#tallship — Public Fediverse posts

@tubetime @FunkyBob

That was a great video. Thanks @Tube🍂Time! I found myself continually unforgivably, dismissively muttering, "So what? So what? So what?" (Recalling that I still have 3 tube testing machines) until you got to the ESD and especially EMP - one might wonder why much of our defense industries settled entirely on LSI, then VLSI, etc., etc., instead of backup primary systems incorporating this "In between" manufacturing technology that you pointed out, which would certainly have benefited from advances in microminiaturization just the same - mostly, anyway.

But then there's that dialog that for some reason just came to me from "White Squall" where the Captain of the Cuban warship smashes the binnacle compass with his rifle butt and Jeff Bridges exclaims in Spanish, "Real sailors need only the stars overhead to navigate".

That was a really kewl project you built. How do you source the parts nowadays for things like nuvistors? There's very few Electronics surplus/liquidator type stores out there anymore.

I'm still trying to suss out whether Chister the Molister in the pic below is a villainous deer in the headlights of having his superspy cover blown, or if he's the inspiration for that other cartoon character of scandalous nature.

#tallship #nuvistor

16.0 Alpha 1 has arrived...

People ask me how come I often don't know these things... It's simple really. I'm on kernel-generic-7.2.4-x86_64-1 running #Slackware -current and don't actually bother to look up from the work I'm doing cause 16 is just a distro's version number, but 7.2.4 is a kernel. Officially, Slackware 16.0 Alpha is available w/the Linux huge 6.18.x kernel while 7.2.4 is in /testing.

Me, I'm just rolling along in production as I have been for close to 30 years now w/ Slackware - current looking back on the next upcoming release like it's something from yesterday lolz.

I do the same thing on #Debian (14/Testing/Forky) I just upgraded my kernel to 7.1.12+deb14-amd64 - so I'm not running that far behind the ultra-bleeding edge of Slackware, or what Arch and Gentoo users are either.

Anyway, you're going to hear more about the upcoming Slackware 16 release as the weeks go on and if there's one thing I can advise you of it's don't get caught up in the guessing game bullshit - Patrick will release it matter-of-factly w/o any fanfare and pretty much all bets will be wrong. The most you can do is to ask, "Is it soup yet?".

So here's the thread, and Patrick's response to the OP (who's running 7.3-RC1)

#tallship #FOSS #Linux #distros
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People get the wrong idea when I relate my experience of living off-grid, miles away from other humans, deep in the wilderness of the mountains in Humboldt, California.

Somehow, it just doesn't click that no, there's no roads Trails, and things resembling road like passages cut by people with properties using their own tractors and excavators, sure. You dare not go anywhere farther than you wish to hike unless you bring a chainsaw with you; failure to do so means you might not be driving back after a couple of trees decide to fell themselves across the path.

Food, the mornings were fun and interesting. I would start by filling the firebox in my Stanley cooker with Doug fir, oak, and madrone. It takes a good 20 minutes or so before the kettle begins to billow steam, a few minutes after that it's boiling - during that time you've been grinding the coffee beans by hand with the big circular crank on the wall-mounted grinder. Then you pour the boiling water into the coffee press and turn your attention to breakfast sizzling away in the video below.

You'll probably need to add more wood to the firebox, it's not a very efficient stove the furnace in the main room, but it does burn hot enough to turn all that iron into a giant griddle - if you're really adventurous you can try to bake a cake in the oven. It's an art to keep the oven consistently at the desired temperature, and... that's part of the fun too.

So what else were you really going to do in the hour and a half it took to make breakfast? Next? We tend to the garden, then later we travel about bucking up logs and felling trees for the coming winter.

#tallship #off_grid #homesteading #Humboldt #wildnerness

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@tedu

Yup. And some time ago too, I might add. The ability to take what works so well and complicate it to the point of absurdity never ceases to amaze.

#Margaret_Hamilton put two men on the moon with 4K of memory. 8K if you're counting the additional RAM on the Columbia's #AGC.

Well if you ever figure out how to lookup your NIC-HANDLE, as they're officially called (or rather, were), I'm BT-74 👋🤠

Yeah, that goes back to the days of "Direct Assignment" when #SRI also operated under the auspices of NIC.DDN.MIL.

Welcome to the club of unhappilly disenfranchised #NIC_handles 😥

#tallship #Apollo #software_engineer #NIC #NetSol #WHOIS

Backport Wisdom

"The reason is that they don’t buy the IBM answer as the only answer. The saying in the US is “nobody ever got fired for picking IBM.” That’s not a saying in Europe."
~Doug Michels, January 1987

#tallship #Microtimes #SCO #Logica #IBM #XENIX

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@adam @silverpill

Hey Adam :)

I haven't paid much attention lately (no need, really), but some time ago, specifically with respect to China, a couple of things were already facts of life, even in extremely rural areas, due to government mandate

1. ) The Wechat app is used to buy candy and cigarettes at the store and access other banking functions (which can be confiscated or suspended) as well as turning in your elementary school homework assignments.
2. ) Surveillance cameras were so ubiquitous that 95% plus of the population could be identified via facial recognition and located within 10 minutes anywhere in the entire country.

"make it impossible to interact online without your every move being tied back to your IRL identity by law enforcement"

Socialist dystopias count this goal among their basic tenants.

Capitalist market societies highly desire this too, as such is the nature of any government run amok, but also because of commercial pressures.

"make it impossible to circumvent DRM or ads"

In the free market economies of the world, commercial interests (in the name of protecting digital rights of producers) apply extreme pressure for governmental regulation to guarantee their collection of monies and force delivery of programmatic consumerism.

Authoritarian governments will also seek to quantify any consumption of tangible products (enforcing the collection of government revenue and control the freedom of personal movement) and the ability to deliver any messaging/notifications at anytime unabated.

Desired results being arguably congruent, motivations are divergent in theory, although not necessarily in practice.

Some company proposes a solution

The government itself is the genesis for this in socialist authoritarian dystopias.

In capitalist economies of (to whatever debatable extent) free societies, this is exactly how it works; the classic example being VHS vs Beta, Soundblaster 16 CD & audio vs competing coalitions and extending to Blu-ray, DVD, etc., first the highly coveted "MPC" certification of hardware, with manufacturers eventually coalescing around one market solution that appears to be the most viable regarding adoption by the consumer market.

This usually, but not always, results in the superior candidates evolving into industry wide adoption - the evolution is slow, can be clumsy, and full of compromise (not unlike FOSS innovation and maturation).

Authoritarian despotism is much more efficient in choosing, and deploying such technological solutions (but usually not as effective in developing), and can generally be introduced into the target market rather immediately (although it can also be prone to sucking really badly). Failures can be replaced by edict almost immediately, following the development of replacement alternatives, upgrades, or improvements, the decisions for which are much less dependant upon target consumer preference.

and use this hardware to provide secure attestations of

For whatever, actually :p

I always called it the choke-chip, but IIRC the Clinton administration and manufacturer consortiums called it the V-Chip. Perhaps the first foray into what eventually spitballed into DRM, but for reasons stated as being different and a functionally differentiated market as well.

the tech giants invent a new protocol (I'll call it EvilTP), which is proprietary and a trade secret. It is managed by a consortium which only provides documentation on the protocol to companies that pay a massive licensing fee and sign NDAs.

Tangent: Okay till now I've interpreted your choke-chip (Evil TP) to be driven by mostly market based pressures. At least primarily so. One could also consider how authoritarian socialist economies might evolve toward your consideration of consumer control & surveillance - in both of these economic models, I would suggest that there are intensely incentivized tendencies to converge toward the same result, irrespective of any stated reasonings (all governments are at their cores, self-serving liars).

Although the reasonings may differ, the end goal product remains quite similar - with or without admission, or perhaps not even by initial desire of design. It just ends up nearly the same.

For example, on the following article I cover a bit of the specific chronologies of space exploration between these two distinctly different economic models, and humorously, my take on how effective this convergence ended up.

https://public.mitra.social/post/018edf1c-91ce-41dd-942a-8ce33d9e28d8

I'll see if I can't locate the post on the home server where it renders much more prettified as I intended, the images aren't inline in my current client as I would like them to be. I'll try and post that URL as a follow up to this thread. There's a bonus at the very end after I've finished ridiculing the Baran that I think you might appreciate (hint: she's one of my life's superhero inspirations).

I mean, just look at all that bird guano, those puppies are ready to be rolled out onto the launch pad and fueled up for launch lolz. 👋🤪 🚀

But I digress.

You effectively suggest that to avoid antitrust quagmires, this consortium would themselves through strong NDAs, and commiserating with each other as well as throwing juicy bones to the governments of capitalist, market based economies - but no it doesn't have to be that way as I mentioned above with the Wechat App in China. The Industrial surveillance complex isn't tethered to capitalistic or Marxist/Maoist systems with any sort of exclusivity. It's a beast all its own that in one case, brings down the government to bear in fake acquiescence, and in the other, is harnessed from the outset as a weapon against individuals by the government itself, respectively.

And I don't think that in the first case that you necessarily need to protect proprietary software and manufacturing by agreement (Microsoft shows no one their core code, ever). I think that Faceplant and InstaSpam are great examples of how one might compell the subjugated chattel to capitulate their privacy all too voluntarily. With zeal even! Ah those mighty endorphins that perpetuate and exploit that addictive personality!

So I'm not discounting what you're cogitating over at all, but I do have a couple of questions.

This secure attestation can't be sent over ordinary HTTP, or it could be reverse engineered and faked.

- a.) What about browser based blockchain operations and transactions over non-custodial wallets? You raise some serious alarms over financial integrity in that one aspect alone, and online banking too.
- b.) Are you suggesting that engaging via browser with one's Peergos account, which is hardened with post quantum encryption and audited, is as insecure as the suggestion of reverse engineering that you posed?

In the larger scheme of things however, I want to share my apprehensions and concerns for the end point of the conversation itself. I'm happy in a kornshell via an SSH session on my old 3270 PC-AT box with a burnt amberchrome monitor and an 8 bit NE-1000 ISA NIC - as long as I've got my trusty old authentic IBM tactile click keyboard keeping the neighbors awake, but on any contemporary Intel based workstation, and thanks to the MIT cuck license, we're ALWAYS running Minix too. You can't touch it. You can't feel it. But it's there in the chipset happily doing whatever it's doing, operating under that NDA you brought up (you and I have discussed licensing philosophy before).

In furtherance of your concerns over blocking free Internet commerce, here's how one socialist dystopian solution was implemented in Merry Olde England...

I'm hoping this markdown quoting code works here (copypasta from a previous chat discussion where I consulted Grok for clarifications):

### Is Radio Garden Blocked in the UK?

Yes, **Radio Garden** is currently restricted for UK users, limiting access to UK-based radio stations only. This restriction prevents UK listeners from accessing international radio stations through the platform, a change that began in **late September/early October 2022** and has been extended indefinitely.

### Nature of the Restrictions

The restrictions on Radio Garden in the UK are **geoblocking measures** that prevent users with UK IP addresses from streaming non-UK radio stations. When attempting to access international stations, users see a message stating, **"Stations outside the UK temporarily unavailable"** (noted as early as October 2022). Additionally, most **BBC Radio stations** were removed from the platform, except for the **BBC World Service**. In January 2023, Radio Garden updated its announcement to clarify that these restrictions, initially described as temporary, would continue **indefinitely due to copyright and neighboring rights issues** requiring clarification.

The geoblocking is enforced through the platform’s **API**, specifically via the `https://radio.garden/api/geo` URL, which detects a user’s location and restricts access accordingly. Users have reported workarounds, such as using browser extensions like **uBlock Origin** to block this API or employing **VPNs** to mask their IP address and access international stations.

That's an example of instilling fear into companies to a degree of uncertainty where they express fealty to their Lord and Master. Whether the threat is real or perceived, the net effect is the disenfranchisement of presumably an entire nation of people.

Hang on, I'mma fro up in my mouf a little bit here 🤮

Okay better now. I don't need to go into the myriad ways in which a government, or rather, peering points at the behest and direction of government, can choke off any targeted packet flow, but I will mention that patent law is extremely powerful - the type of fear you would want to instill could merely be akin to that of cross-pollination of GMO based corn 🌽 planted in your neighbors field the previous year, the genetics 🧬 of which show up in samples of your harvest this year - oopsies!

You could literally go to jail in that scenario, although Monsanto would prefer you just breakout your checkbook.

So I'll sum up a bit coz this wasn't supposed to become a diatribe (apologies)...

With #FOSS, there is freedom, and I'm not going to suggest that those who exercise their inalienable rights and freedoms won't end up in prison like the Falun Gong in live organ transplant harvesting farms; or Jimmy Lai, who to my knowledge, is still in solitary confinement; or a little old gray haired Londoner lady who some Bobby observed on a sidewalk and invoked England's thought police laws because the cop claims she was praying to her God.

There will always be those of us who insist upon the personal preference of using almost exclusively FOSS based software, and those of us (the subjugated chattel) that will gladly acquiesce to selling their souls for that tickle of dopamine. The entire problem to be solved, if it can be, is to educate enough people to become the critical mass that categorically rejects being subsumed by the diabolical progenitors of #EvilTP...

If your corn polin flies into my cornfield it's my fucking polin, bitches!

Okay hey I went ahead and dug up that article at the source HERE it is

Enjoy :)

#tallship #stuffs #DRM #technological_convergence

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Have you ever received an HTTP 418 status code while browsing? If so, it may be because you were trying to put a square peg in a round hole, or vice versa.

Indeed, RFC 2324 Lays out the specification, and Oopsies! It turns out that an April Fools joke was canonized, albeit with some utility. Turns out, even if someone's not trying to pull your leg, by telling you "I'm a Teapot", it's likely you're gently being encouraged to look for a resource other than the way in which you're asking.

For example, you ask for a coffeemaker and receive the error, HTTP 418 (I'm a Teapot). It's certainly nicer that a 404 and yet indicates that there is content where the page you've just asked for exists.

This is in some ways a concern that many have dug their heels in over, clinging as intransigent as ever when it comes to #tmpfs discussions beginning twelve years ago on the #Debian Dev list.

Often, in practice, cron is used to clean out unneeded clutter in /tmp or /var/tmp, as well as other methods. An issue I have is with the systemd defaults including /var/tmp in tmpfs on some implementations because temporary files here are intended to be persistent across reboots.

By default, systemd cleans out files in /var/tmp by default after 30 days, and this can be problematic, while the default is 10 days for /tmp. /var/run and /var/lock are also Incorporated - But I digress.

After well over a decade, about half of the major Linux distros have migrated to tmpfs: Arch, Fedora, and some versions of SuSE number among the most familiar. Others have not: Redhat, SLES, and other "Enterprise" focused distros, along with Debian, ... Until just recently, when much to my surprise during routine updates I noticed the switch to tmpfs has now occurred.

w00t 🤘🤠🤘

With respect to Slackware, does it use the traditional disk based method or the RAM based tmpfs? The answer to that of course, is "Yes, of course, it absolutely does!"

"Which one did you say?" I actually didn't, lolz. As is usually the case with Slackware (and Arch and Gentoo), it's really however you want it!

In Slackware, the implementation is much more elegant however. You simply mount /tmp on a ramdisk (again, leave /var/tmp alone - these files are intended to be persistent across reboots, and for possibly much, much longer than a mere 30 days).

Okay so back to Debian. If you're one of those fraidy cats that doesn't believe, or rather, isn't competent or confident enough to run Enterprise production machines on rolling distros, I've got good news for you! You won't be needing to concern yourself with this until Debian 13 is officially released or you're forced to upgrade to it in the next few years. Lucky you!

For the rest of us however, already running #Trixie, it has indeed arrived. Welcome! Here's the problems...

You may, depending on what daemons you run in production, want to tweak your defaults. i.e., 10 days may be less than appropriate for your company's needs. Remember, #cron is your friend. It's also why Slackware's approach was referred to as elegant, because you have to take into account what it is you want or need before you implement it.

For example, since you already know that you don't want temp files to survive reboots in /tmp, there's really nothing faster than disk space residing in RAM anyway.

On the other hand, Poettering doesn't make up the rules for the developers of this world or sysadmins. If you're not careful you can wind up right back on a spinning disk platter again, since the default for #systemd is to allocate 50‰ of your RAM for tmpfs, if you don't have ample memory, you go to SWAP.

Oh, the irony :p

When you're in an HA environment where your UNIX boxes have uptimes exceeding 800+ days, and the only reason to reboot is to install a new kernel, Poettering's 30 day default storage for tempfiles in /var/tmp, or for that matter, a default for files in /var/lock or /var/run, ... is absolutely absurd - this is why we have cron and shell scripts (and Perl/Python).

tl;dr: This is why I started of with that amusing simile about HTTP 418, because if you just trust systemd to hold your hand, you just may find that one of your mission critical Enterprise services informs you that it's been told it's a #Teapot 🫖

That's not a good thing when 5, 500, or 50,000 people expect their shit to just work without ever having to know your name as the person who makes that happen for them.

Disk based storage is the safe bet; that's why #Redhat still does it that way. But it's certainly not the most performant, and requires the steady fingers of a competent systems administrator for the care and feeding of the tmp file systems - otherwise, like so many n00bs have discovered (in the days when hard drives didn't exceed a Gigabyte in capacity), you may wake up one day to find that you've hammered your filesystem, everything is running, but nothing is doing anything it's supposed to be doing - now, rm and du have become your best friends until the moment you discover that rotating your log files and keeping /tmp clean is actually part of your job...

Even as a casual workstation user on your personal laptop. It's your job.

For those interested, here's an example of the systemd defaults for tmps should you wisely consider the beneficial consequences of responsible planning for managing the size of your growing tempfile directories, from the Arch Wiki:

/etc/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf
# see tmpfiles.d(5)
# always enable /tmp directory cleaning
D! /tmp 1777 root root 0

# remove files in /var/tmp older than 10 days
D /var/tmp 1777 root root 10d

# namespace mountpoints (PrivateTmp=yes) are excluded from removal
x /tmp/systemd-private-*
x /var/tmp/systemd-private-*
X /tmp/systemd-private-*/tmp
X /var/tmp/systemd-private-*/tmp

Umm... 10 days, /var/tmp? IMNSHO, that's maybe just a tad (way more than a tad) aggressive.

Although I've so far only alluded to it, I actually do recommend that you consider removing /var/tmp from any cleanup schedule too, instead using cron and shell scripts, along with a little proactive monitoring to keep that part of your tempfile systems clean.

And remember: "You may be short, and you may be stout, but unless it's April 1st, don't let anyone call you a Teapot." 🫖

For further reading you can checkout the [LWN article here] (https://lwn.net/Articles/975565/?ref=news.itsfoss.com).

As always, feel free to boost and share this with others (sharing is love), and I'm always interested in hearing your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

I hope that helps. All the best!

#tallship #FOSS #Linux #Slackware #Arch #Gentoo #SuSE #Fedora

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@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev

Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.

No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?

Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.

No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.

The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.

Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.

True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.

With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.

Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.

In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when they're on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.

The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".

That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.

masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.

Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.

Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.

There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.

I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.

Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!

Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?

In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.

My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.

The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.

I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.

And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him [paraphrased, of course]: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.

Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.

I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.

They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)

#tallship #FOSS

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First discovered in 2002, paleontologist draw comparisons of #Dinocephalosaurus_orientalis with other aquatic species having no modern day analogs - why did the entire family of #Tanystropheidae or the genera exhibiting these morphological functionalities not continue?

Perhaps just as interesting is the convergent evolution (especially with respect to their necks) between that of Dinocephalosaurus and members of the Tanystropheus genus. A close resemblance on the surface, yet Dinocephalosaurus orientalis was strictly an aquatic species.

I've included an artists reconstructive rendition of Tanystropheus longobardicus for comparison between the two, but note that Dinocephalosaurus had four flipper-like feet of the same size, and unable to exist, or at least thrive in a terrestrial environment, where Tanystropheus exhibited larger feet in the rear - not unlike your hands being smaller than your feet.

And yes, as Yuki (@youronlyone) offers up as a contemplative inference, the whole "Dragon" and "Loch Ness Monster" corollaries are uncanny, raising questions as to why would pre-industrial societies actually have such fables, or in the case of the latter, claims of sightings, if not rooted in some previous observation by humans?

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/23/world/dragon-fossil-240-million-years-old-intl-scli-scn/index.html

Dinocephalosaurus was extant from the late #Paleozoic (late Permian period) through the early #Mesozoic (early Triassic period) eras.

#tallship #Dinocephalosaurus #Triassic #Tanystropheus #Tanystropheus_longobardicus h/t to @youronlyone for bringing the latest news on this matter to me - I'm always fascinated with things related to #marine_biology - especially #Opisthobranchia

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RE: https://c.im/users/youronlyone/statuses/111985758251416307

@youronlyone

Questions always follow after such, 'salty talk', or 'nautical nomenclature', or in #Star_Trek terms, #technobabble.

What's the difference between a mizzen topgallant sail and a main royal staysail? Just a few rules is all it takes, but in today's world, one need only avail themselves of the basic Marconi rig on a single masted sloop. There's a mainsail (the big triangular one aft of the mast), and a jib, or foresail. Typically, when speaking about a jib (the one forward of the mast), people will typically categorize them into about three classes:

• a #Genoa (big one - low wind conditions)
• a #Jenny (also called a #working_jib for most wind conditions)
• a #Storm_jib - smallish, for reduced sail area in high and gale force winds.

If you're rigged to run one jib, you're a #sloop; two, and you're #cutter rigged.

tl;dr: Unlike elections, rigging is a good thing. Without standing rigging you have nothing to hold your masts up in place and they'll just snap or fall over. Without running rigging you have no way to control your sails, hoist them up, or catch the wind.

So when it comes to sailboats, it's a very good thing that they're rigged :p

#tallship #silly #rigging

About twenty five years ago, we laid out the keels for a new adventure - The Twin Brigantine project, in the parking lot of the #Los_Angeles_Maritime_Institute, next to the #Los_Angeles_Maritime_Museum, in the old ferry building that was, along with a pontoon bridge, obviated by completion of the #Vincent_Thomas_Bridge connecting the mainland to #Terminal_Island.

Up until that time, #LAMI operated and sailed the 70' gaff-rigged topsail schooner, Swift of Ipswitch (previously James Cagney's personal yacht) for it's youth sailing program. It took a few years to complete the Irving and Exy Johnson, sister Brigantine vessels built and outfitted by dozens of volunteers over the duration of the program. At some point, another gaff-rigged schooner was borrowed and enlisted, the136' Bill of Rights filling the need for accommodations of a youth sailing program that had greatly expanded over time, with many ups and downs, achievements and disappointments, but building two square rigger tall ships for and by a non-profit organization dedicated to youth educational programs for the community, a truly novel pursuit, eventually came to a close as a great success.

This photo shows the 113' brigantine Irving Johnson, on 23 March 2005, and which, after less than three years of service, she had run hard aground on a sandbar following several storms that affected local charts, leaving them partially obsolete - in short, on her way into the Channel Islands harbor, well... sadly, the pic speaks for itself.

Another year and two million dollars later to repair structural damages and flooding, the #Irving_Johnson once again joined her sister ship, #Exy_Johnson, in the pursuit of education as #school_ships, something that Irving and his wife Exy (Electa), following no less than 7 circumnavigations together, pioneered and championed in the 20th century aboard their three successive sailing ships - a #schooner, a #brigantine, and a #ketch - each named the #Yankee.

#tallship #youth_sailing #education

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This image or file is a work of a United States Coast Guard service personnel or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image or file is in the public domain (17 U.S.C. § 101 and § 105, USCG main privacy policy)

I could compare the price per Grade A Large eggs between the dozen and the 36 pack egg cartons to see which one is the cheapest - That's basic Algebra, that every fricken' housewife has leveraged since the dawn of time...

WTF, Chuck?

Tell me folks, who were, have been, and likely are still the mathematicians in the average family?

https://toobnix.org/w/xbuq13ajunyUWSig417tLy

#https://toobnix.org/w/xbuq13ajunyUWSig417tLy

🤘 💀 🤘

I hope that helps!

#tallship #stuffs The cold, hard, truths #Muahahahaha

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@graciegato and @dancinyogi

You should give the soundtrack a good listen too - it's marvelous!

I never saw the movie, but learned the whole story from my parents who used to play that album all the time.

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=QNIl3Jm51Uo&local=true

#tallship #zorba

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@spencer @Laurien

Oh my! 🤘😎🤘

What a delightfully inspiring affirmation that 2023 is awesome!

Thank you for sharing, my friends!

#tallship #happy_new_year #2023 #new_year #inspiration #Bowl_after_Bowl #heavy_metal_maiden #Iron_Maiden

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@LRyan_Storms

Awesome!

Thank you for fixing that branding and i must also apologize for not previously having formally welcomed you to the #Fediverse...

Welcome, happy New Year, and may your be year be full of new friends, in health and happiness, for the coming months, and beyond 🎈 🥳🎉

#tallship #FOSS #new_year

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Chill factor... Hello #2023, we'll see you soon because it's almost...

Happy New Year! 🎊👯‍♀️🪅💃🥳🎉🎈

Wishing all the very best, in #health and #happiness, to everyone in the coming #new_year and beyond.

#tallship #FOSS #Fediverse #Calckey

@Saltybretzel

That's really phenomenal work!

The Darth Vader portrait is about as ominous as I've ever seen, but...

Seriously, Mark Hamill was never that pretty lolz.

Really great portraiture. Truly.

#tallship #Enterprise #NCC_1701 #Romulans

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