Oliver Lowe

@Oliver Lowe@hachyderm.io
8 Post – 65 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Rollerblading, programming, writing, documentaries, travel, motorbikes… That’s it!

Preferably otl@apubtest2.srcbeat.com

This account is here to interact with bits of the Fediverse which don't play nicely with my weird ActivityPub-email system.

Mastodon is written in Ruby. Nowhere near as big as Facebook or the ML field, but hey, it's important to a couple of us at least :)

@programming @nifty

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Really? AV1 & webp support, Quantum engine, process-per-tab, reader mode, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3 support, cross-site tracking protection...?
Browsers have a lot of features. Some convenient, some come and go. That's ok.
Firefox is an ideological choice for some people so both cynicism and unconditional support is expected.

@AMDIsOurLord @linux

@mac Related: Why the SQLite team uses Fossil instead of Git https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html

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> more compact tab bar, saving space

Not sure if you're aware, but there's a hidden setting to make Firefox's toolbars more compact:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compact-mode-workaround-firefox

@Pantherina @linux

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Fax machines are still used in healthcare!
There is an overwhelming amount of healthcare admin where software could help.
Computers are designed for messaging, data manipulation, deduplication... stuff that people are drowning in because the existing software sucks or doesn't exist.
Yet we see pie-in-the-sky "AI" (LLMs? who knows?) projects being funded.

(I worked as a manager at an Australian general practice. Assuming the US is similar? )

@technology @throws_lemy

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I get where you're coming from. But not everyone who falls for this stuff is "stupid". Some are just vulnerable - maybe just temporarily - and once you're in, it's an awful slippery slope.

I don't know how many are just vulnerable and how many are good Darwin award nominees.

@technology @Tristaniopsis

@czardestructo For the CPU Intel says 7.5W: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81071/intel-celeron-processor-n2830-1m-cache-up-to-2-41-ghz.html
So all up I’m guessing under 10W. I don’t know how much other components affect the power usage, though. And I’m about 200km away from where it is installed! Hoping someone more expert in hardware could chime in here :)

@selfhosted

@CoderSupreme The founder of StackOverflow went on to work on Discourse (https://discourse.org). There’s actually an ActivityPub plugin available nowadays, so apparently people can contribute from whatever fediverse server they’re coming from. For example see Go Bridge (https://forum.golangbridge.org)

@programming

From the forum: "If I know IBM at all, behind the scenes it'll end up being a bunch of junior programmers doing the work, after the AI branded tech fails. It'll still be called Watson tho.." https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/ibm’s-generative-ai-tool-aims-to-refactor-ancient-cobol-code-for-its-mainframes.1495343/post-42133422

@onlinepersona @fediverse Haha good question! They're light on details ("we moved to Wordpress")
and after testing it seems like it's not even working :(

WordPress has an ActivityPub plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

Here's a wordpress blog that is available via activitypub: https://solarbird.net/blog
We can address it like so: @solarbird.net
We can't see the posts on Lemmy (doesn't support ad-hoc fetching of ActivityPub Notes)
but in a Mastodon web UI: https://solarbird.net/blog/2024/02/27/kosa-again-yes-again/

@Pantherina You might be interested in looking into the Plan 9 operating system. The original designers of Unix (on which Linux and BSDs are based) created the OS with lots of interesting ideas built into the core of the system, rather than bolted on afterwards. No root, userspace drivers, others you mentioned are explored.

Take a look: https://p9f.org

For starting out, Building a Router from the OpenBSD FAQ is helpful: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/example1.html

@MigratingtoLemmy @selfhosted

Seems like some good improvements to internals about which I'm not a strong enough programmer to understand.

@Mad_Punda it’s funny because the name “overtime” loses meaning when it becomes normal. I hereby propose the name “overovertime” (I’m good at names that’s why I’m a great programmer)

@programming

@agressivelyPassive

> Part of the reason for bloat is the fact that frameworks and libraries became huge

Absolutely. What I find funny is that the inverse is kinda true, too. Tiny dependencies (as seen in the Javascript world) are also to blame. They’re so small, I’ve noticed some devs say “well it’s so small, what’s the harm of one more?”. Bloat by a thousand deps.

@programming

None that I know of :(
But @benjja tells me that on some of these you can install coreboot: https://ohnepunktundkomma.org/@benjja/111991771619601081

Something I’m keen to look into.

@cmnybo @selfhosted

@Vendetta9076 @InformalTrifle A system to centralise the management of mobile devices like iPhones and iPads remotely. Usually used by companies to provision devices automatically and dictate apps can be installed and have email/calenders etc. configured automatically.

See also https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/deployment/dm005

@SpaceNoodle I’ll always be sad how GitHub helped popularise centralised workflows. Such an amazing opportunity for a big cultural shift, but it didn’t go anyway as far as it could have.

@programmer_humor

“innovation”

@TCB13 @programming

@copygirl Oh man, is non-AI assisted programming old-school already? :(

@programming

Good eyes! Yes this is one we got from Telstra on a VDSL NBN connection. Now it’s just a modem in bridge mode with Aussie Broadband

@selfhosted @Da_Boom

Because blinking lights give me goo goo ga ga

@Smc87 @selfhosted

> Why is Mastodon being treated as a monolithic entity?

Oh the usual: makes a batter headline.

I guess I’m spreading toxicity by replying to a post from a Mastodon app…? Or something?

@fediverse @finkrat

Installing Linux on old PCs and laptops is what got me into Linux (and other OSs) in the first place.

I still love it. There's a joy of breathing new life into old hardware.
Perhaps it's similar to how people like fixing up old cars even if people aren't really going to drive them again.

@linux @VanHalbgott

@Zaktor There is some influence. Two things that come to mind:

* default post length limit (500 characters)
* how the server renders “Page” ActivityPub objects (e.g. Lemmy posts)

For example, many comments made in this thread could not be made from a Mastodon server. All Lemmy posts show as just a title and link with a blank body. These application behaviours have a direct influence on what types of conversations take place by people from Mastodon servers.

@fediverse

@Jedi Agreed! Am I on Mastodon or Lemmy when I read and replied to this thread? Doesn’t matter :D

@asklemmy

@wwwgem Totally agree! :) One of the coolest things about Linux for me is learning about all the different approaches to systems and applications.

This one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003378019857.html

Halfway through writing a follow-up blog post detailing set up, internals, etc. Should be available soon if you’re interested :)

@alvaro @selfhosted

This one has an old Intel N2830:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003378019857.html
With this particular model you can get a newer N100 chip

@selfhosted @tk

@towerful I mainly program in Go, so when I see all that extra software I notice how much easier it is when I get to just rely on the Go runtime. It does a lot of the heavy lifting done here, but the resulting code is not as clean. Actually just today I read through Mastodon’s code to track down a bug in my in-progress ActivityPub service (in Go) and found the Ruby really easy to navigate!

@programmer_humor

@poVoq Agreed. It got me thinking. But feels almost entirely ideological, conflating social media (e.g. Twitter, Reddit) with “the digital world”.

Saying git is a “failed attempt at decentralisation” just because GitHub is popular misses that GitHub is less critical infrastructure than it would be if we only had CVS or Subversion.

I’m encouraged by incremental, practical decentralisation efforts outside of social media. It’s slow, kinda boring but it’s real and happening today.

@fediverse

@hornedfiend @Seltsamsel That's a good question and got me curious. I had a look at Telemetry collection and deletion from Mozilla. You can enter about:telemetry in the address bar to see what Firefox is collecting (even if it is not being sent).

@solrize 43 years young.

When I hear people talk about system issues (e.g. complex microservice architectures) I thought it was all cutting-edge problems of cutting-edge tech. Looks like people have been running into the same things for decades!

@programming

Absolutely!

Although… snail mail is also legislated to be secure. It’s not used as often because there is a more convenient, better(?) alternative: fax. I wish some funding for so-called “AI” projects could be used to develop even more convenient/better alternatives to fax. There are messaging protocols but they seemed crazy.

Payment systems are crazy too. Stripe did all the boring work and now there is a convenient interface for payment processing: Stripe’s HTTP API.

@technology @Car

@pkill Yeah seems that way, judging by their scaling up documentation: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/scaling/

Although hey, it all depends on a whole bunch of stuff written in super optimised (and kinda scary) C !

@programmer_humor

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@Socsa But what about in practice?

@programming

RSS is kinda different. Subscribing is really just polling a file. ActivityPub messages are primarily sent around by first requesting a server to send messages to you. It’s a pull versus push thing.

I love RSS because it’s so simple. It actually goes a long way in the fediverse where most activity, which is read-only. Only a small percentage of users ever comment/post stuff.
@electricprism @fediverse

This is not about software licensing nor the spirit of FOSS.

There's some inconsistent messaging that's genuinely confusing me. I've shared an anecdote below (from a time when I was developing open source software) in the interest of generating discussion to clear it up for me and perhaps others, too. I don't mean to imply I know what is happening right here.

@pop @fediverse