fuser

joined 2 years ago
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[–] fuser@quex.cc 1 points 2 years ago

I realize how stupid I'll sound admitting this, but I think the problem was that I wasn't selecting the "community" in the pulldown, so the submit button wasn't enabled.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

yes, good suggestion, thank you - although before I do I'm going to spend a bit of time to see if I can isolate the problem - I just tested it from a mobile device and the local PC browser and it's working now. I used the exact same url, text and everything to create the post and I didn't change anything - didn't reboot, didn't even restart the browser. Except for the fact that it's intermittent, it looks like some kind of js or css problem, but I need to replicate it and if I do that, I'll probably be able to figure it out.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 9 points 2 years ago

I guess it's a good thing that reddit's nag to install their android app instead of allowing the browser was so annoying that I've never used reddit on my phone. I've already wasted enough time scrolling recycled memes and karma famers, frankly.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is the first time I have quite literally laughed out loud on Lemmy. Well played, as they say :)

[–] fuser@quex.cc 3 points 2 years ago

well, it was a pleasure to reminisce a little and it's refreshing to see the enthusiasm for wresting control away from the conglomerates - the degree to which the internet has been commercialized, monetized and basically stolen from us along with our personal information, political process and practically anything else they could corrupt is dismaying to an old man, I gotta tell ya. Please do your utmost to fix it!

[–] fuser@quex.cc 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hi there - thanks for posting. I’m serving lemmy (ansible install) on nginx from Ubuntu 22.04 and I’m seeing this weird problem sometimes where the submit button is not enabled on the “create post” form. Sometimes it works but then it inexplicably stubbornly refuses to - I am not seeing any apparent error show up in the console, nothing in the lemmy or nginx logs (naturally, because the HTML form isn’t submitting to the server because the submit button's disabled). Happens in different browsers, tried restarting nginx, rebooting, nothing seems to fix it. Now, my addled brain does recall seeing something about Ubuntu 22.04 having some issues with Lemmy and perhaps that’s what I’m seeing - it’s just weird and I’ve never seen a web app do this before - any ideas? The url is quex.cc and you’re welcome to test there if you like, but I'm really just looking for any suggestions for investigation before I start thinking about moving to a different OS.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm thinking about how to explain what Usenet was like in the late 90s. Before Usenet there were dialup BBS services (bulletin boards). That was a little bit like Lemmy - the BBS systems were a common software package tied together by a sort of dial-up federation. The original BBS systems I used were in the 1980s and they relied on 2 meter FM to transmit the BBS info locally and HF SSB to transfer it globally using 300 baud packet radio (developed by hams) - there wasn't much on it except other hams and some universities, but then dial up internet service came along in the mid 1990s - it was pretty tedious because you had to tie up your landline, which back then was the only phone you had. Fuck I feel old saying all this!

Anyway, along with dial up came usenet, which was normally carried by your internet service provider. Newsgroups in Usenet were similar to communities in Lemmy, although they were global, not local to the instance. I believe you could just create alt.whateveryouwant and it would propagate to all usenet servers - this meant that newsgroups with really offensive names was created all the time. There were also pretty significant problems with child porn being posted on usenet. Since you authenticated via your ISP, usenet was somewhat anonymous and decentralized but of course your IP address was in the public usenet headers, so not really. Posting on usenet was an invitation for people to hack you and the majority of people weren't even running a firewall back then - the cable company would run the service, stick a modem on your desk and plug in your PC directly to the internet with nothing in between. It was completely ridiculous, looking back.

The tone on usenet was mostly civil although "flame wars" were common and there wasn't any moderation at all. Usenet presented stuff within the newsgroup in threads, just like an email client - in fact you usually used your email client to read usenet - they were designed to do both. The internet (which was called "the information super-highway at first) was so new that hardly anybody really understood how it worked under the hood. The newsgroups tended to be an area of interest or hobby (very similar to Lemmy communities) and a set of regulars usually dominated them. I don't think they were moderated in any way, I don't remember if the person who created the usenet group had any authority over it or not. but I'm pretty sure that nobody could remove posts or ban users. You would have to complain to the originating ISP (also in the headers) to get people banned - and they would have to be doing something really bad or illegal for the ISP to take any notice.

Anyway that's my potted history - I hope I didn't bore you to tears or come of like some misty eyed old fart, because I'm definitely not misty-eyed about those days, although usenet would have been a good decentralized solution if it had been built into a proper public social media platform instead of being allowed to die slowly.

Decentralizing social media is definitely the way to go and I hope you find joy and success in the fediverse.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 8 points 2 years ago

Lemmy is a very promising foundation - I think more accessible than Mastodon, which also has a great community but the way posts are organized in Lemmy seems more intuitive - although the process to add a community in Lemmy (searching the URL) is kinda clunky and the UI has some issues, we can knock the burrs of the software easily enough -- but just based on seeing the uptake from Reddit, the basic idea of Lemmy seems like it could be the home run in terms of getting people (at least the smart ones) out of corporate-run social media sites. This is very different to the twitter -> Mastodon migration which was pretty chaotic - Lemmy seems (somewhat ironically) well-organized in comparison.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 6 points 2 years ago

Reddit's main attraction for me was RPAN, which of course they ditched. I hope to see a day when musicians can play live on the fediverse. I don't know how, but it sure would be cool.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Glad to hear it - decentralization of social media is imperative. Given the absolute disaster that corporate interests have visited upon us, we would have been better served by developing and enhancing Usenet - can you imagine how good it would be if we'd been at this since the '90s? That's what the fediverse reminds me of today and it's only gonna get better.

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