@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org cover
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

deadsuperhero

@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org

Somewhat ridiculous. The clump of brain cells responsible for We Distribute, VidCommons, and Brands.Town. Goofy but lovable, passionate about many things.

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deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Do you ever get a sad pang of nostalgia about the place you came from? Do you look back at a town, and get sad about the potential it once had, and despair the decline it met instead?

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

I feel that way about Peoria, Illinois, and the surrounding area. It was once prosperous. As a kid, it was on the up-and-up.

But, that city has long been a symbol of its own problems: an abandoned downtown, companies that mostly offer dead-end careers, and a frustrated, depressed population that would rather live anywhere else.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

After Caterpillar moved their headquarters, there's been a black hole in the economy there. Cat used to employ thousands of people in the area - blue collar, white collar, you name it. It propped up everything around it - small businesses, restaurants, bars, and music venues.

That place just feels like it's barely holding on now. It would take a lot of work to improve anything, from starting businesses to making transit more accessible to getting rid of food deserts. Everything depended on one company for like 80 years, and the layout and flow of things required workers to live in small towns half an hour away.

The Midwest in general just feels kind of fucked nowadays.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@cb Badum tiss

cwebber , to Random stuff
@cwebber@octodon.social avatar

Hack & Craft! Starting now! https://fossandcrafts.org/hack-and-craft/

I'm going to be switching between doing pixel art for the Lisp Game Jam and a SEKRET PROJECT for @mlemweb and I's anniversary that I can't tell you about! (But you can see the game jam artwork!)

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@cwebber Awww, these look great!

Also, yay Aseprite!

FediTips , to Random stuff
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services avatar

In case you missed it, there are many Mastodon apps for old computers from the 1980s & 1990s:

:apple_old_logo:
https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/mastodon-for-apple-ii

:apple_old_logo: (pre-OS X)
https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon

:commodore:
https://github.com/Havoc6502/MOStodon

:amiga: Commodore
https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amidon

:ms_dos:
https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOStodon

:IBM:
https://github.com/mainframed/BREXXTODON

:Palm_OS:
https://github.com/knickish/heffalump

:windows95:
https://github.com/meyskens/mastodon-for-workgroups

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@FediTips You can also see pictures and demonstrations of many of these in our article: https://wedistribute.org/2023/07/mastodon-retro-clients/

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Some days, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Weird question: can anyone recommend an email hosting service that is more or less just an inbox/outbox? No groupware or collaboration, just spin up a bunch of accounts and integrate them with your own suite of apps?

I'm really interested in using Nextcloud as a full replacement for Google Workspace in our organization. It's really good! There are ways to automatically provision accounts in there, through SSO or other kinds of integration, so that new people get access on their first login.

But, almost every hosted email service is kind of trying to be their own Google Workspace alternative, with bells and whistles that I don't really need.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@arichtman ooh, this might be exactly what I'm looking for!

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

KDE is almost perfect. But, when running on Wayland, Firefox and Thunderbird have super ugly notifications that act like a popup window?

Trying my best to figure that one out

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

This was one of the best features of #Firefish, and I constantly find myself missing it.

18+ thomholwerda , to Random stuff
@thomholwerda@exquisite.social avatar

When I was much, much, much younger - think late teens, so around 2000 - I would also occasionally casually misuse the word "rape", almost exclusively in a gaming context. I might be a boring 39 year old dad now, but I, too, was once an edgy pre-internet/pre-smartphone teenager, and while I was mostly a good person, I was also sometimes a complete fucking insensitive, uneducated, backwards idiot from a small redneck town in The Netherlands who had no fucking clue about the wider world.

Luckily for me, I've always had close female friends, and through their stories it became pretty clear using "rape" callously is not only deeply cringe, but also wholly insensitive and just downright stupid. Luckily I never used it often enough for anyone to have to point it out to me - think less than a handful of times with guy friends when talking about games - but as with everything stupid we do as teenagers, being reminded of it makes my gut wrench in sour stupidity and biting cringe. As it better well fucking should.

Anyway my point is normal people grow out of this in their teens, but it seems hachyderm.io is totally cool with using this word like cringe teenagers. Jesus fuck it's 2024, lads.

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@thomholwerda what the actual fuck?

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Due to the amount of days I've accrued in my leave balance, I officially was able to put in my two weeks' notice with the United States Air Force today.

This is a weird time for me. I'm figuring out what my future looks like, and planning on going back to school full-time. Part of me is really happy, another part of me is sad, worried, terrified, burnt out, and depressed.

I had some amazing experiences, and met some incredible people. We made memories together. Walking away from that puts me in a really weird spot. I have to take time to figure my shit out.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

One of my biggest fears about going back to school is this internal idea that I'm just not smart enough. I know it's not true, but I frequently have bad dreams about being the kind of student I was 15 years ago: lazy, scatterbrained, and absent.

I have this enormous opportunity, but I'm scared that I'm going to waste it. I worked hard to get here. I'm just afraid of self-sabotage.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Trying out on the desktop, since I'm gradually shifting back to these days. So far it's...alright?

I've always loved the idea of a Fediverse client that integrates nicely with the desktop, while offering full access to whatever features that platform gives you. But, I'm hard pressed to find a client that does everything I want. 😅

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

A minor annoyance is that mobile clients like @moshidon are really, really good nowadays. Desktop clients, though? Some are great, but a lot of them feel like they're five years behind, in terms of user experience.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Hey. Let's just pretend for a while that the Web is a much simpler, happier place.

Old Flash intro from Homestar Runner . com

caseynewton , to Random stuff
@caseynewton@mastodon.social avatar

With today’s announcements at Google I/O, the web has entered a state of managed decline https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@caseynewton I know it's beside the point, but

God damn, that is such a good headline.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

This is my nine year old girl. Her name is Lori. She's a diva, but my heart melts for her.

I adore this dog. She follows me everywhere, cuddles with me, and gives jealous looks / barks whenever I smooch my wife. She also regularly tilts her head back and goes "Bwoo!" as a greeting. ♥️

Lori, a tricolor beagle with white, black, and brown fur, staring blankly with big black eyes at the camera. She's sitting on a bed in front of blue pillows.
Lori, a tricolor beagle with white, black, and brown fur, looking apprehensively to her side.
Lori, a tricolor beagle with white, black, and brown fur, panting happily with her tongue hanging out.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Had to sift through my medical data for my various VA Disability claims, and came across notes from various therapy sessions. It was interesting to read old discussions from another point of view, but it's a real can of worms.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

Ever since I published my article about live streaming on PeerTube, I've been thinking about doing it with some of the games I play.

Would there be an interest in watching gameplay?! 😁

hello , to News from fediverse
@hello@social.wedistribute.org avatar

It's now possible to connect and accounts together, and talk across a bridge! We get into the nuts and bolts of how it works, and what you can do to get started!

https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/fediverse-bluesky-bridge/

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@grishka @hello I'll be honest, this didn't use to exist on the site. I'm not totally sure wtf I toggled, but it's unintentional.

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@grishka @hello Figured it out, should be good now.

glukozavr , to News from fediverse
@glukozavr@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Am I correct, assuming that @tootapp is dead app? On AppStore no updates for a year and I seems not to find any activity around it anymore.

Which client would be the most versatile to work with and maybe some other services with iOS app and alive?

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@glukozavr I've heard that Sora SNS is great!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sorasns-for-mastodon-bluesky/id6450969760

18+ scanlime , to Random stuff
@scanlime@misc.name avatar

lol are the kids rediscovering wobbly windows

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@scanlime Wobbly windows are the best! 😁

FediThing , to Random stuff
@FediThing@chinwag.org avatar

Hello people on who are following my Mastodon accounts 👋

Unfortunately, due to the way Streams' software works, its developers are leaving me no choice but to block you, even though you've done nothing wrong.

Streams is sending me your posts and posts you interact with, even if I don't follow you or interact with you. No other Fediverse platform does this AFAIK.

I originally raised the problem on Mastodon's github, they studied it and noticed it all linked back to Streams (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/30162). I raised it in an existing issue on Streams' codeberg, they refuse to fix it. (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams/issues/144)

Sorry! 😦

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@FediThing Hey FediThing, I read the issue, and I think I know what may have happened. I think part of the problem may have been a breakdown in communication.

Just to be clear: is this about Streams posts showing up in your Federated Timeline, or elsewhere, like your Home Timeline?

If it's the Federated one, could it be that some people you follow also follow Streams accounts? I follow a handful, not a huge number, but I seem to recall that the Federated Timeline consists of people you know about, along with people those people know about as well?

It could be a second-order effect where stuff comes in because of a chain of people following each other.

dansup , to Random stuff
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Most forks fail because you need a core developer to maintain the project

There are dozens of misskey forks, and most of them fail after a few months or a year (calckey ->firefish)

You can't just fork something and live off hopes and dreams

This is why I believe it's in my best interest as the core maintainer of Pixelfed to work with our community as much as possible to eliminate the need for a fork

Such a vibe when you reach this, I love it, fuck egos, we all equals, lets goooo 🚀

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@dansup Yeah, I made a similar case about this recently. It's one thing if you're just adding features and having fun (CalcKey was a good example), but long-term sustainability for a project requires sticking to it, dedicating loads of time and energy to doing the boring, monotonous, unsexy stuff as well as the exciting hot new stuff.

I think writing a project from scratch puts a dev in the position that they can't easily back out of development without shutting down completely. There is no upstream to dump work off to, because you're the upstream.

dansup , to Random stuff
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Yeah I've seen a few fedi devs sell out, some sell soapboxes to presidents and others bring their failed misskey forks to the fintech world

The one thing they all had in common was they never actually wrote their own project, they forked an existing project and added some lipstick

Meanwhile us other fedi devs are still here, not chasing trends or money.

deadsuperhero ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@dansup I don't think it's necessarily bad to "sell out", if it means keeping the lights on, or putting a roof over your head. Sometimes, people get burned really bad from doing so much work for free. If I could make a living building for this space, I would 100% do it. But, I'm a shitty developer.

And I realize that your statement is more about Gleason and Kainoa, and what they're doing. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for someone to pivot and pursue their own things, it's just that one built hate speech networks while the other got seriously burnt out and decided to go do literally anything else.

Ironically, both people are the most successful case studies for forks of existing platforms.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

As a fun little experiment, @damon and I worked together to get a instance up and running that stores media on ! It was an interesting learning experience.

I don't think we're ready to announce anything yet, as this was in service of another project in development. But, there's an increasing number of ways to host content on an IPFS node service, and tie it back to platforms like Mastodon using an S3-compatible API for Object Storage and some proxying.

This is all pretty rudimentary, but the big-brain realization is that a more robust version could be done by pairing Minio to s3x if we wanted to self-host an IPFS node with those specific features.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

There's some valid questions as to whether this brings decent benefits, of if it's just a hype technology that's mostly drawbacks. I'm not totally sure yet.

That said, I can think of a few narrow applications where something like this might actually be really interesting, like a Fediverse cache for URL and media previews for instances, or some kind of limited holdover service for media and data for an instance that's bitten the dust.

Anyway, interesting learning experience, might be able to do something with it.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@ilja So far, the easiest workaround (that was surprisingly easy for us) was to use an Object Storage service that puts everything in IPFS, but serves it back with an S3-compatible API.

After a lot of bumping around and figuring out the pieces, it ended up working better than expected! In practice, though, it just works like regular Object Storage. A next step might be to try to make Mastodon serve back the CID and render it directly, instead of proxying the S3 endpoint.

deadsuperhero OP ,
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

@lutindiscret Mostly, I try to inoculate myself against hype. I think there are benefits to the technology, but am mostly interested in serving specific use-cases with it. It's a good way to test the waters, rather than use the same tool to solve every problem.

deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

My wife makes me so happy. 🥰

Two people sitting on a brown leather sofa in front of a yellow wall with some kind of surrealist clockwork gear painting. On the left is Dani, with her auburn hair hanging down around her shoulders. She has a slight smirk. To her right is me, her husband Sean. I am flashing a toothy smile.
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  • Reply
    • darius , to Random stuff
    @darius@friend.camp avatar

    I just witnessed some software transcribe "Fediverse" as "Feddy bears" which.. do I need to start a new server??

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @thisismissem @darius Yeah, I regularly have to correct the AI transcriptions generated by Riverside, which we use to record interviews.

    Overall, it works pretty well, but the misreads are ridiculous. Some included:

    • That reversed
    • Steady verse
    • That we heard
    • Lead dispersed
    • Freddy Durst
    jtbrown , to Random stuff
    @jtbrown@mastodon.social avatar

    This is a good overview of Nostr (the platform I'm working on these days) from @deadsuperhero, in case you're curious how it compares to ActivityPub: https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/nostr-crash-course/

    Awesome that @news is covering Nostr!

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @jtbrown Thank you for the kind words! 😁

    deadsuperhero , to Random stuff
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    I try to publish daily. No matter what I do though, I always have like 40 drafts in the backlog. 😭

    dansup , to Random stuff
    @dansup@mastodon.social avatar

    Anyone building a federated Stack Overflow?

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @dansup don't do it, Dansup! You've got enough on your plate!

    benpate , to Random stuff
    @benpate@mastodon.social avatar

    Well written article with many good reasons to NOT fork Mastodon.

    https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/forking-mastodon/

    My favorite part was about a previously attempted fork called the Florence project. According to the article, they were apparently better at having meetings than producing actual code. I laughed. I cried. I relived so many years of software development trauma.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @benpate Thanks for sharing! 😁

    I worried a little bit about how the piece might be received. I tried to not be too harsh on Florence...there are a lot of reasons why a project can stall out, despite people's best efforts.

    pixelfed , to Random stuff
    @pixelfed@mastodon.social avatar

    Due to losing control of our Matrix channel, we are officially moving over to Discord for now.

    It's a shame, but we can't properly moderate our Matrix, so we can no longer recommend it.

    https://discord.gg/MHvDHaSzmc

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @pixelfed Honestly, that sucks, and I'm sorry you had to deal with that. While I'm happy to see FOSS projects use FOSS comm tools as part of their infrastructure, I would never criticize someone for not using that.

    At the end of the day, people use what tools are most comfortable for them. Matrix / Element are cool, but they're far from seamless, and have a long way to go when it comes to usability.

    Don't let people push you around for embracing what works best for you. They may as well dictate what you wear, and what you eat.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @sturmsucht Agreed, I think it's just the straw that broke the camel's back.

    I've had my fair share of bizarre issues over the years with Matrix, so I can totally understand throwing up my hands and saying "screw it, this isn't something I feel like dealing with right now"

    Arataka , to Random stuff
    @Arataka@esper.lol avatar

    Rip Bluesky? Jack has left and unfollowed everyone - https://thedeepdive.ca/jack-dorsey-leaves-bluesky-board-unfollows-almost-everyone-on-x/

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @Arataka Some of the reporting on this topic is really messy.

    Jack was on the board, but allegedly had little to do with the day-to-day operations and decisions. He was supposedly bullied off of Bluesky last year by people still mad at him for Twitter, and has largely been supporting Nostr for the duration.

    His unfollowing thing on Twitter is supposedly just a test of the algorithm as it exists today. That's what Jack said, anyway.

    hello , to Random stuff
    @hello@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    A lot of people have talked about the possibility of forking to get the many improvements their communities need. Making such an effort successful is another discussion entirely.

    https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/forking-mastodon/

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @hashraydamon Yeah, I wrote about them in the piece. There's a difference between doing a fork to pursue your own interests and features, and doing a fork to compete with the original project.

    The first is easy, the second one is extremely difficult.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @soaproot My goal isn't to discourage anyone from running a fork, so much as it's an insight into what you're signing up for.

    For me, a big concern involves trying to run a fork that actively competes with Mastodon, to the point of trying to replace it. This is what I see when people make calls for a hard fork, and it concerns me because it's never a call to support an existing fork or another piece of software.

    What it communicates to me is that someone is more interested in being the SABDFL, rather than being one of the contributors supporting an existing project.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @soaproot TL;DR: I'm not saying "don't do it", I'm saying "okay, but there's some big headaches and you need to make peace with a number of things".

    Committed developers, deep knowledge of the code, community outreach, a coherent product vision, and having a designer all go a long way towards making this successful. Making it easy for communities to switch over is important, too.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @jdp23 You are more than welcome to quote and link!

    And yeah, I may have been projecting some of my own discomforts a bit. The last few calls for a hard fork, to me, have felt less like "let's build our own thing together!" and more like a call to abandon Mastodon in favor of this amazing hypothetical fork where some other person is the SABDFL.

    I think there is very much a need for an alternative to Mastodon. I'm not sure it's necessarily Mastodon itself.

    futzle , to Random stuff
    @futzle@old.mermaid.town avatar

    Current number of entries: 9

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @futzle I still need to write, record, and finish my entry. 😅

    onepict , to Random stuff
    @onepict@chaos.social avatar

    "Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing".

    Joe MacMillan
    Halt and Catch Fire Pilot.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @onepict Absolutely incredible series. It was a great insight into what being at the center of the desktop revolution and the explosion of the World Wide Web was like. It's also a great musing on failure, due to how we sometimes prioritize the wrong things.

    deadsuperhero ,
    @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar

    @onepict I'd also go as far to say that the bean-counting tendencies of business makes it difficult for them to take risks or do things that are new and visionary.

    We see that with The Giant, which was an engineering achievement, but also removed all traces of personality to instead focus on specs and releasing on time. What Cameron was originally doing with it was special, and different, and the unveiling of the Macintosh was a big realization for Joe that he fucked up.

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