Around 2005-2007 I was swimming in the online world. I had my own blog, and I was following other blogs too. Seemed genuine. You were following brains, and some were interesting. Others followed your brain. It was nice.
Even when it came to videos I was using at least 3 platforms, one of which was Youtube. Posting on Youtube could get you random views and lots of engagement, out of nowhere. It was more real. At least that's how it felt.
In 2011 I was able to release an Internet documentary. It went a bit viral. Others released similar documentaries/videos back then and they got a sort of reach. We were screaming about how fucked up our society is, and some of us also about what we could do to change that.
It kinda worked.
I remember those "activists" who would go out on the streets trying to make the rest aware of similar things. Like these guys:
And I was thinking....man they have no chance to make anyone stop and listen. Because they were in the middle of a movement. Like a physical movement. People moving from their places to other places. Jobs. They were out to trade. Trade their skills, time, energy in order to be able to have a roof over their heads, access to food, healthcare and so forth. Mostly via the currency called "money".
These zombified people had no time to listen and think. Imagine a subway full of these workers....they NEED to go to their job. Are obliged to. They cannot stop.
So I thought it is pointless to intervene in that environment. That's why I chose the Internet. The Internet felt more like a park. A place where people went in their free time from their jobs, to explore new things. it was new. And not so busy.
That's why it worked to create new things and have others pay some attention to them.
Not anymore!
The society we live in is based on trades as I keep on saying and as it is so obvious. You trade, I trade, your mom trades, your dad trades. Everyone is forced, compelled, and incentivized to do that all of their lives. This has created a rat race, inequality, and overall shitty behaviors, zombifying all humans.
And now the park has become the subway.
The trade world took several years to fully migrate from the offline to the online. Now we do not have blogs anymore since Facebook provided humans with an easy way to share their thoughts, photos and videos, at the expense of trading for that. They lied that their service is free. Humans had to trade their data, attention (via ads), and currency to reach more people. But Facebook took off and no one would bother having their own blog.
Youtube was not a video sharing platform anymore, but a video trading platform. You could convert your views into currency, and youtube inserted ads into your face to make you a better consumer. You traded again your attention and data to youtube.
Facebook became a place where you trade with them, but also where people did not simply post their thoughts there, they used their reach to trade for currency or products. What posts? There you see ads with ads. Youtube ironically called their users as "creators", while these zombies all they cared was how to make more views (again) to trade for a new car, a new house, paying the rent.
Google, Facebook, and a few more companies started to orchestrate the Internet. What you search, what you see, what you do not see, what incentivizes you to post a video or to write a post....all directed by a few companies that all they wanted was the same old thing: to trade.
What was once a park, it is now a subway full of zombies that go somewhere, to trade. Attracted like a powerful magnet, the idiots go to TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and the like, all because they are sucked in by a combination of tremendous power and influence from the part of these companies, coupled with the non-interesting life that most workers have, and lastly the fact that on these platforms many can become traders themselves.
The Internet is not a park, is a subway. Even worse, it is a bazaar. A place mostly full of useless shit where the sellers harass you to buy their shit.
That's the Internet now. All of those Youtube "creators", Instagram "influencers", Facebook Pages, and so on, are most, if not all, merchants. Most of the online content is shit, for the sake of trading it. Most of the platforms are bazaars. There is no more park anymore. Most care about the views, the engagement, the likes...platforms care to optimize for these, for ads, for money making. It is an ugly place.
That's how I feel.
Watch this video about Youtube and tell me....is this a "video platform"!?
So now if I want to say something important to humans, and I want to do it online, I feel like those people in a subway practicing their "activism". Seems pointless. Everyone in the online world is going somewhere: check the Twitter, check Youtube, watch Neetflix, see what friends posted on Facebook...there is no more casual walk in the Internet world to discover new things, to stop and listen for a bit.
But yeah....despite this I am continuing my work. I will release a new documentary this year, even if I know very well that it won't have any big impact. I continue with the 30+ projects that we have. I see no alternative. I could choose the Online over the Offline in 2007. But now what can I choose?
It is ok, this species will disappear eventually and our trace in the Universe won't exist. At least that makes me more relaxed to think about. :)
Now I am in pain. A lot of. Right side of my throat hurts like a hundred big needles got stuck there. I had a look. I see white spots. Throat ulcers very likely. I had this for about a week. I woke up so many times last night simply because of so much pain. Eating is something I hate right now because it hurts the most. Sleeping makes my throat dryer and in about 1h I wake up with tremendous pain. Talking is very uncomfortable. I want this to end.
This is me and my pain now :) :
Only warm tea is helping me alleviate the pain. I've been to the doctor. She looked for 15 seconds and said it is a virus infection and to take ibuprofen if it hurts. Now go home. Fuck them, today I have another appointment and I will make sure to insist to give me some pain killers and more explanations for my situation. I had COVID and this started after that COVID episode. I also took a lot of ibuprofen when COVID
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Now I am in pain. A lot of. Right side of my throat hurts like a hundred big needles got stuck there. I had a look. I see white spots. Throat ulcers very likely. I had this for about a week. I woke up so many times last night simply because of so much pain. Eating is something I hate right now because it hurts the most. Sleeping makes my throat dryer and in about 1h I wake up with tremendous pain. Talking is very uncomfortable. I want this to end.
This is me and my pain now :) :
Only warm tea is helping me alleviate the pain. I've been to the doctor. She looked for 15 seconds and said it is a virus infection and to take ibuprofen if it hurts. Now go home. Fuck them, today I have another appointment and I will make sure to insist to give me some pain killers and more explanations for my situation. I had COVID and this started after that COVID episode. I also took a lot of ibuprofen when COVID hit since I had fever for several days. I've read that ibuprofen can also cause such mouth ulcers. I also fucked up since I did some gargling with water and salt (usually this helps me when in such pain), but I exaggerated and put a ton of salt in the water. Hurt like a bitch.
Then I also used another spray that was for infection+pus....and that also fucking hurt. Now I bought something for canker sores and the doctor said is fine to use it. Hurts less but still...I also tried several painkillers. Nothing works.
This is me having a tear:
Man it really hurts and it is so uncomfortable. Even my ear hurts. Painful pains that last for many days, or longer, are (of course) the fucking worst. I had kidney stones and here's a post I did about it. That was way worse, tho what I experience now it is getting closer to that experience if it keeps on lasting. I forgot about that kidney stone event. And that's normal. And that's my point.
It will go away.
That I know for sure. May take days or a week or so, but eventually it will go away. And this is the point of this post. You know when you are in a lot of pain and your health sucks balls and you think: fhuck, I'm gonna die! You won't. Except in very rare cases if you have a terminal illness, in which case this article won't help you at all :( .
I remember when I was 11 or so. I had a pain over here:
(again this is still me at age 11, deal with it!).
Even now I remember how awful that pain was. I could not lift up my leg, and took months to go away. I had to learn to kick the football ball with the other leg because the right one was hurting. It is funny that I did not give up football tho, despite the pain :D.
Several years ago I had a constant pain here:
That would not go away for 2-3 fucking months. I thought I am losing my mind it was so awful. Not that painful, but fucking constant. I thought there is no life without that pain, that it will be there forever.
But eventually it went away. Took me weeks to get rid of the ghost pain tho. It got tattooed into my brain.
I also had a skin rush on my face that period of time (as you can see in this photo :) ):
And hurt and was uncomfortable. Took me months to get rid of it.
We all have these moments. And it seems to me like that whenever we have them we feel like dying. I dream about the day when I won't have that fucking pain. To then forget about it the next day I feel ok.
So this is a message for all of those who suffer in pain. Don't worry, it will go away.
I cannot wait to read this post when I will have no more throat pain.
I had COVID and this started after that COVID episode.
I just had COVID in like a month or so ago and it actually triggered some inflamation symptoms that I have from being celiac. The worst one was being out of breath due to asthma being triggered. It went away in a week or two after the COVID symptoms.
I've read that ibuprofen can also cause such mouth ulcers.
So, I have some experience with NSAIDs since I had to take then for a long time for arthritis pain (again inflamation from celiac).
So six months after I stopped eating gluten, I was still having bad stomach/intestinal issues, those started to get better as soon as I stopped taking the NSAIDs (even though I had to deal with pretty bad pains for like two months without the drugs), so I learned they were worsening my celiac symptoms. Nowadays my arthritis got a lot better so I don't even need drugs anymore for that :).
Today I am very careful to only take any drugs unless it is absolutely necessary (and no more NSAIDs)
Thanks! Seems to be getting better. I finally got a better look at it by a better doctor and she game me a treatment. She told me is likely because of COVID - after such an infection my body went into buggy mode. A few software and hardware bugs :D.
Oh man.. I had almost the same about a month ago, I think it was something related to COVID as well, although I had all my tests negative. I slept barely for about 2 weeks straight, pain in trought came in suddenly and went away also suddenly, then returned again and it was a few times of shit. Got only Paracetamole and mint candies from a doctor :D, which barely worked, so had to suffer it all through..
Hope it will become better for you soon and completely agree on the feelings you have :( Stay strong and get well soon!
Oh really? You had mouth/throat ulcers too? I've read that COVID can trigger these, or infections in general. They are so bloody painful....I think I remember you were saying something about this when you battled COVID, you having to deal with post-covid stuff...damn....I cannot wait for this to go away :D
Yeah, I had throat inflammation, very painful :( I actually didn't have COVID even once officially (by the test results, but it might be false-negatives), but maybe it was it eventually. Because symptoms are very unusual, not like a flu or something similar. So it was gone as unexpectedly as it came in first place :D I hope it will be cured for you soon ;)
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This is a show from a few days ago from the little town I live in:
It used to be this:
So messy.
Great! It seems that the world is starting to replace fireworks shows with drone shows. No more noise pollution, smoke, waste from
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This is a show from a few days ago from the little town I live in:
It used to be this:
So messy.
Great! It seems that the world is starting to replace fireworks shows with drone shows. No more noise pollution, smoke, waste from the burned fireworks, and so forth. Sounds much much better!
Here's a more advanced and cool example:
But I am concerned they will use them to also display some ads, like brands and promote shit...
Oh wait, they already do it!
FUCK.
Above Sydney so that everyone can see them...and loud music....so still noise pollution. What about those batteries and components for these thousands of drones that are used for such shows? Where do they go after not working anymore? Probably land-fields...
Ok ok....I know, nothing can end up well in a trade-based society. Everything gets traded, and thus marketed. Nothing is what it seems. A drone show is not just a drone show, it is an opportunity to advertise. A book is not just a book, it is an opportunity for the author to buy a new car. A piece of software is not just a piece of software, it is a way for the developer/company to collect more data, to then transform that into currency, to then transform that into holidays, houses, and fancy shit and so on for themselves.
This is the most fundamental thing that everyone should understand about our society, that we are forced and incentivized to trade. Very few people can afford to, or are willing to do things for the sake of doing things. And of course this creates a very messed-up society when you do something in order to get something else. We did that in school where the goal was to get good grades to pass the exams. Most kinds would cheat, not learn anything, because the goal was not to learn. And so it goes for our society...the goal is not to write books, do drone shows to protect the nature, create a PDF converter or whatever. Nah....
So we should not be surprised that everything goes to shit. Pollution, waste, bad products, scammy services....
On a positive note, I'm happy they're getting rid of fireworks, I hated the loud noise, the smoke and everything. I've never seen a drone show before, so it'd be nice to see that one day.
But yeah I knew trade would get in the way, #TradeRuinsEverything - this is why we can't have nice things. So does this mean I have to watch ads in the f**king sky now ?! Why is no one talking about this ?
Apparently today was my birthday. I have become 34 years old. Sounds old to me, but also uninteresting.The only time I still enjoyed celebrating my birthday was when I was 14. 20-bloody-years-ago. But after that I hated it. I don't like to be put in the center of attention, especially for such a shallow thing. Then, why should I celebrate the fact that I get older?!
This is me when I was 14. Waiting for my friends to come for my birthday. Lots of them came..
They gave me many perfume bottles... It was fashionable in 2002.
Anyway. My parents still force me to semi-celebrate it because they buy me a cake and such. It is fine. I am ok with this. But I really hate these events overall. Weddings, birthdays, baby showers, new year, I hate them. I think it is because they are mainly a mindless and consumerist events. Why drag these into today's world? Why don't we celebrate the fir
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Apparently today was my birthday. I have become 34 years old. Sounds old to me, but also uninteresting.The only time I still enjoyed celebrating my birthday was when I was 14. 20-bloody-years-ago. But after that I hated it. I don't like to be put in the center of attention, especially for such a shallow thing. Then, why should I celebrate the fact that I get older?!
This is me when I was 14. Waiting for my friends to come for my birthday. Lots of them came..
They gave me many perfume bottles... It was fashionable in 2002.
Anyway. My parents still force me to semi-celebrate it because they buy me a cake and such. It is fine. I am ok with this. But I really hate these events overall. Weddings, birthdays, baby showers, new year, I hate them. I think it is because they are mainly a mindless and consumerist events. Why drag these into today's world? Why don't we celebrate the first time we discovered exoplanets? Neutrinos? The theory of evolution? These are the events we should celebrate every year.
In any case, I wanted to share some things about me that I think are mighty weird for today's normality, now that I am saying I do not like celebrating my birthday nor do I care about that.
So. Here are some facts about me:
I do not celebrate anything. I do not care. But I like to have fun of course. I was/am usually the one having more fun than the rest.
I do not "go out". I've been to bar/restaurants maybe 100 times in my entire life. I hate these places. Expensive, shallow, fake, annoying. I do not care about them. I love "going out" tho, in nature, for a walk, with the bike, for a swim, at the beach, mountain, etc..
I do not drink alcohol. I never did. I tried it tho. I do not like the taste or the side-effects. Actually I only drink water for the past 4 or so years because of my stomach issues.
I never did any drugs. But I am ok with trying some in the future. But just trying.
I rarely listen to music and I do not like a particular genre, tho I sometimes prefer to listen to "soundtracks" from documentaries or movies. Hans Zimmer and the like.
I do not watch movies. None. I cannot. I used to be a movie addict but then I discovered "reality". Tho I watch tons of documentaries that are a lot more fun and interesting, and real, than movies.
I do not pay for any subscription to anything. No Netflix, Spotify, no anything like that. Except paying for the servers we have for TROM.
I do not use Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Tiktok or anything of the sort. And youtube I watch through Invidious. I use Friendica and Peertube tho.
I rarely if ever use my phone. My phone is a 2015 Samsung S7 and I see no reason to change it. It was my 2nd smartphone ever. I use it to check the weather and pay with it. That's all. Well and for Signal to talk to my parents. Else is like a credit card with a watch and a weather app. A thick one.
I do not have a driving license.
I rarely if ever had a girlfriend. Thanks to @Sasha now I have a great one haha. I never felt the need. I was always happy with being alone. Even now, being alone is fine for me. I never mind that. I am never in need of having people around me really....
Speaking of that I do not like meeting people that much. I prefer avoiding that. Except when it is for TROM-friends :P. I also do not like small talk, and I am not interested in people's stories...
I only lived in 2 places. I never traveled. And I am fine with that. You think the world, not feel the world anyway. However Sasha will probably take me out there in the nature world because I'd be curious to see some stuff.
I only eat a few types of food because of my stomach.... Chicken, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and bread. That's mostly it. I eat at least 2 eggs a day. I feel like I am 24% chicken by now. I used to eat lots of different foods...but my stomach can't handle most.
I never ever had any job. But I worked a lot for TROM and similar projects.
I do not have any vices, except maybe that I buy some specific sweet things for like 2 euros every other day.
Video Games. I do not play them. At all. I used to when I was in school. I see no point now. Waste of time. I do like to play some "offline" games tho. Involving balls :) and rackets and such.
Although I am from Romania and know Romanian, I really don't like talking Romanian. It has become more difficult for me to express myself in that language. I feel like English is my main language now.
I hate scheduling things. I never do that. I hate calendars for that reason. My perfect day is to wake up and have no plans. And then I'll do stuff. Because I do not lack ideas or motivation.
Ok I will add this to my Tinder profile. In the weirdos category.
But well, I like my life. I am really happy as long as I have enough money to support a basic life for myself and Sasha. Actually money is my only problem. If I had 1k Euros guaranteed a month for the rest of my life, I'd be the happiest and most engaged human out there :). Because I do not need much. I don't want any new gadgets, go to any fucking paris-nonsense-thing, expensive shit, and such. The natural world is an amazing place to think about and admire. And the projects I am doing are my babies. I love them.
I know people who have plenty of money but have no clue what to do with themselves. That is scary to me. I am happy that at least I am not like that at all. I know what I want to do. I do not get bored or confused. So yeah....trying to make some money now to support my trade-free work and my very basic lifestyle.
Phones, clothes, houses, cars, online fame....are a scam. Happiness is a state, not an object. Chase the state, not the object(s).
As for celebrations....whatever....if you like them I am not there protesting against you. And I can be part of some, is fine but not that comfy for me. But I would not be the one initiating them. I wish humans would become a saner and smarter species and celebrations would have some bloody meaning, more than let's buy more shit, or let's celebrate someone's "name", or any crappy idea.
Me and a lot of people I know lost our interest for birthday celebrations after reaching a certain age, its not weird at all. At home sometimes if we feel like it we might buy a cake on birthday, but we won't invite anyone and there won't really be any other celebrations. Also I had a high school teacher who used to say that he doesn't understand the point of celebrating birthdays because it just means we're getting one year closer to death, lol. @bigworldsmallsasha
> Phones, clothes, houses, cars, online fame....are a scam. Happiness is a state, not an object. Chase the state, not the object(s).
I think a lot of people would find this helpful. Try to figure out what brings you to the state of happiness, it could be simple things like listening to your favourite song, going for a walk, learning about something that interests you, spending time with your loved ones, etc. And it'll be different for everyone. @bigworldsmallsasha
This is the list of the apps I use the most on my Linux machine.
1. Firefox.
I have multiple windows, each with multiple tabs, on different workspaces...This is what you'll see on my computer if you were to look at it, a Firefox window or two. Inception:
I have it heavily customized and I won't tell you how but it is quite the same as we have it default in TROMjaro. So if you are curious install TROMjaro :D.
I tried many browsers but Firefox is still my favorite as long as I keep it tweaked as I do. I see no ads, I use Libredirect to not even visit the popular websites like youtube, twitter and the like. I therefore use trade-free instances of those. Anyway, Librewolf seems to be a candidate for me in the future, but for now I'll stick to Firefox.
2.
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This is the list of the apps I use the most on my Linux machine.
1. Firefox.
I have multiple windows, each with multiple tabs, on different workspaces...This is what you'll see on my computer if you were to look at it, a Firefox window or two. Inception:
I have it heavily customized and I won't tell you how but it is quite the same as we have it default in TROMjaro. So if you are curious install TROMjaro :D.
I tried many browsers but Firefox is still my favorite as long as I keep it tweaked as I do. I see no ads, I use Libredirect to not even visit the popular websites like youtube, twitter and the like. I therefore use trade-free instances of those. Anyway, Librewolf seems to be a candidate for me in the future, but for now I'll stick to Firefox.
I tried so many notes apps, but I need one that can sort my notes in folders and sub-folders that are easily accessible. Plus support basic text formatting/lists + code. Zettlr supports Markdown and a WSYIWYG editor for it so all looks neat.
The fact that I can add the type of code, is useful because it automatically uses the proper colors for it, making it easy to understand it. Since it saves everything as individual markdown documents then it is easy to backup and move to another Notes app if needed.
Because it is so easy to use, and is p2p. So no limitation in terms of how much you can share and with whom. I share files with my friends like this, and it is so fast. The only difficult part is setting up the Send and Receive folders between you and your friends, mostly because you may get confused by that. The way I do it is to create a Sync folder. There I make another with the name of the friend: Sasha. And then inside this 2 more: Send and Receive. I share them both with Sasha and the Receive is set as "receive only", the other one as "send only". DONE. Now copy the files into the Sasha-Send when you share with her, and look in Sasha-Receive when you get files from her. Easy and reliable.
I screenshot a lot. To showcase bugs with the software, or for posts like this, and so on. I cannot find anything close to Flameshot. Press one keyboard key then drag the area you want to screenshot.
And you also have access to quick tools for blurring parts of the image, add arrows, and more. Then CTRL + S to save or CTRL + C to copy it. Done! Cannot live without this app.
If you customize it a bit can look sleek. I absolutely love and need the "open in new tab" feature because many times I want emails to be stored in tabs so I can reply later. I cannot do email without this feature.
1 file with all of my passwords. Encrypted with a master password. Stored locally. Perfect. KeePassXC simply works...stores all of my passwords.
If I lose this file I do not know any passwords. But is fine I have it backed-up in multiple locations. The integration with Firefox is decent and at times fails. So is not ideal when you want to save new passwords when you register on some websites....but is fine....
I have a mouse with 18 buttons. I use them all. But I also use global mouse gestures and it makes things so much easier. People who do not use this, have no idea what they are missing :D.
The default SMPlayer looks like crap. But installing some skins and tweaking it a bit and looks like this:
Everything I throw at it, it plays. You can tweak the seekbar as you want (easily), and setup it any way you want. Has hardware acceleration, and a ton of features. I have been using it for so many years and I tried so many other video players. For me nothing beats SMPlayer.
Out of all image optimization tools nothing beats Imagine. Not very well known but damn good. Easy to use and reduces the size of photos while keeping the quality. The best of any I have tested, by a lot!
The other notable mentions are: Blanket because I need some background sounds when I sleep... :D, Element + Signal as my chats; I use Gnome Boxes to test TROMjaro or other distros, and Meld to check between versions of files; I use Shotwell for my photo albums, Inkscape and Krita for image editing, and Kdenlive for video editing. Lastly, Private Internet Access is my default VPN, Vorta + Timeshift is the way I backup my files, and Peek helps me video record my desktop when I need to make a short video.
That's it! :) If you want, tell me what are your top apps that you use. I'd be curious to try them out.
I used to use Opera when I was on Windows but I since forgot about it...is Opera open source?
As for emailing I truly need a graphical interface I simply cannot function in the terminal and VIM confuses me a lot :D . I know that there are superhumans like you, @Rokosun is one of them too, who can deal with such "let's not use the mouse and click" sort of things :P. It is great that there are options for everyone.
Yes I saw that. I am aware not to blur anything that if unblurred can be a disaster for me. So even if all of the above photos from the post get unblurred is fine. Thanks for the headsup tho.
I and Sasha. I am 1.8 meter tall, she is a meter and a half. She is quite short, but I really like that. Together we are 3.3 meters tall.
Not that it matters but we are also more than that. We want to reach higher and higher. I spent the past decade fighting in the online world with this society. Trying to make people aware of the fuckery of this world, but also showcase how to perhaps think differently about this society, through the perspective of trade. Then how we can do awesome things via this trade-free approach. She spent that time traveling and learning a lot about the world, the offline one. And writing about it on her very interesting blog. She gathered so much knowledge that she also wrote a 300+ pages book about....the world basically. And again how to approach it differently.
So she has a ma
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I and Sasha. I am 1.8 meter tall, she is a meter and a half. She is quite short, but I really like that. Together we are 3.3 meters tall.
Not that it matters but we are also more than that. We want to reach higher and higher. I spent the past decade fighting in the online world with this society. Trying to make people aware of the fuckery of this world, but also showcase how to perhaps think differently about this society, through the perspective of trade. Then how we can do awesome things via this trade-free approach. She spent that time traveling and learning a lot about the world, the offline one. And writing about it on her very interesting blog. She gathered so much knowledge that she also wrote a 300+ pages book about....the world basically. And again how to approach it differently.
So she has a massive book ready to be published (currently 2 people are proofreading it), and I have tons of active projects (tromsite.com plus tromsite.com/tools) and have finished 2 hours out of 4, for the TROM II documentary that can be a really interesting one. Cannot wait to release it.
So, we are very active. As much as we can.
We are also financially fucked because in this society it does not matter if you are engaged and try to be informed, and be a good human overall. It does not matter if you want to do, and do good things that are valuable for hundreds or thousands of others. Does not. And we are very aware of that.
The focus is always how to be a better trader. Chase the trades!
But we can't give up! And we try not to!
Because we have so little money and we live with my parents, we can't continue not to make any money. The donations for TROM are dropping and dropping for the past many years. So we decided to take the matter into our hands and try to trade ourselves a bit in order to support these projects of ours, together with the help we still get from donations.
So this is what we are doing and we hope to "succeed":
UNO - I have launched a new project: WebApe. I am trying to make websites for money. I can build pretty much any sort of website (this is my "skill") and I have a decade plus of experience with that. I charge monthly but provide a lot.
If I manage to get some 10-15 websites then we are saved! I will make enough to support both of us. Because we need very little. We spend less than 300 Euros on food a month. We don't eat out ever, we do not use drugs or have other bad habits :D. So if we can get some 1k Euros a month then we should be fine.
So far, thanks to @Alexio who is a long time TROM friend, I managed to get 3 long term projects. And my "mission" for these next months is to get more.
DUO - Due!? I don't know. On top of this we are trying to work in cleaning in weekends or any other "gigs". The retarded part is that @Sasha is willing to get a summer job here, but no one can employ her because she does not have the right papers. She is from USA, married with me (having a Spanish residency), but she cannot get the papers because I (the husband - I hate these words) am poor. I need to make over 1k a month for Spain to allow he to work.... So we do not have money, and the gov in Spain is like "then she cannot work"....but if she worked we would have the money....
This world is so retarded. So we are trying to make money but it is difficult as you can see....
TRES - WebApe + summer gigs + donations. Donations. They are super important. If we can get at least some 300 Euros or so a month, and with our savings (around 2k now) we can survive till February when Sasha can get the papers. Here's another retardation: so Sasha cannot get the papers because I am poor. She cannot work to make us not poor, because she has no papers. BUUUUT if she can manage to survive in Spain for 3 years WITHOUT leaving Spain, she can get the papers!!! haHahA. Stay here! But you cannot work! If you want papers, you need to have money. But you cannot work here to make money. Also cannot leave if you want the papers. This is me jumping very high:
If you think that this photo-insertion makes no sense now, it is the same with this system. Makes no fucking sense.
Anyway, if we know that she can get the papers in February when she will have completed the 3-years-stay-without-money-in-spain, she can then work to make some money....
Basically we need to be able to support each other until February/March so then to be able to try and keep on supporting each other....
My hope is that I can make enough websites to support us, so that then I can reach a point when I only manage these websites and have enough time for TROM. So that I can finish that documentary, so that I can scream more, louder and better.
Also at the end of this year I will have to make a donation campaign to help me pay for all TROM servers + backups. That's around 1k Euros a year. Not that much considering that we provide so many tools and content.
So TROM donations + WebApe + summer gigs + a yearly campaign for the server/backups + getting Sasha's "permit" to live and work in Spain in February, is what we need to be able to "make it" in this trade bullshit game. If we do not see any drop in donations we can make it. We try folks. It is difficult. We should not be forced to do any of this. We were already engaged and active and doing good things....but our situation is the perfect proof to support our work, because it proves that this trade-based society is the root of most problems and fucks things up.
We are at war with this society. And we know that.
I am 1.56 meters tall btw :D so together we are 3.36 :) And there's also a small chance that I can get the papers before September, though there's no guarantee. I'm still hoping for that :)
Your individual and partnering experiences as pioneers of the "Trade Free" life offer an exceptional opportunity to be included in funded social science initiatives. Many of these look at various aspects of 1) how members of society allocate their time on the planet; 2) how society values the time allocation choices of its members; 3) how society develops the full potential of each member; and 4) how society provides access to the basic needs of its members regardless of their life circumstances. Your "Trade Free" framework would be a worthy addition to the mix!
The EU funds many social science initiatives. As an example, Erasmus+ is one of them. Perhaps some of the audiences served by that initiative would match your interests?
Also, you might contact social science professors at universities near w
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Tio and Sasha,
Your individual and partnering experiences as pioneers of the "Trade Free" life offer an exceptional opportunity to be included in funded social science initiatives. Many of these look at various aspects of 1) how members of society allocate their time on the planet; 2) how society values the time allocation choices of its members; 3) how society develops the full potential of each member; and 4) how society provides access to the basic needs of its members regardless of their life circumstances. Your "Trade Free" framework would be a worthy addition to the mix!
The EU funds many social science initiatives. As an example, Erasmus+ is one of them. Perhaps some of the audiences served by that initiative would match your interests?
Also, you might contact social science professors at universities near where you're living and see if one of them would be willing to include you in research grants already funded or in their request for proposal submissions. For instance, data visualization is a big deal when organizing and tracking a plan of action on any grant project. Your combined skills in website design and content creation would be quite useful in such efforts.
Here's an article about the results of a study in Sweden that relates in a general sense to what you're encountering about employment in Spain. IMHO, you would offer a different and valuable perspective to a study like this.
This is a lot to swallow for us considering we are so busy these months with "trading to survive". I do see value in this approach and I would be so happy and engaged if I were to be helped in this regards. If there was someone out there helping us to get to such projects. If someone can help us maybe write some papers about the negative impacts of trade and the positive ones of the trade-free approach. So if you can give us more details about this and a direction then we can try it in a few months time. I definitely plan to become louder and try different approaches as soon as I release the TROM II documentary that can on its own be a way to reach higher.
I just tested it and posting from Friendica to my Wordpress blog seems to work now. This is amazing and it is yet another set of amazing features Friendica has. My blog is my own personal place. My home. My thing.
But Friendica has become like a backyard with neighbors. A place where I can keep in touch with others, with the news, and so forth. But also a place where I can share my thoughts in seconds. No need to visit my blog, log in, and create a new post. It is a lot easier on Friendica. Coupled with the fact that I can add inline media on Friendica, and it makes it easy to create simple posts. I can have some basic text editing such as: bold, italic, underline. And I can even add markdown
Links are of course a thing, and quotes are handy:
Like so
Our Friendica instance has custom de
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I just tested it and posting from Friendica to my Wordpress blog seems to work now. This is amazing and it is yet another set of amazing features Friendica has. My blog is my own personal place. My home. My thing.
But Friendica has become like a backyard with neighbors. A place where I can keep in touch with others, with the news, and so forth. But also a place where I can share my thoughts in seconds. No need to visit my blog, log in, and create a new post. It is a lot easier on Friendica. Coupled with the fact that I can add inline media on Friendica, and it makes it easy to create simple posts. I can have some basic text editing such as: bold, italic, underline. And I can even add markdown
Links are of course a thing, and quotes are handy:
Like so
Our Friendica instance has custom designed themes so that it makes it look more modern and easy to navigate. I am using the Dark Purple one:
Ok. So how do you post form Friendica to Wordpress?
Go to your Friendica Settings - Social Networks
Then add your Wordpress URL and the /xmlrpc.php after it. Add your user and password and click save.
Then, when you make a post, click the Permissions tab and select to post on Wordpress:
You can even select to auto-post on Wordpress by default via the same Friendica Settings - Social Networks setting.
In any case this is so awesome! Thanks to the Friendica developers. I keep on Saying Friendica is super underrated. #tromlive
EDIT: testing editing to see if that is pushed to my blog post too. I suppose not...but that's ok.
Look at the blog post tiotrom.com/2022/06/posting-fr… - all worked great! All formatting everything. @Hypolite Petovan @Michael Vogel and @Tobias and all of those working on Friendica deserve a round of thank yous! :) - Now I can finally keep my blog active alongside friendica :D
Actually this is a feature Friendica had for a long time, but it didn't work in the past from my tests. Now it works. Friendica has many many features. I wish I had the time to make a post or page or website all about Friendica's features. The main website does no justice to this awesome network friendi.ca/about/features/ - but I am sure whenever I have the time I can throw up a demo website for them maybe they can make it official.
This is nice ! I have a few questions, mainly due to my completely unfamiliarity with the Wordpress plugin : - shouldn't the comments to this post appear as comments on the blog? - shouldn't there be a link on the blog to interact from the fediverse? - shouldn't there be a sign on the blog post that it is actually a friendica post? (like the arrow in the corner that we have on Friendica)
As far as I can see this Wordpress Friendica addon simply uses the POST api on Wordpress. Meaning, it simply tells wordpress: submit this blog post. And then that's it....So you don't need any plugin for wordpress for this to work.
But if you install the Activitypub Wordpress plugin it works the other way around: posts made on wordpress cna go to your friendica if you enable native reshares, and any comment on friendica for that post, will go to the wordpress post. Any edit to the wordpress post will update the Friendica post too. So works far better the other way around from what I can tell...
Are they compatible with each other ? Of course the AP plugin won't magically notice that the post originates from Friendica, but is there anything that prevent you from doing the following ?
post from Friendica with Permission set to only yourself + WP
Hm so you mean to make a post on Friendica that's only visible for you, then this post goes to Wordpress. Now you setup native reshares from Wordpress to Friendica, and the same post comes back to your profile. But this time the post is more connected since any comment you get on the post, it goes to your WP too, and any edit you make to the AP post, will edit your Friendica post too. Tho idk if the latter is true.
Seems a bit too complicated to me and it means you make double posts....
any edit you make to the AP post, will edit your Friendica post too.
But AFAIU you will not be able to edit the WP post from Friendica, as from Friendica the AP post will only be a reshare.
it means you make double posts....
That is a bit annoying indeed, but it will only appear as such to you.
A workaround may be to create a separate Friendica account for WP posting, and designate your main account as a delegate. Then the posting account can have "private to itself + WP" as default permission, so that simplifies the procedure after the initial setup. So all you need to do to post to WP is to post in the name of the posting account.
Note that I have never used a subaccount myself so I do not know how easy the latter is in practice.
If the WP post gets reshared on Friendica via ActivityPub, then if you edit the WP post, Friendica will fetch the newly updated one. IDK if this works with native reshares or just re-shares. Am a bit confused haha.
And I think if you go for 2 friendica accounts just to post on WP + Friendica....it is not worth the trouble. I'd might as well post on WP directly :D .
If the WP post gets reshared on Friendica via ActivityPub, then if you edit the WP post, Friendica will fetch the newly updated one. IDK if this works with native reshares or just re-shares. Am a bit confused haha.
TBH I am not that less confused. But I thought you meant you could edit directly on Friendica, which apparently you can't as you tried with your OP.
And I think if you go for 2 friendica accounts just to post on WP + Friendica....it is not worth the trouble. I'd might as well post on WP directly 😁 .
I said "delegate" but I think I meant "parent". From the wiki :
If your primary account is designated as the parent user, you will be able to easily toggle identities and manage your forums or other types of accounts.
So I thought that you don't even need to identify twice but that you could just press a button to publish as the WP-posting account. I may misunderstand that, once again I have never done it myself.
@Tio @Liwott There are two kinds of issues affecting the activitypub plugin for WordPress:
1) friendica is already able to follow a wordpress blog, through the rss / atom protocol and when you try to follow a federated Wordpress, frendica relentlessly follows it as an RSS feed ... I tried to figure out how to get around the problem, but it seems that friendica deems RSS "more native" than pub activity for WordPress blogs. And therefore it tends to give priority to RSS
2) The second problem concerns some technical limitations of the activitypub plugin for WordPress, among which the most worrying one is the fact of not managing the privacy of messages: in practice, if someone sends a private message to the blog user, this message becomes public .in addition, the activitypub plug-in for Wordpress cannot manage the deletion of messages, so if I send a message by mistake then I can no longer delete it
1) You have to follow users not the entire website. For example m website tiotrom.com/ - if you want to follow it natively via ActivityPub you have to follow a user from it like me tio@www.tiotrom.com - that's how it works from my understanding. It is like you cannot follow my entire Freindica instance at social.trom.tf but you can follow me at tio@social.trom.tf.
2) It is true there are limitations and concerns with the activitypub plugin. But it is still new. Report issues here github.com/pfefferle/wordpress…
@Tio @Poliverso notizie dal fediverso @Liwott The first solution is indeed reasonable and I had not thought about it. Unfortunately it will not allow the new authors to be followed immediately, but it is a good compromise.
As for the reports, the problem of deleting messages and the privacy of DMs has been reported several times, but development has been stuck for a couple of years
@Tio @Poliverso notizie dal fediverso @Liwott Speaking of interaction between #Friendica and other federated publishing platforms, I take this opportunity to point out the very happy integration between Friendica and #Lemmy. In fact, from Friendica it is not only possible to follow Lemmy conversations, but it is even possible to publish a new post! In practice, by mentioning the community name (=! + Community name + @ + domain) and writing the title text in the subject field, you can publish new posts that will be followed and commented on by anyone who follows that community.
Grazie dell'aiuto ! Mi chiedo se il problema non potrebbe essere legato alla versione 2022.05-rc di Friendica. Suppongo che hai fatto tutti i test dall'instanza Poliverso? (che usa Friendica 2022.02)
@Liwott in ogni caso, ci sono ancora alcuni problemi, quali per esempio l'invio di post contenenti immagini: questi post non vengono proprio pubblicati su Lemmy... molti di questi problemi si scoprono solo col tempo...
Listen. I hate google or any trade-based good/service. When you want something in return for what you offer, is not good... I have created a manjaro spin - see tromjaro.com/ - and I've used Linux for many years now. I also curate through thousands of Linux apps to find trade-free ones. I wrote books, made videos, documentaries, etc. about how much I hate these trade-based services like Google. But ....
So. We have this situation: MOM has hundreds of thousands of photos and videos. They are not organized. She wants them on her phone and laptop. Synced. Magically. She wants to share them on Facepalm or whatever networks. She wants to be able to do some simple editing too (rotate, crop, luminosity). She needs a simple interface and a simple solution overall. She does not understand much about computers. She thinks Facebook is the Internet, and a Fire Fox does not exist despite her using it daily.
My parents :)
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Listen. I hate google or any trade-based good/service. When you want something in return for what you offer, is not good... I have created a manjaro spin - see tromjaro.com/ - and I've used Linux for many years now. I also curate through thousands of Linux apps to find trade-free ones. I wrote books, made videos, documentaries, etc. about how much I hate these trade-based services like Google. But ....
So. We have this situation: MOM has hundreds of thousands of photos and videos. They are not organized. She wants them on her phone and laptop. Synced. Magically. She wants to share them on Facepalm or whatever networks. She wants to be able to do some simple editing too (rotate, crop, luminosity). She needs a simple interface and a simple solution overall. She does not understand much about computers. She thinks Facebook is the Internet, and a Fire Fox does not exist despite her using it daily.
My parents :)
They both use TROMjaro Linux as their daily distros for many years now.
So I want to help MOM deal with her photos. She basically take photos and videos with her phone, a lot of them, and wants an easy access to them. I tried many Linux apps and sync methods, and all are not sufficient. Most gallery apps do not allow you to set it up to keep an eye on a particular folder for new additions, and the ones who do are either broken or work but lack other features.
What I managed to do:
Install Syncthing on the Phone and Laptop. Sync her phone's camera folder with a local folder on her laptop. Then use FreeFileSync to one-way sync this local folder to one on her external HDD where all of the photos are (I had to involve cron jobs for this to work...). I do this so that she has a copy of them on her machine, since she can't store so much on her phone. This way, if she deletes the photos from her phone, they wont be deleted from her external HDD. So now we have an external HDD with all of her photos and videos. I then use Shotwell as the photo gallery app and set it up to keep an eye on that entire drive.
Great! Great? ...
This is how it looks like:
Not bad. Except for a few very annoying things.
If she wants to see the photos from 2010 she can't just click 2010. She needs to also click the month, and the day....
This is really annoying. You can't see all of your photos from a particular year....
She can't edit them. Well....Shotwell has a super basic editor that is kinda ancient, but the issue is that whatever changes she does, Shotwell does not change them for the photo itself, but for Shotwell...nondestructive photo editing. I have no clue what is this useful for. Basically you edit the photo but is only inside Shotwell...forever. The second option I set up for her is to right click a photo and edit with an external editor like GThumb. GThumb is great for simple editing. But to use 2 apps for such simple things....
Not to mention Shotwell is super slow...
So yeah we have to do gymnastics. At times the Syncthing app on her phone does not work and needs a restart, at times her external HDD disconnects (because she moves the laptop), so I am always on call to help her out.
Online alternatives?
I looked and looked at online alternatives...but can't find anything that works well or is cheaper than google photos. If I am to setup a NextCloud for her it would cost me twice as much + a lot of work. Plus, what about backups ha!? Currently she syncs the HDD to another one on my computer....local backups...with Syncthing... If NextCloud would be cheaper and had a decent photos apps I would consider trying.
I am tired.
I really tried to find a trade-free solution for this. With local drives, with open source software....but for so many photos and her needs, that are (let's be honest) similar to what most people need, then I honestly will go for a 10 Euros a month google photos subscription for her... She will have 2TB of storage, an app that integrates perfectly fine with her Android phone, a webapp for the laptop. A really good photo viewer, editor, and manager. It is super simple to use and works well. She will have the photos everywhere....backups are not an issue, google takes care of that...
I hate to do this but after years of trying I am tired and I cannot find a decent solution. If anyone knows a better way to do this, let me know....
I remember in 2013 when I started to work with TVP and we released TVP Magazine. It felt like "we are doing it". That's it. People are paying attention. I got enough financial support to work for a few years and I was on fire. I produced lots of content and was so engaged. Then TVP died for me, and many others. That's because the closer I got to them, the more I realized it had no substance. Unfortunately. The ideas of Fresco were and are still quite important and inspirational. But they are just that, inspirational. And the organization was ran like a company plus they didn't do much anyway.
But well, I feel nostalgic at times because of that feeling of thinking that this is big. Important. Something will happen.
Since I moved away from TVP in 2016 I tried to bring that feeling back to TROM. But not artificially. It just so happened that I discovered that the entire structure of our society is based on trade, and this simple explanation provides us with a fantastic tool to try and change the society. Trade-Free.org was born. A few people got very excited. We met in 20
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I remember in 2013 when I started to work with TVP and we released TVP Magazine. It felt like "we are doing it". That's it. People are paying attention. I got enough financial support to work for a few years and I was on fire. I produced lots of content and was so engaged. Then TVP died for me, and many others. That's because the closer I got to them, the more I realized it had no substance. Unfortunately. The ideas of Fresco were and are still quite important and inspirational. But they are just that, inspirational. And the organization was ran like a company plus they didn't do much anyway.
But well, I feel nostalgic at times because of that feeling of thinking that this is big. Important. Something will happen.
Since I moved away from TVP in 2016 I tried to bring that feeling back to TROM. But not artificially. It just so happened that I discovered that the entire structure of our society is based on trade, and this simple explanation provides us with a fantastic tool to try and change the society. Trade-Free.org was born. A few people got very excited. We met in 2019. We had plans. It died.
But not for me and a handful few. Unlike in the case of TVP, who was a cloud and the closer you got the more you realized it had no shape, our new approach was like a drop of water. From distance you may not see it, but the closer you got to it the more you realized that it had a shape, a structure, a form. TROM has substance and I dare anyone to challenge it :).
My excitement got even higher, but in different ways. I realized the race is long. And it takes time to get the idea behind TROM. TVP looked a lot more attractive but it was deceiving. TROM is the opposite in all regards.
I still love the idea of TVP/Jacque. But as inspirational. And I still feel sad that I do not see excitement in anyone really....but the TROM II documentary has some potential to bring some of that back. And as long as I am alive and have some money/support, I can keep on pushing things. After TROM II will be released I have a lot of plans, I will focus a lot on more content, videos, books, discussions and debates.
It is a long journey folks. And this society is not our friend, quite the opposite. I am trying to keep myself calm and sane. We have a lot to do. And I don't care if I am to do this alone. I probably will, one way or another. But likely there will be others too, pushing this further.
TROM II. Can't wait to release it. Whenever that will be.... #tromlive
PeerTube does it very well when it comes to the Federation-Moderation. Listen!
PeerTube allows you, the admin, to keep your instance clean. Nice rhyme! :)
You can follow any instance, channel, user that you want. Restrict the search to only these. And so when people use your PeerTube they see your curated content only, even when they search for something. While at the same time any user on your PeerTube can still subscribe, watch, and interact with ANYONE on any other PeerTube instances. That's how it should be.
A balance between having tremendous control over your own instance, but at the same time do not break the fediverse by cutting ties with other instances. Yes, PeerTube also gives admins the option to ban entire instances or users, but the fact that they give these positive reinforcers like mentioned above, makes an instance admin not want to use these "nuking" options.
This is because I and others have insisted that they provide us with these tools. We suggested to them what to implement and it works! My instance was full of crap, even after I start
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PeerTube does it very well when it comes to the Federation-Moderation. Listen!
PeerTube allows you, the admin, to keep your instance clean. Nice rhyme! :)
You can follow any instance, channel, user that you want. Restrict the search to only these. And so when people use your PeerTube they see your curated content only, even when they search for something. While at the same time any user on your PeerTube can still subscribe, watch, and interact with ANYONE on any other PeerTube instances. That's how it should be.
A balance between having tremendous control over your own instance, but at the same time do not break the fediverse by cutting ties with other instances. Yes, PeerTube also gives admins the option to ban entire instances or users, but the fact that they give these positive reinforcers like mentioned above, makes an instance admin not want to use these "nuking" options.
This is because I and others have insisted that they provide us with these tools. We suggested to them what to implement and it works! My instance was full of crap, even after I started to manage it in terms of what users can upload on our PeerTube. But after they introduced custom homepages, the ability to follow channels, instances, users and limit the trending, discover, the search and the like, to only these, since then my instance is a fuck ton cleaner. So it works.
Why in the name of the fediverse I, the admin, may want to block any other instance when I have so much control over my own!?
Oh, and PeerTube also allows any user to quickly block any user and even delete all at once all of their comments from their videos. So imagine if someone trolls you on PeerTube, with 1 click you ban them from ever posting and also delete ALL of their comments on ALL of your videos.
Give users the power to protect themselves and make it very easy to do so. And give admins the power to keep their instances clean without the need of cutting ties with any other instances, something that will affect all users and have a slippery slope effect.
Why in the name of the fediverse I, the admin, may want to block any other instance when I have so much control over my own!?
Because I, as an admin, have an obligation to my users to shield them from harassment. It's far more practical to block an entire instance from federating with mine in any shape or form, than it is to ask my users to do so individually.
As an admin, I serve my users. If my users tell me they don't ever want to hear from $X, I'll block it for them.
I cannot see how this can end up well. So are you asking all of your users when you ban an instance? How about future users? Do you make sure they understand that your instance cannot communicate with others? And why is it better to put so much weight on 1 human (the admin) when everyone can take care of themselves?
I do not ask my users. They ask me, I evaluate, and act accordingly. And yes, they fully understand that our instances will not be able to communicate in the future. That is the desired outcome. There were 0 complains in the past 4 years.
And why is it better to put so much weight on 1 human (the admin) when everyone can take care of themselves?
Because it is much easier for them if I take care of it. Future users won't even need to.
Here's a scenario: my instances are LMBTQ+ friendly. This tends to attract a whole lot of harassers which none of us here want to ever interact with. So we first report the harassment to their instance admins, and if nothing happens, we just ban the whole thing. Problem solved, for all current and future users.
If I didn't ban them, each and every one of my users would have to, individually. Me doing it also makes ME the target of any retaliation, and I'm more equipped to handle that.
I'm not saying that individuals being able to ban and mute whatever they want is a bad thing. It's great. But the admin being able to help the entire instance is also a good thing.
Care must be taken, indeed, blanket bans are a double edged sword. But sometimes it is the right call. Neither my users, nor I ever want to interact with instances full of transphobes or other hateful people. Cutting those off at the admin level is more practical than every user doing it on their own.
I understand you. However cutting instances seems an extreme approach. You cannot evaluate very well the userbase of those instances or yours. So you end up trying to battle cancer by doing surgery with a kitchen knife. The side effects of this are really concerning to me, simply because it makes admins like you get comfortable with such approaches, and you end up cutting connections between individuals. If this is your instance then I cannot see where iy makes it transparent what instances you have blocked trunk.mad-scientist.club/about…
Indeed, I cannot fully evaluate it. But if repeated harassers don't get dealt with, that's an instance I do not want to federate with. Any good people on those, can choose an instance that has admins who are willing to act on reports and not just make things worse.
If any of my users report that they are in any way inconvenienced with an instance ban, we'll figure something out. None of them did so far.
Yep, that's one of my instances, and I intentionally don't make my blocklist public.
To phrase it differently, using your metaphor: banning an instance with repeat abusers where admins join in on the "fun" may seem harsh, but I'd rather undergo cancer removal operation (which may have undesirable side effects) than tell my immune system to just work harder (which would end up with me dead).
This blocking is a blind game. I go on your instance and have no idea that you chose to not connect with other instances, The fediverse is already hard to grasp for most people, nowgo ahead and explain to them that it is not really like you can connect with anyone who has as federated account. It depends where these accounts get created. It is like XMPP server admins cut ties with other XMPP servers, and you have no clue about that.
This is a bad practice. Non transparent, confusing, rushed, unnecessary. Let the people take care of themselves and not break the fediverse.
It's not a blind game. I go to great lengths to research an instance before I block them. I explore other avenues first. My users - past, present and future - know my stance on blocking, they are aware that there are a dozen or two blocked instances. That's part of the onboarding process. This works for us fine, and has saved a lot of trouble for my users.
It is necessary, because asking each and every user to block the same stuff is not very practical. They don't want to deal with that.
Your instance has 7 users from what I see, but for instances larger than say 100 users this is not applicable. And it backfires. Also, why this need to take care of users when they can easily take care of themselves? Same way you do it for them, they can do it for themselves. You see a weird post/user, hover the name and block. Done. So the better and easier tools users have in this regards, the better will be for us all. Admins would not need to take care of these users.
For example if we would brainstorm more we could come up with an opt-in feature for users of any instances if they want to let the admins moderate stuff for them. Like an adblock list made by the admins. If I enable that then all of your blocking will protect me too, the user. But if I do not want that, let me see boobs and stuff and connect with anyone on the fediverse.
They technically can take care of themselves, yes. But it's much easier for everyone if they don't have to. Instead of 100+ people blocking the same things, a handful of them reporting to me, and me blocking is much more practical, and has the same net effect.
They see a bad post/user? They report. Done. For every single user, not just one.
I'm here to help my users, not make them do more work. It's better when they don't even see the bad.
My users are aware of which instances I blocked. The list is publicly not available, but my users can take a look if they want to, and can decide themselves whether that's ok for them or not.
And I repeat, this is the crucial point: not seeing a lot of bad in the first place, but still being able to report and/or block at the user level gives a much nicer experience than just the latter.
It's like spam filters. Your users can filter their own spam. It works better if you do globally too.
I am not talking about spam. But blocking instances because some of the users there post things others do not like. I repeat, an adblock-like list with bad actors, for each instance, is a great idea. Let users choose that protection (opt in if possible). Like a filter that users apply themselves. I would hate if Firefox would have an adblocker baked into the browser itself and I could do nothing about it. Let me decide what websites to visit, same way let me decide who to follow and connect with on the fediverse.
Good thing is: you can do that! And my users who prefer all of this to be handled for them, so they don't have to deal with it, can have it our way.
Having both options available is great. If purely user-level blocking works for you, great! It doesn't for many of my users, so I block for them. Everyone wins.
The instances I block, my users would block them anyway, so the net effect is the same, and it doesn't break fedi. It just keeps bad actors in their corner. I call that a win.
That'd still require my users to use the list one by one. They don't want to deal with any of that. They delegate the blocking and the backlash that comes with it to me.
Having the option to block at an instance level makes this possible. An admin can choose not to use the feature, and defer to users to handle blocks themselves. Users can also ask their admin to do it for them.
Both methods have their pros and cons, neither is better than the other, they're suited for different scenarios.
It is far better to have a simple toggle to opt in for the instance's list of banned users/instances. No idea how you do not see that. Maybe because you instance is made of 7 people. Mine has 600. You can't sit down and decide with 600 people. That won't work.
All my users are fine with me blocking. They wouldn't sign up otherwise. So they effectively sign up for the blocklist. Practically the same effect.
Whoever comes to my instances, agrees with the blocking. It's right there in the rules of my other servers. They can choose to go elsewhere. If they come to mine, they're fine with the status quo.
Another scenario, which happened just last week: some of my users reported an abuser, I looked into it, blocked that single person on the instance level, so they don't harass others. People from their instance - including their admin - started to dogpile on me a few minutes after. So I blocked them on my account. Then they started to harass random users on my instance, people who never interacted with them before.
So I blocked the entire instance to avoid having my users harassed.
If I didn't block at the instance level, they would've dogpiled on hundreds of users. It's not reasonable to expect them all to handle the fallout from other users blocking people as users.
This is where admins need to step in, and block the abusers hard.
The same way you easily blocked them, users can easily block them. And there won't be any collateral damages. I have blocked many users too. It is easy. Users have such great control over who can contact them, what they can block, etc..
You still don't get it. My users do not want to deal with it. They could, they choose not to. They come to my instance, becauseI deal with blocking, and the fallout.
No matter how easy it is to press a button, it has other consequences (see my dogpiling example earlier), possibly for other users too. They don't want to deal with that.
If I had an opt-in adblock, every user of mine would subscribe. So it's effectively an instance-wide block. Why bother with the extra steps then?
An adblock-like list many subscribe to does not prevent collateral damage. Those who subscribe to it, will end up blocking people and servers the same way an instance-wide block would.
All such a list accomplishes is some people not using them, at the cost of forcing everyone else into an extra step to opt into it.
Collateral damage will still be there. More burden on the users, too, and a larger attack surface. No thanks, we'll go with instance blocks, they're more practical for us.
To reiterate: instance-wide blocks aren't the be-all, end-all solution. They don't work for every server, or every user, either. But they do work for a fair number of servers & users, usually on top of user-level blocking.
Same goes for user-level blocking.
Both have their pros and cons, both have their place. Neither is inherently better than the other, because they're better for different scenarios. Having them both gives us the flexibility to set things up as we wish.
An adblock-like list many subscribe to does not prevent collateral damage. Those who subscribe to it, will end up blocking people and servers the same way an instance-wide block would.
They will, not you. That's better for whoever wants that.
All such a list accomplishes is some people not using them, at the cost of forcing everyone else into an extra step to opt into it.
Then make it opt-out. So much easier. No need for you to manage their lives.
I don't think that banning harassers is breaking the fediverse. Anyone who happened to be on a wrong instance by mistake, can easily move elsewhere, they're not tied to any one server, the protocol has a quite reasonable solution for migrating to another server to help with that, too.
Banning harassers at the instance level keeps my users happy, and on the fediverse. It makes Fedi a safer, happier place.
My users want to enjoy being here, not spend their time blocking. That's what I'm for
I do get why people ban entire instances: Requiring every user to block every spammer manually does not scale: Spamming is then cheaper than blocking spammers.
I think the opposite is true: instead of 1 human dealing with the blocking for everyone's needs, which cannot scale up (maybe some instances bother some of your users but not others), then why not let the users do your job for themselves? Users can easily block others and entire instances on Mastodon. The moment you try to become everyone's dad, you will fuck things up, because not all of your "kids" are bothered by the same things. And you end up breaking the fediverse by blowing up bridges.
If you get spammed by bots from particular instances of course no one would argue you should not block this. I am talking about unwanted content. Admins who block other instances based on politics, nudity, whatever else.
I've heard that reply many times before: if you don't like it, go somewhere else. But this is irrelevant for what I am saying. I argue that the practice of banning instances by admins is detrimental to the entire fediverse. Same way you think banning nudity is ok because you have a little community of people who are afraid of nipples, others may think that being "gay" is detrimental to their own community. And so forth. And in the name of thousands, a dozen people will interrupt the communication. Let the "gays" talk to the nudists! You know what I mean!?
And I was showcasing the example of Peertube which provides a great set of tools to keep your instance clean and safe without nuking any bridge.
Let’s replace the nipples and gays with targeted insults and ganging up on people.
Do you understand what I mean?
If you don’t like that, have a look at the tools that actually provide scaling defense against spam and such which I linked in my previous post: rollenspiel.social/@ArneBab/10…
That said, I still think having instances with per-instance rules has value.
Your argument "banning is detrimental" doesn’t quite work, because in the Fediverse you can easily have several accounts.
Look all I'm saying is that instead of using these primitive tools that are nontransparent, and decide for thousands of users, we should be smarter. Think about an adblock like list. Instance admins can have that and let users opt in in their settings or when they create an account. That list will ban all of these "bad" people for the users who choose. This way you dont have to cut ties with any instance, let the users decide. Simple.
I can imagine some people having dejavus from Newsnet server messages about mailservers. And the perks of blocking a domain (federation-level) versus blocking a user (individual level).
Cant blame Fediverse for introducing moderation at the federation level (next to the individual level).
All of what you see on an instance, including the search, can be curated yes. While at the same time if a user finds otehr peertube channels into the wild and wants to follow them from your own, they can. So you keep it clean, and also not break any connections that users may want to create.
Yes. But your users can defend themselves easily. And we can come up with even better tools to protect against that without the admin deciding for everyone else what is good to follow/interact with.
What does not not solve? If you curate your instance then you won't be flooded on that instance with nonsnese content. On Friendica for examples users can even limit whet they post to only those who follow them and such, so you don't even reach the outside world. Plenty of good tools already to keep admins and users happy. No need for a nuking solution. And more good tools can be invented if people would seek for such a solution rather than the primitive one of nuking other instances at the admin level.
But you are missing my point too. Somehow. I didn't say you should not have that. I said this practice, used by so many and for no good reasons, is damaging the fediverse. While at the same time there are better approaches like I mentioned about Peertube. We should be wiser and think further ahead for this fediverse thing, so we don't break it. If a massive instance blocks left and right other instances, and people don't even know that, then it is complete madness and breaks what we call as the fediverse.
That's my point: the practice of banning entire instances at the admin level is a very rudimentary and in the long term harmful approach. We have better tools that won't create these side effects.
Yes p2p seems to be the best approach, but this doesn't mean we should break the fediverse for no good reason. I have several instances and I see no reason in blocking the connection to other instances.
I asked for one feature for poast from @alex and @mkljczk and people still cry about it til today. they probably broke fediverse more than anyone else ive seen to date
Wouldn't the proposed federation method make a mess with MediaProxy, etc., not wanting to have CP on your server, etc.? I guess the admin would have to block them in the proxy config?
If you are bothered about what people fuck, what they believe in, or the color of their skin, then ignore or block them. And if others want to ignore idiots, they can easily block you ofc.
Even coming from the more block&ban-happy perspective, as I am, I agree with this approach. You can still nuke the worst of the worst, while keep your trending etc clean from grey area iffy stuff. On my Fedi instance (currently running a Pleroma fork) I ended up trying to disable the entire homepage for non-logged-in users.🤷🏻♀️
These past days many people seem to have migrated to the fediverse and some are complaining about the limitations of Mastodon for example, since most are using that (it is the most popular). Mastodon is great, is sleek, well developed, and I'd say looks the best and is the most reliable perhaps. But some people want better features and I ended up replying to them individually. I am making this post to explain why I moved from Mastodon to Friendica and why I chose Friendica despite trying a lot of other alternatives.
The great things about Friendica:
It is very easy to use; the default Frio theme it comes with looks very intuitive. For our instance we have created custom themes social.trom.tf so that it looks even better in my view.
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, H
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These past days many people seem to have migrated to the fediverse and some are complaining about the limitations of Mastodon for example, since most are using that (it is the most popular). Mastodon is great, is sleek, well developed, and I'd say looks the best and is the most reliable perhaps. But some people want better features and I ended up replying to them individually. I am making this post to explain why I moved from Mastodon to Friendica and why I chose Friendica despite trying a lot of other alternatives.
The great things about Friendica:
It is very easy to use; the default Frio theme it comes with looks very intuitive. For our instance we have created custom themes social.trom.tf so that it looks even better in my view.
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
Can follow RSS sources as "normal contacts". That's amazing since you can follow websites directly.
You can create huge posts, format the text (basic formatting), add inline media, and even use markdown.
You can setup any contact (even RSS sources) to auto repost their posts. For example we also have a Peertube account and I setup that so when we post a new video on Peertube, it also goes to our Friendica page. As native post or re-share, up to you. So awesome!
Has a calendar and you can schedule and organize events.
Has very well defined "news feeds": chronologically, based on activity, or based on your participation.
Auto contact discovery or random profile discovery.
Can integrate with Twitter so you can post to your twitter from friendica, or interact/connect/follow anyone on twitter.
You can setup your profile in different ways, such as a page, personal profile, or even forum.
You can have multiple profiles under 1 account.
Send private messages in a mail-like interface.
Follow search results or tags.
Ignore/block contacts.
Filter/block the posts based on language or other rules.
2FA authentication.
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Works with Mastodon's API so any Mastodon app/client should work with Friendica too.
It is developed by some very very nice people!
The not-so-perfect:
Their default theme needs some improvements in my view. People may look at that and think that this is not a very modern social network. Mastodon nails it!
Their website needs to be a lot more attractive. People going there have no clue about how awesome Frendica is.
Should handle video platform embedding better.
Maybe should add reactions to posts.
Should better handle images - how they are displayed and such.
Should have an "app"....I do not use phones really, so this does not affect me, but nowadays this can be important.
Maybe that's all. Anyone feel free to let me know if I've missed anything and I can edit the post.
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Wait, what? Do you mean any user on a Friendica instance can do that? If yes, how? Or is it an option that the admin has to activate?
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
I think this "talk to everyone" approach of Friendica is one of its main strength, especially wrt other fedi platforms. There are two main precisions that I can bring about this
devs actually cooperate to implement other's protocols and objects. This is why it works so well with Lemmy and also why it works at all with Diaspora
the broad set of features plays a role. For example, Mastodon has a character limit and does not have downvotes, which make sense in their pure microblogging perspective but which limits the experience of interacting with Peertube
Works with Mastodon's API so any
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Very nice list !
You can use it as your email client and receive/send emails too (did not test this tho).
Wait, what? Do you mean any user on a Friendica instance can do that? If yes, how? Or is it an option that the admin has to activate?
Connects with pretty much everything. Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Peertube....
I think this "talk to everyone" approach of Friendica is one of its main strength, especially wrt other fedi platforms. There are two main precisions that I can bring about this
devs actually cooperate to implement other's protocols and objects. This is why it works so well with Lemmy and also why it works at all with Diaspora
the broad set of features plays a role. For example, Mastodon has a character limit and does not have downvotes, which make sense in their pure microblogging perspective but which limits the experience of interacting with Peertube
Works with Mastodon's API so any Mastodon app/client should with with Friendica too.
Yes, but, as you say it yourself later on, it lacks a dedicated app, something that does not just squeeze the content of your friendica timeline into a microblogging frontend. Really hope that @Fedilab Apps implements a more Friendlica-oriented frontend at some point, so as to get closer to their announced goal of being the multifunctional fediverse window :)
I really want to look into this as well, what an awesome feature. I set it up in options but fumbling around to get it to work at the moment, I assume it's accessible under the mail icon ... hmmm
Sorry if this double posts, my last one disappeared. Totally agree, Friendica is amazing except for a few things, the email client aspect looks amazing, but I haven't been able to figure it out just yet. It would be really great if there was a UI sprint or something for Friendica, it would make a huge difference in attracting new users IMHO
In today's world human brains are completely wasted. In this case humans are paid to work on nonsense video games - stupid, simplistic, violent, non-creative - instead of using that brain power for doing interesting things.
If humans could focus that "game" energy into creating fantastic CGI about real stuff, like past societies, past creatures, the natural history, then we would have amazing educational materials and a way for humans to experience and learn about things that were real, but are not anymore.
Such a waste to spend so much time and resources and skills to create stupid video games, enforcing the "video games culture". Enforcing actually a business. That's what happens when we live in a trade-based society. It is all about that trade.
In today's world human brains are completely wasted. In this case humans are paid to work on nonsense video games - stupid, simplistic, violent, non-creative - instead of using that brain power for doing interesting things.
If humans could focus that "game" energy into creating fantastic CGI about real stuff, like past societies, past creatures, the natural history, then we would have amazing educational materials and a way for humans to experience and learn about things that were real, but are not anymore.
Such a waste to spend so much time and resources and skills to create stupid video games, enforcing the "video games culture". Enforcing actually a business. That's what happens when we live in a trade-based society. It is all about that trade.
Some humans sell idiotic video games and make money. Then they pay more slaves to work on their nonsense projects because these slaves need money. A way of pooping and eating your own shit for the sake of surviving.
How did humanity's earliest ancestors evolve into one of the most successful species on Earth? An extraordinary journey tracing the footsteps of early hominids.
These are the things that, to me, are the example of today's retardation-cool society:
The complete useless notch on phones, just to make it "cool". Makes 0 sense. Cuts off videos, limits the design screen, makes no difference for the scrolling morons anyway. This together with removing the physical and useful buttons and making phones edge-to-edge making it difficult to even use them properly. Just some Apple and other such companies' nonsense.
The tampon earbuds that Apple somehow made popular. Easy to lose, really bad microphone quality, batteries that degrade over time, costly as fuck. Charge them!
And of course, the vertical idiots who film vertically.
If I see someone with an edge-to-edge screen + a notch, having wireless tampons and filming vertically, I'll push them off a cliff. :)
Oh wait, all are like that. I'll just jump myself then. :))
But really, to m
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These are the things that, to me, are the example of today's retardation-cool society:
The complete useless notch on phones, just to make it "cool". Makes 0 sense. Cuts off videos, limits the design screen, makes no difference for the scrolling morons anyway. This together with removing the physical and useful buttons and making phones edge-to-edge making it difficult to even use them properly. Just some Apple and other such companies' nonsense.
The tampon earbuds that Apple somehow made popular. Easy to lose, really bad microphone quality, batteries that degrade over time, costly as fuck. Charge them!
And of course, the vertical idiots who film vertically.
If I see someone with an edge-to-edge screen + a notch, having wireless tampons and filming vertically, I'll push them off a cliff. :)
Oh wait, all are like that. I'll just jump myself then. :))
But really, to me these are signals of today's stupidity. Trade made humans come up with all kinds of nonsense and expensive toys.
Ah, one more thing, the idiots that (maybe because of Zoom) enable that blur background or to change the background when they do videocalls, and it looks like shit. Their heads are cut off, and if you combine that with the shitty microphone quality of the tampons, it shows how technology has downgraded. See this, minute 5 on lx.com/entertainment/is-the-co…
These days I kept an eye on the current war, from 4-5 sources. DW (germany), Aljazeera (qatar), BBC (uk), Rt.com (Russia Today), and TASS (tass.com - russian news agency). So 2 are from Europe, 1 from Asia, 2 from Russia.
I was curious to see how they report it and how the information is presented.
What I've seen:
Aljazeera, DW, and BBC (ADB) kinda present the same things, the same story line. BBC seems to be more jumpy with the facts, as in presenting more information that even they say could not be verified. More politicized I felt. Also they add a lot of opinions from their editors. You kinda sense it is "Let's beat Russia now! Fuck them.". But seem to try to also be balanced in regards to "he said that, she said that" sort of thing.
So ADB showcases a lot of the horror in Ukraine and how Russia is doing a lot of bad things. They show footage and photos from the conf
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These days I kept an eye on the current war, from 4-5 sources. DW (germany), Aljazeera (qatar), BBC (uk), Rt.com (Russia Today), and TASS (tass.com - russian news agency). So 2 are from Europe, 1 from Asia, 2 from Russia.
I was curious to see how they report it and how the information is presented.
What I've seen:
Aljazeera, DW, and BBC (ADB) kinda present the same things, the same story line. BBC seems to be more jumpy with the facts, as in presenting more information that even they say could not be verified. More politicized I felt. Also they add a lot of opinions from their editors. You kinda sense it is "Let's beat Russia now! Fuck them.". But seem to try to also be balanced in regards to "he said that, she said that" sort of thing.
So ADB showcases a lot of the horror in Ukraine and how Russia is doing a lot of bad things. They show footage and photos from the conflict, with the victims, with the refugees, with the people sheltering.
The Russian Media (RM) doesn't even call it a war, and their main pages are quite voided of any photos or videos of the horror of the war. Almost as if those dead people, sheltered, the refugees are not even existent. You can clearly see a bias in this regards. Their websites are full of "diplomatic" photos with the politicians that discuss these events.
Here are the ADB front-pages, in order:
And RM:
Clearly ADB is like "WTF people are dying, Russia is at war, Europe is at war". While RM is like "Russia is doing a special intervention to free up Ukraine. Calm down." Although ADB may exaggerate things and make them too bloody explosive, and they are for sure biased too, RM is clearly biased and being a jerk for not highlighting the human suffering.
As for what they are saying, ADB tells us that Putin is a lunatic and has no reason to invade Ukraine or fear NATO. Putin may start a WW3. They do not tell me why he fears NATO or how we came to this point very much. They tell me that what Ukrainians say is probably true and that Ukrainians are heroes defending their land. It feels like a clear fight between the good (ukraine and the world) and the evil (putin and russia).
ADB tells me that Russia is full of lies and Putin is a dictator basically. They say RM is full of propaganda.
RM tells me that this is not a war, but a "special intervention" and that Russia only attacks the Ukrainian military and not civilians. RM tells me that there are Nazis in Ukraine, but ADB seem to not talk much about it. Is it true and to what extent? Who knows for sure, but RM sounds like some 1930s Germany Nazi propaganda in my head - the irony...
So overall RM tells me that Russia had no choice, it got scared of NATO and NATO broke its promises + NATO is a bad bad guy. Tells me the USA is a monster and a snake. Does not seem to at all criticize Putin and Russia's actions. They do however present criticism (as quotes) coming from some politicians and such. But not criticism from their editors. They say that the other media is full of propaganda and lies.
So that's what it is...a bunch of things.
ADB: NATO good, USA good, EU good, sanctions good. Russia and Putin bad. Putin crazy, a criminal. Russia needs to be destroyed via sanctions.
RM: NATO bad, USA bad, EU a puppet of those, sanctions don't matter much. Putin has reasonable motives to do the "special operation" and all is going to plan.
My thoughts?
Very likely RM is full of shit. They may post some truths about NATO and the USA, but to not report much on the war itself and not even call it a war? The dead? The refugees? The crisis? Unacceptable. Where are the horror photos of the injured and destruction? So fuck off RM. You are a prostitute.
ADB should also be a lot more balanced and less emotional. Aljazeera seems to be doing better. But they seem to not address much the reasons why the invasion has happened and make it seem like Ukraine and the people there are saints and heroes and woke up one day with Putin and his army in their country.
Overall it can become a confusing mess if you want to stay up to date with the current situation.
What I am sure of is that:
Currently millions of people are suffering because of Russia's invasion. Some dead, some scared, some have no home, or food, and so forth. That's awful
Media is biased but the level of it makes the big difference; picking your sides should be a variety of a few from different parts of the world. I still think RM is a lot more biased to the point of fully propaganda. But they do point towards some things that the others do not talk much about and are true: how USA invaded other countries under a false pretext and killed and destroyed a lot without being sanctioned and such; but I feel they use these as distractions from whatever Russia is doing.
Speaking of that, Russia is doing awful things, but is nothing that unique; USA and EU tribes, and others, have done atrocities too in the past and all are snakes and charlatans.
Ukraine is not a saint.
Ukraine does not deserve to be destroyed.
It is all politicized and tribes + politicians take advantage of this. USA is like "OMG Russia is doing war crimes!". Fuck off USA, you are still doing these and more. And Russia pointing to that....Fuck off Russia, don't divert the attention from the crimes you are doing!
Lots of money are made by arms dealers nowadays.
Ordinary people who did not start this or fuel this, are going to suffer more than the ones who started and fuel this conflict.
What else? I don't know...but these are my thoughts for now.
We are thinking to do a TROMcast and invite some people from Russia and Ukraine to discuss the situation. Will see....
I think there is also a lot of online censorship from both sides, which could play a big role in this. There is a very thin line between moderation and censorship, especially if the moderation decisions are not being made public. I hear Russia is going big by even blocking access to major websites, use the Tor browser folks. If your internet access is not censored, install this extension to help users in censored areas: snowflake.torproject.org
So one super cool thing about Linux is that you can make your system look like one thing. Have your favorite theme applied to the entire system. Ofc this should be a normal thing, not a Linux specific thing. It is an awesome way to make an operating system fun, but also functional.
Look at our new TROMjaro that we will release soon with a different theme that is more modern:
These are all different kinds of apps, and yet they all look the same. You know where the window buttons are and what they are (minimize, maximize, close). It is beautiful. I can change it to a light theme with two clicks:
We made sure that TROMjaro looks great and uniform with most apps.
And
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What are you doin' gnome!?
So one super cool thing about Linux is that you can make your system look like one thing. Have your favorite theme applied to the entire system. Ofc this should be a normal thing, not a Linux specific thing. It is an awesome way to make an operating system fun, but also functional.
Look at our new TROMjaro that we will release soon with a different theme that is more modern:
These are all different kinds of apps, and yet they all look the same. You know where the window buttons are and what they are (minimize, maximize, close). It is beautiful. I can change it to a light theme with two clicks:
We made sure that TROMjaro looks great and uniform with most apps.
And now here's the white sheep:
It does not respect the theme at all. It only has 1 button (close) and on the right side. If my theme has buttons on the left side, the white sheep don't care. This is the Touche app we use to setup the touchpad and touchscreen gestures, and recently they moved to the libadwaita library. This is something pushed by Gnome that says it will make the app developers' life easier in terms of creating apps for gnome. But that means app developers are enforcing 2 themes for all such apps. Light and Dark. And messing with the entire Linux ecosystem of theming and usability.
Problem is it seems we can't do anything about it and more and more Gnome apps will implement it. We use a bunch of gnome apps for TROMjaro and we may be forced to replace them.
Gnome stop transforming Linux into MacOS or Windows. The beauty of Linux is the many distros, the variations, the themes, the user experience, the fact that you feel that OS is yours....
Such a sad and stupid move.
Let me say it again: the apps should respect the system. If my system says "I want this theme" then the apps should respect that. If my system says "I want 3 window buttons on the left side" then the apps should respect that. Else we end up with a zoo of different apps looking and behaving in different ways. Gnome already broke the global menus and the top bar of apps. Instead of us having uniformity and usability, we get MacOS or Windows- And for what!?
Now I understand it more when people complain about Gnome. Took me a while to get it...I am happy we moved TROMjaro from Gnome to XFCE. #tromlive
Another example, out of billions out there, showcasing how rules and laws DO NOT FIX ANYTHING. I mean, sure, they may fix a few things here and there, but overall they do not.
Look at it this way: if you have a zoo, you don't throw in the same cage alligators and polar bears. Also, no polar bears in fuckin Florida! Please! Even when we build zoo enclosures we need animal experts who know what those animals need, else these animals will die or become fucked-up. Put an orca in a very small enclosure and not feed it properly, and it will go berserk. Yeah, zoo enclosures are really not that good for animals, but we created a zoo for us, humans, too. Yet we have no human-experts that created that. It
Another example, out of billions out there, showcasing how rules and laws DO NOT FIX ANYTHING. I mean, sure, they may fix a few things here and there, but overall they do not.
Look at it this way: if you have a zoo, you don't throw in the same cage alligators and polar bears. Also, no polar bears in fuckin Florida! Please! Even when we build zoo enclosures we need animal experts who know what those animals need, else these animals will die or become fucked-up. Put an orca in a very small enclosure and not feed it properly, and it will go berserk. Yeah, zoo enclosures are really not that good for animals, but we created a zoo for us, humans, too. Yet we have no human-experts that created that. It is like we let children manage a zoo.
Same way that orcas need a lot of swimming space, food, interactions with other of their members; same that polar bears need a wide area to walk, proper food, proper climate; same way alligators need their own environment; Humans also need that! We need a safe environment, we need trade-free access to at least our basic needs, free time, and so on. Else we are going to fuck everything up. We are put in a trade-based society where we are forced to trade else we die. Think about that!
So, when we see climate change, we we see corruption, pollution, violence and so on....if we do not study the human animal to see what pushes "it" to do these bad things, we will have 0 chances to ever change anything. And if you look at it this way, you realize that our trade-based society makes us behave violently, corruptly, ignorantly, and so forth.
We need to admit that our worldwide trade-based society is unfixable. We should start to think about different ways of organizing ourselves. And one simple and powerful idea for now is to TAKE CARE OF HUMANS. Give them trade-free access to their basic needs so we are not like fuckin crazy bears and orcas killing and scamming each other. #tromlive
tilvids.com is great! Peertube suffers from bad quality videos and is great that there are some Peertube instances that are very well managed so that the quality of the posted videos is sane and ok. We cannot do that with videos.trom.tf because the idea behind this instance is to let anyone register and use it without restrictions. However PeerTube could add a simple feature that would make any instance a whole lot better: an easy to customize homepage where admins can select what videos and channels to promote. And overall a way for admins to kinda select what content to promote. That'd make a massive difference.
Another killer feature for Peertube would be an Invidious like plugin, so that it merges Peertube with youtube. When users search for a video, to search on all peertube instances + on youtube. To prioritize the peertube videos, but to have access to the unmatched library of youtube. And all videos to be showcased on the same instance you use and in the same style using youtube-dl. Plus the
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tilvids.com is great! Peertube suffers from bad quality videos and is great that there are some Peertube instances that are very well managed so that the quality of the posted videos is sane and ok. We cannot do that with videos.trom.tf because the idea behind this instance is to let anyone register and use it without restrictions. However PeerTube could add a simple feature that would make any instance a whole lot better: an easy to customize homepage where admins can select what videos and channels to promote. And overall a way for admins to kinda select what content to promote. That'd make a massive difference.
Another killer feature for Peertube would be an Invidious like plugin, so that it merges Peertube with youtube. When users search for a video, to search on all peertube instances + on youtube. To prioritize the peertube videos, but to have access to the unmatched library of youtube. And all videos to be showcased on the same instance you use and in the same style using youtube-dl. Plus the ability to mirror any youtube video on peertibe with one click. And to subscribe via your Peertube account to any youtube account.
I honestly cannot use Peertube much because I cannot find any interesting videos/channels among the crazy ones. So integrating invidious on peertube I think could bring a fuck ton more people to Peertube. #tromlive
Custom home page for admins - this is a really cool idea, it'll help in dealing with conspiracy theories other harmful content, without outright censoring them. This could help mitigate the bad reputation peertube gets cause of such content.
Appreciate the kind words about #TILvids! The nice thing about @peertube is that every instance can try different approaches, so there are lots of different types of instances out there. Lots of experimentation, exciting time to be participating in the community!
Tilvids.com really seems like one of the best curated peertube instances in existence right now, and the fact it's infotainment focused it seems like a perfect fit. @tio
If you mean tilvids then probably, you should ask them @TILvids :) - ofc you are also welcomed to post on our instance at videos.trom.tf - whatever suits you ;)
MattZ
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MattZ
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