The Entire History of Video Games
A 6 hour long that goes through all the major parts sof the video game history. One of the best video essays I've watched
It seems reddit really will use crypto trading for it's icons and awards
The ERC-20 tokens awarded to users, along with virtual goods like avatars can now be freely traded.
> Popular news aggregation and discussion website Reddit has changed its terms of service, allowing users to earn, purchase or sell currencies and items that can be cryptographically verified. The change in terms also explicitly outlined a clear separation in the definition of non-tokenized Web 2 virtual goods and tokenized Web 3 virtual goods, with a member of the Reddit product team disclosing plans to sunset the former.
The analysis of network traffic by Windows 11 motivated the researcher to wonder if Windows itself is now spyware.
The Death of Infosec Twitter
"Infosec Twitter," a vibrant community of security practitioners, known for its insight, inspiration, and entertainment, is coming to an end.
> Over the last 3 weeks of our data (June 21 to July 12, 2023), we saw a weekday daily tweet count drop from the 1,272 pre-Elon average to just 333 tweets a day, which is about a 74% drop in weekday tweets. The 2-week rolling average (including weekends) dropped down to 272 tweets over the final 2 weeks. When I attempt to remove automated CVE announcements (bots), the drop is even more significant, dropping from over 500 a day down to 66 over the last two weeks, an 87% decrease in CVE-related tweets.
Relevant HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36780739
From the discussion it seems most of the infosec people have moved over to Mastodon already which is nice.
That's true, duplicate copies of the same book is perhaps the main pain on bookwyrm right now. On the other hand it also feels like a problem that devs must be aware of and are actively trying to figure out a solution for.
Bookwyrm - A Goodreads alternative that is part of the fediverse
Social reading and reviewing, decentralized with ActivityPub - GitHub - bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm: Social reading and reviewing, decentralized with ActivityPub
Goodreads is perhaps the best example of enshittification imo. It's only good now as a way to track your reading lists.
I tried bookwyrm today and it feels quite polished already, like giving you a guided tour of it's features. Hopefully it takes off as well similar to mastodon and lemmy.
If you want fan translated chapters - Mangadex
for official translations - Mangasee
for both - Comick
if you want to download them you can either use tools like tachiyomi, hakuneko or fdm2 that allows you to ddl from most major sites or use nyaa if you are comfortable with torrenting.
It depended on how you used reddit. They were extremely fast, had no ads, trackers or javascript so were extremely privacy friendly. But they were read only so you couldn't engage with the reddit content through them.
It's an interesting thing to ponder and my opinion is that like many other things in life something being 'OC' is a spectrum rather than a binary thing.
If I apply a B&W filter on an image is that OC? Obviously not
But what if I make an artwork that's formed by hundreds of smaller artworks, like this example? This definitely deserves the OC tag
AI art is also somewhere in that spectrum and even then it changes depending on how AI was used to make the art. Each person has a different line on the spectrum where things transition from non OC to OC, so the answer to this would be different for everyone.
Teddit Is Shutting Down
Teddit is a free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. Teddit doesn't require you to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Libreddit is going down as well.
The silver lining here is that both of them are wholeheartedly recommending lemmy as the alternative, so it should provide an extra push to those on the fence about migrating
Instance admins can setup a slur filter for their instance, which automatically removes that word from ever appearing on that particular instance.
If you want some method of making all filenames have same format, use advanced renamer
If you want something to automatically fetch metadata, use calibre or YAClibrary.
Yea some countries have strict piracy laws, that's why using a VPN and following basic privacy becomes necessary while pirating.
Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped by 50 percent
In the early hours of Saturday morning, Musk tweeted Twitter was suffering from an ongoing negative cash flow issue due to an approximately 50 percent drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt burden..
Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. ‘mass surveillance’ law
Whittaker said Signal would not abide by the proposed law, and highlighted concerns about privacy and the need for tech leaders to take a stand against socially accepted surveillance.
New bard update includes image support, voice response and support for new countries and languages
Today we're expanding Bard to new languages and countries, and launching new features to help you get creative and boost your productivity.
Relevant HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36709895
Ahh yes this is one of my favorite quotes and one I think about a lot.
Twitter is blocking links to Threads.net from appearing in Twitter searches
A search for Threads content on Twitter currently brings up zero results, despite plenty of links to Meta’s microblogging rival being posted on the platform.
More Links https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/12/twitter-block-threads-links/
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/11/twitter-blocks-links-to-rival-threads-while-ceo-downplays-reports-of-traffic-decline/
https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/11/twitter-is-blocking-threads/
At least, not with today's software.
Relevant HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673040
What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It's pretty cool to see.
Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement
Famous comedian Sarah Silverman declared war on OpenAI and Meta. She claims that her work is being used in their datasets.
> They allege that OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta's LLaMA chatbots were trained on datasets that included their copyrighted books, without their permission. The datasets in question were allegedly obtained from "shadow library" websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, and Z-Library. These websites are known for distributing pirated content.
Nitter is working again
Uses a new bearer token and a new set of updated endpoints. Only thing missing is search.
For those not aware nitter is an opensource twitter frontend which has no ads or javascript.
Now it also bypasses the rate limits and other restrictions.
This is probably outdated since feddit federates with us, I even joined some of their communities.
Right now it's not even mastodon compatible let alone lemmy. There are some arguments on how federating with them will allow people to migrate to a more privacy respecting instance and still view threads content, and some users say this will allow them to still communicate with their friends who don't want to switch away from threads.
So while we do lean towards defederating from it, it's some months away before we need to actually decide and till then we are simply listening to and discussing both sides of the argument.
why lemmy.fmhy.ml was down for a day and the changes made after that
This post explains the incident well but long story short some hackers were able to compromise user and admin accounts through stolen authentication cookies on some instances.
Before things were clear on exactly how this happened, we pulled the plug on our instance to mitigate the risk. We probabaly should have hastily wrote an announcment post before doing that but the situation seemed critical so we didn't want to waste any time.
Few hours later, people were able to figure out the issue and promptly fix it. Turns out this vulnerabilty could only be exploited if an instance had custom emojis which thankfully ours didn't, so users using this instance should be safe from the hack. lemmy.fmhy.ml now runs on v18.2rc which has fixed this vuln to be extra secure.
Sorry for the downtime and we will try to communicate the problem better in the future.
P.S. After somone mentioned exploding-heads on a recent post and why we are still federated with it, we took some time to view it carefully and decided it's an instance that systematically breaks our rules and to defederate with it. We will shortly post our defederation policy soon to give a better idea on how we will decide on which instance to defederate from moving forward.
that community got famous so naturally will have more posts now, can't do (or should) anything about it imo. Thanks for thinking about the instance though.
Nope, but they look fine to me. Can you share an example
fyi they have added themes now so you might find a look that suits your tastes better, if none of them do then you can raise an issue on thier github or add an external theme
lemmy.fmhy.ml now runs on v18.1! (and what it changes for you)
Announcement post: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/695504 Github release page: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/releases/tag/0.18.1
This version had some major backend optimizations, so lemmy now uses much less resources and should feel a whole lot more snappier. I also compiled a list of some more noticeable changes that have come with this version:
Features
- Captchas are added back.
- When you delete your comment, they are now permanently deleted from the database after 30 days (used to be just hidden before).
- Federated posts with sensitive images are not cached on local instance if not allowed by the local site. This means such images won't be stored on local servers and would instead rely on image URL.
- More sorting options for your feed (with some more like 'best' coming in future updates)
- Community sorting options in community tab.
- Retain Scroll Position of Home Feed when going back.
- Searching for a community for the first time on an instance now gives result much faster.
- Body posts text limit increased from 10k to 50k characters.
- When hovering, most buttons now show a focus border.
- If image size you're trying to upload is more than the allowed size on the instance, it now shows the proper reason of upload failure.
UI
- Base font size slightly decreased and better use of horizontal space for the home page, making overall UI feel much better.
- Themes are now added to lemmy, including litely-compact and darkly-compact for people who like their feeds more compact.
- Body Preview is removed from posts on home feed (there's now a button to expand a post).
- Only child comments now have colored borders.
- OP, mod and admin tags are now more prominent on comments.
- Private message and Create Post UX improved.
Fixes
- Kbin federation is now better so more posts from there should be visible
- Subscribe and Block button were sometimes not clickable on first load. This has been fixed.
- Upvoting sometimes caused the page to scroll to previous comment, this has been fixed.
- Video Embeds now work the same as other content.
- Search request being called twice on search page.
- Images no longer auto collapse when they were expanded and upvoted.
- Avatars aspect ratios fixed (no longer smooshed).
- A 300 comment limit is now imposed on posts to prevent a vulnerability abuse. This is temporary until the vulnerability is fixed.
This is also a good time to ask how people are feeling about the instance, and if you have any suggestions on things that can be improved. And once again, if you encounter any bugs after the update, please write them in the comments so we can fix them.
Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I've seen about it seems like a Mastodon/Twitter alternative? Lemmy really doesn't have anything to do with it since we can't even view mastodon posts here.
Oh we had censored some words like removed and removed since we got ad posts in the beginning of instance, it seems that had some negative effects. we'll remove those filters now, thanks for catching that error.
Saw my message just says removed lol, pretty good example of unintended consequences.
users won't want to use an instance that can't view content from threads (since that where's most content would be), but they'll be much more open to joining an open source instance that federated and views stuff from there as well.
One of my favorite communities here glad to see it grow
looking at the app it seems it's launched with just local content feed with a promise of being mastodon compatible in the future. I guess specifically to generate some unqiue content so people join.
I'm totally willing to discuss my thoughts since it seems I'm in the minority on this threads mania-
Once Threads launches it'll obviously have a lot more users than the whole fediverse combined, maybe even 90% of all users. Now let's say some instances with barely 1-2% users and small content feed defederate from it. Do people think a new user who does not care about things like open source or privacy will join the niche instance? No, people will go where the content is. Big social media giants will jump on fediverse bandwagon and instances who dont fetch their data will become extremely niche communtites (some might like that but it's not good for overall fediverse health).
Instead let's say we keep federated with threads, and make posts like how YSK: other instances don't track your data, other instances are free from corpo greed, other instances are run by normal people etc etc and make users aware and let them naturally migrate. Ideally, meta will bring the eyeballs which we can help to make fediverse as a whole grow.
imo it's naive to think that us 100k users defederating will put even a dent on threads. Insta tik-tok people will join the new trendy social media and generate content. The only solution is to make people constantly aware that better alternatives to view the same content exist.
Lemmy/Fediverse Terms Explained
Decentralization
Reddit is going downhill, Twitter is a mess, Youtube is making decisions that no one wants and Instagram/TikTok are creating algorithms to make you addicted to their content at the expense of your mental health. Before them there was myspace, digg, yahoo etc doing the exact same thing. The common thing is that the power on these platforms is 'centralized', meaning that a single company has the power to make any rule or change which the users will have to agree with if they want to continue using the platform.
'Decentralization' aims to return control to the people. Instead of one dominant entity governing the entire system, these platforms rely on smaller, user-operated nodes that communicate with one another. This way no single user or company has the power to make changes to the entire system, or to decide what is acceptable or not as each instance can have their own set of rules by which they run.
Federation
In simple terms, when two instances communicate and send data to each other, they are said to be 'federated'. An instance can thus federate with thousands of other instances to view and interact with the content hosted on them. You can even set up your own small personal instance and federate with every other instance to view data from the entire fediverse.
If an instance becomes unomoderated, hosts illegal content, has a bot problem or has just in general a vibe you don't agree with, an instance admin can 'defederate' from that instance, meaning you will no longer view posts from them nor can they view posts from you, effectively breaking any communication with them.
Fediverse
Fediverse, or 'federated universe' is the name given to the social media platforms that utilize this concept of federation and decentralization. While Lemmy and Mastodon are the most popular right now, there are many similar platforms. There is Peertube for example, which is a Youtube alternative, or Pixelfed, which is an instagram alternative. You can view a list of all such platforms on this site. Here's also a visual representation that might help.
Lemmy
Lemmy is the reddit alternative social media that is part of the fediverse. It works similar to reddit, in the sense that people can post stuff and other users can comment on these posts, higher upvoted posts rise to the top etc. The main difference is that communities (subreddits of lemmy) are hosted on different instances which can then all be viewed by a user from their home instance (provided they weren't defederated). So no single instance or admin has control over all communities, nor do the hosting costs skyrocket as ideally each instance will host some communities to balance the load.
Mastodon
The Twitter alternative and the first popular fediverse platform. it's pretty similar to Twitter so if you know how that works you pretty much know how Mastodon works too (apart from the decentralized aspect).
Kbin
While Lemmy and kbin are spoken of together nowadays, kbin is actually more of a hybrid between lemmy and mastodon. While you can use kbin just as a lemmy alternative with a different skin, it is also a microblogging site. This means that you can follow individual users, and people looking at your 'timeline' can even view posts you upvoted, similar to twitter.
Right now there is no way to interact with mastodon users through lemmy, but Kbin can view content from both. So it's upto you which kind of platform feels better to you.
Edit: Small correction but Mastodon can view lemmy content as well, so it's just lemmy who's unable to fetch mastodon content right now.
ActivityPub
ActivityPub is the protocol on which the entire fediverse runs. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and subscribing to content. All you need to know is that if a platform is part of the fediverse, then it must be using ActivityPub protocol.
FOSS
Free and Open Source Software. It's a more general term but thought it's relevant enough to be added since a lot of people might not have heard of it. FOSS applications are not only free but make their source code public, which means anyone can view exactly how each part of the site works and to check if nothing malicious is added. People can even modify this code to make changes and make the application better. Here's the source code for lemmy for anyone interested.
Aside from the terms I'll also try to answer some questions I've seen asked frequently:
> Q: How is this entire thing monetized? > > A: In short, donations. Decentralization helps by making the hosting costs manageable for a single instance, so donating even a little bit to your home instance can help them cover a large portion of their operating costs.
>Q: What Instance should I join? > >A: While I wish I could say join any one of them, in reality, each instance has a different set of rules and philosophy on which they operate. Some can be heavy in their moderation, trying to curate a very specific feed, while others are much more liberal, letting users have more free control. My advice to someone new would be to make an account on any instance just to get a feel for how everything works and if you like the concept of Lemmy. Once you've grasped how things work, then choose an instance to be your main home.
>Q: Why do I see different amount of upvotes and comments on different instances? > >A: If the comment is new, it can take some time to sync and be visible on other instances in general. However, remeber that you can't see upvotes and comments from users your instance has not federated with. So if your home instance has not federated with some instances, the upvotes and comments from users of that instance won't be visible to you.
>Q: How do I discover new Communities to join? > >A: I made a specific post just for this question.
>Q: Are there any mobile apps for lemmy?
>A: Yes, a lot of them infact. Here's a megathread that's being kept updated with all current apps.
>Q: I signed up on an instance, now what? > >A: You should see 3 tabs at the top, namely subscribed local and All. Subscribed will give you the feed from the communities you've subscribed to, local will show you communities hosted on your home instance and all will give feed from all the communities from every instance you are federated with. all is basically the r/all of lemmy. That's a good place to start browsing to discover new communities and to interact with people from other instances.
>Q: My feed looks different on my instance compared to another instance even though we haven't defederated from anyone? > >**A:**The way federation works on lemmy is after someone searches and subcribes to a community for the first time from another instance, only then is the information about an instance fetched. >This is done this way to prevent flooding and overloading the local instance with every single other instance at once (and to not waste bandwidth connecing with spam intances). So if you set up your own personal instance, you’ll need to search interesting communities once yourself to view them later (or set up a script to do something like it).
These are the main points I thought a new user might find useful. If someone has anything they wish to be added, comment below and I'll update it with relevant information.