h3ndrik @ h3ndrik @feddit.de

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469

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2 yr. ago

It's not the first strange decision they made. I think I finally switched from Ubuntu to Debian when they introduced the Amazon advertisements to the Unity desktop. That must have been 12.10 Quantal Quetzal. I've been happy since and didn't miss the odd business strategies they pushed in the time since...

You're right. It's an oversimplification I made there. I recently tried MacOS in a VM and I talked a bit to people. You usually get a really smooth desktop experience. Apps are sandboxed, there is a fine permission system, they keep their stuff together and don't spread them across the filesystem. I think(?) the software brings their libraries along? Usually a used Macbook Pro is still fine and runs fast after 6 years. I think MacOS really shines on the desktop.

On Linux it's a bit more diverse. I mean we have the XDG specification file locations. But there's also lots of 'grown' stuff. We're still working on the sandboxing. And you get a different experience depending on the distro you're trying. And I'd prefer Linux on a server every time. It really excels for that use case and on the server we have Linux > everything else. And as a matter of fact I personally also prefer Linux on the desktop. And my Debian is also still running perfectly 6 years after I initially installed it. Had some minor issues with NVidia during the times, but that's to be expected and it wasn't that hard to fix. I wouldn't have had issues had I not mixed in testing and unstable, but there are lots of guides and tutorials around for the common woes. Which makes my argument a full circle.

Hehe, you got your answer. You're lokking at the places where 0.05% of the users are discussing their problems and some others share their crazy customizations that aren't possible with anything else. And it seems like 95% of users having issues to you.

I'd argue Linux is way more stable than Windows. If that's your perspective. (Unless you do silly stuff.) But less stable than for example MacOS. It depends on which Linux Distro we're talking about. I'd say it's MacOS > Linux > Windows. With the biggest step down from Linux to Windows.

I mean it's not only alike what you're currently using... It's the foundation of Ubuntu. Lots of packages are exactly the same.

And I think you'll find something very similar, just with the stuff missing that Ubuntu added on top, and you don't like anyways.

Hope you can move you containers and volumes without too much effort. I mean since you're starting over anyways you could also pause for a minute and think if you want to recreate something similar or switch to something different. There are other containerization techniques, podman, systemd-nspawn, you could do your server in a declarative approach with NixOS... But if you like what you have now, and don't want to learn something entirely new, I'd say Debian is probably your solution.

And I would agree. I've been using Debian on my VPS with docker-compose etc for years. Would recommend it, too. And it's pretty similar to what you have now. There isn't much needed to swich around or learn.

And it is the textbook example of a successful, community driven distro.

NSFW is already off by default when you sign up to most instances

I don't think this works in practice. Most big instances have gone the extra step to also defederate from the two major porn instances here. Showcasing that there are additional issues, otherwise they'd just have used this instead. I took a quick random sample of the biggest Lemmy instances and ~50-60% additionally block them entirely.

NSFW and 18+ aren't the same thing. The NSFW tag is made for a slightly different purpose. And it's a crutch that doesn't work well for this purpose. There are some slightly vulgar topics that shouldn't inadvertently pop up at your workplace but they might be safe to consume for minors. Also I think minors should have access to sex education. The Wikipedia has a similar stance. There are videos of "the act" on Wikimedia. You shouldn't watch them while sitting in your open-plan office. But I think especially with the situation of sex ed in the USA, adolescents should get a chance to ask their questions and learn something about important aspects of life. The NSFW tag as is is doing them a disservice because now they can't. Or everything else immediately gets mixed in. For example I'm not comfortable sharing my experiences >!sticking bluetooth-enabled things into somebody's bum!< with kids. Or having sex ed and hardcore fetish stuff being the same category.

And I mean it's not even just that. Gore and pictures of dead bodies in the Ukraine war also fall into the same category. So everyone just gets a yes/no decision on everything ranging from sex education to gore. In practice both these extremes aren't very common on Lemmy. But in theory it's just like that. (It's not entirely theoretical. We just have a different community here. But there are examples in the wild. For example 4chan mixes pretty tame porn with fetish with crime, gore and death.)

So in summary the current state of (mis)using the NSFW tag actively leads to defederation and it's doing a disservice to both people who participate in adult conversations and also adolescents. And its overly simplistic design prevents some conversations which should be allowed.

Why do you think porn is bad/unsuitable for 14-17 year olds?

My opinion doesn't really count here. There are legal requirements people need to implement, whether they like it or not. So that's kind of already the end of this conversation.

I think it makes a difference if you watch (somewhat tasteful) plain sex, or >!somebody dangling from a hook in the ceiling getting whipped by a disguised old man!<. I think it's just not the same category. And we shouldn't treat it as such. Similarly it's also not the same if you deliberately explore that when you're 17. Or you're inadvertently exposed to it when 12 while researching what sex education has failed to provide you with.

And there's the aspect of me inviting friends and family to my self-hosted services. Or discussing Linux server administration with people. I don't want to mix either of that with porn. I think having it hidden per default is a good first step. And just requiring an extra, deliberate step to enable it is a good design. It just lacks any of the nuances to it, mingles valid use-cases with filtering that is made to do something else, and as I pointed out with the defederation happening, it comes with issues in practice.

And I think the Fediverse offers some important advantages over other platforms. ActivityPub is very vague. We can just attach fields to label content and the technical aspect is kind of simple to implement. And with federation, we have diversity built-in to the platform. This is our unique advantage. People have different use-cases, different moderation needs and perspectives and opinions on something like my proposal with the filtering. And I think the Fediverse turns out to be made exactly for something like this. I could have my instance my way and someone else can have a different opinion and have their instance another way.

But it requires some coordination effort. We need to agree on a foundation and some technical aspects. I don't think a crazy rag rug works as a whole. And we already see some consequences of other disputes. Moderation being a constant issue in the background and instances seperating from each other because there's no nuance to moderation and defederation. And ultimately we want to talk to each other and connect. And provide everyone with a place they like.

Sure. For me it's the other way around. I've never really fell in love with microblogging. My hobbies are kind of mixed and sometimes niche, I sometimes don't have anything of substance to post from my everyday-life and I really disliked the mob mentality and regularly surfacing toxicity in places like Twitter. And at some time I tried Reddit and got hooked. It's a very different approach whether you follow people or topics/communities. It's less about who you are, but more a marketplace of ideas. A level playing field. Sorted by ideas and hobbies and you can just dip in. It also makes you target different audiences for different niche hobbies. And everything gets ordered like that. I mean you also have hashtags on Mastodon, but it's not really designed around this concept.

It really has some appeal to me. I also sometimes participate in web forums and found a similar structure in this. And I always liked how the free software community is supposed to work. It doesn't matter who you are, if you're 15 or a 40 yo woman... You just all come to the same place and discuss your ideas and perspective on things.

It does have downsides. And it doesn't necessarily foster good behaviour and being nice to people. I don't have an ultimate opinion on this. I think encouraging good behaviour in discussions, requires some degree of 'it matters who you are'. Because having an image stick to you incentivizes you to behave properly. It's not than big of an issue in practice, the overwhelming majority of people is nice and they use the platforms to everyone's benefit and not to troll and cause trouble.

Thanks for your input. I've come to the conclusion that maybe I need to broaden my perspective. Have a closer look at other places in the Fediverse. I'm pretty sure Mastodon ain't it for me. But Friendica might be a good place to start. I've also had Akkoma reccomended to me in this discussion. Maybe some other software than Lemmy is more closely aligned to my vision of what I'd like to run on my server. I'd like to stay compatible with Lemmy, since there are lots of nice people here and it's usually fun to talk here, more so than in some other places.

Meh. Since you're here... How is Friendica? Should I try that? I read it's focusing on privacy and being a nice place, has communities and distributed forums, "relationship control" and add-ons.

On the paper it looks like it has many more features to offer than for example Lemmy. I'd be interested in the distributed forum aspect. Do the added features tie into every aspect of the platform? Or is it mainly microblogging with a basic forum added on top? And when participating for example in this Lemmy discussion... Is it a smooth experience, or can you tell you've left Friendica and only have basic functionality here? (I mean I can tell from over here, that you're from a different platform, since it includes the @ user mentions like Mastodon does. And I've tried Mastodon and I think it's not really a great experience interacting with Lemmy and KBin communities. Some of the structure of the threads gets lost in the process and comments from other branches of the discussion don't show up.)

Sure. But what about federation? Arbitrary content is pulled from other instances. And my users are confronted with that content, too. Not only with each other. I'd need to also disable federation. (Or am I missing something?)

I think at that point I'd be better off installing Discourse or Flarum. And I've changed the whole vision of my instance. I've started with envisioning a federated platform that simultaneously can cater to adults and adolescents. And now I've locked it down to just cater to the few adolescents I directly invite, done away with the federation aspect and also cancelled all the appeal to adults. I think there's not much left of what I'd like.

Wouldn't you find exactly the same stuff on porn websites ?

Yes. And i think it's bad practice. We should strive to be better than the average porn site.

How would you do otherwise with preserving user privacy

I think there are two issues at play:

1. It's a complex task. Usually that leads to people saying "we can never achieve 100%" and "it doesn't fit every purpose" and then nothing gets done. I'd argue this gets us like 40% the way and that's better than nothing. And it'd get me all the way and probably a few other people, too.
2. I think verification should be delegated to the instances. There isn't a single solution. In some jurisdictions it might be enough that people claim to be 18. Those admins can choose a really simple solution. Other admins might not care or cater to minors, they can not activate the filters. A compromise might be requiring signup. That'd hide content from kids who aren't logged in and just browsing the web. And already far better than just displaying it to them. What I'd like to do is have users request access and handle that manually. Alike some Discord servers or other software does. I know a few people I'd like to invite and their age. So it'd be no problem to unlock their accounts. I think it's the same for other communities. And usually "eyeballing it" also works to some degree. It might be a valid approach for some admins. I know from experience you can often tell if your opponent in a computer game or the person you're arguing with is a 13 year old kid, or 35. It's not perfect but surely does a decent job with the extremes.

I'd like to abstain from privacy-breaching methods that are in use by big tech companies like Google etc. Requiring phone numbers on signup or showing your ID into the camera is too much. And it's bad. I don't want to tell the admins how to handle verification. If they're required to, or would like to see the IDs and their users are comfortable with it... I've included extensibility to the requirements. So they can. Maybe we're provided with a solution in the near future. My German ID card can already vouch for my age without revealing my identity. It's a zero knowledge proof and the proper technical solution to age-verification. I can also envision some "Web of Trust" providing this. Something like PGP or CAcert does.

I think there are some valid ideas and some technical solutions are already out there and available. The issue is just nobody uses them. And neither do we.

Also, how do you avoid falling in the reddit trap where every discussion vaguely about sexuality end-up being 18+

That is a good question. These categories need to be concise. And the people ticking the boxed need to comprehend the meaning and consequence. I think moderators will do. With the users, I'm not sure. I don't think I had that issue on Reddit. A year ago when I still was there, I've occasinally replied to people on relationship_advice and some more explicit subreddits. I didn't see any problems. But I've not been a heavy user. Maybe I didn't pay attention. I'll listen if this is deemed a likely scenario or proves to happen in practice.

That is part of my idea. I don't think it should be water-tight and not circumventable. My personal opinion is if a 16 yo really wants to watch porn or something, and they put in the effort to circumvent something that is a bit more elaborate than just clicking on "Yes" on a popup... They should be allowed to see it.

But that's just my opinion. And I'm not really concerned with what other instances do. It's enough if it enables me and a few other people to have my instance how I like and invite people to my instance without worrying too much. I mean my own server is also the only one I'm held responsible for. As far as I'm concerned other people can do what they like.

And it's kind of pointless to try. Kids don't need Lemmy or the Fediverse to watch adult content. They can just go to Pornhub and click yes. So I'm already in a position where I don't care about other domains. But I'd like to keep my own Website and Minetest server clean. And also potentially offer some more services and at least do my best to do it right there.

I'll research that. If you have some specific examples for federated platforms that provide more than a simple blocking or allowing on a domain level, feel free to drop me a hint to get me in the right direction. I'm not really a social media person so I have limited experience. I didn't specify a platform. My initial motivation was linked to Lemmy as I really like this platform type. But I also like and use Peertube, maybe others.

That is kind of my point. I'd like to be able to do that. But Lemmy's design /feature set prevents me from being able to do it.

I think I have a proposal with a bit of overlap. At least the privilege implementation could do both things at the same time: A call for better age-restriction and moderation/filtering on the Fediverse on !fediverse@lemmy.ml

So what's your opinion or alternative solution? I can see filtering being a controversial topic since it has been applied to restrict users.

My own motivation is: I want to run my own small federated instances. I'd like to invite friends and family and also maybe random people. And I want to like and use my instance myself, not lock it down for everyone and defederate too much. Currently Lemmy prevents me from doing that. I'd either need to close registrations and exclude minors, make sure my family also likes the communities I like to visit... Or be comfortable with potentially breaking the law or ending up with a severely limited instance I don't like myself.

If it were possible to invite everyone while not blocking content, and I'd have some means of unlocking accounts... It'd allow me to provide service to everyone. And with this proposal it wouldn't necessarily change anything for people on other instances.

Also it would allow me to swear and discuss adult topics in dedicated communities without taking into account whether that's appropriate. That's probably more of a concern for people who do more than just discuss politics here... But that's some additional benefit.

I think the more important file is the fontforge one. As this is the thing people can edit and build upon. (the "source")

The otf, ttf and woff are just a bonus for people who don't want to install fontforge and and go through the process of exporting it themselves.

Ultimately it's your decision what you release. It's a similar concept whether you share a cake, or a recipe for a cake. The free software / open-source movement is concerned with sharing the recipes. That's why they share source code and files in the format they've edited it in. (And often include instructions on how to build it, since that is usually a bit more complicated with software.) It enables people to also load it in their editors and customize it, adapt it to their use-cases and fix issues.

You can also just publish the end-result, which are the otf and ttf files in your case. But people can't really modify or customize those. It'd be called a freeware font, then. It'd help people who just want to use it, but doesn't provide much more.

I'd invite you to upload both the sfd and the resulting otf and ttf. Usually that's how people do it. Distributing digital files comes at practically no cost. On the internet you can share a recipe and the actual cake alongside at no extra cost.

I think the most important step is to get it out there. So:

1. Choose a license. These resources might help:

• https://fontsarena.com/licenses-explained/
• https://choosealicense.com/
• https://opensource.org/licenses

I'd stick with the licenses made for fonts or in use by other font projects, as there are some specifics to fonts licensing.

2. Choose a name
3. Sign up and create a repo. Upload your project.

That is the "get it out there" step. If you want to be open, generally speaking you want to include a LICENSE file, your creation in the format you're editing it and other people can load and edit it, too. And the exported file in case of something like this, so people can directly use it without learning how to convert a font into a format that is usable. It's also good practice to include a README.md with explanations and a summary of what this is.

I think that's a sound approach for open source. And it's generally alright to learn as you go. Even if you don't get everything perfect at once, the most important thing is that it's available. People might pick up on it. And they will file bug reports and issues if they like it some other way. So you'll be directed into the right direction anyways. And once you have something to show off, you can start talking about it or make people aware of its existence.

(And maybe skip all the boilerplate and complicated extra stuff at first. You don't need an AUTHORS file, no code of conduct, no documentation if there isn't anything complicated to explain... Just stick to the important stuff and don't make it unnecessarily complicated and distracting for your users.)

It's been an underdeveloped topic for some time. espeak-ng is available on most distros and has some integrations available that somewhat tie it into the desktop. There are more modern solutions that sound way better. For example Coqui's xtts2, maybe Piper which is part of Home Assistand nowadays. If your language is English, you got quite some more solutions available to choose from. But it's a mixed bag if they sound nice, are easy to install (that also depends on which Linux distro you use and if it's available as a package) and if they tie into the rest of the system. I'm not an expert on this, but I'd also like to have TTS and STT available on my Linux desktop witout putting to much effort into it.

Sure. I think what you're looking for are "AI agents" or "RAG" (Retrieval Augmented Generation). It's not the model itself that does it, but the framework and software around it that provides the internet search capabilities.

And it's not unique to ChatGPT. It's been available also to open-weight / local models for years. I've lost track of all of the frameworks we have and what features they have. So I don't know what to recommend. But you can look it up, there are several frameworks available that provide such capabilities to any model. Maybe your preferred solution even has a plugin available.

The underlying method is probably the same for how ChatGPT works internally, and all the other ones. And it's related to how companies have always fed internal data to their chatbots since all of this started.

You can try one example on hf.co/chat Another solution would be something like h2ogpt. It can do web-search and also index all of the PDFs on your harddrive and answer questions about them and do vision tasks, look at pictures or generate them.

I'd also glue it to the back of my TV and install Kodi or Batocera on it. Next option is give it away if you don't need it. Either to someone who is still in need of a homelab or to recycling.