h3ndrik

Hmm, if you have a home network anyways... Maybe you can run AdGuard/PiHole there. I've switched to blocky.

I made it listen externally and just configure it in the network settings of my devices to override the automatic DNS server. That way I don't need to install sth like AdAway on all of my laptops and phones, because I have one central instance.

Is there anything else that blocks video ads? I've never found anything except for uBlock which actually works. And I've recently learned that you can enable developer mode in Firefox based browsers on Android and install all the Plugins they don't like you to use on mobile. Like SponsorBlock etc.

Ja, das ist ein populärer Wunsch von Faschos, extrem Religiösen, Incels - und/oder Menschen die nix können oder zu bieten haben, aber noch wen unter sich in der Hierarchie sehen wollen...

Sollen die doch in irgend ein Kalifat oder islamistisches Land mit Scharia ziehen? Gibt's doch? Ich würd dann den hier freiwerdenden Wohnraum den armen Frauen von dort anbieten.... Und apropos: Ich glaube z.B. Afghanistan ist auch nicht in der EU, da könnten die gleich mehreres auf einmal bekommen von dem was sie sonst noch so wollen.

Lemmings

You mentioned exactly the two ROMs I'm currently using. GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. And LineageOS for microG on my Samsung tablet. I'm really happy with both of them.

I don't use that many proprietary tech so there is little issues for me. My car only has regular old plain bluetooth, so I wouldn't know. And instead of some add-on firewall/dns adblocker solutions, I'm just using the ~~Librewolf~~ Mull browser with the uBlock plugin.

Naja, Einfuhrumsatzsteuer muss man ja seit einiger Zeit schonmal abdrücken. Plus 6€ wenn DHL das übernimmt.

I think you're doing it wrong. There are lots of people on Mastodon.

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

If you want Linux on your phone. But Android is probably easier to use. Something like LineageOS or /e/ works pretty well. I'm not sure what kind of phone to recommend for that.

It depends on the exact specs of your old laptop. Especially the amount of RAM and VRAM on the graphics card. It's probably not enough to run any reasonably smart LLM aside from maybe Microsoft's small "phi" model.

So unless it's a gaming machine and has 6GB+ of VRAM, the graphics card will probably not help at all. Without, it's going to be slow. I recommend projects that are based on llama.cpp or use it as a backend, for that kind of computers. It's the best/fastest way to do inference on slow computers and CPUs.

Furthermore you could use online-services or rent a cloud computer with a beefy graphics card by the hour (or minute.)

Hmm, I get you. But I don't think that's what this discussion is about. I'm more concerned with the technical difficulties / impossibilities / inconsistencies with the approach. Less so if it should replace the current solution or a possible upgrade path. That's something to worry about later. It's more like I don't think it's going to work properly. It's more combining the disadvantages of two different approaches.

But I'm happy if someone goes ahead and does a better approach. I also see the shortcomings of the current solution. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

I really agree with your premise. Less responsibility on the server means less depending on it. We'd gain independence, could move accounts and do some more nuanced things. But I really think the less your own server or relay does, the more you're prone to suffer from network outages, other servers becoming unavailable etc. So you'd need to duplicate everything no matter what to compensate for that. And you introduce lots of additional traffic by fetching all the hashtags from everywhere. Or you'd end up in the same situation as before where they're subject of availability on your instance or perspective on the network.

Plus you want unsubscribed old posts showing up and a perspective that's independant of the chosen instance. So you basically need to replicate everything everywhere. And this introduces additional complexity and resource usage and your goal was to reduce that. (And federation becomes just an inconvenience and additional unnecessary work at that point.)

It's not that it's technically difficult. We could do that. And you're right by pointing at XMPP and Movim and stuff. But that also doesn't solve most of the issues you outlined in your initial post. It's even more narrow in how you rely on your own server and shaping your perspective on the whole network.

And sometimes this is what we want. People do dedicated instances to a topic. For example a Mastodon server for IT and tech people. Of course you want IT related stuff to show up on your main page. And we sometimes want moderation and a place to have civilized discussions. Not a place of anarchy and shitposting like on 4chan. That requires some form of hierarchy or democracy. And at the end of the day the server operators are responsible for what content is shared (publicly) via their infrastructure...

So I'd say you can't achieve all your goals with ActivityPub. You need to think bigger. Maybe do away with federation altogether. Since federation is all about having different instances with a different focus and perspective on the same network. Maybe focused on a language or subject or sub-community of users, different rules and moderation. And you want more a unified perspective, everyone gets the same and less intermediaries. I'd say that is fundamentally incompatible with this form of federation and kind of out of scope. You probably want a network without that hierarchy. And that comes with different technical challenges and advantages.

(And suppose we extended ActivityPub. Instead of separating and moving stuff to the client, we could imagine you install a Lemmy or Mastodon server/instance on your computer or phone. Along your browser. You'd have it all on your device and could configure it like you wanted. I'm not sure if that'd be a superior solution.)

I have Debian on my servers for a decade or so, and on several workstations. My past experience doesn't quite reflect that. The Debian guys and gals have always been pretty quick with patching the vulnerabilities. Like outstanding fast.

There is some merit to the bugfixing. But that's kind of the point of Debian Stable(?!) Like in the meme picture of this post I don't want updates each day. And I also don't want the software on my servers to change too much on their own. I know my bugs and have already dealt with them and I'm happy that it now works seamlessly for 6 months or so...

And that's also why I have Debian Testing on my computer. That gives me sort of an unofficial rolling distro. With lots of updates and bugfixes. I mean in the end you can't have no updates and lots of updates at the same time. It's either - or. And we can choose depending on the use-case. (I think the blame is on the admin if they choose a wrong tool for a task.)

Meh. No Flatpak, no worries. And no updates, no new software or security patches.