up favoring it over Trillian. I already had accounts on all the services, so it worked out. I guess thinking about it, if only basic chat was supported, it may not have been terrible supporting everything
I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you're sick before you feel sick.
Yeah... that sounds like bullshit haha
But the same methods used to stop Joe and Rush could be used by government in an authoritarian way. Giving government more control over media is a very dangerous and difficult thing to do without media devolving into a propaganda arm
In case you were innocently using whataboutism without meaning to, here's a tip to avoid it.
If you're going to compare to the US or wherever, first ask yourself if that place was mentioned in the comment you're replying to. If not, it's whataboutism.
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat
The Remembrance speaks to us on the evil of man's will, of the reasons for Exodus, and the Rites of the Traveler. Arcadia is our destiny and our right. Enlightenment is our gift. By the Bloodnames of the founders we must return, return and protect that which is unique among the stars. Terra awaits us as it was written. We are the last of the Wardens, the sole hope for the Earth.
Wolves still prowl
Yo, that's super cool. +1 on the who was on the phone?
Thank you! I was really tempted to try to put moves on her, but I was in a relationship at the time. When I got home and told the story, my girlfriend at the time said she totally would have given me a pass. I have regrets. Of course, I probably would have failed anyway, but it's fun to think about.
This is the kind of quality content I'm here for
While it's good to be suspicious, I don't think we can call CloudFlare a monopoly quite yet.
Akamai is a big, giant competitor. You also have the big cloud providers like AWS that have their own CDN systems, like CloudFront. (I don't recall GCP's or Azure's product names.) Then you have specialized CDNs like Google's AMP system.
Now, is it possible that there could be a horizontal trust between these companies? Certainly. There's few enough players for that to happen, but so far, I haven't seen signs of it happening.
It makes me sad the site seems to be pushing crypto. Or maybe it's that crypto bros keep referencing the event? Chicken and egg? I dunno
The fuck is this article? What are the differences in ideologies between the military and the government? Is there any history of this conflict? How long has this president been in office? Most BBC readers probably have no idea about anything in Niger, myself included. The article should supply at least a little of this info.